With that rallying thought, I elbow my way through the vegetation, my hair snagging on a couple outstretched branches.

When I get to the front yard, Famine is waiting for me, his horse saddled and ready. Wordlessly, he takes the bag I’m holding and secures it to his steed.

I follow behind him, taking a deep breath to steady my stomach.

The Reaper turns to me. “Before we go …”

I wait for him to finish his sentence. Instead, he reaches a hand out, angling his palm towards my feet.

My skin tingles, and I can sense Famine’s magic unfolding around us.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“Being naughty,” he says.

After seeing what I have of Famine’s normal behavior, I can’t imagine what naughty looks like. What I do know is that I should definitely be afraid.

Only, I’m not. Despite all his brutality, I know this man isn’t going to hurt me. I know it with a certainty I cannot explain.

At my feet, the moist earth shifts. From it rises a small green shoot. I watch, fascinated, as it grows before my eyes, the branches climbing, several of them twisting up my leg. Leaves and thorns sprout from the plant.

“Is this where I finally die?” I say, my voice even.

“Don’t be so dramatic, little flower. I already told you—I don’t intend to kill you.”

Even as the plant grows, not a single thorn pricks me, though it does start to coil itself around my body like a lover.

I watch, transfixed, as in a matter of moments a rosebush comes to life around me. From it sprouts a single bud. I stare at it as the bud grows, then bursts open, revealing the delicate, smoky petals of a lavender rose.

I go numb at the sight of it.

Famine grew the same flower the first time our paths crossed. And now he grew it again.

He plucks the rose from the plant, removing its thorns. He runs a hand over the rose bush. “I know she’s lovely,” he murmurs to the plant, “but you must let her go.”

As though it understands, the rose bush uncoils itself from me.

Just as I’m stepping away from the plant, Famine hands the rose over.

“Why?” I ask, taking it from him. Why did he grow this rose for me after he wiped out my village, and why did he grow it for me again today? It’s been one of those odd, random things that’s picked at me.

“Because around you,” he says, “I feel the oddest urge to use my power to create rather than destroy.”

We don’t return to São Paulo, and for that, I’m absurdly grateful. Even from here I swear I can smell the decay in the air. I can’t imagine what death would look like in a city that large.

Not that we avoid it altogether. Heitor might’ve lived on the outskirts of the city, but the sheer sprawl of São Paulo means that we spend kilometers passing corpses wrapped up in bushes and trees.

“Were they in pain?” I ask.

I expect a cruel response from Famine. Instead he says, “It was quick.”

“Why kill them this way?” I ask. I now know that Famine can make a man wither away just as easily as he can plants.

“Preference, mostly.”

That’s all he says. It’s almost as though, today, he doesn’t savor his deeds like he usually does. I try not to think about that. It’s too easy to feel hopeful, like I have the power to change a bad man one blowjob at a time.

Though I will say, my blowjobs are transformative.

For kilometers after we ride out, the land lies in ruins. Dead stalks of corn lean against each other in brown, brittle heaps. Fields of orange trees have all but withered away. Usually, these plants don’t die until we pass them, but today as I stare out at the horizon, I see that the destruction extends as far as I can see.

It doesn’t end with the crops, either. We pass through another city, and there are so many corpses on the road that Famine has to weave his way through them. Next to many of these bodies are trailers full of valuables. I realize belatedly that we’re seeing at least part of the wave of people who fled São Paulo ahead of the horseman.

“When did you do all this?” I ask, covering my nose against the smell.

Not recently, that’s for sure.

He makes a noise in his throat. “After I confronted Heitor, I got a little carried away.”

A little carried away? That’s putting it mildly.

But at the mention of the drug lord, my mind flashes back to that ominous night when Famine and I fought for our lives. I can still see the horseman’s mutilated body even now, and the thought tightens my chest.

That memory, in turn, leads me to another—the sight of Famine fighting for me, defending me.

This is not what I should be thinking about right now. The fact that I am thinking about it right now, amongst so many dead, feels wrong.

This all feels wrong.

It’s felt wrong from the moment I woke up. The lightness in my stomach, the intimacy that I should be regretting but don’t. Or that I’m acutely aware of every part of me pressing against every part of him like I’m some virgin who’s never been touched before. And now this—having soft thoughts towards the Reaper while riding through a graveyard of his own making.

That’s wrong on so many levels.

When these thoughts aren’t spinning through my head, my mind drifts back to last night and the way he looked at me. The way he touched me. The way he tasted me.

At the memory, I feel that same fluttery sensation low in my stomach. It eclipses the last traces of my nausea. For the first time I actually take note of it.

It’s not desire, though that’s there, too.

The last time I felt like this, it had been with Martim, the rancher who had told me he loved me and who I foolishly believed was going to marry me before he broke my heart and married a proper woman.

Oh my God.

It actually hits me then.

Fuck my tits and my asshole too.

I’m falling for this psycho.

Chapter 38

I try to walk the realization back.

Famine was just a really good lover.

You’re just curious, and it’s been a long, long time since you’ve had a genuine sexual encounter.

No one in their right mind would fall in love with a man who’s wiping out entire cities.

“What’s wrong?” Famine asks at my back.

Of course the horseman would notice something was off the instant I recognized my own feelings.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I say way too quickly. “Why would you even ask a question like that?”

There’s a long pause, then suddenly, Famine is pulling his horse to a stop.

No-no-no-no-no—

The Reaper takes my jaw, turning me to face him.

“What are you doing? Why have we stopped?” My eyes are darting over our surroundings.

“Look at me.”

I almost argue, but that would even be more suspicious.

I force my gaze to meet his.

“What?” I say obstinately.

Don’t see it. Don’t see what I’ve only now just realized.

His gaze narrows. “Little flower, I know something is wrong. You can tell me now, or I can figure it out on my own, but I promise you this: I will figure it out.”

My stomach tumbles. If Famine is half as good at reading people’s minds as he is at dancing, or kissing, or oral, then he’s going to figure out real quick that despite our vow last night, things have changed between us.