Afterward, as we lay tangled up in each other, Lucas combed through my hair with his fingers. As he stared up at the ceiling, he said, “Only one thing bothers me.”

“What’s that?”

“The only thing I don’t like about being mortal means — I have to leave you. Not until the end of my life, and trust me, I intend to live a good long time, but just the same. That’s where we’re headed, someday.”

A sharp pang made me hug him tighter. ‘Til face that when the time comes. If I’m able to have the next fifty or sixty years with you — if we can be together and happy for your whole life — then that’s what I want. I’d rather mourn when I lose you than not be with you at all.”

Lucas kissed me deeply, then folded me back into his arms. “So that’s what we’ll do.”

“What about you?” I whispered. “I know how happy you are to be alive, but . .. you were going to live forever, and now you won’t. You lost your immortality. Does that feel weird?”

“I’ll never die,” he said. Before I could protest, Lucas put two fingers on my lips. His gentle smile seemed to fill the room with light. and I realized he was telling a deeper kind of truth than I’d ever known before. “You’ll live forever, and being remembered by you is the only immortality I’ll ever need. If I only live on as a part of you — Bianca, that’s my idea of heaven.”