War begins to move, and my thoughts banish themselves. He pushes himself off the ground, rising to his feet once more. A malicious smile spreads across his face.

Now I turn to look at the woman holding the gun. Her hand is steady, though her eyes are wide. She’s a little older than me, and the hijab she wears billows in the breeze as she trains her weapon on War. And then she resumes pulling the trigger.

The bullets light up his body, jerking his frame left and right as he strides forward. He spreads his arms and laughs like a crazy fucking bastard as the shots pierce his armor and sink into skin. His blood drips in thick rivulets from the wounds, sliding down his body.

I stare at him in horror.

Dear God, he really can’t die.

The woman shoots until her gun clicks. War gives a low laugh, and his eyes are so, so violent.

Without thinking, I cut across the street, dashing in front of the woman, blocking her from the horseman.

War’s eyes settle on me. There’s a moment of surprise; this is the first time since battle began that we’ve run into each other. But his surprise quickly withers away, and his eyes narrow.

“Don’t come between us, wife,” he says, not bothering to speak in tongues. His guttural voice cuts through me like a cold wind.

“I’m not going to let you kill her.” I don’t know what the woman was thinking, but she better make herself scarce fast.

“Miriam.” War’s voice is as serious as I’ve ever heard it. “Move.”

Be brave.

“No.”

The horseman scrutinizes me, his wounds still weeping blood. “There are thousands of innocents in this town. She is not one of them. Don’t waste your mercy.”

I square my shoulders. “I’m not moving.”

War steps up to me, and I’m reminded of why he’s so goddamn frightening. He’s over two meters tall, and nearly every square centimeter of him is coated in blood.

“You are playing a dangerous game, wife,” he says, his voice pitched low.

I think it’s supposed to be a threat, but I feel that voice low in my belly, and I’m reminded all over again of the horseman’s kiss.

“I don’t consider life and death to be a game. Spare her.”

“And have her attempt to kill me again?” he says. “That’s madness, woman.”

As he says this, I hear a dull clink. I glance down just in time to see a bloody, spent bullet roll along the road.

That … came out of him.

Holy balls.

“What harm would it do? Spare her,” I urge again.

“You like her simply because she tried to kill me,” he says, giving me a look.

Maybe.

“She’s brave.”

He stares over my shoulder at the woman, a grimace on his face. “She’ll cause trouble.”

But he’s actually considering this.

I press my advantage. “Give her a useful task—make her cook things or manage stuff.”

The battle is still brewing around us, and every second that passes the odds of this woman surviving grow smaller and smaller.

War stares at her for an impossibly long time. His upper lip curls.

“This is a waste of my time,” he says. “For the sake of your soft heart, I will let her live—for now.”

He whistles to a nearby soldier and beckons him over. The man jogs to War’s side. Leaning in close, the horseman whispers something to the soldier. The man nods in response, then breaks away.

I glance behind me. The woman is still standing in the middle of the road, though at some point she procured a knife.

Why didn’t you run when you had the chance? I want to ask her.

She shifts her weight from foot to foot, her eyes going to me, then to War and the soldier. She has an angry, desperate look about her.

The man breaks away from War, striding over to the woman.

“What is he doing?” I ask War, alarmed.

The horseman’s upper lip curls. “Sparing her,” he says, a note of disgust in his voice.

The woman raises her weapon as the soldier comes in close, but the man easily knocks away the blade, grabbing her by the shoulder. As soon as the soldier touches her, she goes berserk, scratching and kicking and screaming.

Gritting his teeth, the soldier begins to explain himself to her, gesturing first to the horseman and me, and then to a nearby horse. Whatever the soldier is telling her, it’s causing her to slowly, reluctantly cooperate.

A minute later, he takes the woman to a nearby horse and helps her onto the saddle, murmuring quietly to her.

“Are you sure he’s not just going to slit her throat the moment we’re out of sight?” I ask War while I stare at the two of them. I don’t even know why I’m so invested in this. Maybe it is simply because the woman hurt War.

“No,” he responds as the soldier and the woman ride off, “I’m not. The hearts of men are fickle and cruel.”

I give him a look just as another bullet wiggles its way out of his armor, clinking to the ground.

The horseman steps in close, and without warning, he cups the back of my head and pulls me in for a savage kiss. The world is spinning on its head, but the moment War’s lips touch mine, the cyclone seems to stop.

There’s no more battle, no more death and violence, no more heaven pitted against earth. It’s just him and me.

He tastes like smoke and steel, and my lips respond to his, just as they did last night. It seems I can’t not kiss him, even when he represents everything I’m fighting against.

His mouth scours mine over and over and—

War breaks away from the kiss, and the world rushes back in.

I stare at the horseman, dazed, as he backs away, his kohl-lined eyes fixed to mine.

“Deimos!” he calls out, not looking away from me.

War’s steed comes galloping to him like it had been just waiting for the order.

The horseman mounts the beast while I stand there, wondering what the fuck I was thinking just now when I kissed him back.

War doesn’t say anything else. With a final look at me, he rides back into the fray.

By the time the fighting is done, no one is left.

The streets are filled with the dead and dying. The buildings are ashes and rubble. The once blue sky is now a hazy red-brown and ash drifts down like snow.

The captives have been taken away, and the rest of us are filtering back out the way we came.

My hands shake from pain and exhaustion and hunger and a deep sense of wrongness. What happened today wasn’t right.

I stumble across the horseman again on my way out of the city.

War is standing at a crossroads, his back to me, a field of bodies spread around him. He’s splashed with blood, calmly surveying the destruction.

He can’t be something holy. He can’t. Nothing pure can be responsible for pain like this.

But then he turns, and his eyes meet mine. Beneath the bloodlust, there’s a weight and a resolve in his gaze. And if I stare long enough, I might even say that he looks a bit burdened.

I glance away before that can happen.

I continue walking on, skirting around the bodies and strolling right past him as though he were invisible.

Not two minutes later, I hear galloping behind me. I swivel around just in time to see the horseman astride his warhorse, Deimos, the two of them heading straight for me.