His head moved side to side, his mouth opening and shutting, and sweat beaded around his brow. He was in pain. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides and I picked up the hand of his uninjured arm, locking my fingers through his as he squeezed. He opened his eyes briefly to look up into my face, and my lips went numb when I saw his irises had dulled to a pathetic gray.

“What did that thing do?” I screamed at Merodach. “What did you do to him?”

Behind me, Merodach laughed, his heavy, gravelly voice so loud and deep that it weighed me down and disoriented me. “You should have heeded Kelaeno’s warning. She may be dead, but soon your Guardian will join her.”

“No!” I screamed it over and over.

“I’ll come back for you, Gabriel,” Merodach added. “Once your heart is dead from the loss of your Guardian, I’ll be back for your soul.”

Will groaned, and his grip on my hand slackened and went limp. I touched his cheeks and neck and chest, my gaze lingering fearfully on the vicious wound in his arm. On the thick clear liquid from Rikken’s bite mixing with Will’s blood.

“I don’t know what to do!” I cried. “Please tell me, Will. I don’t know how to help you!” I leaned over him and kissed his cheeks and forehead, holding his body close to mine as the ache in my heart crippled me.

He was slipping away, weakening by the moment. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t lose him after everything, after all of this. Merodach stepped away and spread his dark wings wide before vanishing into the Grim, leaving me alone on the cold ground with Will dying in my arms.

I smoothed his hair away from his clammy forehead with my palm, and then he began convulsing. I screamed, but my wails were drowned by the thumping music pouring out of Kate’s house. Liquid oozed from the bite in Will’s arm, and it grew darker by the moment until it was black mixing with the red of Will’s blood. The wound wasn’t healing.

“Ellie?” came a frightened voice behind me.

I snapped my head around to see Marcus jogging toward me, his gleaming sapphire eyes locked on Will’s shuddering form. My own body was shaking uncontrollably as Marcus knelt on the other side of Will, one hand on his chest and the other on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Marcus asked, the fear clear on his face. Of course a reaper would be the only one to hear my screams. “What happened?”

“Rikken bit him!” I wailed. “And he collapsed! I don’t know what’s wrong! I don’t know how to help him!”

If even a single word of what I’d just said was comprehensible, it would’ve been a miracle. Marcus stared at Will, carefully inspecting the wound in his arm.

“Hold his head still,” he directed. When I just sat there, sobbing, he repeated the order more firmly. “Ellie! Hold his head still. He’s seizing. If you want him to live, then you’ve got to pull yourself together. I’ll be right back. Can you handle this?”

No. I nodded anyway, choking on a sob. Marcus vanished and I was alone again, breaking apart bit by bit. I couldn’t lose Will. I couldn’t. For the past few months, I’d tried to force myself into believing that I didn’t need him, but it was all a lie. I needed his comfort, but I could only sit there on the ground in my prom dress as the air grew steadily colder and watch him die.

Marcus came back and put his hand on my arm. “Come on. Let’s get him into the car.” He ripped off the sleeve of his tuxedo and wrapped it around Will’s arm like a tourniquet. The wound wouldn’t heal. Will’s wounds—even the ones a hundred times more severe than this—always healed. He was always fine. He always got better.

Marcus lifted Will’s limp form and threw him over his shoulder. We rounded the front of the house and wove our way through a crowd of kids holding plastic cups. Kate’s red BMW sat in the driveway, and I opened the back door and Marcus laid Will across the seat. I climbed into the back with him as Marcus jumped into the driver’s seat. Will was semiconscious. His head rolled left and right as he groaned in agony. I held his face in my hands and murmured to him. I kissed his cheek, but he didn’t respond to me.

“Will,” I said firmly, turning his face to mine. “Will!”

He tried to tear his head from my hands as he ground his teeth together.

“Will!” I cried again, but he was unresponsive. “Will, damn it. You’ve been telling me all this time to keep fighting. Don’t you give up on me!”

“We’re going back to the house,” Marcus said from the front seat. “Rikken bit him, right?”

“Yes.” I met his eyes in the rearview mirror.

“It must be poison of some kind. Venom.”

A rush of coldness swept through me, and the blood drained from my face. “Your strength in heart and hand will fall to a reaper’s bane,” Kelaeno had said. The prophecy. It was all coming true.

He dug his phone out of his pocket and dialed. “Ava. Find Sabina and get to the house as quickly as you can. Will is wounded. I’ll explain when you get there. Yes, she’s with me. Just get to the house.” He hung up.

I swallowed hard. “Will Ava know how to help him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will Sabina?”

“I don’t know.”

Marcus drove fast—inhumanly fast. When we blurred into the driveway of Nathaniel’s house, Marcus wasted no time, jumping out of the car to help me get Will out of the backseat. He moaned, and his tuxedo was damp with sweat. Ava and Sabina were waiting on the front porch, their expressions hardened and focused instead of mirroring the fear and grief on my own. I watched them carry Will into the kitchen and lay him on the dining table. I was trembling head to toe.