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There’s a pain in my chest that’s equal parts joy and anguish. I don’t want to believe him because if I’ve misunderstood, the disappointment might crush me alive.

I brace my hands on the countertop as I sway a little.

My God.

Pestilenceretractedhis plague. I don’t know how, but he did.

He must’ve done it while I was confined to that damn room. I’d thought the worst of him then, and all the while he wascuringthe plague he’d brought down upon the masses.

The only thing besides his love that I ever wanted. He gave it to me.

Had I but turned on the fucking T.V. I would’ve seen this.

Pestilence stopped the plague, and still I left him.

I swallow back a choked cry.

Why didn’t he tell me? By God, that would’ve changedeverything.

“And the Fever,” I ask, somehow finding my voice, “has it spread since then?”

Have to be sure I understand this correctly.

The outpost owner frowns, considering my words. “Not that I’ve heard, though who knows where the world’s at these days? It hasn’t been back around these parts, and that’s good enough for me.”

I thank the man for the news and walk away from the outpost in a daze.

My last encounter with Pestilence fills my mind.

I surrender, he’d said, casting his crown aside.

He had already reversed the plague by then.

I may have laid claim to the world but I’ve lost you, the only thing I ever really wanted.

Whydidn’t he say anything? Did he think I was watching the news in that room, that I’d learned that he’d cured them all and still decided to walk away?

These thoughts are gutting me. Because I’m still in love with Pestilence, and now, after vindicating himself, he’s gone.

Chapter 53

By the timeI return to my hometown of Whistler, I hear enough reports and firsthand accounts to believe the incredible.

The plague reallydiddisappear over the course of days.

Just …poof, gone, and the horseman with it. I try not to think about that. My heart aches enough as it is.

I learn that, like me, people didn’t believe the news—not at first, at least. Weeks without incident had to pass before anyone dared to hope that the Messianic Fever was truly over and that the horseman had vanished.

Then people began to hope—in that ridiculous way we do—that other things would return to the way they once were. That electricity would begin to work as it ought, that batteries would hold a charge and perhaps even the Internet would eventually come back.

They hoped in vain.

The world never went back to the way it was. I doubt it ever will.

Without the horseman by my side, no one recognizes me as the girl he kept. Despite the few blurry photos that once circulated, not a single person has connected the dots.

When I finally arrive home, I get a hero’s welcome—the firefighter who took a stand against the horseman, the woman they all thought long dead.