This earned me a hug and a smile, and then she had to scurry off to work. I sat back down on the couch, papers still clutched in my hands. Roman sat down opposite me.

“You’re going to end it, aren’t you?” His voice was surprisingly gentle. “With Mortensen?”

“Yeah. I mean, I knew we would, but it didn’t hit me until just now. We were deluding ourselves . . . caught up by a temporary situation. They deserve to be with each other, and I shouldn’t have done what I did to her.” I sighed. “Nyx tricked me with the dream. It wasn’t real.” Without thinking much about it, I rested my hand on my stomach. Even if there’d been any chance of getting pregnant while in stasis, it was gone now. “It might be real for them, though.”

Roman looked so pained, so sympathetic that it was hard to imagine he still wanted to kill me. Though I was pretty sure he did. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry you can’t have your man and your daughter. I’m even sorry you can’t have your cats.”

I glanced over at where Aubrey slept, recalling the tortoiseshell cat from the dream. “Well, I think she’s happier being an only child anyway.”

Seth showed up later that evening. Roman was mercifully gone, off to buy groceries. No matter my protests, he seemed intent on staying with me. I thought about complaining to Jerome but was pretty sure my boss wouldn’t appreciate such a petty concern right now. If he was still even my boss. I was taking no news as good news for now.

Seth handed me my car keys as he walked in. “It’s out behind the building.”

“Thanks.”

“Sorry I took off like that. I didn’t want to . . . God, that was so hard.”

“It was what I wanted,” I told him. We stood a couple feet apart, hesitant to get much closer. “I’m glad you listened to me.”

“I wasn’t going to, you know. As soon as I got off the phone with that demon—and let me tell you, that was weird—I was going to head right back, and . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done. I would have stood by you.”

“You could have gotten yourself killed.”

He shrugged, like that was inconsequential. “I did actually head back, and then . . . then I saw Dante.”

I crossed my arms, still fearful about approaching him, largely because I was afraid I’d throw myself at him. “I knew that’s what you’d done. But why? You don’t like him. You know what kind of person he is.”

Seth nodded. “I don’t like him, but . . . they would have killed him, wouldn’t they?”