This is where the horseman grabs my head and twists it until my neck snaps. And unlike him, I won’t be coming back from the dead.

Now it’s a matter of life and death.

Fuck your feelings, Miriam, finish this.

I lean my weight on the blade. “Surrender,” I command him.

War’s upper lip curls, and his eyes flash with his rage as he holds the blade back. Blood is dripping down his wrist and onto the bed. Our bed.

“I know you’re capable of it,” I say. He’s human enough. I’ve seen him change his mind and change his rules. Killing is a choice for him, no matter how intrinsic it is to his nature.

“I’ll give you one last chance to drop my weapon, wife.” The title stings like a slap. “I will spare you some of my wrath if you do so.”

“Surrender,” I repeat.

With a deft yank, War jerks the sword from my grip and casts it aside. And then the two of us are left to stare each other down. His blood drips from his hands onto the packed sheets beneath him.

Without his weapon, I feel acutely naked.

I could’ve planned this situation … better. Instead I let my emotions carry it out, and it didn’t work.

I don’t know if I truly thought it would, just as I didn’t know if warning Mansoura would work, but I had hoped that threatening him—then perhaps incapacitating him—might at least do something.

Foolish, foolish girl.

War stands, and even though he’s naked, he is excruciatingly menacing.

“You betrayed me.” In the horseman’s eyes, that’s one of the worst crimes one can commit.

He takes an ominous step towards me, his massive frame looming.

For the first time since Jerusalem, I catalogue each thick bulge of muscle not as an aspect of his otherworldly beauty, but as proof of all the ways he can hurt me.

I take an uncertain step back. All of my former bravado has left me.

How to get myself out of this situation?

War notices me backing up, and he laughs low, the sound terrible.

“It’s too late to run, savage girl.”

All at once, he’s closing in on me, and God save me, this is it.

The horseman grabs me, his blood smearing onto my skin like war paint.

“Did you really think that I could be so effortlessly dealt with? I created violence. You cannot outmatch me at my own game.”

My knees go weak with my fear. I was an idiot to ever not fear this man.

War’s hands move to my hair, his blood smearing against my cheeks, my ears, my scalp.

“This is where you surrender, wife,” he says, his voice hushed. “Surrender to me truly, just as you vowed you would.”

There are so many things War can take from me, but my word isn’t one of them.

“I surrender to no one,” I say. “And if you once believed otherwise, you are a fool.”

The horseman’s gaze narrows. He laughs then, that deep, chilling sound raising the hairs along my arm.

He cups my jaw. “The earth is full of so many bones,” he whispers.

I don’t know what to make of those words, only that I should be frightened by them.

War releases my jaw. I can feel my skin smeared with his blood.

His hand moves to the hollow at the base of my throat. He traces my scar, the shape now smeared with his blood. “This is the Angelic symbol for surrender.”

Where is he going with this?

His raging eyes rise to mine. “I am not the only one who can resurrect the dead,” War says. “You were brought back to life and marked just as I have been,” he says.

The water rushes in—

I had thought I died that day. A chill sweeps down my spine.

My eyes drop to War’s tattoos, and now that I look for it, the shape of them is eerily like my scar. I never noticed the similarities. Not until now.

War runs a hand over his glowing tattoos. “This is my purpose, written on my flesh.” He nods to my scar. “That, is yours.”

I shake my head.

“Deny your vow all you want, but it won’t change the truth: you were made to surrender to me.”

Chapter 45

War leaves shortly after his final words.

In his place are zombies, lots and lots of zombies. I can sense them outside the tent, but it’s the ones who are inside—the ones War sent in—that capture more of my attention.

Most of these ones are a bit more decayed than usual, and their ripeness has me covering my mouth.

I’m sure the horseman picked these corpses on purpose.

Proof that War can be just as petty as the rest of us.

The long hours of the night tick by, and I have nothing to fill them with. Sleep eludes me, and my toolmaking kit and arrows were confiscated with the rest of War’s weaponry, leaving me nothing to do with my hands. There’s still that well-worn romance novel …

The thought of reading it twists my gut. I couldn’t bear to hear about someone else’s great love life when mine is such a mess.

I almost killed him. There was a moment when I was leaning on War’s sword where I was putting my full weight into the thrust. Only the horseman’s sheer strength prevented that blade from piercing his skin.

I rub my eyes, feeling a thousand years old.

Violence doesn’t fix violence. I know that, and I knew it before I devised my plan. Yet nothing else had worked. I had been angry and tired of watching too many innocents die. And in the end, at least War had that same wounded surprise in his eye that so many of these doomed civilians had. If nothing else, my horseman got a taste of his own punishment.

By midmorning, the sounds of camp are in full swing. People are laughing, bickering, shaking out dusty clothing, sharpening their blades, or smoking cigarettes and kicking balls around the tents. I’ve already heard the war drums herald in one execution, and breakfast has come and gone. In all that time, War hasn’t returned.

I’m busy staring at the photo of my family, my thumb rubbing over my father’s face when the zombies around me straighten. Then, as one, they approach me.

They close in until it’s clear they’re going to grab me.

“If you want me to follow you,” I say quickly, setting the photo aside, “I will. Just please don’t touch me.”

The guards stop just short of me, flanking me on all sides. Then, as one, they begin walking towards the door of the tent, and I’m swept along with them. Together, the group of us leave War’s quarters and head towards the center of camp.

Somewhere in the distance, the war drums start up again, the sound making my skin prickle. The farther we walk, the louder they get, until it’s clear the drums are pounding for me.

There are hundreds—maybe thousands—of people who have swarmed around the clearing. They watch the group of us pass with a mixture of curiosity and horror. We cut through the crowd, the people around us giving us plenty of room to walk.

As the morning sun beats down on the clearing and the smell of spilled alcohol and vomit rises up from the earth, this feels like a dream that was left out to rot.

Amongst it all, War sits on his throne. His phobos riders spread out around him, most looking stoic, but a few of them appearing pleased. Only Hussain, the one rider who’s been kind to me, appears at all concerned.

I’m brought before War, my guards finally stopping at the foot of his raised dais. I haven’t been bound or manhandled, but it is clear enough that I’m a prisoner.