Constance’s eyelashes fluttered, and tears streaked down her pasty cheeks. “Please . . . no . . .”

“Tell me the cure,” I yelled.

“There isn’t one,” she yelled right back. “Please, kill me. You have to kill me. I—I can’t go home like this. I can’t spread this to my babies.”

I backed up, leaning against the edge of the table and staring at her, utterly dumbfounded.

“Kill me.” She pushed her chair back and dropped to her knees before me. Her fingers gripped my legs, her manicured nails turning her fingers into talons. “Please, kill me,” she begged. “Please. There’s no cure. I swear there’s no cure. Just kill me.”

My heart went cold. Because I believed her.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Garth is sick . . .

I stared down at Constance, kneeling on the floor at my feet. Clinging to my legs. Begging me to kill her. She was sick, too. She was infected, and there was no cure.

Garth is going to die . . .

All the moisture that should’ve been in my mouth was gone, leaving it a desert. I gripped the edge of the polished boardroom table behind me, my palms slick with sweat.

This is my fault . . .

I should’ve known better than to send Garth to the one place infested with this manufactured disease. I should’ve known better than to crawl into his bed. I should’ve known better than to fall for a fucking mortal. I had known better. I’d known better, and I’d done it anyway. But I’d thought I would have a little more time with him, that he would have a little more time before his mortal body wasted away and his soul faded into oblivion.

My eyes burned with the need to cry, but I blinked the tears away. I didn’t deserve the relief of tears. Garth would’ve had more time if I hadn’t invaded his life. From now on, I would only get involved with Nejerets. I was off humans, for good.

If only Garth was a Nejeret . . .

I blinked again, straightening from my slouched position, my eyes searching the blank wall just a couple yards away as an idea formed. An impossible idea. What if we’d been looking at this whole situation all wrong? What if it wasn’t the disease we needed to cure? What if it was mortality? What if it was humanity?

Slowly, my focus shifted to Nik, standing off to the right near the wall. “Mari,” I said, recalling what she’d told us about her work with Ouroboros that stormy day on the roof, just a few floors above where we stood now. “We need to find Mari.”

She’d wanted Nik to work with her because his sheut power would enable her to transfer slivers of a Nejeret ba into a human being and graft it to their mortal soul. She’d claimed that, if the procedure was done properly, it would transform a human into a Nejeret.

I shoved Constance to the side, ignoring her cry of surprise, and took a step toward Nik. “Don’t you see? There’s no cure. This game—we can’t win it. It’s rigged against us. But if we change the rules . . .”