War (The Four Horsemen, #2)

by Laura Thalassa

as Miriam Elmahdy’s Guide to Staying the Fuck Alive: (1) Bend the rules—but don’t break them. (2) Stick to the truth. (3) Avoid notice. (4) Listen to your instincts. (5) Be brave.

A monster of a man sits on his blood-red steed, a massive sword strapped to his back. There are gold rings in his dark hair and kohl thickly lines his eyes. His cheekbones are high and the scowl he wears makes him look absolutely petrifying.

You will be safe here until I get back. All you must do is swear fealty with the others. Then we will speak again, wife.

“You’re wrong if you think that angers me.” His smile is menacing. “Everything you are has been made for me.”

“I saw you, and for the first time, I wanted.” His words pucker my flesh. “And so, I took.”

“I believe in God,” I say. “I just don’t believe in your God.” My mother was Jewish, my father was Muslim. I grew up believing in everything and nothing all at once. “That’s too bad,” War says, eyeing me, “because He seems to have taken an interest in you.”

You’ll get through this, Miriam, just as you have everything else.

“I am yours and you are mine, Miriam—” I quake at those words. “—but I am not like you, and you should never forget that.”

His eyes are like honey when he says, “Stay with me, Miriam.” His hand flexes against my side. “Sleep in my tent. Make your weapons. Argue with me.”

You don’t need anyone to take care of you, Miriam, least of all the horseman.

“My brothers and I can all do the opposite of our powers—Pestilence can spread sickness and cure it. Famine can destroy crops and grow them. Death can give and take life at will.” War pauses. “I can injure … and I can heal.”

“Consider it a trade—you get my dagger, I get yours.”

“Why do you even want my dagger?”

“I’m … fond of it.”

You are my wife, you will surrender to me, and you will be mine in every sense of the word before I’ve destroyed the last of this world.

“I don’t want to be awake when you’re asleep. Talking with you reminds me of how lonely it is to exist.”

“So, you find love beautiful, Miriam?”

“No,” I say, my eyes meeting his in the near-darkness. “Not love itself.” Everything I’ve ever loved I’ve lost. There’s no beauty in that. “It’s the power of love that I find beautiful.” It can change so many things— For better, or worse.

How could you understand my motives if you don’t understand God?

Never never never. It scabs over, and for a time you can almost forget it’s there, but then something—a smell, a sound, a memory—will split that wound right open, and you’ll be reminded again that you’re not whole. That you’ll never fully be whole again.

“You are painfully human. Your bones want to break, your skin wants to bleed, your heart wants to stop. And for the first time ever, I am desperate for none of those things to happen. I have never known true fear until now.”

He strokes my hair. “For millennia I’ve craved this.” Human connection, he means. “For millennia it’s been just out of my reach.”

“You undo me,” War says hoarsely.

“It will make no difference in the end,”

“It will make a difference to me.”

“Call the men in. Tonight, the dead will not rise.”

You intoxicate me.

“My wife, my heart.”

“To feel that a part of me is inside you still—wife, there is no more thrilling sensation in the world,” he states.

“You are mine wholly and completely—and I am yours. For now and always it will be this way.” Oh dear God. That sounded a lot like a vow to me. What have I done?

The horseman cups my face, his gaze searching mine. “Death always comes between humans. I won’t let it happen to us.”

“Do you know my heart?” I ask carefully. “I do,” he says. “Is it good?” “It’s good enough.” For me, the silence seems to add.

“I vow to you, wife, we will find what’s become of your family.”

“You’re only willing to follow your god when you have nothing to lose,” I say. “But when you do, then you defy him? You’re no tragic savior, you’re a weak-willed monster.”

His hold tightens on me. “Goddamnit, woman,” he says, giving me a shake, “do you not feel a single shred of what I feel for you? I’m telling you this because I couldn’t—I couldn’t ever kill you. I can destroy an entire civilization, but not you, Miriam. Not for a thousand different slights you might visit upon me. I’d sooner cut off my own hand than hurt you.”

“But no, Miriam, I don’t want all humans to die. My very essence was borne of human nature. Without you, there is no me.”

“You are in my arms, and yet I sense you are far, far away from me,” War says. “I don’t like this distance, wife.”

“I need to go.” War steps in close. I can tell he wants to kiss me—or at least touch me—but he doesn’t.

Still, his eyes look regretful.

He waits a moment or two for me to say something, and I consider it— I hope you don’t come back. May your enemies cut you down. Rot in misery, asshole.

This is what heartbreak looks like on a horseman, and it is terrifying.

It’s as though our relationship never was.

He frowns, the concern back on his face. “Are you sick?” There’s a sharp, almost frantic look to his eyes.

His eyes are telling me what his words haven’t. I love you.

My period should’ve come by now.

Dear God, I-I might be pregnant.

He could lump our child with the rest of humanity, the part he wants to purge the world of.

Don’t ask this of me again, wife. You will be denied.

“Whatever it is that’s bothering you, we can fix it—I will fix it.” He takes several steps forward, stopping just short of me. “Hate me, curse me, just please come back to me, Miriam,” he says. His voice breaks. “Please, come back.”

“I love you, Miriam,” he repeats. “I hadn’t known until last night what this strange happiness I felt around you was. But I do now. Being with you makes me feel as though I have swallowed the sun. Everything is brighter, fuller, better because of you.”