Famine (The Four Horsemen #3) - Laura Thalassa Page 0,51

be moving your shoulder,” he says gruffly, his body still rigid beneath my touch.

“It’s fine.” It’s not really fine, but whatever. “I’ve lived through worse.”

It’s quiet for a moment, and I know Famine’s thinking about the scabs and scars on my torso.

The silence stretches on, and this is where a normal, nice person might apologize for nearly killing me. They might at the very least beg for forgiveness.

“You never should’ve been there,” Famine says as I begin peeling away his armor.

“Where?” I say, thinking he’s referring to protecting the old woman.

“Visiting me with that woman—the one who tried to sell you.” His words drip with disdain.

“And where should I have been?” I ask, casting aside a bronze vambrace.

“With me.”

I shiver at the low pitch of his voice, and this time there’s no mistaking it, they are good shivers. Problematically good shivers.

My hands move to the armor covering his chest, my body brushing against his. I can feel his eyes on me, and even though there’s nothing sexual going on, this whole situation feels intimate.

“Tell me about yourself,” I say to distract myself as I work on unfastening his breastplate.

“I don’t have a self to share.”

My brows knit together. “Well of course you do.” My gaze ventures up, and even though the bedroom is steeped in shadows, I catch sight of the pools of his eyes.

He stares back at me, and after a moment, I sense that he might actually want me to elaborate on that.

The armor comes undone in my hands. “Since you’ve come to earth, you’ve been a man—”

“I’m not—”

“You are a man. Just because you can’t die and you can make shit spontaneously grow,”—not to mention the swarms of bugs and the not sleeping and peeing—“you have a body. You have a self.”

I toss his unfastened breastplate aside, the metal clattering on the ground.

“What do you want me to say?” he finally responds. “Do you want me to tell you something human about myself? Even if there were a part of me that was truly human—which there isn’t—your kind made sure to stamp it out long ago.”

I think he’s alluding to the torture he met at our hands. I almost ask him about it, but I know that conversation would put the malice back in his voice. I’m not interested in his wrathful side; I get plenty of exposure to it during the day.

“Fine, then tell me something inhuman about yourself.”

Another long silence follows. I think I might’ve shocked the Reaper, though I have no idea why.

“I feel … everything,” he finally says. “Every blade of grass, every drop of rain, every centimeter of sunbaked clay. I am the storm that rolls in, I am the wind that carries the bird and the butterfly.” As he speaks, he begins to gain confidence.

“The sensations are a bit muted now that I wear this form,” Lightly he touches his chest, “but still I feel it all.”

Forgetting about the last bit of armor that encases his arm, I inch closer to him, drawn in by his words. Say what you will about me, I like a good story.

“That’s the difference between me and my brothers,” he continues. “We are all meant to ravage the world, but we have our distinctions: War is the most human, Pestilence perhaps next. But even Thanatos—Death—is intimately connected to life.

“I am the one least truly alive. I have more in common with wildfires and clouds and mountains than I do anything else. So to be something that lives and breathes is a stifling, unpleasant experience. I am ... trapped in this flesh.”

I sit back a little, trying to process his admission.

He sighs. “I just want this to be over,” he confesses. “All I want is to return to what I once was.”

Famine has been staring at some point between the floor and the wall, but after several moments he turns to me, as if just realizing I’m next to him.

Abruptly, he stands. “We’re leaving at daybreak,” he says. “Rest while you can. You won’t get any tomorrow.”

With that, he heads out of the room. Just past the doorway, he pauses.

“One other inhuman thing about me, flower.” Famine turns his head slightly towards me. “I don’t simply exist, I hunger.”

Chapter 20

As usual, Famine makes good on his word the next day—by the time the sun has risen, we’re already back on the road, and the house we stayed in nothing more than a mostly-forgotten dream.

My wound throbs as I wiggle my feet. I finally have another pair