I COME TO WITH QUINN STRADDLING MY CHEST, MY arms pinned above my head by my wrists. I am strong and still startled by her strength, her form seeming to contain more mass than possible by the laws of physics. The neckline of her top stained with more blood than before, a sniff confirming that it is hers—I must have caught her off guard initially, landing a lunge and tearing into her neck with my fangs. Not me, but my inner Beast. Of course, no trace of the wound adorns her throat.

As the haze subsides I realize she speaks to me.

“Have you calmed, Oracle?” Her voice seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, echoing in the empty parking lot and causing my predator within to slink back into the recesses of my psyche.

“Get off me!” I snarl and she does, launching backwards with startling grace and maintaining the readied stance of a warrior a few feet from me.

I stand. She doesn’t speak for several moments, her posture relaxing; she looks on me as a mother who hopes she needn’t reprimand an errant toddler in the checkout line of the grocery store, coolly and expectantly.

“Tell me. Tell me how you did it. Tell me why,” I manage to choke out. I cannot say his name. His name rings in my ears with the same rhythm as the blood that has rushed there.

“We don’t have to do this now,” she offers.

“Tell me!” My shout fills the night, scaring his name from my veins.

“Ezekiel Winter made a choice that night. I merely carried out his wishes.”

“Liar!” I snarl again.

“I am a Valkyrie. He could have chosen to join the Honored Dead in Valhalla or he could have chosen to die forgotten. He spent most of his unlife searching for what stood before him in that moment. I won’t say his choice was easy, but it was his to make.”

“We hail from a line of warriors. The fight is in our blood. Our blood! He’d never roll over to die like a dog whose master abandoned him,” I spit. “If you are truly one of the Valkyries”—a flimsy argument borne of desperation, but I commit nonetheless—“why meddle? Why seek me out? Why—?”

“So the Seeker did share his research with his beloved?” Quinn proposes with a wry smile. “It is true that we rarely meddle in the affairs of others as we prepare for Ragnarok. I sought you out because you have a role in all of this—beyond what you know, beyond what you may ever truly understand. But above all, I promised Ezekiel.”

A promise, the sucker punch. My field of vision narrows, blackness tinging the edges and creeping like tendrils to obscure the back of the coffee shop, the parking lot, the woman standing with sword and shield before me as if we stepped out of some History Channel special—Quinn the Valkyrie, Quinn the Murderer, Quinn the Keeper of Secrets, of Promises, of Zeke’s Final Moment.

“He—he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t choose to leave me . . . ”

“Delilah, Ezekiel chose to join the Honored Dead in Valhalla, but he didn’t leave you. That’s why I’m here.”

“Take me to him.” The words take me by surprise but merely elicit a slow shake of the head from the Valkyrie.

“Do you know what it is you ask?”

I nod.

“His fate is not yours—but you, too, will face a difficult choice when the time comes.”

“Enough!” I spin on my heel and start for the back door of the coffee shop only to find Quinn falling quickly in step beside me.

“I can’t take you to where Ezekiel is—but I can take you to where it is you need to go,” she offers. I do not slow down. She sighs. “Where are you going?”

I stop, turning my head to glare at her.

“The Council of Keepers charged me with discovering Zeke’s murderer—which I have—so now I fulfill my obligation to my sect by tying up loose ends.” I take a step towards her. “Then I will seek you out. Whether it takes me weeks or decades or centuries, I will drain you of every last drop of your Lifeblood. In your Final Moment I will be the last person you see. My fangs in your neck will be the last thing you feel. You will remember his name and you will remember the choice you weren’t given. I will be your Ragnarok.”

“You could kill me now and it would be over—but that won’t bring him back.”

“Vengeance is its own reward. You will die when I choose,” I snarl, stepping towards her. “Until that moment I will be every creaky stair, every flicker of shadow, the thing that lurks inside you and never lets your inner Beast rest.”

I think of the moment I learned he’d died, and the endless stream of moments thereafter.

“Every night you will rise, exhausted, and think of me. Every sunrise you will fight to keep your eyes open so that your dead heart might keep its phantom metronome another moment longer.”

Had she merely honored his request? Did it matter? No. Ash is ash.

“You will forget this promise: when you die you will see my face.”

And when I die, I will see his. Just as I do every night I rise and every sunrise I return to slumber.

“Live knowing by whose hand your Final Moment will be delivered.”

“Be that as it may,” she sighs, “your beloved died a good death. And if I die by your hand, I will, too.” She falls in step with me again.

“What honor is there in a death you choose?” I challenge, her story of Zeke’s Final Moments still not making sense to me. Though I know less of the Valkyries than Zeke did, I poured over those notes as diligently after his death.

“Where else would honor dwell than in the bloodswell of an enemy?”

“But Zeke didn’t view you as an enemy.” The truth is, she—they, the Valkyries—might be the one thing he loved that rivaled his love for me. Not who they were, but what.

“You’re right. He didn’t—and I wish you wouldn’t. But every time a warrior enters battle they have decided how they will die. The battle Ezekiel fought that night wasn’t by combat; his decision wasn’t to die a physical death—nonetheless, he chose to die the moment he gave them Ismae the Bloody. Look, if I explain, everything will be undone. Don’t you see, Delilah? Everything unfolds as it must, as long as I do not meddle. You’ve vowed your revenge and I respect that you will honor that. For now, let me help you. Let me honor the promise I made,” she implores.