War (The Four Horsemen, #2)(9)

In front of me, I don’t hear the kneeling man’s answer, but then the executioner grabs him by the hair.

That’s answer enough.

The captive takes one look at the sword. “No-no-no—”

With the sweep of the blade, the executioner cuts his cries short.

Saliva rushes into my mouth, and I force down my nausea.

That’s what will happen to me if I don’t agree to this camp’s terms. It’s nearly enough to make me change my mind.

I close my eyes.

Be brave. Be brave. I probably shouldn’t be using Rule Five of Miriam Elmahdy’s Guide to Staying the Fuck Alive to convince myself that death is the better option. The whole point of my rules was to stay the fuck alive.

The handful of prisoners that follow all choose allegiance. They’re pulled from the arena and swallowed up into the crowd.

Someone pushes me forward, and now it’s my turn to face judgment.

A soldier roughly drags me to the center of the clearing, where the executioner waits. Puddles of blood soil the area, and the liquid splatters beneath my boots as I walk up to the man with the blade. Here, the air smells like meat and excrement.

Death is messy. You forget that until you cut a man open.

The camp’s eyes are now all on me. They look sickly fascinated by this, like it’s some sort of macabre show.

But all of their faces fade when I gaze up at War.

As soon as the horseman sees me, he sits forward in his seat. His face is placid, but his dark eyes are intense.

All you must do is swear fealty with the others. Then we will speak again, wife.

One of his hands squeezes his armrest; the other rests beneath his chin, those odd glyphs glittering from his knuckles.

Now that he’s not on the battlefield, War’s removed his armor and his shirt, leaving him bare chested. No wounds mar that skin even though I know that at least one of my arrows embedded itself in his shoulder. There are, however, more of those strange glowing glyphs on his chest, the two crimson lines of them arcing from his shoulders to his pecs before curving back towards his ribcage. The markings look just as dangerous as the rest of him.

He no longer wears his giant sword. In fact, the only weapon he is wearing is a needle-like dagger that’s strapped to his upper arm.

The executioner moves in front of me, forcing me to tear my gaze away from War. The man’s blade is so close that I could reach out and touch it, the steel thickly coated in blood.

Behind me, a soldier shoves me to my knees. Blood splashes as my knees hit the soaked earth. I cringe at the warm feel of the liquid.

I close my eyes and swallow.

“Death or allegiance?” the executioner demands.

It should be an easy answer, but I can’t force myself to say the words.

Despite everything, I don’t want to die. I really, really don’t want to die, and I don’t want to feel the bite of that blade.

Right now anything, even the thought of turning on my own brethren, is more tempting.

I open my eyes and look to the executioner. The man has dead eyes. Too much killing and not enough living. That’s what’ll happen to me if I choose to live.

Inadvertently my gaze moves to the horseman sitting on his throne.

The horseman, who caught me and spared me. Who called me his wife. He watches me now with captivated eyes. I know which answer he wants from me, and he seems almost certain I’ll give it.

The longer I look at him, the more unnerved I become. A shiver runs over my skin. There’s a whole unexplored world in his eyes, one that promises me dark and forbidden things.

I tear my gaze away from him and my wandering thoughts, my attention returning to that bloody sword in front of me.

Death or allegiance?

Be brave, be brave, be brave.

I glance up at the executioner and force out the one word I couldn’t only moments before.

“Death.”





Chapter 4


The executioner forces my head down, so that the back of my neck is bared for him. I don’t see him lift his sword, but I feel the warm drip of blood from it.

I bite my lip at the sensation.

This is not how I imagined my life ending …

“No.” War’s voice fills the camp. The sound of it is like a lover’s breath against my skin. It’s sinister, deep—so very, very deep—and the weight of it seems to echo across the clearing. Or maybe it’s simply the silence that falls in its wake.

Every rowdy, beady-eyed soldier goes quiet.

I glance up. The crowd seems to shrink back into itself, and their fear is a physical thing.

My eyes move to War, where he reclines on his throne. His gaze locks with mine, and suddenly, it’s as though we’re back on holy ground and he’s declaring me his wife all over again.

War’s eyes aren’t anything like the executioner’s. They are so very, very alive. They burn bright. And yet, for all the life that fills them, I cannot say what the man behind them is thinking. If he were a human and I defied him, I’d expect anger, but I’m not sure that’s what he feels at all.

War lifts a hand and beckons me forward.

A soldier grabs me by the arm and leads me towards the horseman, only halting me a couple meters from his dais.

With a nod to War, the soldier backs away.

The horseman’s gaze rakes over me, and not for the first time, I register just how unnaturally handsome he is. It’s a vicious sort of beauty, one that only dangerous men have.