He grunts, though I have no clue whether he believes me or not.

“I … couldn’t leave you,” I admit, picking at a fingernail.

The room is quiet for a long moment. Then—

“Lay down next to me,” he says again.

I run my teeth over my lower lip.

“I don’t trust you,” I confess.

“That makes two of us.”

I make a disbelieving noise. “I saved you.”

“If this is your idea of saving a man—” His voice cuts off and he takes a ragged breath, “then I don’t want to know what your idea of punishment is.”

“I can’t believe—” My teeth chatter, “I actually felt bad for you. You’re so rude.”

“Fine,” he says, “stay cold.”

I glare at his form in the darkness. It’s clear he’s done talking.

I last maybe another fifteen minutes before I curse under my breath, then scooch over to his side. I bump into something wet and gooey. The horseman hisses in a breath.

Shit—

“Sorry!” I apologize.

He grunts again.

Gingerly I lay myself down next to him, bumping his arm twice more on accident. Each time he makes a low, pained sound.

Bet he’s regretting his offer now.

Finally, my bare skin presses against the side of his torso. The only place to put my head is on his shoulder, and I can’t help but breathe him in. This is how lovers sleep, nestled in each other’s arms.

Why am I even thinking about that?

“Don’t get any ideas,” I say out loud, as though the horseman is the one with the dirty thoughts.

“Because your flesh is so tempting right now,” he quips.

My face heats a little. “I don’t know what you’re capable of.”

“I don’t have hands at the moment. And until I reacquire them, I think you can save worrying about my capabilities.”

“Wait—‘reacquire them’?” I echo weakly.

The horseman doesn’t respond to that. But now my mind is hyper-focused on his injuries. I can still see his horrible, mangled body lying in the mud like he’d been discarded.

“How did you survive what happened to you?” I ask.

There’s a pause.

“I cannot die,” he finally says.

He cannot die?

“Oh.”

The silence stretches out.

“What’s your name?” I ask. As far as I’m aware, there are four horsemen, and I don’t have a single clue which one this is.

I swear I feel him looking at me with those frightful green eyes. In the darkness he begins to laugh.

“You don’t know?” he finally says. “I’m Famine, the third horseman of the apocalypse, and I’m here to kill you all.”

Chapter 9

Five years ago

Anitápolis, Brazil

Despite his words, he doesn’t kill me. At least not right then.

However, he continues to laugh and laugh, raising the hairs along my arms. Now would be a really good time to move my head off of his shoulder and scoot my dumb little ass out of here.

Why do I always get myself into these messes?

Famine is still laughing and laughing and laughing. The man has officially lost it. Somewhere along the way, his laughter changes, deepening until he’s not laughing but sobbing.

I lay in his arms, feeling even more awkward and uncomfortable than I did before. I don’t know what I expected when I saved him, but I don’t think it was this.

The third horseman of the apocalypse is having a mental breakdown right next to me.

The sound is awful, his shoulders heaving with each sob.

I don’t know what to do. I thought the hard part would be saving him, but it’s clear that while the horseman’s body is safe—for now—his mind isn’t. It’s still caged in whatever prison he’s been locked up in, and I don’t know how to set it free.

Finally, because I can think of nothing better, I reach out and begin stroking his hair again.

“Ssshhh,” I murmur, “it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” The empty platitudes slip from my lips. I have no clue what I’m saying. Of course nothing is okay and it won’t be okay, and I should not be making Famine (holy shit!) feel better.

Under my touch his cries taper off until he’s left taking in ragged breaths of air.

My hand stills.

“Don’t stop,” he says, his voice broken.

I resume my ministrations. For a long time the two of us are quiet.

“So, you’re Famine?” I finally say. “What does that mean?”

“Mortal, I have no idea what you’re asking.” He sounds exasperated. Weary and exasperated.

“Um,” I say, “do you have any special powers?” I clarify.

“Special powers,” he mutters. “I can make plants perish—among other things,” he says.

“I had heard stories about you. That you’d been captured. I hadn’t thought they were true, but … were they? Have you been held somewhere?”

His breath begins to speed up again. “Mhm …”

Jesus.

I run my fingers through his hair. I really want to ask him about his captivity—where exactly he was, what they did to him, how long he was there—but it’s clearly a tender subject.

“What are you going to do now that you’re free?” I eventually ask.

Beneath my hand, he seems to go still.

I hear the menace in his voice when he says, “I’m going to get my revenge.”

I didn’t think I was capable of falling asleep in the horseman’s arms, yet I must’ve because I stir at the touch of soft fingertips.

I blink my eyes open, squinting at the morning light streaming in through a nearby window. A man looms over me, his green eyes piercing. After a moment, I realize I recognize those green eyes.

Famine.

I suck in a shocked breath when I truly take in the horseman.

All of him is strange and lovely.

When I found him yesterday, he wore blood and grime in place of clothing. But now he’s fully dressed, and over his black shirt and pants he wears bronze armor that definitely wasn’t there last night. The metal breastplate gleams in the morning light.

How … ? Did he leave at some point to get his things?

But then my focus returns to his powerful build. Even kneeling, he looks intimidatingly large, and I don’t have to see the skin beneath his armor to know he has a body made for battle.

That’s nothing, though, compared to his face.

He’s … there aren’t words for this sort of male beauty. His caramel colored hair curls around the nape of his neck, and those brilliant green eyes are made all the brighter against his tan skin.

I don’t know where to look—at the sharp slice of his jawline or those high cheekbones—or those soft, sinner lips. He looks like some mythological figure taken straight out of a painting.

He is a mythological figure.

I push myself up, the action forcing the horseman to move away.

His fingers are what woke me, I realize. He was brushing my hair from my face much the same way I had done to his throughout the night. Now his fingertips linger on the side of my face.