“I have every confidence that you’ll find a way to end my life before I stain the world with evil.”

Rebellion in those eyes. “We die,” she said, “we die together. That’s the deal.”

He thought about his final thoughts as he’d fallen with her in New York, her body broken in his arms, her voice less than a whisper in his mind. He hadn’t considered holding onto his eternity for a second, had chosen to die with her, with his hunter. That she would choose to do the same . . . His hands clenched. “We die,” he repeated, “we die
together.”

A moment of utter silence, the sense of something being locked into place.”