War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(105)

I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

Oh God, I think I might actually care for the monster.

My hands are shaking and I feel bile rising in the back of my throat.

The two of us are staring each other down, and I can tell War is waiting.

I have rope and a plan and fuck, I just need to do this.

I can’t—

I pull the sword away from War.

His eyes narrow, but he relaxes. “That was a good decision—”

—I can’t fall for this monster.

I lunge, driving the weapon back at the horseman, aiming for his throat.

War catches the sword by the blade, his hands wrapping around it. Blood wells beneath his fingers, slipping down his wrists and along the edges of his weapon.

If War feels any physical discomfort, he shows no signs of it.

Instead, it’s his eyes that are wounded.

“You would’ve hurt me—with my own blade.” That last part is tacked on like it’s insult to injury.

“It’s no less than you deserve.” I hate that my throat tightens as I say those words.

“No less than what I deserve,” he repeats, his tone inflectionless. “Is that what you think? You kiss me and fuck me and breathe my name like a prayer, but you believe I deserve death?”

I stare down at him unflinchingly. “You deserve worse.”

The corners of War’s eyes tighten infinitesimally, and I can feel the breath of that wrath he spoke of. He was mad before, but now I’ve truly wounded him in a way that no one else can.

This is where the horseman grabs my head and twists it until my neck snaps. And unlike him, I won’t be coming back from the dead.

Now it’s a matter of life and death.

Fuck your feelings, Miriam, finish this.

I lean my weight on the blade. “Surrender,” I command him.

War’s upper lip curls, and his eyes flash with his rage as he holds the blade back. Blood is dripping down his wrist and onto the bed. Our bed.

“I know you’re capable of it,” I say. He’s human enough. I’ve seen him change his mind and change his rules. Killing is a choice for him, no matter how intrinsic it is to his nature.

“I’ll give you one last chance to drop my weapon, wife.” The title stings like a slap. “I will spare you some of my wrath if you do so.”

“Surrender,” I repeat.

With a deft yank, War jerks the sword from my grip and casts it aside. And then the two of us are left to stare each other down. His blood drips from his hands onto the packed sheets beneath him.

Without his weapon, I feel acutely naked.

I could’ve planned this situation … better. Instead I let my emotions carry it out, and it didn’t work.

I don’t know if I truly thought it would, just as I didn’t know if warning Mansoura would work, but I had hoped that threatening him—then perhaps incapacitating him—might at least do something.

Foolish, foolish girl.

War stands, and even though he’s naked, he is excruciatingly menacing.

“You betrayed me.” In the horseman’s eyes, that’s one of the worst crimes one can commit.

He takes an ominous step towards me, his massive frame looming.

For the first time since Jerusalem, I catalogue each thick bulge of muscle not as an aspect of his otherworldly beauty, but as proof of all the ways he can hurt me.

I take an uncertain step back. All of my former bravado has left me.

How to get myself out of this situation?

War notices me backing up, and he laughs low, the sound terrible.

“It’s too late to run, savage girl.”

All at once, he’s closing in on me, and God save me, this is it.

The horseman grabs me, his blood smearing onto my skin like war paint.

“Did you really think that I could be so effortlessly dealt with? I created violence. You cannot outmatch me at my own game.”

My knees go weak with my fear. I was an idiot to ever not fear this man.

War’s hands move to my hair, his blood smearing against my cheeks, my ears, my scalp.

“This is where you surrender, wife,” he says, his voice hushed. “Surrender to me truly, just as you vowed you would.”

There are so many things War can take from me, but my word isn’t one of them.

“I surrender to no one,” I say. “And if you once believed otherwise, you are a fool.”

The horseman’s gaze narrows. He laughs then, that deep, chilling sound raising the hairs along my arm.

He cups my jaw. “The earth is full of so many bones,” he whispers.

I don’t know what to make of those words, only that I should be frightened by them.

War releases my jaw. I can feel my skin smeared with his blood.

His hand moves to the hollow at the base of my throat. He traces my scar, the shape now smeared with his blood. “This is the Angelic symbol for surrender.”

Where is he going with this?

His raging eyes rise to mine. “I am not the only one who can resurrect the dead,” War says. “You were brought back to life and marked just as I have been,” he says.

The water rushes in—

I had thought I died that day. A chill sweeps down my spine.

My eyes drop to War’s tattoos, and now that I look for it, the shape of them is eerily like my scar. I never noticed the similarities. Not until now.