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He found tears streaming from her eyes, mixing with the trickling blood from the bullet wound. “He’s in my head again, Wax,” she whispered, trembling. “Oh, Ruin, he’s in my head. He’s taking me. I won’t go back to him.”

“Hush,” Wax said, pulling a second gun from her side and tossing it away. “It’s all right.”

“No,” she cried, grabbing his arm. “No, it’s not. I won’t be his again! I will be me, at the end!”

Bleeder’s trembling increased, her body bucking, as she held to his arm. He frowned as she kept her head thrust forward, meeting his eyes, weeping and shuddering. Thrashing.

“What are you doing?” Wax demanded.

“Dying. We decided it! We won’t fall again. We found a way out.” She could no longer meet his eyes, and she fell backward, spasming. Eyes dilating quickly, skin trembling against the bone.

Wax watched, horrified. He seized her arm. No pulse. She was dying. Killing herself.

Could he stop it?

Why would he care to? She was a murderer many times over. This was a fitting end. In truth, he empathized with her. Let her take this route, rather than suffering under Harmony’s control. Hesitant, but feeling there was little else he could do for this poor creature, he picked her up and held her close. Let her die in someone’s arms. It revolted him to do so, after what she had done. But damn it, it was right.

Bleeder turned her head toward him, and her expression softened as she shook, smiling through bloodied lips. “You’re … you’re as surprising as a … dancing donkey, Mister Cravat.”

Wax grew cold. “Where did you hear that? How did you know those words?”

“I think I loved you even on that day,” she said. “Lawman for hire. So ridiculous, but so … earnest. You didn’t try to shelter me, but seemed so eager to impress.… A lord with a purpose.”

“Who told you of that day, Bleeder?” Wax demanded. “Who…”

“Ask Harmony,” she said, the trembling growing more violent. “Ask him, Wax! Ask why he sent a kandra to watch over you, all those years ago. Ask him if he knew I would come to love you!”

“No…”

“He moved us, even then!” she whispered. “I refused. I wouldn’t manipulate you into returning to Elendel! You loved it out there. I wouldn’t bring you back, to become his pawn.…”

“Lessie?” Harmony, it was her.

It was her.

“Ask him … Wax,” she said. “Ask him … why … if he knows everything … he’d let you kill me.…” She grew still.

“Lessie?” Wax said. “Lessie!”

She was gone. There in his lap, he stared at her body. It kept its shape. Her shape. He clutched her, and let out a low-pitched howl, from deep within, a raw shout that echoed into the night.

It seemed to drive the mists back.

He still knelt there, holding the body, an hour later when a figure loped out of the mists and approached on four legs. TenSoon the kandra, Guardian of the Ascendant Warrior, approached with a reverent step, wolfhound’s head bowed.

Wax stared out into those shifting mists, holding a corpse, hoping irrationally that his heat would keep it warm.

“Tell me,” Wax said, voice cracking and rough from his shouting. “Tell me, kandra.”

“She was sent to you long ago,” TenSoon said, sitting back on his haunches. “The woman you knew as Lessie was always one of us.”

No …

“Harmony worried about you in the Roughs, lawman,” TenSoon said. “He wanted you to have a bodyguard. Paalm had exhibited a willingness to break prohibitions the rest of us held sacred. He hoped that you two would be good for one another.”

“You didn’t tell me?” Wax spat, his grip tight. Hatred. He didn’t think he had ever felt hatred so intense as he did at that moment.

“I was forbidden,” TenSoon said. “MeLaan didn’t know; I was only informed a few days ago. Harmony foresaw a disaster if you were told whom you hunted.”

“And this isn’t a disaster, kandra?”

TenSoon turned away. They sat there on that empty bridge, electric lights making pockets in the mist, a dead woman in Wax’s lap.

“I killed her,” Wax whispered, squeezing his eyes closed. “I killed her again.”

EPILOGUE

Wax sat alone in a room full of people. They’d done everything to make him comfortable. A warm fire on the hearth, a small lamp on the table beside it, for Steris knew he preferred flame to electricity. Broadsheets lay untouched in a roll beside a cup of tea that had long since grown cold.

They talked and celebrated, led by Lord Harms, who laughed and exclaimed about his minor part in it all. A disaster averted. A new governor—the first ever who was not of noble blood. Even the Lord Mistborn, long ago, had been part nobleman. The Last Emperor had been full-blooded, and the Survivor half nobleman. All great people, everyone agreed, to be lauded.

But Claude Aradel had none of the same lineage. Not a drop of noble blood in him. Those at the party congratulated one another for being so progressive as to speak favorably of one who was common-born.