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Still nothing from Pestilence.

I recite Lord Byron (“Darkness”) and Emily Dickinson (“Because I could not stop for Death”) and more Poe (“Annabel Lee”), and the entire time the horseman doesn’t utter one single word. Not even to tell me to shut the hell up.

I give up.

“What are you thinking?” I finally ask.

He doesn’t respond.

I lay my hand over the one that presses against my stomach, securing him to me. “Pestilence?”

His hand flexes.

“Last night I could not decide which you were—a tonic or a toxin,” he says. “Today I’ve discovered you’re both.”

I wince a little at his words.

“You have woken in me things I did not know slumbered,” he continues. “Now that I am aware of them, I cannot ignore their existence. I fear I am becoming … like you. Human and full of want. Ineedthis longing to go away.”

“Longing?” I almost choke the word out.

“Don’t tell me I am mistaken in this too,” he says bitterly. “Love, lust, longing—you cannot refashion my feelings. I know my heart, Sara, even if it’s alien to you.”

What did I walk myself into?

“What do you want from me?” I ask.

“Nothing! Everything!Fuck,” he swears, the profanity shocking coming from his tongue. “This is soconfusing.”

I’m about to speak when he cuts in. “I want to taste your lips again. I want to hold you like I did in the tent. I don’t understand why I want these things, only that I do.”

My face heats. Is it wrong to feel flattered when Pestilence is clearly having an existential crisis?

No?

Alright.

“Love, affection, compassion—these are the few redeeming qualities your kind has,” he says, “and now I’m beingtemptedby them and it is breaking me in two.”

Ever been stuck in a situation you desperately want to get out of, but there’s no escape? That’s this moment, sitting here on Trixie Skillz and listening to Pestilence tell me about all his feels.

“I can sense you drawing away from me,” he says. “The more I want from you, the more reluctant you are to give it. And I don’t know what to do.”

I do. “Stop spreading plague.”

He laughs humorlessly. “I cannot help what I am any more than you can help what you are.”

Is that really true though? He spared me, which means he has at least a tiny bit of control over his lethal ability.

“We are locked into these roles, you and I,” he says, “and I do not know what to make of this misery.”

He sounds so desolate, so hopeless.

I squeeze his hand.

My heart hurts again. This man is so much worse than all the other men I’ve ever known, and yet I feel chafed raw by him.

I reach up and tilt his head down to mine, and then I brush a kiss against his lips.