I thread my fingers through his. “You’re never going to be able to be here all the time,” I tell him. “Someone’s always going to need you somewhere else. There’s nothing either of us can do about it. You’re not a person who can ignore other people’s pain. I wouldn’t want you to be.”

“You don’t understand, Annah.” He grips me so tightly I can feel the tips of his fingers imprinting my skin. “I almost lost you.” He kneels, wrapping his arms around me. “I walked into the auditorium and I saw you in that cage and I died. All that blood—I thought you were infected.”

He looks up at me. “At that moment I realized I’d made the biggest mistake in my life. I realized that I’m nothing without you. That there’s no point in being alive if I can’t love you.”

I catch my breath but he’s not finished. “I love you, Annah. And if you’re willing to risk everything to be with me, then I’m willing to risk everything to be with you. I’m going to keep fighting for you, every day of my life. If you’ll have me.”

I sink to my knees until our foreheads are touching. Amazed at how in this tiny little room in this corner of a dark and forgotten world I can feel so alive.

“Yes,” I whisper against his lips. I kiss him and he kisses me back, fully and wholly and without reservation.

And for a moment there’s no death in the world, no pain or infection or despair. There’s only us and life and something between us so impossibly pure that it consumes us both.

Chapter XXXIX

Just as we feared, there’s a knock on the door that night as I’m helping my sister drink another cup of the herb tea. Already color flushes her cheeks and she’s able to stay awake for small stretches of time. She’s still weak—they both are—but they’re not on the edge of death any longer.

Someone pounds on the door again, insistent. Elias struggles to push himself from the bed but I nudge him back down under the quilts. “Catcher’s here, he’ll take care of it,” I tell him but he frowns, clearly wanting to stand between us and them—to protect us.

I tiptoe into the hallway, my back pressed against the wall so that I can watch as Catcher opens the door, machete clutched in his hand. Ox stands on the threshold, alone, and my entire body tenses.