“It was me he meant to hurt! What has he done to you?” He holds me close, kissing my face, saying my name over and over.

Oh! My body is failing. Soon I, too, will be nothing but spirit. I must pass on the Great Secret. Dare I risk doing it after I have crossed the Rubicon? What if I am prevented from returning somehow? Can Stricklend’s hatred reach me even in the Land of Night? I cannot take the chance. I will tell Bram. I can trust him. I have to trust him.

“Lilith,” Bram calls to me again. “Let me send for a doctor.”

“No doctor. You must listen to me…”

“There must be something I can do.”

“Bram, please. I am dying…”

“No!”

“I am not afraid. No necromancer fears death. I will cross the Rubicon to the Land of Night and join my Gentle Spirits there.”

“No.” He is weeping now, and it breaks my heart to see him so lost, so afraid. “Please, my love, don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

I reach up and touch his face. “I am sorry. My only regret is that I must leave you. My poor love. Forgive me, my darling, but there is one more thing I would ask of you…”

“Yes. Anything. Anything.”

“The Great Secret. It cannot die with me. I will entrust it to you.”

“But … I am no witch.”

“You must pass it on. Tell Louis. He will guard it with his life, I know he will.”

Bram is shaking his head, not wanting to face what is happening.

“You have to be strong, Bram, my darling. Please, do this for me.” I gasp as my body screams out for the air it is being denied. Stricklend’s spell is slowly crushing the life from me.

Bram steadies his voice and strokes my cheek. “All right. Lie still, my love. Tell me what it is that you have given your life for. I promise I will tell no one but Louis.”

I nod. I want to be gentle, to explain, to make him understand, to hear him forgive me for abandoning him, but I have so little strength left. So little time.

“The Great Secret reveals the final ingredient needed to assemble the Lazarus Elixir. Without it, the potion is powerless, it cannot work.” My heart is thudding, laboring, stuttering now, with irregular, unnatural beats. I must press on. “Three drops of blood from a baby. Newborn. It must be collected before the infant is an hour on this earth. A silver pin, pricked into the heel, and the precious drops collected.”

“From a newborn?”