War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(24)

“Would you like me to tell you then?” he asks, his voice deceptively soft.

My pulse picks up. “Yes.”

“I want you to surrender.”

A beat of silence passes.

I have no clue what that actually means, but I note that chaining me to a bed and feasting on my pussy were not mentioned. Shame. Under the right circumstances (a.k.a., lots and lots of booze), I could actually get behind that one.

“Surrender?” I echo. “I already have.”

“You haven’t,” he insists.

Are you kidding me? He’s forced me to leave my life behind because it suited him. If that’s not surrender then I don’t know what is.

The more I stew on my thoughts, the more indignant I become.

“We’ve talked about how different you are and how difficult you are to understand, but we haven’t talked about me,” I finally say. “I don’t want you as a husband, and I don’t accept you, and whatever your god thinks he wants to do with me and the rest of the world, I will fight it with my every last breath.

“Oh, and I’m not surrendering anything to you, motherfucker.”

War gives a malevolent laugh, and despite myself, it raises the hairs on the back of my neck. “Fight all you want, wife. Battle is what I’m best at—and I assure you, you won’t win this one.”

The second day of riding is both more and less miserable than the first. More, because I still have to ride alongside War, and less, because Thunder has only tried to kick me once so far, and that’s an improvement from the three attempts he made yesterday.

My terrible sunburn also seems to be much better today—the skin only slightly tight and tender—and my saddle-sore thighs don’t ache nearly as much as I expected them to. I don’t know what witchcraft is responsible for this, but I’m not going to complain.

Today we leave the arid mountain range behind us, moving towards the flatter ground near the coast. The moment those rolling hills fall away, I feel bare. I’ve lived with the mountains my entire life. The wide, flat expanse of land that stretches out in front of me now is foreign and it makes me painfully homesick.

I’m really not going back. My heart squeezes a little at the thought, even as a strange sort of exhilaration takes hold. For years I had been trying to save up enough money to leave Jerusalem. And now I’ve truly left it.

Not that this part of New Palestine is much to look at. It’s nothing but swaths and swaths of yellowed grass, interrupted every now and then by a struggling patch of farmland. Every so often we pass a dilapidated building or a seemingly empty town, and maybe there are still people living here. It doesn’t look like War has laid waste to these places, but it’s all so very quiet.

“Are the people here already dead?” I ask.

It feels like they’re dead. Everything’s too still. Not even the wind stirs, like it’s already abandoned this place.

“Not yet,” he says ominously.

How is it feasible for War to stretch his reach this far? The cities he lays siege to, those I understand, but the houses that speckle these forgotten places—how does he get those?

He doesn’t say anything further, and I’m left with a horrible, gnawing worry that he and the other horsemen are truly unstoppable.

But they can be stopped, right? After all, another horseman came before War, and then, at some later time, he vanished.

“What happened to Pestilence?” I ask.

Quiet fear had settled into Jerusalem after the news came that a horseman of the apocalypse was spreading plague through North America. But then a short while later rumors erupted that Pestilence had disappeared. I don’t know if anyone truly believed that—that he’d disappeared, I mean. We’d been fooled by that explanation once before, when the horsemen first arrived.

But Pestilence hadn’t returned after all; War had come instead.

“The conqueror was vanquished,” War says.

“The conqueror?” I repeat. “You mean Pestilence?”

War inclines his head a little.

“I thought you were all immortal,” I say.

“I didn’t say my brother was dead.”

I narrow my eyes, studying War’s profile. How could a horseman be both alive and vanquished?

He glances over at me. “You carry trouble in your eyes, wife. Whatever you’re thinking, unthink it.”

“Tell me about him,” I say. “Pestilence.”

War is quiet for a long time. His kohl-lined eyes far too aware. “You want to know how Pestilence was stopped?”

Of course I do. I had no idea a horsemen could be stopped. A second later, War’s words truly register.

“So he was stopped?” I try to imagine Pestilence chained and immobilized, thwarted from his deadly task.

War settles himself deeper into his saddle. “That’s a story for another day, I’m afraid.” His words are final. “But wife,” he adds, “there is something you should know now.”

I raise my brows. Oh?

War flashes me a fierce look. “My brother failed. I will not.”

I think I’m supposed to be frightened by War’s words, but all I can think is that Pestilence failed. He failed at whatever he was supposed to do.

Shit. The horsemen really can be stopped.