I’d had this choice before. The different deaths. The death of waiting; the death of optimism. Harrow, the last time I chose to die, I died with your face the last thing I ever looked at. Let me tell you a secret: it was easy to die thinking I wouldn’t have to see you go. It was so easy to check out before you did.

Now here I was, alone, holding your body hostage, in a space station at the bottom of the River and getting sucked into some kind of heinous underworld that only opened for the undead souls of monstrous planets. I had the choice of shooting myself, being crushed by the water, or waiting to get squashed by tonnes of falling metal. Or I had the choice of living to get pulled down into Hell.

I wish I could say I was thinking about you. Harrowhark, there was so much I wanted to tell you. I wish that on the edge of an ending bigger than I understood, that I was thinking about you, that the last word on your lips would be me saying your name, taken down to the dark heart of some world beyond.

But my whole life and death had come crashing down around me. It turned out I was the child of God—hey, suck it, Marshal—but also nothing more than a stick of dynamite. I was nothing but a chess move in a thousand-year game.

I mean, yeah, I was thinking about you too; if I could’ve turned that off I would’ve turned it off years ago, but more importantly—I was absolutely fucking out of my mind Ninth House big pissed off.

As I dithered, Pyrrha sandblasted me with the calm, “Your mother would’ve picked the bullet.”

“Yes, well, jail for Mother,” I said.

And taking a leaf out of your book, I thrust my sword into the whimpering plex.

It gave. Both of us got knocked back flat on our asses by the gush of foaming, filthy, hideous water—I had to hit the deck—and that whole corridor deformed: it was like a popped balloon. The world went dark. I went under before I could take a breath. We bounced off about twenty surfaces, and as water closed up over our heads, the both of us made for the hole in the side of the ship. We squeezed through a narrowing, breaking tunnel and pushed through, and then we were out.

I couldn’t swim, but never fucking mind. I couldn’t even tell if Pyrrha had been right about the breathing. It was like I had Crux standing on my chest. Something hideous happened in your ears. We tumbled over and over and over in the water, and I thought for the first moment that it was really the end. I thought your eyeballs were about to burst in your head.