Chapter 28 I am drifting somewhere dark. Healers crowd my study. They pass a pitying look between themselves. He's dying, their eyes say. I know, respond my sunken ones. Then, there is nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I blink back into myself. Several new letters scatter the desk. They spell out Calum's death at my hand. I trace the morbid truth with my gaze, realizing I've turned a daughter into a fellow orphan. I would tell Mira why, tell her I had to, if she hadn't already vanished. My gaze lifts from the page. Death stands before me. My mind is hazy. Her words swim in and out of my comprehension. She wants to be with me. I must have heard her wrong. She is Death. I tell her so. Mara does not take that well. I was beginning to think her reputation was unwarranted. But Death is deserving of the fear she so easily earns. My head aches. My chest constricts. I did precisely what I wished to prevent-make an enemy of Death. Nothingness follows. Then, my brother. He stands beside my wife. The sight is unsurprising. "She killed your father, not mine," I hear Kai say, his voice muffled in my ears. The Plague loosens its grip long enough for me to hear his damning words. "Paedyn is more your family than I am." I'm drifting again, overwhelmed by the traitorous power consuming me. No. No, no, no-I need to speak to my brother. I rage against the darkness. Please! I'm sinking into oblivion. Let me out! Let me out! I need my brother. I need to know what I'm saying to him- Nothing. When I wrestle myself free from the Plague's clutches, there is a sword in my hand. I lift the blade to block the stoker Kai brandishes. He is panting. So am I. We are sparring. We are smiling. We are falling back into a familiar, lethal dance. I fight to remain in this moment with him. But it fades like all the others. It's a sudden burst of pain that pulls me back into the present. I lift my bleary gaze. Kai stands at the end of the stoker he holds. But it is Death who drives it into my chest. She wears a twisted grin, her cold hands wrapped around the iron shaft. Mara, with the gentle smile. Mara, with the flour on her nose. Mara, with the heartbeat I lent her. Mara, vengeance incarnate, guides that stoker through my flesh. She is my Death. "No!" Kai cries. "You were supposed to dodge, Kitt!" I prod at the wound, staining my fingers with blood. "I... forgot." Just as I've forgotten everything. My brother catches me when I fall. This is not how I imagined it-dying. The Plague curls up in the corner of my mind, letting me enjoy these last few moments of life. I don't feel the pain. Not really. This is relief. Death stands over Kai's shaking shoulders, her pretty face unfeeling. I cling to my fading soul. I am with my brother. I don't want to be anywhere else. "I wrote you l-letters," I eventually say. Mara's presence grows stronger in my tightening chest. "So you can see why I'm... a monster." I need him to know. Love me still. Forever. Always. For him, I would do it all over again. "It is time," Death says coldly. I lift my blurring gaze to her. "I'll go gently. For you." There is no flash of light. No bang or slow fade. Kitt (now only a soul) feels cheated. A presumably long while after Kitt's foretold demise (he no longer has any concept of time, you see), Death disturbs his peace. He was just getting used to it, actually-the nothingness of it all. Only two stars keep him company, though often at a comfortable distance. Yes, the late king is alone, but decidedly not lonely. Not like he was among the living. Kitt is sitting within the nuzzling nothingness-neither up, nor down, nor anything at all-when Mara steps into the darkness beside him. She wears a look that one would assume, justifiably, accompanies Death-bleak and cold. The pretty features the king once passively admired are now vacant of any emotion, deader than perhaps even she. Her hollow gaze flicks over him with a chilling indifference. "Are you enjoying your peace?" Kitt nods, weary of this volatile Death. "I am beginning to. It's quiet." He quite likes that, he realizes. "My mind hasn't been quiet in a while." "Good." The word is cutting from Mara's tongue. She doesn't sound happy for him; rather, morbidly excited at the vulnerability of his enjoyment. And when a smile touches her cold lips, Kitt fears for the life he no longer has. "Now I get to rip such peace away from you." The fallen king blinks at his grinning demise. "What?" "I only showed you such peace so I could take it away," Death informs coolly. She then tilts her head at him, a habit that Kitt once found curiously endearing. "Did you really think I would allow you the quietness you so crave?" Kitt stands to his feet in the void. "I... I don't understand." (There is much he has yet to comprehend. Most of all, the significance of Mara's seemingly sudden hatred for him, or rather, the Azer it belonged to long before. Loathing often finds a way to recognize itself in another. And in this lifetime, it has latched on to a different pair of green eyes, though they say the same thing when meeting Death's-she cannot possibly be loved.) "I warned you Death would not be kind-I would not be kind," Mara snarls, and the darkness quivers around her. She draws a breath then, one Kitt suspects she does not need. Then, leisurely, that worrisome smile returns to her lips. "And now you possess more of me than any other soul." Kitt knows he is not meant to understand this, and that frightens him greatly. "Mara, please..." "You were always meant to be king, Kitt." Grinning, Death grabs his arm. "Just not of Ilya." In a romance-themed observation show, several participants undergo a series of interactions and conflicts filled with love, misunderstandings, and power struggles. In the end, one couple rises to over...