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He wasn’t sure what he expected: Laughter? Tears? A heroic demand that she take his place in hell? He had lost track of who was Dante, Virgil, Beatrice. Was he Orpheus or Eurydice?

He saw Alex in the garden, a black-winged bird, night gathered around her like a silken shroud shot through with stars. His monstrous queen. His gentle ruler. He knew what she was now too.

She did not step forward. She cast no words of protection. He ended as he had always suspected he would, alone in the dark.

Welcome back. We missed you. I missed you more than I should have, more than I wanted to. I went to hell for you. I’d do it again.

“Come on, Darlington,” she said. “Let’s give them hell.”

She was more beautiful than he remembered. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t that she had changed or that his vision had sharpened. He was just less afraid of her beauty now.

Alex made herself enter. Why the hell was she so nervous? This was Darlington—scholar, snob, and pain in the ass. No mystery there. But she’d held his soul inside her. She could still taste him on her tongue.

“These marks mean I am bound in service. Forever.” “To hell? To Golgarot?” He laughed then, the sound deep and cold, the thing at the bottom of the lake. “I’m bound to you, Stern. To the woman who brought me out of hell. I will serve you ’til the end of days.”

“I have appetites, Stern. They are not entirely…wholesome.”

He saw Alex in the garden, a black-winged bird, night gathered around her like a silken shroud shot through with stars. His monstrous queen. His gentle ruler. He knew what she was now too.

But now he wanted in a way he never had. He had been tempted to bury his face in his soup bowl and lap at it like a greedy animal. He wanted to place himself between Alex’s legs now and do the same to her.

Darlington would have believed her. He always had. Except Darlington was gone.

All he had wanted was to serve her, to be seen and desired by her. He hadn’t known he was looking into the future.

“Galaxy Stern,” Darlington said, his eyes flashing gold, “I have been crying out to you from the start.”

He could feel their longings—sharp spikes of ambition, the simple grind of appetite, lust like the heavy pull of a rip tide. Their greed was everywhere, a buffet of gluttony. He hungered after their hunger, and it was maddening.

“I did miss you, Stern.” “Did you?” She hadn’t meant to ask, but the words were out before she could stop them. “As much as an unholy fiend without human feeling could.” That almost made her laugh.

I forgive you, she thought. Just come home.

Maybe they were just two killers, cursed to endure each other’s company, two doomed spirits trying to find their way home.

If Alex could have told Darlington anything, it would have been, Come back. She would have said it in English and Spanish. She would have used the imperative.

But what was Darlington to Alex? A mentor? A protector? An ally? None of those words seemed sufficient. Had some soft-boiled part of her fallen for the golden boy of Lethe?