Famine (The Four Horsemen #3) - Laura Thalassa Page 0,145

it. Right now. Before I lose my nerve and retreat back into my usual, apathetic self.

However, there is one more thing that stands in my way, one other thing that’s always stood in my way.

Forgiveness.

The word rings in my ears like God Herself spoke it.

Forgiveness.

I suck in a sharp breath. Ever since I first heard Ana speak that word in her sleep, a word her vocal chords shouldn’t have even been able to produce—it’s been there, taunting me.

I’m not sure who I’m supposed to forgive, but I imagine it’s everyone. God would expect no less.

It’s not even in my nature to forgive. I’m apathetic at best, vengeful at worst. And after everything humans have done to me, to Ana …

Forgiveness is preposterous.

I don’t need to do it. Not today, not ever. I still get to have Ana.

Ana, who every second is losing bits of her life, the clock counting down to her end.

My steady pulse grows frantic.

I don’t need to decide today.

I don’t.

But the longer I wait, the closer to death she’ll get. Is it wrong that I want to age with her?

Forgiveness. I turn the word over and over in my mind. Forgive these petty, wicked creatures.

It’s so wholly oppositional to what I’ve been doing this entire time.

Above me, storm clouds gather, the thick plumes of them darkening the sky. The ground is beginning to shake—just a little.

I think of Ana. Ana, who asks nothing of me. Ana who saved me before she knew what I was—and then saved me again once she did know.

Ana, who I forgave long ago—I forgave her the very night we met. And I’ve forgiven her every day since—for harming me, for hating me, for every slight she’s inflicted. It’s easy enough to forgive someone like Ana, who is kind when she doesn’t need to be. Ana who is radiant and thaws my cold heart.

It’s much harder to forgive everyone else, especially when everyone else includes the people who once hurt me.

They made ribbons of my skin, they disemboweled me, they stabbed me—over and over—and burned me alive. Those men and women made pain an art form.

And the very night Ana saved me, my body still mutilated, God forced me to consider that damnable word.

Forgiveness.

You ask too much, I’d whispered into the darkness, my voice broken. Far too much.

I hadn’t been able to forgive this teeming mass of humanity then. I still haven’t been able to do it. But I know intuitively that I don’t get mortality until I do this.

I swallow.

A raindrop hits me. Then another. The ground beneath me is shaking.

If I forgive humanity, then what?

I think of these wretched people, with their crudely-dug wells and their rickety corrals full of bored looking animals. I think of the crumbling cities overgrown with plants.

Human hearts are spiteful and selfish; they are what bid me and my brothers here.

As though aware of my thoughts, my armor materializes on my body, and my scythe and scales appear a mere arm’s span away from me.

I feel the weight of not just my armor, but my hate and anger, my task and my immortality—all of it—on my shoulders.

I drop to a knee and place a fist against the trembling ground, even as raindrops begin to patter against my armor, coming down faster and faster. My breath is labored and my ever steady heart is quickening.

Something’s happening to me. I don’t know if it’s as simple as my mind changing, or if the forces that brought me here, the forces that made me a man and forged my purpose into form are now transforming.

“Famine?”

I jolt at the sound of Ana’s voice.

My gaze flicks up from the ground, where small plants have started to flower and twist up my wrist.

She stands outside our doorway, her cotton dress whipping in the wind. Rain is pelting her, and her eyes look spooked.

Still, she’s so goddamn radiant that it makes my chest tight looking at her.

At what point did she become my purpose?

Her gaze roves over me. “What are you doing?” she calls out to me.

I don’t … I think …

Fuck, I’m uncertain. I hate being uncertain.

Forgiveness.

That bloody word echoes through me.

“I’m … relinquishing my purpose.”

Chapter 51

Ana

Famine has barely spoken the words when—

BOOM!

It sounds like the world is cracking itself wide open.

I stagger towards the horseman, the ground trying to throw me off like a wild horse bucking its rider.

Another earthquake.

I remember the last one well enough. Famine had caused it then, too.

Around us, the earth heaves, and trees from the forest