“It’s what feels easiest right now, because Enola is pressuring you to do this thing. But it’s a miracle you’re here. It’s a miracle that you tried to bind yourself to me, and it worked. It’s a miracle that either of us are alive at all. We are the living embodiment of something so improbable it may as well be impossible. But we’re here, and this isn’t something you can undo. Please, don’t throw it away.”

“When I am gone, you will be free of the burden of my disease, everything I feel that you share. You will be free of it.”

And there it was. As much as she’d been warned off anthropomorphizing since she’d first learned of his existence, she didn’t think she had ever heard such a human rationalization. It may not seem like this now, but when I’m gone, things will be better. It may be painful in the short term, but ultimately, it’s for the best. One day, you’ll see.

She’d had that thought herself so, so many times in the last few months. She’d only recently gotten herself out of the mire enough to see how much that was the sickness talking. This isn’t you, she thought. You could not have made it this far if this were what you really believed.

“I hope you understand that I’ll never be free of you. I . . .” She swallowed painfully, her throat feeling like it was coated in spikes. “Kaveh’s gone. I can’t live through losing you, too.”

“Then you should come with me now.”

At this, she felt that voice she’d spent so much work over the last few weeks beating back, the one that said, It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

“No,” she said. “I’m going to live. Death is final. This isn’t something you can undo. Stay with me. I’ll take care of you.”

Slowly, his eyes slid open, but the amber gemstones stayed sedate and dark. She wiped her face of fluids as best she could and then leaned her face into the smooth skin above the ridge of his eye. “You can’t ever go home. You will never be the person you were before. But that doesn’t mean there’s no healing from this. That doesn’t mean we can’t make it better.”

“Enola refuses to witness the entire human superorganism meet the same fate as your lover, no matter how cruel some of them are.”

“He is going to have to wait. It’s not your time yet.”

She tried to feel what was going on inside him and began tipping into despair when she felt that he hadn’t budged. This wasn’t working. Either she wasn’t making a good case, or his alien mind just couldn’t see things the way she did.