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There’s pain and pain and pain, so much goddamned pain. I’m burning up with it even though there’s no fire I’m burning up and make it stop, please make it stop, please, please, please—

Chapter 9

I wake brieflyto an intense flare of pain in one of my shoulders. I cry out as hands release me and some of the agony abates.

The world around me is out of focus, just swathes of colors, and my body throbs in the most horrible way.Whydoes everything hurt?

Around me, the colors begin to sharpen enough for me to make out a face. An angel looms over me, his face still somewhat blurry.

Am I in heaven?

Should I feel pain if I’m in heaven?

I reach out and cup the angel’s face with a shaky hand, my wrists bloody and my fingers purple. He flinches, moving out of my reach.

“Am I dead?” I think I ask, but the angel doesn’t respond.

“Stay with me,” I murmur. I grope for a hand. When I find what I’m looking for, I lace my fingers through it. “Please.”

Not supposed to say that word.

Why am I not supposed to say that word?

Something about begging, but now I can’t quite remember …

Everything is drifting farther and farther from me.

I squeeze the hand I hold tightly. “Stay with me,” I say again.

But the angel and the rest of the world melts away.

I blink myeyes open, staring at the popcorn ceiling above me. For a moment, my life is normal, my mind is wiped free of memory.

Someone squeezes my hand, and I turn my head, bewildered. And then I see him.

I scream.

There’s nothing—nothing—more monstrous than that beguiling face Pestilence wears, his golden crown resting proudly on his head.

It’s only once he drops my hand like it burned that I realize the fucker washolding my hand. It takes another second for me to process why exactly that fills me with blinding fury.

Fleeing the horseman. Arrows to the back. Tied to his steed and forced to run. Falling. Dragging. Pain. Dying.

I gasp at the memory, and now the full force of my agony surfaces.

“I’m … alive.”

It seems impossible in light of everything I went through. It felt as though I was being torn apart.

“Suffering is for the living,” Pestilence replies from where he sits. I glance around at the room we’re in. It’s another guestroom, presumably in another house Pestilence has decided to invade.

My hands delve into the worn sheets beneath me. He brought me to this room and laid me on the bed, and presumably I’ve been here ever since.

I can’t tell whether this scenario utterly terrifies me, or whether it takes the edge off my fear.

He didn’t let me die. He intends to let me heal—

Only so that I can suffer more.