Pestilence (The Four Horsemen #1)(102)

And now I don’t know what to do, whether to close the distance between us or keep away from him. I don’t know in what state he’s coming to me.

I left him … a broken thing.

I bite the inside of my cheek. “They said you just disappeared.”

He searches my face, and maybe I’m just imagining it, but he looks like he’s trying to memorize each one of my features.

“I can do many things, Sara, but disappearing isn’t one of them.”

A surge of relief follows that statement. He can’t just vanish and leave me.

I stand aside, opening the door wider. “Want to come in?”

Pestilence’s gaze moves to the apartment beyond me, his eyes sparking with interest and a want so fierce it makes my knees weak.

My horseman came back for me.

Carefully, he steps inside, glass crunching under his boot as he does so. His attention is everywhere, taking in each little piece of my humble life.

“Where are your things?” I ask softly as I close the door, my eyes scouring him again. The bow that’s never more than an arm’s span away from him, the crown that almost always decorates his head, the golden armor that makes him look ever so otherworldly—it’s all gone.

I surrender, he’d said.

He swivels to face me. “My purpose is served.”

What does that even mean? And why does that fill me with dread?

“And Trixie?” Had the creature served his purpose too? That would kill me.

Pestilence jerks his chin over his shoulder. Only now, when I manage to tear my eyes off of the horseman, do I bother to look out my window. In the darkness beyond, I catch the barest shadow of his mount.

Trixie Skillz, the steed whose back I road on all those weeks, snuffles in the darkness, his reins looped about a broken lamp post.

I turn back around only to find Pestilence standing close, his eyes devouring me like a starving man.

“How did you find me?” I ask.

“I never left you.”

My brows furrow.

“Come now, Sara,” he says at my confusion, “I wasn’t just going to let you slip out of my life that easily. I’m far too stubborn and not nearly noble enough.”

What is he saying? That the entire time I made my way back here, he shadowed me?

“Besides,” he continues, “you were still recovering, and I didn’t trust your fragile body to make the journey back.”

I can’t take in enough air.

He cared. Even when he thought I didn’t, he never gave up.

“So you followed me?”

He nods.

And I never knew.

“Why didn’t you ever show yourself?”

Pestilence glances down at his boots. “You had made your decision. I wanted to respect that.” He laughs self-deprecatingly, toeing a stray piece of broken glass. “But I couldn’t, in the end.”

And I’m so glad for it.

“You stopped the plague,” I say.

He meets my gaze, his expression turning guarded. “I did.”

“Why?” I ask, searching his face.

Pestilence’s eyes are deep and true. “Because love brings out the best in you.”

I swallow thickly. If the last couple months have been a nightmare, this is some wonderful dream, one where I get everything I want.

I don’t trust it. I’ve come to expect that things that appear too good to be true often are. Why should the one thing I want more than any other follow different logic?

“Back at that last house, why didn’t you tell me you cured the sick?” I ask. That would’ve saved months of this agony.

Pestilence’s gaze is agonized. “My mind was a mess at the time. I … had not committed to my actions, not even after I set them in motion. Nor after I let you go. It took weeks of contemplation for me to come to terms with my decision. My heart spoke first; my mind had to follow.”

His expression turns fierce. “I should never have let you go. I should have listened to you, spoke with you, fought for you. I’m only now learning how very complex humans are.”

My heart beats madly at his words. Hope is beginning to surge through my veins, and that scares the crap out of me because all hope does is prime you for a letdown, and I’m not sure I can take another letdown.

“And the plague—it’s gone for good?” I ask.

Pestilence gives me a sad smile. “Sara, there will always be sickness and disease—that I cannot change. But my divinely-wrought plague will never infect another. I have … served my purpose,” he says again.

And again, that one sentence fills me with a strange sort of dread.

I tug on the sleeves of my shirt. “What happens to you now that you’ve served your purpose?” I’m proud that my voice doesn’t tremble like the rest of my body is beginning to.

It shouldn’t be possible to feel this much. Excitement and anxiety and fear are all churning inside me. But mostly fear, fear for my horseman. I never asked him what would happen if he simply stopped spreading the Fever.

I probably should’ve.

Pestilence’s blue eyes pierce mine. “Come with me and find out.”

That ache in my chest expands, but now it hurts with something that is halfway between pain and pleasure.

“There are so many things between us,” I say. So many insurmountable things. I want him so badly it hurts, but I swear it feels like he’s the one thing I can’t have, even after all his wrongs have been righted.