Just as I begin to scour the edges of the blast site, I notice that there’s another, smaller clearing a short distance away. Next to it is a coffin-sized hole in the earth.

I swallow.

Watching my step, I pick my way between the dead, heading over to it.

Don’t want to look.

I take a deep breath and step up to the pit.

I have to look.

I peer over the edge.

“No.” The word slips out like a sob.

Lying at the bottom of the pit is War.

Chapter 58

I sit on the corpse-littered ground, my fist pressed to my mouth, staring at War’s open grave. I can feel hot tears on my cheeks.

He was going to stop. All of the violence, all of the killing. He was going to stop. He told me as much last night.

At my back I hear the clomp of hooves. A minute later, I feel a horse snout nudge me in the back.

I turn around to see Deimos, his blood red coat marred by blood and several large gashes.

With a stuttering breath, I press my face against his. “What did they do to you and War?”

He nickers against me, the sound oddly pained; it’s the closest thing I’ve heard to an animal crying.

I hold the steed’s head, petting his cheek. And then I begin to sob. I sob for this man that everyone fears. I sob for the man that everyone wants dead. I sob for the man I love. The man who I never admitted this to.

He doesn’t know.

I’ve said and done so many ugly things to him, but I haven’t told him that he’s the best part of my day. I haven’t told him that he became a better man, and I didn’t mean to, but I fell in love with him. That all I want is him, and he’s gone.

He said he couldn’t stay dead. He all but promised it to me.

And I never pegged him for a liar.

I collect myself and take a deep breath, letting Deimos go as I stand up.

I approach the grave once more.

I step up to it, and it’s just as hard to stare down at War’s body now as it was the first time I peered over the edge. Only this time, I force myself to stop and actually look at him.

The first thing I recognize are the tattoos on his hands. Not even death has diminished their glow. That’s how I first knew it was him.

His hands are folded over the hilt of his sword, which lays over his armored chest.

If it weren’t for his missing … missing head, he’d look like some savage, sleeping knight. It’s an oddly noble position for the phobos riders to place him in, considering how gruesomely they slaughtered him.

Eventually my eyes make their way up to War’s head—or where his head should have been anyway. I have to bite back a sob.

The horseman’s lower jaw is still attached to his body, and the skin of it and his upper neck look pristine. It’s his chest and shoulders that are doused with blood. Lots and lots of blood. The sight doesn’t look quite right, though I can’t put my finger on exactly why …

Before I get a chance to puzzle it out, my attention snags on a dark, egg-shaped device nestled next to War’s thigh. There’s another on the other side of his body. But now that I’m noticing those, my eyes take in the longer, cylindrical objects that rest around him like grave goods.

A chill courses through me. Those craters I passed on my way here, the mangled bodies scattered along their edges …

You’ll die if you try to save him, the phobos rider had told me.

I’ve never seen a grenade or an IED with my own eyes, but that must be what these are. Explosives.

I had assumed the phobos riders were using them to kill War. I hadn’t realized they were using the explosives to keep the horseman in his grave—just in case he really could survive decapitation.

I sit back down on my butt, hard, and breathe through my mouth.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. You can’t fall apart, not yet. All isn’t lost.

My gaze returns to the explosives. I swallow down a low moan.

But it is, though, isn’t it?

War has no head and his body is packed with explosives.

I bite my lower lip hard enough to bleed and press my palms into my eye sockets. Now a cry does slip out, and it’s an ugly, broken sound.

I was never supposed to fall in love with him. It wasn’t just about the fact that he represented everything I was fighting against. It was also my deep certainty that everything you care for, you’ll lose.

I drop my hands, my palms wet with tears, and I stare down into that crudely made pit again.

I can’t lose you too, War.

What am I supposed to do?

The answer comes in the horseman’s own words.

Have faith.

The trouble is, I’m not sure that I have faith in anything anymore, except maybe for him.

“Can you?” I ask.

“Die?” War clarifies. “Of course I can. I just have a tendency to not stay dead.”

Have faith. I take a deep breath. Have faith.

My eyes go back to his body, and I stare at the blood that rings his lower neck and chest. I stare and stare at it.

Suddenly it hits me, what looks so odd about the blood splatter. Halfway up the column of his throat, the bloodstain abruptly stops. Not a single drop mars the skin beyond that point. It’s as though the wound happened at War’s neck, and then everything above it …

Grew back.

I shouldn’t dare to hope for something like that, but I can feel it in every shallow breath I take.

I touch my scar, tracing it as I gaze at War. According to him, I drowned in the Mediterranean, and I was reborn there as well. This might be the horseman’s own rebirth I’m witnessing.

I take in the various explosives around him—the grenades and the IEDs. What happens if he survives decapitation? If he’s rebuilt and whole once more? What happens if I leave him in that pit to regenerate and he wakes and moves and every single one of those bombs go off? What if he’s blown apart, his body incinerated? Can he come back from that?

My breath catches.

A more important question: Am I willing to wait and let him suffer that fate?

No. Not in a thousand years.

I love him and I won’t let him face death again, and it’s my turn to believe in something bigger than myself.

I do have faith—in him and myself and this moment. Maybe even in God Himself.

I step up to the edge of the grave. “I surrender.”

Chapter 59

I’ve lost my mind.

I’m sure of it when I lower myself into the grave. One misstep, and it’ll be my boat explosion, part two.

Be brave, be brave, be brave.

Just as my feet are about to touch the bottom, I notice a grenade nestled in a deep shadow.

Holy balls, I was about to step on it.

Swallowing my yelp, I reposition my feet and land softly in the grave.

For a moment, I wait for the inevitable explosion. When it doesn’t come, I release a shaky breath.

For better or worse, I’m in.

My eyes move over War.

Now, how to get him out?

First I grab his sword, prying it out of the horseman’s grip as gently as I can. If I pull too hard, one of his arms might slide off his chest and into an explosive.

I manage to dislodge the hilt from one hand before quickly repositioning that hand back on his chest. Then I manage to dislodge and resettle his other hand.