Famine (The Four Horsemen #3) - Laura Thalassa Page 0,31
ear. “I’ve told you before: you don’t need to fear me—not now, anyway.” The Reaper’s voice is gentle, but somehow that makes it all worse.
“Why did you do that?” My voice comes out like a croak.
There’s a long pause, and I genuinely think it takes him a moment to figure out what I’m referring to.
His fingers tap against my thigh. “They would’ve turned on me soon enough,” he finally says.
“You let them pack their things and ready their horses,” I whisper. “You had them ready a horse for me. Why?” My voice hitches. “Why do that if you were just going to kill them all?”
“You assume my mind works like yours. It doesn’t.”
Thank fuck for that.
The two of us are quiet for several beats, the only sound the tread of his horse’s footfalls and the slight jangle of my manacles. We pass by several rotting bodies, their forms caught within the grasp of more plants and trees.
“Is there any horror you are unwilling to commit?” I eventually ask.
“When it comes to you creatures?” he replies. “No.”
My thoughts spin round and round. I feel untethered; my entire life is gone and now I’m here, riding alongside the horseman rather than meting out my revenge. This is … not how I imagined events unfolding.
I wiggle my feet in my heavy boots. There aren’t any stirrups for my feet, and gravity seems to be trying to pull my shoes off of me. I roll my ankles, trying to readjust my footwear to make them more comfortable. It works … for a few minutes. But then I’m uncomfortable again.
I can’t have been on the horse for more than thirty minutes or so when I draw the line. Stupid boots.
“Hold me,” I say over my shoulder.
There’s a beat of silence. Then, “If this is another one of your sex-starved ploys—”
Before the Reaper can finish the thought, I swing a booted foot up and into the saddle. As predicted, the effort throws my body off balance.
Reflexively, Famine catches me, his arm tightening around my waist.
“What the devil are you doing, Ana?”
My shackles clank as I unlace the leather boot. Once I’m finished, I grab the thick rubber heel and begin tugging.
“Taking off these damn boots.”
I pull the shoe off, along with the sweaty sock beneath it. Setting them on my lap, I begin working on my other shoe. The Reaper doesn’t say anything, but I sense his deep annoyance. Deep, deep annoyance. I’m pretty sure he finds every decision I make irritating.
Once both boots are off, I manage to open one of Famine’s saddlebags—which is massively hard when you’re handcuffed. But I manage it, huzzah!
At my back, I can practically feel Famine’s disapproval. He doesn’t stop me, however, so I press on.
Grabbing the boots, I attempt to shove the tips of both into the saddlebag, but then the manacles catch on the heel of one boot, jerking it out of the bag. I try to catch it as it falls, the action dislodging the other boot. Both tumble down the side of the horse before hitting the ground.
There’s a beat of silence.
Then—
“Not my problem,” Famine says.
I glance over my shoulder at him. “You cannot be serious,” I say.
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
Damn him, he doesn’t.
“I need those shoes,” I say. They’re my only pair.
“I’m not stopping.”
“Wow.” I face forward in my seat, settling myself back against him. “Wow.”
Chapter 13
As we ride, the fields wilt.
At first, I don’t notice it because Curitiba stretches on for so long, block after city block filled with buildings that cannot wither away. But eventually we do leave the city, and at some point, the structures are replaced with farmland.
But the longer I sit in the saddle with the guy, the more I realize that the land is changing before my very eyes.
Fields of corn and soybeans, rice and sugarcane—and everything in between—all wither away, the stalks blackening, the leaves curling. The color seems to drain away in mere seconds. By the time I glance over my shoulder at the crops we’ve passed, it’s a sea of dead foliage.
Famine’s power doesn’t, however, touch the wild things. Not the grass or the weeds or the indigenous plants that greedily press up against the edges of the fields. It’s our subsistence he wants to end.
“Will it ever grow back?” I ask, gazing out at the dying crops.
“Not any time soon,” he replies, “and when it does, it won’t be crops. This land doesn’t belong to humans. It never has, and it never will.”