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I walk right past him, heading for the foyer.

“Where are you going?” he calls out, his voice ringing with his authority. He doesn’t sound scared or lost or uncertain.

Does he seriously have no idea?

Ignoring him, I reach for the front door and slip out.

Outside—fuck, it’s cold. I stagger a little at the temperature. It’s a wet, biting chill that wriggles under your skin and seeps into you. Already my ears are beginning to sting. I bring up the hood of my jacket.

You’ll never survive this, weakened as you are. Ill-equipped as you are.

The door opens behind me. “Whereare you going?”

I stop at Pestilence’s voice. Now there’s something to it besides pent up rage. Something that is still too confident to be worry. I think it might be shock and a touch of confusion.

“To rejoin humanity,” I say.

“I haven’t released you.”

“I wasn’t aware that I was your prisoner,” I say.

Clearly he seems to have forgotten this little detail.

“You aremine.”

I pull my jacket closer to me. “I amno one’s,” I say vehemently.

The horseman scowls at that but doesn’t try to argue the point.

I appraise him. “Just say I stayed. What will you do when all the people are gone?”

“I will endure.”

“What will you do whenI’mgone?”

“I will keep you alive,” he insists.

I search his face. “Even if you could, even if you could protect me from every attempt on my life—because there will be more so long as I’m with you—you wouldn’t be able to keep me alive forever. Eventually I’d age. I’d age and die and then you’d be alone again, only now, there’d be no more humans, just you.”

“And my brothers,” he adds quietly.

I throw up my hands. “Alright, you and your murderous brothers.” Brothers who have been absent these long years. “But other than them, you’d be alone.”

My body is beginning to tremble from the cold, and Pestilence’s eyes go right to the action. “Cease this foolishness, Sara. Come inside,” he says, gentler. “I will warm you up.”

I give him an incredulous look. “Do you still not get it? You’re killing offeveryone. Did you seriously think I would stay with you after something like this?”

“You stayed with me before,” the horseman says heatedly, but I don’t miss the spark of fear at the back of his eyes.

I let out a hollow laugh. “That was when I thought you hated what you were doing to my world.”

Back when I thought you could change.

Isn’t that the most horrible detail of all? I finally got what I wanted—Pestilencedidchange, just not for the better.

“I’m doing this to avenge you!”

“I never asked for your vengeance,” I say. “I asked for yourmercy.”