“Can you fix her or not?” the horseman demands.

“You can’t fix a human,” the woman says. “We’re not houses with leaky roofs or broken windows.”

“No, you’re all a scourge across the land, but I’m not here to play semantics with you. Now, tell me what you can do for Ana,” he says.

“Without antibiotics? Not much,” the woman says. “I can clean and bind the wound and make her a poultice to draw out what I can of the infection. But I doubt it will do much good at this point. Her body is going to have to fight this on its own.”

My gaze moves to the horseman. I’ve never seen that look on his face—I think it might be desperation. It, more than my fever, alarms me.

“Am I going to die?” I ask as he catches my hand, holding it tightly. I don’t know how I feel about that—death.

“No.” Famine says it like a vow. “Not in my lifetime.”

Chapter 44

Famine

It’s strange, having a body. I feel too big for it. I am too big for it. It’s the greatest relief, you know, spreading my disease through the fields. Spoiling fruit and poisoning seed. I feel more like myself.

Unlike this … this strange human experience I’m forced to endure.

I stare down at Ana’s sallow face, a hot, prickly feeling overcoming me.

It might’ve been fine if I never met you. If you hadn’t saved me those years ago.

Your arms were too slender and your cheeks too gaunt, and yet somehow you dragged my body to shelter, and you offered me water, and I couldn’t stomach any of it. A human girl hiding me from my tormentors and giving me what little she had.

You stayed by my side that agonizing night, even though I know I frightened you. And when those men were hunting me down and their voices came so chillingly close to us, all you had to do was call out and your nightmare would’ve been over. They would’ve taken me back to that prison. I might’ve been there still.

But you didn’t call out, and despite your fear, you didn’t leave me.

You saved me when you had every reason not to.

You broke me.

And in the process I broke you.

And now I fear the only way we will ever be whole again is together, all your jagged edges nestled against mine.

I hate that I want that.

But I do.

I want to be whole with you.

Ana

Bathroom.

That’s the one thought I wake to. My bladder is screaming at me to be relieved.

The sheets are pulled back, and then Famine’s scooping me up, his hand carefully cradling my head and neck.

I must’ve spoken the request unknowingly because the horseman carries me outside, past several townspeople.

He glares at the onlookers. “Leave us, or die,” he says.

Within moments, the curious townspeople are gone.

I think I’m feeling better. Still feverish, still exhausted, but at least I’m aware enough to not wet myself.

Famine carries me past the surrounding homes and into the wilds that border the neighborhood, not stopping until we’re alone.

I’ve gone to the bathroom many times while traveling with Famine. During every one of them he’s given me some modicum of privacy. But now he doesn’t fully let me go as he lifts my dress.

A few seconds pass. “You can let me go,” I say.

I made it my business to have sex with strangers, but I can’t seem to find it in me to pee in front of Famine.

“You’ve barely moved since I set you in that bed,” he says. “I’d rather not.”

I feel myself getting weepy, though I’m too dehydrated to actually cry. “I don’t want you to … see me like—”

Before I can finish, he kisses my lips once, softly, to silence me. “You’re being ridiculous, Ana. I don’t mind.”

That’s all the fight I have left in me. And so I go to the bathroom right there in front of Famine as he helps hold me up.

I’m shaking—from embarrassment, fatigue, and fever—and now I begin to sob, my dehydrated body managing to squeeze out a couple precious tears. My emotions are all twisted up.

When I’m done Famine helps clean me up and I’m caught between utter mortification and exhausted gratitude.

Why are you being like this? I want to ask him. You’re brash and mean and capricious.

But he’s not. Not when you get down to the heart of him.

The horseman carries me back into the house and resettles me on the bed. Pulling a chair up next to the mattress, he grabs a nearby pitcher and pours me a glass of water.

I watch him while he works, feeling tired and achy and just generally unwell.

“Drink,” he says, handing it to me.

“So demanding …” My voice is nothing more than a whisper. I take the water from him anyway and swallow it down. It doesn’t sit well in my stomach—to be honest, my stomach doesn’t feel like it’s sitting well in my stomach—and I have to swallow several times to keep it down.

The longer I’m awake and aware, the more I realize that I’m not actually feeling better at all, just more alert. And even that is tenuous because all I want to do is go back to sleep and escape all the pain I’m in. It reminds me of the last time I fought off an infection, when the town around me had all gone to their graves.

I thought I was a goner then, too. I swear I came so close to Death I could touch him.

I set the water on the bedside table next to me. That’s when I notice the small sculpture of Our Lady of Aparecida resting just behind the pitcher.

I draw in a breath. I’m not sure the horseman believes in signs, but I think I might.

“Famine,” I say, and my voice sounds all wrong.

There are things I need to tell him. Now, before I lose the chance.

His back stiffens. “Don’t,” he says, his eyes flashing. “Don’t,” he repeats. “I already told you, you’re not dying.”

Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. It feels like I might be.

I take a deep breath and finally admit to him what I haven’t even fully admitted to myself.

“I love you.” My heart is hammering away. “I don’t know when I began to, and I’m really, really upset that I do—”

“Stop, Ana,” Famine says fiercely. There are unshed tears in his eyes.

“But I love you. So much. And I always will. I want you to know that,” I say, “in case—”

“Stop.” Famine looks angry that he can’t make words wither away like he can plants. “I will kill the whole goddamn world if you don’t stop.”

I press my chapped lips together.

Once he sees that I’m not going to continue, the Reaper exhales, leaning his head back against his chair to stare up at the ceiling, one of his legs jiggling.

“When I told you I liked stories,” he says out of nowhere, “there was one in particular that I never told you.”

I give him a confused look. Fever and exhaustion are tugging me towards sleep, but I force my eyes to stay open.

“The night you saved me,” Famine says, looking back down at me, “when you fell asleep, you spoke.

“You said an Angelic word, one you should have been unable to pronounce.”