War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(32)

The man breaks away from War, striding over to the woman.

“What is he doing?” I ask War, alarmed.

The horseman’s upper lip curls. “Sparing her,” he says, a note of disgust in his voice.

The woman raises her weapon as the soldier comes in close, but the man easily knocks away the blade, grabbing her by the shoulder. As soon as the soldier touches her, she goes berserk, scratching and kicking and screaming.

Gritting his teeth, the soldier begins to explain himself to her, gesturing first to the horseman and me, and then to a nearby horse. Whatever the soldier is telling her, it’s causing her to slowly, reluctantly cooperate.

A minute later, he takes the woman to a nearby horse and helps her onto the saddle, murmuring quietly to her.

“Are you sure he’s not just going to slit her throat the moment we’re out of sight?” I ask War while I stare at the two of them. I don’t even know why I’m so invested in this. Maybe it is simply because the woman hurt War.

“No,” he responds as the soldier and the woman ride off, “I’m not. The hearts of men are fickle and cruel.”

I give him a look just as another bullet wiggles its way out of his armor, clinking to the ground.

The horseman steps in close, and without warning, he cups the back of my head and pulls me in for a savage kiss. The world is spinning on its head, but the moment War’s lips touch mine, the cyclone seems to stop.

There’s no more battle, no more death and violence, no more heaven pitted against earth. It’s just him and me.

He tastes like smoke and steel, and my lips respond to his, just as they did last night. It seems I can’t not kiss him, even when he represents everything I’m fighting against.

His mouth scours mine over and over and—

War breaks away from the kiss, and the world rushes back in.

I stare at the horseman, dazed, as he backs away, his kohl-lined eyes fixed to mine.

“Deimos!” he calls out, not looking away from me.

War’s steed comes galloping to him like it had been just waiting for the order.

The horseman mounts the beast while I stand there, wondering what the fuck I was thinking just now when I kissed him back.

War doesn’t say anything else. With a final look at me, he rides back into the fray.

By the time the fighting is done, no one is left.

The streets are filled with the dead and dying. The buildings are ashes and rubble. The once blue sky is now a hazy red-brown and ash drifts down like snow.

The captives have been taken away, and the rest of us are filtering back out the way we came.

My hands shake from pain and exhaustion and hunger and a deep sense of wrongness. What happened today wasn’t right.

I stumble across the horseman again on my way out of the city.

War is standing at a crossroads, his back to me, a field of bodies spread around him. He’s splashed with blood, calmly surveying the destruction.

He can’t be something holy. He can’t. Nothing pure can be responsible for pain like this.

But then he turns, and his eyes meet mine. Beneath the bloodlust, there’s a weight and a resolve in his gaze. And if I stare long enough, I might even say that he looks a bit burdened.

I glance away before that can happen.

I continue walking on, skirting around the bodies and strolling right past him as though he were invisible.

Not two minutes later, I hear galloping behind me. I swivel around just in time to see the horseman astride his warhorse, Deimos, the two of them heading straight for me.

War leans out of his saddle, his arm outstretched. I begin to move out of the way, but War simply adjusts his trajectory so that he’s still closing in on me. The distance closes between us—ten meters, five, two.

His arm slams into my midsection, sweeping me off the ground. My breath leaves me all at once as I’m dragged onto his horse. I gasp for air as War secures my back to his front.

“Next time, you’ll wait for me,” he says into my ear.

Unlikely.

I scowl at him over my shoulder as he carries me out of town, hating that I’m pressed so close to him.

Once I’ve taken in a few deep breaths, I say, “You made me kill today.” They were his soldiers, but still.

It wasn’t right, none of it was right.

War doesn’t respond.

Of course he doesn’t.

The horseman’s steed slows as we rejoin the last of the army, who has gathered at the edge of Ashdod. I don’t know why War’s soldiers have stopped here, rather than back at camp, or why War is stopping with them.

Deimos comes to a halt, and as soon as he does I slide off the steed. War lets me go, and that in and of itself should’ve tipped me off that something strange was going on.

I feel the horseman’s gaze burning into my back as I make my way into the gathered crowd of soldiers. The people around me look to their warlord like they’ve been waiting for an announcement.

War’s phobos riders fan out around him, the group of them still on their steeds. I stare at these stoic, mounted men, each one wearing a red band on his bicep. Like War, many of them have taken to wearing kohl to darken their eyes.

A hush falls over the crowd, and my skin pricks at the silence. All eyes are still on War.

What is going on?

Wordlessly, the horseman reaches towards the ruins of Ashdod, his palm upturned. His arm begins to shake, his muscles tense beneath his armor. Slowly, he raises his arm, higher and higher as though lifting a great burden.