I stand out in our yard, taking in my surroundings with a sort of helpless fear I’ve come to despise. I can hear Ana somewhere in the house, humming while she burns the dish she’s trying to make.

I still can’t get enough air in my lungs.

How will I ever possibly take back up my scythe once she’s gone?

I won’t.

I can’t.

It’s as simple as that.

What a fool I’ve been to believe I didn’t have to choose between Ana and my task. Choosing her was the end of my task. There’s no moving on once she’s gone.

But—if I’m made mortal—I’ll age with her, die with her, move on to whatever comes next with her.

I want that. I want it bad.

But mortality would mean living in this body I have long despised, a body I’ve only recently been reconsidering. And it would mean giving up my powers.

That’s a staggering tithe—one my brothers have already paid.

I finally understand why they traded in their weapons and their immortality. There is nothing quite like being human. This damnable, deranged experience actually has some perks.

I find I don’t care nearly enough about my power to shake away this notion that I could be mortal with Ana.

I want to do it. Right now. Before I lose my nerve and retreat back into my usual, apathetic self.

However, there is one more thing that stands in my way, one other thing that’s always stood in my way.

Forgiveness.

The word rings in my ears like God Herself spoke it.

Forgiveness.

I suck in a sharp breath. Ever since I first heard Ana speak that word in her sleep, a word her vocal chords shouldn’t have even been able to produce—it’s been there, taunting me.

I’m not sure who I’m supposed to forgive, but I imagine it’s everyone. God would expect no less.

It’s not even in my nature to forgive. I’m apathetic at best, vengeful at worst. And after everything humans have done to me, to Ana …

Forgiveness is preposterous.

I don’t need to do it. Not today, not ever. I still get to have Ana.

Ana, who every second is losing bits of her life, the clock counting down to her end.

My steady pulse grows frantic.

I don’t need to decide today.

I don’t.

But the longer I wait, the closer to death she’ll get. Is it wrong that I want to age with her?

Forgiveness. I turn the word over and over in my mind. Forgive these petty, wicked creatures.

It’s so wholly oppositional to what I’ve been doing this entire time.

Above me, storm clouds gather, the thick plumes of them darkening the sky. The ground is beginning to shake—just a little.

I think of Ana. Ana, who asks nothing of me. Ana who saved me before she knew what I was—and then saved me again once she did know.

Ana, who I forgave long ago—I forgave her the very night we met. And I’ve forgiven her every day since—for harming me, for hating me, for every slight she’s inflicted. It’s easy enough to forgive someone like Ana, who is kind when she doesn’t need to be. Ana who is radiant and thaws my cold heart.

It’s much harder to forgive everyone else, especially when everyone else includes the people who once hurt me.

They made ribbons of my skin, they disemboweled me, they stabbed me—over and over—and burned me alive. Those men and women made pain an art form.

And the very night Ana saved me, my body still mutilated, God forced me to consider that damnable word.

Forgiveness.

You ask too much, I’d whispered into the darkness, my voice broken. Far too much.

I hadn’t been able to forgive this teeming mass of humanity then. I still haven’t been able to do it. But I know intuitively that I don’t get mortality until I do this.

I swallow.

A raindrop hits me. Then another. The ground beneath me is shaking.

If I forgive humanity, then what?

I think of these wretched people, with their crudely-dug wells and their rickety corrals full of bored looking animals. I think of the crumbling cities overgrown with plants.

Human hearts are spiteful and selfish; they are what bid me and my brothers here.

As though aware of my thoughts, my armor materializes on my body, and my scythe and scales appear a mere arm’s span away from me.

I feel the weight of not just my armor, but my hate and anger, my task and my immortality—all of it—on my shoulders.

I drop to a knee and place a fist against the trembling ground, even as raindrops begin to patter against my armor, coming down faster and faster. My breath is labored and my ever steady heart is quickening.

Something’s happening to me. I don’t know if it’s as simple as my mind changing, or if the forces that brought me here, the forces that made me a man and forged my purpose into form are now transforming.

“Famine?”

I jolt at the sound of Ana’s voice.

My gaze flicks up from the ground, where small plants have started to flower and twist up my wrist.

She stands outside our doorway, her cotton dress whipping in the wind. Rain is pelting her, and her eyes look spooked.

Still, she’s so goddamn radiant that it makes my chest tight looking at her.

At what point did she become my purpose?

Her gaze roves over me. “What are you doing?” she calls out to me.

I don’t … I think …

Fuck, I’m uncertain. I hate being uncertain.

Forgiveness.

That bloody word echoes through me.

“I’m … relinquishing my purpose.”

Chapter 51

Ana

Famine has barely spoken the words when—

BOOM!

It sounds like the world is cracking itself wide open.

I stagger towards the horseman, the ground trying to throw me off like a wild horse bucking its rider.

Another earthquake.

I remember the last one well enough. Famine had caused it then, too.

Around us, the earth heaves, and trees from the forest that now surrounds our house snap by the dozens, their trunks crashing to the ground. That’s the only sound I can pick out, but there are others too—too many others. I think our house is making some of them.

Rain turns to hail and lightning flashes from the heavens—coming so fast and from so many places that I can’t make sense of it.

I cover my head as a bloodcurdling howl rises from the depths of the earth, the sound filling the sky, so deafening that it drowns out the roar of the storm.

Far in the distance, several of Taubaté’s derelict skyscrapers begin to fall.

I swallow my scream at the sight. They crumble apart as they collapse, kicking up plumes of debris in their wake.

At some point, the unearthly howl dies away, leaving my ears ringing. Slowly, I hear the sounds of frightened animals. Thousands of birds and bugs have already taken to the skies, but they fly in a confused, agitated sort of way, like neither land nor sky is safe.

A short ways from me, Famine is still kneeling on the ground.

His face is wiped clean of all expression.

Fear—true, undiluted fear, the kind you feel as a kid—floods my system.

“What was that?” I breathe.

I’m not sure he heard me; my voice is too quiet and our surroundings are too loud.

But then the Reaper’s unearthly green eyes move to mine. He holds my gaze for several seconds.