I begin to weep in earnest, clutching her tightly to me.

Why, wife?

Why?

I glance around us at the sand and dust that coats our bodies. At the partially caved in wall near my feet. It takes a bit longer to see the few bits of metal scattered about and the charred remains of Miriam’s clothing.

They obviously buried me with the same damn explosives that kept going off when they were trying to kill me. And Miriam … Miriam must have seen them as well.

Which means my wife came for me despite their presence. Was it suicide? She had an unhealthy leaning towards death. Or had she tried to retrieve me?

My gaze goes back to her throat.

Surrender. The word mocks me now.

I feel mortal and powerless.

That thought alone pulls me from my grief. I straighten my shoulders.

I was never powerless. Not when I first woke and not now.

There is still one path that might be open to me, one possibility left.

I hold Miriam’s body to me and I begin to chant in Angelic.

This is my last hope. My only hope.

I close my eyes and the world disappears.

When I open them again, I am somewhere else.

Chapter 61

War

Thanatos stands in front of me like he’s been waiting. He looks unsurprised but vaguely disappointed.

“No,” he says.

Around us, the air shifts and moves. We are everywhere and nowhere all at once. So many voices filter in, so many faces flicker by. The humanity we swore to destroy is still teeming around us.

“Why are you here?” he asks, his dark wings looming behind his back.

“You already know,” I growl.

He eyes me up and down. “You should be doing your duty.”

“I have.” I take a step forward. Men quiver at even this slight show of power. Death doesn’t so much as flinch. “I want her back.”

He tilts his head, his black hair slipping from behind an ear. “I have never seen you want for a human.”

Death wouldn’t understand love, not as he currently is. He hasn’t roamed the earth like I have. It is a sensation one must live to experience.

My voice drops low. “She’s marked,” I say instead. This is something he will understand.

And yet Thanatos appears unmoved. “She served her purpose, and now she’s been called home.”

I feel a part of myself break at his words. I am her home. Not the Great Everafter.

Stepping forward, I grab his shoulder and squeeze. We have always been close, he and I. Surely he will work with me the way we have always worked together.

“I beg you,” I say, my voice low, “bring her back.”

Death’s eyes narrow. “When have you ever begged?” He appears put off by it. “My sure-footed, vengeful brother, you take.”

And yet I cannot take this.

“Please.”

Thanatos’s wings stretch, then resettle. He’s intrigued, which is an improvement from unmoved. “You and I both know she cannot live,” Death says. “That’s not our task.”

“You spared Pestilence’s woman.”

Thanatos had mercy then.

“A curiosity I will not repeat,” Death says. “Besides, his woman was … retrievable. Yours is not.”

“She’s already crossed?” I ask, that sense of hopelessness flooding me all over again. But of course she’s crossed. The moment life released her from its clutches, she must’ve.

My brother’s demeanor softens. “She’s fine—as is the child.”

The child. My child.

When I first woke as a man, and then when I fought—all that time I thought I had nothing to lose. I thought the end necessitated the means. Humans—all humans—were doomed to die. It wasn’t personal.

I feel like I’m choking on my old beliefs now.

“I will do anything,” I say.

Death’s lips press together. “There is only one thing that can be done.”

I don’t breathe.

“Surrender your sword, War.”

My one purpose. My existence and identity wrapped into one.

Surrender. The single sign written on Miriam.

I suck in a breath.

He’d always known. I was the one who’d been a fool in my certainty. I’d basked in my utter confidence that Miriam was mine by divine right and that nothing could change that.

Nothing can change that. This isn’t over. It doesn’t have to be.

Surrender.

Nothing comes without sacrifice—this least of all. Miriam was right, love and war cannot coexist. I can have one or the other, but not both.

My sword wasn’t with me when I left the earth, but it’s here with me now, settled in its scabbard like we were never separated. I reach for it. The metal sings as I withdraw the weapon from its sheath.

“So that is your choice,” Thanatos says, curiosity and disappointment rolled into his voice.

“It is no choice.” I will cast my lot with the mortals. The fallible, complicated mortals.

I begin to hand my blade over, hilt first. Thanatos reaches to take it from me.

At the last moment, I pull back the sword, withholding it. “The child comes too.”

Death’s dark eyes study me. “What is the point, brother? She was barely a possibility.”

She. A girl then.

“She comes back,” I insist.

Death looks at me with his dark eyes. He’s judging my heart just as much as I’ve judged humankind’s. Eventually he nods. “Enjoy what time you have left with them,” he says honestly. “I hope it is worth it.”

With those words, a change overtakes me.

I’m stripped bare of my bloodlust and my immortality. It lifts like a weight from my shoulders.

I’m no longer proud War but a penitent man.

“You are released.”

Chapter 62

Miriam

I blink my eyes open. It’s bright, and my skin tingles. I don’t feel quite right.

War leans over me, and my eyes focus.

I gasp in a breath at the sight of him, whole and unmarred.

“Wife,” he says, his own voice shocked. And then he pulls me against him.

War buries his face in my neck, and his huge body begins to tremble. It takes me a moment to realize he’s weeping.

“You’re alive,” I say, amazed, running my fingers through the hair on his head. I’d feared that this death was going to be his last.

But how … ?

“You shouldn’t have come for me,” he says, his voice hoarse.

I pull away a little to look at him, and I touch one of his tears. I’ve never seen the horseman weep.

“I love you,” I say. I bottled up those words until it was nearly too late. They rush out of me now. “I will never not come for you because I love you.”

War’s face is naked emotion. Disbelief and joy fill his features, chasing away his tears.

His hands clasp my cheeks and he searches my eyes. “I am having one of your human dreams,” he says. “This is too wonderful to be real.”

“I think this is real.” Right?

I glance around me. We’re not in the grave anymore, but we’re nearby, the dead still scattered around us. I remember that—and I remember trying to save War. I’d been so close, but then his hand slipped. I don’t remember an explosion, but I don’t remember anything else either. My memory simply stops.