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And so, she arrived at the crossroads and knew which was the only path ahead of her that she could traverse. She expected to feel terror. But she did not. She knew what must need be done, and she was…at peace with it. Perhaps her conversations with the dead made it so. Or perhaps she finally accepted that which she should have done a long time ago, before his corruption poisoned her heart.

“There is but one thing left for me to do.” She smiled faintly at him. “One place where I can go that you cannot reach.”

His silver eyes widened. He took a silted step toward her. “No—”

“Goodbye, Gideon Raithe.” She took the knife from her throat just long enough to rip her wedding ring from her finger and hurl it at him. In the same moment, she fled onto the balcony, shoving open the doors with their shattered panes. They cut her hands. She did not care. It would not matter soon enough.

The ledge of the balcony was low enough that she could jump easily onto it.She turned in time to see Gideon coming toward her.

The thin band of gold still rolled across the floor, bouncing a few times before skittering along on its edge like a coin. Its path was ended abruptly as a dark boot flattened it to the stones.

A whisper of dark fabric.

“Marguerite—wait!”

The stone crenellations on the balcony dug into her palms. She could feel the grit as the edges of the blocks jabbed into the cuts on her hands. She watched the man who pursued her—who had taken everything from her. The monster she had fallen in love with. Dark robes swirled around him. Only his silhouette was visible, cut out against the firelight of the torches behind him.

He reached for her.

I choose to die.

She let herself fall backward into the darkness.

Indigo wool fabric whipped in the wind as the world rushed past her. Someone screamed her name, but it was too late. Hewn stone walls of the castle exterior turned to rough, jagged cliffs.

Then…all movement stopped.

Her ribcage collapsed.

Her lungs flooded with blood.

Her skull cracked.

She died.

Jagged rocks had met her at the bottom of the castle. Its parapets were black silhouettes against a barely brighter sky. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move.

She was already dead.

The silence of her heart was deafening. Her body was dead.

But she was still…there, somehow. Lingering. Stuck. Waiting for Death himself to fetch her.

Someone was suddenly there beside her. But it was not the reaper, although black robes swirled around him, caught in the wind she could no longer feel. He knelt beside her. Claws, long and jagged, as dark and shining as onyx, reached for her. Silver bands caught the dim starlight, stark in contrast against the shadows around him.

He spoke.

“You will never die alone.”

A promise and a threat.

Comforting and terrifying.

Angry…and mournful.

She was afraid of him. She was afraid of dying. But that wasn’t all she felt. There was something else there, lurking in the shadows of her stilled heart.

He lifted her in his inhuman hands, cradling her dead and broken body close to him. She watched, somehow within her body and without it, as he pulled a necklace from the depths of the darkness he was made from.