“People change, Sara, but horsemen don’t. It doesn’t matter what you think of me; I am and will always be Pestilence the Conqueror.”

He’s not going to bend. I can see it now. I should’ve seen it before, back when I could’ve protected my heart a little better.

“What happens now?” I ask. Immediately I regret the question, my stomach roiling with dread.

“The world ends.”

“And me?” I say, the desolation already creeping in.

“You will stay with me.”

He doesn’t ask it; he doesn’t even say it as a challenge. It’s spoken with complete authority.

I nod slowly.

Pestilence must sense something is wrong because he takes another step towards me.

“Don’t,” I say.

If he tries to make either of us feel better—I swear it will break the last of me.

And there’s so little left to break.

I glance around.

Can’t be in the same room as him. I’m suffocating on all this tragedy.

I turn on my heel, eager to get away from him.

“Sara,” he calls out before I can escape. His voice is so goddamn patient.

I pause. “You once told me that names don’t matter,” I say, my back to him, “that what I called you doesn’t matter.”

I glance at Pestilence over my shoulder.

Love. I think we can both hear my earlier endearment in the air between us.

His expression is wary when he inclines his head. “I remember.”

“You’re wrong, you know,” I say. “They do matter.”

Pestilence is the very worst of his nature. I glimpsed the very best of his, but that part of him, that future, is no more than a whisper of a possibility, like smoke dissipating into the wind.

I leave him at that.

Chapter 51

I walk away from him long enough to grab my things—what little I have. It’s hardly more than the shirt on my back.

I stare at the master bedroom for a long time, feeling like my heart is unmaking itself one piece at a time.

Why couldn’t you have fallen in love with a normal boy, and then died a normal death alongside him? Why did you have to choose a horseman? Why did you have to insert yourself between him and the world?

All this time has been a deadly tug-of-war between love and loyalty. How I ever deluded myself that it wouldn’t come to this, I don’t know.

I pull on my boots, grab my borrowed coat, and then head for the front door.

Pestilence is still where I left him, still standing guard by the television, still consumed with his own wrath.

I walk right past him, heading for the foyer.

“Where are you going?” he calls out, his voice ringing with his authority. He doesn’t sound scared or lost or uncertain.

Does he seriously have no idea?

Ignoring him, I reach for the front door and slip out.

Outside—fuck, it’s cold. I stagger a little at the temperature. It’s a wet, biting chill that wriggles under your skin and seeps into you. Already my ears are beginning to sting. I bring up the hood of my jacket.

You’ll never survive this, weakened as you are. Ill-equipped as you are.

The door opens behind me. “Where are you going?”

I stop at Pestilence’s voice. Now there’s something to it besides pent up rage. Something that is still too confident to be worry. I think it might be shock and a touch of confusion.

“To rejoin humanity,” I say.

“I haven’t released you.”

“I wasn’t aware that I was your prisoner,” I say.

Clearly he seems to have forgotten this little detail.

“You are mine.”

I pull my jacket closer to me. “I am no one’s,” I say vehemently.

The horseman scowls at that but doesn’t try to argue the point.

I appraise him. “Just say I stayed. What will you do when all the people are gone?”

“I will endure.”

“What will you do when I’m gone?”

“I will keep you alive,” he insists.

I search his face. “Even if you could, even if you could protect me from every attempt on my life—because there will be more so long as I’m with you—you wouldn’t be able to keep me alive forever. Eventually I’d age. I’d age and die and then you’d be alone again, only now, there’d be no more humans, just you.”

“And my brothers,” he adds quietly.

I throw up my hands. “Alright, you and your murderous brothers.” Brothers who have been absent these long years. “But other than them, you’d be alone.”

My body is beginning to tremble from the cold, and Pestilence’s eyes go right to the action. “Cease this foolishness, Sara. Come inside,” he says, gentler. “I will warm you up.”

I give him an incredulous look. “Do you still not get it? You’re killing off everyone. Did you seriously think I would stay with you after something like this?”

“You stayed with me before,” the horseman says heatedly, but I don’t miss the spark of fear at the back of his eyes.

I let out a hollow laugh. “That was when I thought you hated what you were doing to my world.”

Back when I thought you could change.

Isn’t that the most horrible detail of all? I finally got what I wanted—Pestilence did change, just not for the better.

“I’m doing this to avenge you!”

“I never asked for your vengeance,” I say. “I asked for your mercy.”

Pestilence flinches at the word as though I slapped him. It’s the very word that saved my life the night I tried to kill the horseman. The word that’s saved me every night since.

Mercy.

“Did you ever think that maybe your God’s mercy was never meant for me?” I ask. “That maybe it was meant for everyone else?”

No, he hadn’t, if his expression is anything to go by.

I turn, beginning to walk away, only to feel the warm press of Pestilence’s fingers in the crook of my arm.

“If I have to tie you to me, I will,” Pestilence says. “But I will not let you go.”

I swivel to face him. For all his lofty demands, his face is betraying his true feelings. I can see stark panic in his expression.

He hadn’t anticipated this.

“Pestilence,” I say, my voice calming, “you can force me stay with you, but you can’t make me want to be with you.”

“But you do want to be with me,” he insists. “You called me love.”

I look away. “I did.”

“And you love me.”

My heart beats faster. I may not have said the three words, but the horseman speaks the truth.

My eyes move to him. “I do,” I agree. “And it is not enough.”

He staggers back a step. “Not enough?”

I think I might be hurting him worse than any weapon ever did.

“It’s not enough to overcome whatever else lies in your heart,” I say. “You clearly hate humankind more than you care for me.”

Pestilence’s nostrils flare, but he bites back a response.

He doesn’t deny it. Ouch.

“Love is supposed to bring out the best parts of you,” I continue, reminding him of our talk shortly after Ruth and Rob passed. “Not the worst,” I add quietly.