I hear the wet thud of Famine’s boots as he walks through blood towards me. A whimper leaves my lips, and a tear tracks down my cheek.

“Open your eyes, Ana.”

I shake my head.

The plant holding me now releases its grip. I’ve been caught up in it for so long that my bloodless legs fold under me, too weak to keep me standing. Before I hit the ground, the Reaper catches me.

Now I do open my eyes and look up at his stormy ones. Behind his head his scythe looms, secured to his back once more.

I can smell the blood on him, and I can feel it in the wet press of his hands on my body.

Another frightened tear slips out. I thought I was brave, stabbing his hand earlier. I foolishly thought that if I hurt him, I might actually be able to direct his anger away from these people and onto me.

Instead I only enflamed his fury.

“You’re the best of humanity I’ve seen so far,” Famine’s voice is silken, “and I have to say, I’m not too impressed.”

With that, he scoops me into his arms and begins heading towards the door, kicking the odd head out of his way as he does so. Bile rises up my throat once more.

“Put me down,” I say, a tremor in my voice.

“So you can stab me again?” He huffs out a laugh. I can hear the soft splash of his boots as they step through puddles of blood. “I don’t think so.”

The only people who are left standing are Famine’s men. They stare stoically at the carnage, but inside they must be freaking out. I know I’m freaking out, and I’ve already seen this many times before.

“Why are you the way you are?” I whisper staring up at his blood-speckled jawline.

Mean. Evil.

That jawline seems to harden as he glances down at me. “Why are you the way you are?” he retorts. “You fucking stabbed me in my hand.”

“So you killed an entire room for it?”

“I was going to kill them anyway.” As he walks, the trees and bushes part, making a walkway of sorts for us.

“How can you possibly be a heavenly thing?” I ask as we leave the building. Outside, the rain is coming down hard, soaking me within seconds. “You meet compassion with violence, and mercy with betrayal.” More tears slip out. “If there’s one thing in my life I regret, it’s saving you. And if I could go back and undo it all, I would.”

“You would choose to not help me?” Famine says, glancing down at me, rain dripping off his face. Just from his tone and the look in his eyes, I know I’ve hit on something sensitive.

“After what you’ve done?” I say. “In an instant.”

“After what I’ve done?” A muscle in Famine’s cheek jumps, and the rain seems to come down harder. “This is not a war I started, it’s just the one I’m ending.”

I glare up at him, my dark hair plastered to my cheeks. “What you’re doing isn’t ending some war, it’s just evil for the sake of evil.”

Overhead, the sky flashes, and for an instant Famine’s face looks inhumanly harsh.

“How dare you judge me—you, who are nothing,” the Reaper says, coming to a stop. “Nothing but self-aware stardust. In a hundred years you and your petty, self-important beliefs will be gone, your memory cast from the earth, and everything that makes you you will be scattered to the winds. And still I will exist as I always have.”

“Am I supposed to be upset by that?” I say. “That in one hundred years you’ll still exist as this, soulless, festering thing, while for once in my life I’ll get some goddamn rest?”

Famine flashes me an angry look. A second later he lifts me up, and for an instant I think he’s going to hurt me just as he has everyone else. But then I realize that his horse is right behind me, blending into the dark night.

He sets me down hard on the seat, and I’ve only just managed to adjust myself when Famine follows me up, his body pressing in close.

Grabbing the reins, he clicks his tongue, and his horse takes off.

The rain and wind whips against my face, but I hardly feel it. I’ve gone numb. Maybe that’s why I don’t immediately notice that Famine’s cutting through fields rather than taking the main road. The crops rise around us like phantoms in the darkness.

The sky flashes, lighting up the world. For an instant I can clearly see stalks of sugarcane around us, but as I stare at them, they begin to wither, their leaves looking like long, curling claws reaching for me.

The sky flashes again and again, and the thunder seems to fill the whole sky. Rain leaks from the heavens like blood from an artery.

It’s a nightmarish ride, made all the worse by the Reaper’s dark, forbidding presence at my back.

I quake when I see our house in the distance, lit up by candlelight. We’re going back, and it’s an awful sensation, to survive all this death—like I’ve missed the boat to the afterlife and all that’s left for me is to waste away here.

The horseman nearly rides us into the house before pulling his horse up short. A few guards meander about the property, but now that we’ve arrived, they start to approach us. They must see something in Famine’s expression, however, because they stop several meters away from us, not daring to come any closer.

The Reaper swings himself off his steed, and before I can so much as move, he reaches up and hauls me off his horse as well.

I glare at him. “I can get off on my own.”

“Can you now? That’s news to me. You’re always harping on getting everyone else off.”

Wait, was that a sex joke?

I don’t have more than a moment to process that before Famine tows me by the wrist into the house, leading me back to the room I was tied up in all day.

Naturally, I fight against his hold, trying to yank my wrist free. It doesn’t deter the horseman. If anything, I get the impression that he wants a knock-down drag-out fight.

When we get to the room, he practically tosses me inside, and I stumble forward before whipping around.

If he wants a fucking fight, I will give him one. Already I’m fantasizing about slamming these big-ass boots into his nutsack.

He follows me into my room, his body dripping with rainwater. I, too am soaking wet, the water sliding down my legs.

“Well?” I say angrily. “Why aren’t you leaving?”

The Reaper scowls at me, looking like he’s about to say something. Instead, he walks back to the door and kicks it shut with his booted heel. Then he wheels about, unholstering his scythe and tossing it on the bed.

“I’ll leave when I want to leave,” he says.

Anger makes my face flush. “Get out.”

He stalks forward, ignoring my words altogether. “You look at me like I’m a monster, but I’m not the one who spent years inflicting torture on a helpless prisoner. The horrors I endured—”

“You think I don’t know pain?” I say over him. My voice comes out louder and angrier than I intend. “I lost both my parents by the time I was a teenager, my aunt abused me, and my cousins did nothing to stop her, but that didn’t prevent me from mourning them all when you killed my entire town.

“And then, left with nothing, I had to fend for myself, and I consider myself lucky that my madam was the one who found me.

“I was seventeen when I started to sell my body. Seventeen. Still just a teenager.”