“I’m not completely ignorant of human ways, wife. Just mostly.” He gives me a sly smile.

His response has me grinning back. I can’t bear to look away from him. He’s enraptured me. But then my curiosity has me glancing down at my ring.

It’s gold, with a round ruby at its center. It’s the color of War’s armor and his glyphs and his steed—well, and blood too, but I’m ignoring that one.

The ring is too loose for my ring finger, so the horseman slips it on my middle finger, but then the ring is also too loose for that finger, so War moves it to my pointer finger, where it rests comfortably.

This isn’t quite human custom either, and I love it all the more for that fact. The two of us, after all, are not quite a normal couple—but we’re close enough.

“I love it,” I say.

War squeezes my hand. “I like my ring on your finger. My dagger looked good on you too, but this … this might be even better.”

“Tell me about God,” I say that night after I slip beneath our sheets. War’s ring is a comforting weight on my finger.

“Not ‘your God’?” War asks from where he sits sharpening a blade, his eyes heavy on me.

It had always been his God. Not mine.

I don’t know when that changed—maybe it was when War changed. Which is ironic, considering I’m derailing him from the holy commands he’s supposed to carry out.

“What do you want to know?” he asks.

I prop my head on my fist. “Everything.”

War laughs, setting his blade and whetstone aside. “Why don’t we start with your most pressing questions?”

“Only if you get in bed.”

The horseman’s eyes deepen with interest. He stands, removing his shirt. A minute later he slips into bed next to me, scooping my body over to his.

“Better?” he asks.

“Much.” My stomach is finally starting to swell, making it hard for the two of us to line up flush against each other.

“What are your questions?”

I reach out and trace the glowing words on his chest. “What does this say?” I’ve never asked.

The horseman stares at me for a long time, and he seems like he’s deciding on something.

His lips part and he begins speaking in tongues. “Ejo auwep ag hettup ewiap ir eov sui wania ge Eziel. Vud pajivawatani datafakiup, ew kopiriv varitiwuv, wargep gegiwiorep vuap ag pe. Ew teggew kopirup fotagiduv yevawativ vifuw ew nideta eov, ew geirferav.”

The divine words wash over me like a wave, and I feel them as though they are living, breathing things. Holy things. My eyes prick because hearing them, I feel like I’ve just touched God, whatever and whoever God is.

I will be the blade of God and His judgment too. Under my guiding arm, mankind shall surrender their last breaths to me. I shall weigh men’s hearts even as I deliver them onward.

I can’t doubt that War is anything other than holy. Not after hearing that.

I’m still breathing shallowly when War reaches out, tracing my own crude marking at the base of my throat.

“I have something for you,” War says, interrupting my thoughts. He gets up from the bed and crosses the room, grabbing a small item from his trousers.

“You have something else for me?” I say, raising my eyebrows.

Two gifts in one day? That’s a dangerous precedent to set.

He comes back over. “I meant to give it to you earlier, but after I proposed …”

After he proposed, any additional gift would’ve gotten lost in the moment.

War gets into bed and opens his fist.

All I see at first is red thread, but that’s enough for me to know exactly what this is. A split second later, I notice the silver hand, a tiny turquoise stone embedded at its center.

The Hand of Miriam. A hamsa.

“These were on display in Edfu, and I remembered the one you wear on your wrist.”

I touch the one he’s speaking of.

“I’m not your father,” War continues, “but I thought I might do right by him.” By giving me another hamsa bracelet and continuing on my father’s tradition.

I take the delicate piece of jewelry from him and hold it in my hand.

I close it in my fist. It’s been a decade since my father wrapped my last bracelet around my wrist. Receiving this gift from War … it feels less like my father’s gone.

“Thank you,” I say softly. “I love it.”

War helps me fit the bracelet on my wrist, right next to my other one.

I stare at the two pieces of jewelry the horseman gave me today, and I almost say it.

I love you.

My eyes move up to War.

I love you.

He would be thrilled to hear those words.

I part my lips. “What will happen to us?” I say instead, chickening out at the last minute.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the future. Our future. Not just what will happen in the next week or month, but where we’ll be years into the future.

“What do you mean?” War asks.

“Where do you see our lives going?” Now that there’s a baby and War’s ways are changing, the future is one great, looming uncertainty.

“Wife, we will live just as millions of others have—in love until a ripe old age.”

There’s only one problem with that. “But you’re immortal, and I’m not.”

“That means nothing.” Still, War frowns, and I know he’s thinking about it all the same.

“It will,” I insist.

I’m twenty-two now, but I won’t always be. Eventually my youth will bleed away into brittle bones and sagging skin. Meanwhile, what will War look like? Will he remain unchanged, his body still muscular and virile? I can’t imagine him any other way.

And if he didn’t age, what then? What would happen when I was elderly and my husband was still this raw, masculine force of nature? Would we still be together? Could we still be together?

And even if we were—

“Eventually I would die,” I say, “and you wouldn’t.”

What then would happen to War? And what would happen to the world? The horseman’s vow might end with my death. Would he then return to his old ways and pick up where he left off?

“You spoke once of faith,” War says, interrupting my thoughts. “Perhaps now is the time to have faith in me. All will be alright, Miriam. I vow it.”

By the time I wake the next morning, War is gone.

A chill moves over me. The horseman has left early before, but that was back when he plotted with his men. He doesn’t do that so much anymore.

I get dressed and force down a little food—my morning sickness actually seems to be going away—and then I leave the tent. Already the sounds of the living are filling the campsite.

I wander around until I spot War. He stands on the edge of camp, petting Deimos along his muzzle. The horseman’s dark hair flutters in the desert wind.

He doesn’t notice me until I come right up to his side. When he does eventually see me, he smiles. His expression is so free of violence that he could almost pass for a man.

You rip bits of his otherness away and then he becomes like the rest of us.

I don’t know if I want him to become like the rest of us. I like his strangeness.

But maybe I get to still have that strangeness, just without the bloodshed.