Pestilence stares at them curiously, as though he’s never seen anything like this before.

Their skin is old, their bones are old, their hearts are old. And they’ve loved each other for a long, long time. And yet it’s clear that even after all the years they’ve had together, this parting is too soon.

Far too soon.

My throat clogs. This is … personal. Really, really personal. And heartbreaking—and not for my eyes. I bow my head and eventually slip out of the room.

The horseman doesn’t follow after me, choosing instead to be an interloper. Five minutes pass, then ten.

What could he possibly be doing in there?

Finally, when it seems like an eternity has passed, I open the door again and peek in. Pestilence sits next to the bed, his large frame dwarfing the side chair. He watches the couple with a confounded look on his face.

Ugh, need to remember that this guy has zero social skills.

Slipping inside, I take his hand and tug him off the chair and out of the room. He appears just as confused by this new turn of events as he did about the couple he was staring creepily at.

“What is it, Sara?” he asks when I shut the door behind us.

“These are their last hours. I’m sure they want to spend them alone.”

His gaze wanders back to the closed door. “How do you know they want to be … alone?”

I can tell he finds my word choice strange—alone is traveling through a foreign land for weeks on end and never once speaking to another soul. It’s most definitely not holding onto another human being murmuring in low tones about things only lovers know.

Pestilence is staring at me, waiting for my answer.

How to put this? I never thought I’d have to explain something this obvious to someone else.

“I mean that they want to be alone together,” I say. “They want to share their final time enjoying each other’s company, not ours.”

The horseman is still looking at me with no small amount of confusion, so I elaborate. “We only get so many minutes alive,” I say. “When you find someone worth spending that time with, you don’t want to share those minutes with anyone else.” Particularly not your final few minutes.

For a long moment, Pestilence digests this. Eventually, he inclines his head. “Then I will leave them … alone.”

I peer closely at him. “Why were you watching them anyway?”

Pestilence doesn’t really like watching people die, for all the death he delivers.

He hesitates before saying, “They are in love.”

Now it’s me who isn’t following.

When Pestilence sees this, he explains, “This is the first time I’ve seen humans in love. It’s … curious, compelling, to see a side of human nature that has been previously hidden from me.”

I don’t know what to make of that. “But you’ve been alive to witness thousands of years of human history. You must’ve seen love at some point during all that time.” After all, he’s the one who’s always waxing on about how ageless he is.

“Yes,” he says slowly. “But not like this.”

Not as a living, breathing, feeling thing. And somehow that makes all the difference.

Chapter 34

Rob goes first. It’s a cold, bleak morning, the day he dies.

Ruth’s weak cry wakes me up. Though the sound of it is faint, there’s something to it that hits me low in the gut, and I just know he’s gone. The great love of her life is gone.

I hurry to her bedroom, even though there’s no reason to rush at this point. Pestilence is already there, Rob’s frail and pockmarked form cradled in his arms.

The horseman’s sorrowful eyes meet mine, and he looks so hopelessly adrift. I can’t make sense of his emotion, this horseman who insisted they must die.

Moving past him, I kneel at Ruth’s side. Even in the middle of her fever, she cries weakly. I pull up a chair to her bedside, and I stay with her, clutching her hand in mine as her grief works its way through her system.

You’d think that after a lifetime together, Ruth would be inconsolable, but not an hour after I entered her room, her sadness has passed like a storm moving through a city.

“I’ll be with him soon enough,” she tells me. “It really is a blessing, to leave this world together. And to live in an age when I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’ll see him again—and so soon. I can almost pretend he simply left the house on an errand.”

Only, Rob’s not coming back.

Her eyes grow distant and sad. “I just can’t believe it’s over …”

Just then, Pestilence re-enters the room, his presence like that of the Grim Reaper. But maybe that’s just me because when Ruth sees him, she has a smile ready for the horseman.

Instead of returning the look, Pestilence glances my way, his brow wrinkling with concern as he frowns. He stops well away from the bed.

“Don’t be a stranger now,” Ruth chastises him. “Come closer.”

The horseman moves towards Ruth like she’s a cobra set to strike. It’s almost laughable to see formidable Pestilence wary of soft, loving Ruth.

She pats the bed next to her. I wince at even that small action. I know how unbelievably painful the sores make movement.

Gently, Pestilence sits where she indicates.

The old woman reaches out to him and cups his cheek. “I forgive you, dear.”

Pestilence looks blindsided. “For what?”

But he knows. I can see it on his face. He knows exactly what she’s forgiving him for, and he’s covering up the fact that he—is—shook.

“You don’t have an easy task ahead of you,” she says. “For whatever reason, the Lord deemed fit for you to feel what it is to be human—the loss, the heartbreak, all of it.”

Suddenly, Pestilence appears very young.

Only now do I see in him what Ruth does: he is one of us even as he stands apart. He’s not insulated to our pain and torment the way I’d like to believe he is. He has to bear it like some kind of penance.

With that one realization, the entire axis of my world shifts.

He is every bit a victim of this apocalypse as I am.

Noble, gallant Pestilence, who must watch us all die, who must make us all die, even though death greatly bothers him. No wonder he hates us so much. He has to. Otherwise, he’s murdering thousands and thousands of people for no good reason other than the fact that he was told to do so.

“You’re going to be okay. You walk in His light,” Ruth says like the straight baller she is. I mean, holy shit, this woman is on her deathbed and she’s comforting the dude that put her there. If that’s not savage, I don’t know what is.

Pestilence’s nostrils flare, as though he’s holding back some strong emotion.

“Rob’s not here to say it,” Ruth continues, “so I will say it for him: You take care of that little lady you’re with, alright?”

He stares at her the same way he did that first night, like he’s never encountered a Ruth before.

Slowly, he nods. “With my life, I swear it.”

Something warm and uncomfortable spreads through me.

She gives him another one of her sweet smiles. “Now, if you would be a dear, I’m awfully thirsty.”