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“Shh.” His smoking hand cups my cheek, the heat of his palm almost uncomfortable against my skin. “He is real. William Mercer is here, and he is going to help us.”

Before I can ask how, something wallops Iscairn across the shoulder. His body jolts, his hand slipping from my face as Gideon brings a thick wooden cross down against his back.

“IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, I COMMAND YOU TO LEAVE HER!”

Iscairn barely turns towards him, though his fingers scrape against the stone as he struggles to keep himself upright. Gideon is already raising the cross again, screaming scripture.

“Billy…” The whisper breaks on a dry click in my throat, and my eyes slide towards the heap in the muck. “Can’t… look at him. He’s… rotting.”

“I know.” Iscairn lowers himself onto one elbow. The smoke plumes from beneath his collar now, slipping through his torn cloak. “Listen to me carefully, Ophelia. Your body is dying. The pestilence has taken too much, and nothing I can give you will make it whole again. I cannot heal you. I could pour every ounce of soulglimmer I possess into you, and it would do little more than prolong your suffering. We have passed the point where medicine can help.”

“A... patient? Can’t... Iscairn, hands are gone. Can’t hold... a blade.”

“No.” His fingers tighten very gently against my cheek. “I have brought you a way to live.”

Gideon strikes him again, the cross catching against his shoulder as he bends over me, but Iscairn only draws a harsh breath through his mask and continues.

“I cannot save the body you have now, Ophelia. I would have to change it. Entirely.” His hand trembles against my face, and smoke drifts from the tears in his cloak, rising between us as he struggles to hold himself upright. “You would become what I am. Your body would no longer be mortal, and the pestilence would have nothing left to destroy.”

The words float over me like smoke, hard to pin down.

“Like... you?” I can’t get enough air behind the whisper to finish it.

“Like me.” He draws a shuddering breath through the bone beak. “No age. No pestilence. Not an ordinary life, Ophelia. But you would have one.”

My gaze slips sluggishly to Billy Mercer.

To take a piece of the rot that broke my life and knit it into my marrow... Bile rises hot in my throat, but there’s no strength in my stomach to heave it up.

No. My head gives a tiny, involuntary twitch against the grit. Not him. Don't put that dog in me.

“Then why…” A harsh, hollow cough catches in my ribs, tearing the rest away before I can shape the words. “Why… him?”

“Because his soul has already begun to leave his body, and I can make use of what remains. The soulglimmer I have given you before could only mend what was damaged. With his soul and my own power, I could do something far greater. I could change the very nature of your flesh.”

I stare at him, struggling to make sense of his words through the fever.

“He broke…” The air scrapes out of me, barely shaped. “...my leg. Left me… in the water. You want me… made of that?”

“No, Ophelia. No more than the wood in your hearth remains a tree once it has been burned.” His thumb moves weakly against my cheek. “What I take from him will be spent in the changing. There will be nothing of William Mercer left for you to carry.”

“Iscairn…”

“Please,” he whispers. “Please, Ophelia. I know what I am asking of you. I know you have every reason to refuse, and if there were another way, I would give it to you.” His fingers find mine against the stone, closing around them with what little strength he has left. “But there isn't. Your body is failing, and I cannot bear to sit beside you and watch it happen when I have the means to prevent it.”

I watch his fingers shake around mine, so badly that I can hardly tell which of us is holding on to the other.

“Don’t know how…” My whisper frays into a dry, shuddering rattle. “Can’t… be what you are.”

“Then I will teach you how to be. But, Ophelia Harrow,” he whispers. “I am asking you to stay.”

Stay.

The word hangs in the cold air, heavier than the blows Gideon is landing against Iscairn’s back.

My eyesight is failing at the edges, the grey tunnel collapsing into black velvet. Decades. Centuries. Cold stone and masks. The sheer, impossible madness of it should terrify me, but my body only understands that the dark is pulling at my heels, and Iscairn’s hand is the only thing anchored to the earth.

I don't want to rot in here, and I don't want to be another body in the pit.