My knees were already weak from his earlier words, but now they completely give out, and it’s his grip alone that keeps me standing.

The horseman smiles against my mouth, more than aware of his effect on me.

His need is sparking my own. I kiss him back—I don’t think I could do anything but kiss him back in this moment.

I’m going to pay for this later … but right now I don’t really give two shits. I’ve forgotten what self-control feels like.

War parts my lips with his own, and suddenly his tongue is pressing against mine. His body feels like sin, but he tastes like heaven.

My hands move back into that soft hair of his, and my core is on fire. If this is what his kiss does to me, I can’t imagine what everything else would feel like.

I don’t know who ends the kiss, but eventually our lips part.

I stagger out of War’s arms. Now I’m the one who’s gobsmacked. I stare at his mouth.

My God, I’ve never so badly wanted someone I disliked. But then again, here’s another side of War I’m only beginning to see—the reckless, passionate warlord.

War breathes heavily, that overwhelming body of his heaving with the action. I thought he might flash me one of his mocking smiles; he knows exactly what he did to me. Instead, he steps towards me, his expression determined, clearly ready to resume that kiss.

I take a halting step back. “I can’t.”

The correct response should’ve been no, but the truth is, I want to kiss the horseman back. It’s embarrassing how much I want that.

His gaze is fixed back on my lips.

“Why,” he says. It’s hardly a question.

I take a deep breath, beating back my lust. One day my vagina might stage a coup and overpower my brain—but that day won’t be today.

My eyes meet War’s. “Because tomorrow you’re still going to ride out with your army, and it’s going to break my heart.”

Chapter 12

We assemble before dawn.

It’s a quiet, somber thing. I’d like to think that the soldiers around me are just as pained at the thought of killing innocents as I am, but I don’t know.

I’m one of several hundred who’s given a horse. The rest of the army is heading in on foot—well except for the few men and women who are manning the giant carts they’ll bring into the city, carts that will eventually return to camp stacked with stolen goods.

The soldiers have me wait off to the side of the army procession, just like last time I left camp. And like last time, I hear the pounding hoof beats of War’s horse cut through the early morning air. War rides out of the darkness, the torchlight making him look particularly menacing.

I stare at his blood red horse. Deimos, he called the creature.

War stops when he gets to me.

“Stay safe,” he says, his voice as serious as I’ve ever heard it.

“Try not to kill too many people,” I respond.

A smile curves his lips. “There’s no such thing as too many.”

Ugh.

“Farewell, wife. We’ll meet again on the battlefield.”

With that, War rides to the head of the procession. The soldiers who can see him lift their weapons and torches and whoop.

Idiots.

Slowly, the entire army begins to move. I slip into line along with the rest of them, my nerves ratcheting up. The lot of us are heading into Ashdod, a city nestled along the coast of New Palestine. Home to many, many people.

The ride in is unnaturally quiet. No one speaks with each other, so the only sound is the fall of hoof beats and footsteps. Dozens of soldiers carry torches, and the firelight illuminates their somber faces.

On one side of my waist is War’s sheathed dagger and on the other is a sword I lifted earlier. It’s a bit too heavy and the edge is fairly dull, but I’m going to need to use it anyway if I’m going to throw myself into the fray.

I feel my resolve hardening into place.

Rule One has always been: bend the rules—but don’t break them. But if the rules are wrong, then they need to be broken. They need to be smashed to fucking pieces.

And today I’m going to do just that.

War’s army takes out the aviaries first.

As soon as I enter the town, I can hear the birds’ shrill cries. Fire already engulfs several buildings, and in one of them, there are birds trapped inside. All around me people are fighting and screaming and fleeing and dying, but it’s the sound of those birds’ cries that truly chills me.

To attack the aviaries is akin to cutting off any and all warnings that could be passed along to the outside world.

I assumed War met with his men to talk about battle strategy, but I hadn’t actually thought about what that strategy might look like.

A lone bird soars through the air, its form partially obscured by the plumes of smoke rising from the burning city. I dare to hope that it escaped the fire, that it’s carrying a warning someone managed to scribble out before it was too late. I hope that it’s heading somewhere that hasn’t already been hit by War.

And I hope that the bird actually gets there.

Go, I silently cheer it on.

It has a fighting chance, it really does.

But then I see a few archers on a nearby roof. I see those soldiers cock their bows and aim. And then I see them release their arrows. There must be a dozen of them arcing through the sky.

Most miss the bird, but one hits the creature square in the chest. It tumbles out of the sky, and I feel my hope plunge with that bird.

There will be no warnings to pass along, just as we weren’t warned. We’ll all just fight and die and War will move on to destroy more cities until the entire world is gone.

We’re facing a mass extinction, and we’re not going to survive it.

Chapter 13

It’s awful. The things I see.

The bodies, the blood, the needless violence. But the worst, the absolute worst, are the faces of the civilians as they lose everything all at once.

Some of them don’t even run. They see the lives they built for themselves torn down, and they stand in the streets and simply weep. All of these people survived a civil war. They’ve seen destruction and violence sweep through once already. And for a second time, they have to endure it. Some of them simply give up. If the world is this hard to live in, it’s not worth living in.

I ride through the city on my horse, my heart in my throat.

Buildings are utterly engulfed in flame. Worse yet, Ashdod happens to be a city that people flocked to after the Arrival, and the shantytowns I ride past appear to be even more flammable than the older buildings. It’s nothing but a wall of red-orange flame; even the ground seems to burn in these newer, more desperate neighborhoods, and I can hear the horrible dying screams of those trapped inside.

I stop my horse, my eyes scouring the landscape. I’ve been so set on fighting War’s army that I’ve forgotten that I can still help people live. Isn’t that the ultimate goal? To survive this apocalypse?

I catch sight of a mother and the two children she presses close to her, and I can’t not react. That could’ve been me and my family. It once was me and my family.

I guide my horse to them and hop off, keeping the steed’s reins in my fist.

The woman’s eyes are pinched shut, like that can shut out the nightmare, and she’s shushing her crying children.