“I can’t . . . I can’t stop this,” she choked.

“Don’t . . . want you . . . to stop it.”

“No.” She had no tears to shed. She had nothing but fury and sorrow. “There’s a way to save you. I’ll fetch a healer.”

He shook his head, a faint movement. “No leeches. Can’t be . . . saved. I have to . . . die.” Already, the brilliant blue luster of his eyes faded.

“Why?” she demanded.

“For you and . . . for me. Livia . . .” He reached for her, his hand cupping her face, yet contacting only air. “I . . .”

His hand dropped to the floor. His eyes stared up, glassy and vacant.

“Bram! Bram!”

He did not answer her. He was dead.

Livia screamed. A scream of rage and grief and helplessness. She did not care if any mortal on the street could hear her. She did not care if the heavens collapsed and crushed the world. She cared for nothing. All she felt was anguish.

Whatever loss she had experienced in the whole of her existence—watching the destruction of Londinium, the sacrifice of her life to trap the Dark One—these were but motes of dust compared to this devastating agony.

All the power she had ruthlessly hoarded, for what? She couldn’t help Bram, could not bring him back from death. She was as weak and useless as any mortal.

Her scream continued. It had no beginning, no end.

The walls rattled. Creatures that dwelled within them ran, scurrying for safety. And then—the windows exploded inward. Glass flew in every direction. It sprayed in glittering arcs.

Mortal voices exclaimed outside. Fleeing footsteps clattered over the paving stones.

Livia had no breath to catch. No need for air. She would scream and scream for all eternity, crouched beside Bram’s body, until the house crumbled, until he was nothing but bones, until time itself became ash.

The darkness of the Ambitus was absolute. Not merely the absence of light, but the absence of everything. Heat, cold, time, distance. Bram plunged through this emptiness, or it enveloped him, or he was part of it. He had no sense of anything but oblivion.

No—not true. He knew one thing: Livia. Her face, beautiful and hollow with mystified grief, as she looked down at him. He knew regret, too. For he would have done anything to keep her from such agony. Yet there had been one choice, one path.

Or so he hoped. This fathomless shadow, he had not anticipated it. This place was very different without Livia’s guiding magic and presence. He sensed a difference, too, for his body had died, severing him from the realm of the living

Was this it? Would there be no more? Had he thrown everything away for a chance that would never materialize?

I won’t allow it.

Immersed in the darkness of the Ambitus, he felt a sharp tug. Drawing him downward. It felt like talons on his legs, trying to sink into his flesh and drag him away. He sensed something’s immense hunger, a ravenous demanding of more and more, and the promise of pain. It waited for him, wanted him. The time had come for the bargain to be fulfilled. What had begun months ago in a ruined temple now saw its realization. For such a man as he, there was no alternative.

He was being dragged down into Hell.

Fury and fear tore through him. Not fear of punishment, but that he wouldn’t succeed in his goal. He’d killed himself for a reason.

He had to break free of this relentless pull. Had to reach her. Everything would be lost if he failed.

He fought. Using his every ounce of strength and will, he fought. He kicked free of the grasping claws, grappling with the clinging shadows. Scaled arms thrashed against him, and he battled back, straining his power to its utmost. Yet it would take more than this to break away from the covetous grip of Hell.

Livia. He must get to her. It was for her that he ran a blade through his heart.

Summoning her face in his mind, he recalled her voice, her very essence. The unstoppable force that was her. It was a wonder he had resisted her for as long as he had, for she had a will as unbending as his own. More so, in truth. Yet even if he could not match her for resolve, his own was formidable, and he used it to shove back at Hell clutching at his heels.

The grip on him loosened. A howl of outrage sounded as he pushed away.

The amorphous darkness receded. Not fully—he was still mired in shadow, but shapes began to emerge, distinct forms. Form and distance solidified, including his own.

Shadows shaped themselves into rolling hills steeped in dusk. A continuous wind swept across the hills, smelling of loam and freshly dug graves. Isolated stands of trees dotted the hills. Shapes crouched upon their branches, larger than birds. Yet it was too dark for Bram to distinguish what, exactly, the crouched things were. A lace of rivers threaded through the landscape, glinting dully beneath a mist-shrouded evening sky. As he watched, the rivers shifted like snakes, and the hills undulated as if they were waves. They made soft groaning sounds.

Human figures roamed over the rippling hills, searching, directionless. Shadows and distance hid their faces. But everywhere he looked he saw these restless forms, and heard their voices upon the wind, speaking words without meaning, the rise and fall of human yearning tumbling over the knolls.

This was humanity’s deepest mystery and greatest fear. The realm of the dead. The place no one could avoid.

Yet he sensed that these shadowed, unstable hills were but one aspect of the hereafter. He could sense its enormity, far beyond the limits of mortal understanding. He had already felt the tug of Hell—felt it now—and this place held a fraught tension, as though in a perpetual state of uncertainty. Neither the reward of Heaven, nor the torment of Hell.

Torment which awaited him. He had pushed back Hell’s claws, but they wouldn’t be held in abeyance forever. They would find him again. Not a matter of if but when.

One thought propelled him forward—find her.

Dried grass crackled under his feet as he ran. The tree branches were bare as bones. Nothing lived here, nothing thrived or grew. The sky overhead remained empty and without the possibility of light. No sun would ever rise. No stars would emerge, and the moon would never climb over the shifting horizon. The things in the tree branches muttered from their perches.

The ground shifted beneath him as he ran. He struggled to keep his footing, staggering like a drunkard but always moving forward, impelled by his need to find Livia. He held her image fixedly within his mind and heart—thoughts of her had helped free him briefly from Hell’s grasp. He must use her as a beacon now, her light guiding him in this vast wasteland.

As he ran and the hills moved, faces emerged from the shadows, people pressing forward. They glowed as they neared. Upon their bodies they wore clothing from every era, from his own time back to coarse tunics and woad. Upon their faces they wore expressions of loss and bewilderment.

He shuddered inwardly. To be trapped for eternity in this half existence, neither rewarded nor punished, but perpetually adrift, stripped of hope. Not unlike the life he had been leading since his return from war. A shade of a man in eternal suspension.

He had purpose now.

Bram did not linger. He sped on, holding fast to thoughts of Livia, sensing the hungering presence of Hell at his back.

He willed the moving hills, commanding them with his determination. I shall find her.

As though responding to his thoughts, the hills buckled, forming an even darker vale where the shadows thickened and a twisting stream ran along the valley.

“Bring her to me, damn it,” he growled.

“Bram—?”

He swung around. There, breaking free from the gloom on the other side of the stream, a woman in a saffron tunic appeared. She stepped nearer.