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Not until me. Somehow, I’m the spark that ignited this terrible deed.

“Undo it,” I whisper.

“It’s done,” he says, his expression uncompromising.

I’m shaking my head. It can’t bedone. Irefuseto believe that.

“You cured me of infection, you can undo this,” I insist, my voice cracking.

I can’t be the only one left alive along the West Coast. That’s its own kind of hell.

“But I won’t.”

But I won’t.

“Please.”

He flinches at that word.Please. It started out as a curse spoken between us, a plea voiced only so that it could be denied. But somewhere along the way,pleasebecame redemptive.

Only now, Pestilence doesn’t want to be redeemed.

Damnit, I can still feel a part of him between my thighs. I’m sore from all the places his body scoured mine today and yesterday, his lovemaking as intense as it was passionate. He can’t have left my side all those times only to curse a good portion of North America.

“Please, Pestilence. Please …love.”

Names mean so much. A rose may smell the same no matter what name you give it, but how you think of it might change. And I think of Pestilence differently—I have for a while. But to call him by a name of my own choosing, to give him an endearment and show him that he’s more than his namesake, I haven’t been brave enough to do so until now.

But there’s nothing left to fear anymore. Not in the face of this situation.

The horseman stills. I see that coldness crack in his eyes.

“You didn’t expect that, did you?” I say. “Me loving you.” I know I hadn’t. And I don’t know in what quiet hour the realization snuck up on me, but it did. “Maybe I’m a fool and a traitor, but I’myours,” I’m blinking back tears, “but damnit, you can’t do this.”

He takes a step towards me, then another, his eyes dying a little bit, like he wants to touch me, but knows I won’t let him. Not now, with all this blood on his hands.

Never bothered you before, Burns.

But that was back when I thought I could change him—stop him.

Should’ve known better.

“I could’ve lived with what those men did to me, cruel as it was,” Pestilence says.

My mind flashes to the horseman tied to the phone pole, most of his face gone.

“But when they shot you—” His voice cuts off with emotion, and I realize my fatal error. “You should’ve never shown me love, dear Sara,” he says.

This whole time, I’d assumed that love would redeem the horseman and save us all. I should’ve known it would only ever damn us to our grisly fates.

“If you now understand loss,” I say, “then you know what you’re taking from these people.”

His jaw clenches. “It is no more than they deserve.”

“No more than theydeserve?” I say, aghast. “Who are you talking about? Rob? Ruth?Me?”

Pestilence’s mouth thins. “You seem to think that arguing about this will change these people’s fate.”

“You and change.” I shake my head bitterly. “I don’t know why you think you’re incapable of it.”