Page 217 of War

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.Iam 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 youeverbegged?” He appears put off by it. “My sure-footed, vengeful brother, youtake.”

And yet I cannot takethis.

“Please.”

Thanatos’s wings stretch, then resettle. He’s intrigued, which is an improvement fromunmoved. “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.Mychild.

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—allhumans—were doomed to die. It wasn’t personal.

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

“I will doanything,” 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.

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