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“You could do it now,” she whispers. “Couldn’t you? While you’re here, and I can still talk to you? Please, Iscairn. I don’t think I can do it any more.”

“No.” I lower my head until the pale tip of my beak rests against the iron between us. “You are not going into my ledger, Ophelia Harrow. I will not write your name amongst the dead, and I certainly will not consume the soul you have spent so much effort forbidding me to touch.”

Her mouth trembles. “I said you could.”

“I heard you.”

“Then why won’t you?”

Because I have grown far too fond of her. She knows precisely what I am, yet continues to treat me as a man, arguing with me over the most inconsequential things and making herself quite comfortable in my company. Somewhere along the way, her presence has become something I look forward to, and I cannot remember the last time I felt so welcome in another person’s life.

“I have walked this earth for three hundred years, Ophelia, and until I met you, I had never once feared the years ahead of me. Now I find the thought of spending even one without you almost unbearable.”

“Oh,” she croaks, a faint smile pulling at her bloodless lips. “That’s dreadfully romantic.”

I huff a quiet laugh. “Be quiet, woman.”

Whatever relief she has found by opening the buboes will be short-lived. The pestilence has already taken hold of too much of her body, and the little soulglimmer I have given her has accomplished scarcely more than easing her suffering.

I could force my way into the crypt, certainly, but what then? Carry her back to the cinders of the apothecary and watch her die there instead?

No. There must be something I have overlooked.

I could attempt to draw more corruption from her wounds, though I doubt her body has the strength to endure it. More soulglimmer might ease her suffering, but I have already seen what happens when too much is given to a patient in the grip of the pestilence. The sickness consumes whatever strength I offer and continues its work regardless.

No. That will not do.

I press my fingers against the bridge of my mask, trying to recall something useful from the countless physicians I have studied beside. Surely, someone must have discovered a way to save a patient so far gone. I have seen men recover with half their flesh blackened while others succumbed to the smallest swellings, yet I cannot think of a single treatment that would give Ophelia a reasonable chance of surviving the week.

And however desperately I try to turn my thoughts elsewhere, they keep returning to the hollow behind my ribs.

Think, you useless old fool. Think.

Why can I not summon something when it matters? A child crying somewhere beyond my reach. A woman wrapping bread in cloth. Surely there must be something more useful buried amongst it all. Something that might help me understand what I have become, and whether there is any way to offer Ophelia the same without losing her in the attempt.

And somewhere amongst those memories is the night I died.

I lean forward, resting my elbows against my knees, and try to remember.

There was rain. Not the sleet falling over Beswick, but a harder rain that had turned the earth beneath me to thick mud. I was lying on my side, unable to move, with a deep, sickening pain beneath my ribs. Something inside me had been torn open, and every breath sent a fresh agony through my belly. I’d pressed a hand against the wound, but blood was already soaking through my clothes, hot and sticky as it seeped between my fingers.

Blood.

A wound, then. Something had torn through the flesh beneath my ribs, leaving me bleeding into the mud as the rain washed the warmth from my body. I’d tried to crawl, though where I thought I might go has long since escaped me. I only knew that I was dying, and somewhere nearby, a child was screaming.

“Papa, please! Somebody help my papa!”

My fingers slowly uncurl against my knees.

A figure stood over me, too tall to be a man, watching with a peculiar stillness as I struggled to breathe. I cannot remember its face, or whether it had one beneath whatever covered its head, but I remember the sound of its voice.

“The man who put you here is dying. He has taken your life, though he has little of his own remaining. I will take what is left of him and give it to you.”

I remember trying to speak, but blood and rainwater filled my mouth, and all I could manage was a weak, bubbling breath.

“I cannot return you to the man you were. That life is already lost. But I can offer you another, if you are willing to bear the years that follow.”

And then something reaching inside me.