War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(127)

The horseman’s thumb brushes my lower lip. “And who says I will?”

“Tell me you won’t,” I say a bit desperately.

“My brother didn’t.”

I go still. “So Pestilence is still alive?”

War nods. “Do you want to know what happened to him?” he asks. “What really happened?”

“How he was stopped, you mean?” I say.

War’s fingers move to my scar, tracing the symbol. “It wasn’t violence that got him in the end. It was love.”

I don’t breathe.

“My brother fell in love with a human woman, and he gave up his divine mission to be with her.

Which is exactly what my horseman seems to be doing.

I try to keep my voice steady. “What happened to him?” What will happen to you?

“He and his wife live—they have children too,” War says.

I feel myself begin to breathe steadily again.

“So they’re alive?” I ask. “And happy?”

“As far as I know,” War says.

Relief washes through me. War won’t die, just as Pestilence didn’t. He can leave the fighting behind, and we can have a good life together. A mundane and happy and hopefully long life.

I study War’s expression again. “So you’re not worried about leaving your task behind?”

War hesitates. “I wouldn’t say that.”

Like snapping his fingers, my fear returns.

He must see it because he says, “Miriam, do you believe that I can be redeemed?”

“What do you mean? Are you asking if you can right your wrongs?”

The warlord gives a sharp nod.

He’s done so many abominable things. From the very day he arrived, he’s brought death with him. But what he’s done is a different question from the one he’s asking.

“I think you’re already redeeming yourself,” I say. “So, yes, War, I do think that can happen.”

The horseman gives me a soft look. “Then surely every man, woman, and child on earth is just as capable of redemption as I am. And if they want redemption, then who am I to cut them down before their true day of judgment?”

I shake my head, at a loss. “So you’re going to stop the killing?”

He gives a slight nod. “So I’m going to stop the killing.”

I don’t know when the two of us doze off, locked in each other’s embrace, only that I’m pulled from sleep by a phantom voice.

Surrender.

The word whispers along my skin, moving over it like a tender caress.

I sit up in bed, breathing deeply. The memory of the word seems to echo in that tent.

Surrender, surrender, surrender.

I touch my scar. This wound and the word it represents inextricably bound me and War together. He was sure I was supposed to surrender. The proof of it was carved into my flesh.

Like a strike of lightning, realization hits me.

The message wasn’t for me.

It never was for me. After all, I can’t read Angelic.

The message is for someone who can.

War.





Chapter 55


The next morning, I wake to War’s hands on my stomach.

“Mmm, what are you doing?” I say groggily, stretching in bed.

I feel the horseman’s hair brush my bare skin right before he presses a kiss to my belly. “It’s never going to cease fascinating me,” he says, “that you’re carrying my child.”

I blink my eyes open and thread one of my hands through his dark locks, which are mussed from sleep.

“Do you know what it is?” I ask.

I mean, he knows a shitload of other things … maybe he’ll know the baby’s sex.

War draws circles on my stomach, his expression soft.

His mouth curves into a small smile. “Human, I imagine. Or close enough to it.”

I laugh and push at him, though I’m not entirely sure he meant it as a joke. “Do you know what gender the child is?”

He looks at me fondly. “Even my knowledge has its limits. We shall find out together.”

I pull him to me, giving him a kiss on the lips. “Trading death for life,” I say when I break away. “It’s a good look on you.”

He takes my face in his hands. “I didn’t know I was capable of feeling this way, wife. Happiness is a new emotion—”

The tent flap is thrown open, and a phobos rider steps inside, interrupting us.

I yank the bedsheet up over myself, covering my breasts. Just like War, I’ve taken to sleeping in the nude. So shoot me, my clothes are becoming too tight.

War sits up, not at all bothered by his own exposed skin. “Get out.” He sounds just like his old self. Full of confidence and pent up violence.

The rider, a burly, balding man with a thick beard, looks a little unsteady. He gives a quick bow, then rushes in to say, “With all due respect, My Lord, the residents of Karima are riding out to ambush us. If we want to stop them, we must leave now.”

I glance at War, alarmed. Yesterday, the horseman was dead-set on laying down his sword, but what happens when the humans are the ones to attack? Does he stand by his words, or does he make an exception?

War stands, utterly naked and completely uncaring, swaggering across the room to grab his pants.