Page 167 of War

The corners of War’s eyes tighten infinitesimally, and I can feel the breath of that wrath he spoke of. He was mad before, but now I’ve truly wounded him in a way that no one else can.

This is where the horseman grabs my head and twists it until my neck snaps. And unlike him, I won’t be coming back from the dead.

Now it’s a matter of life and death.

Fuck your feelings, Miriam, finish this.

I lean my weight on the blade. “Surrender,” I command him.

War’s upper lip curls, and his eyes flash with his rage as he holds the blade back. Blood is dripping down his wrist and onto the bed. Our bed.

“I know you’re capable of it,” I say. He’s human enough. I’ve seen him change his mind and change his rules. Killing is a choice for him, no matter how intrinsic it is to his nature.

“I’ll give you one last chance to drop my weapon,wife.” The title stings like a slap. “I will spare you some of my wrath if you do so.”

“Surrender,” I repeat.

With a deft yank, War jerks the sword from my grip and casts it aside. And then the two of us are left to stare each other down. His blood drips from his hands onto the packed sheets beneath him.

Without his weapon, I feel acutely naked.

I could’ve planned this situation … better. Instead I let my emotions carry it out, andit didn’t work.

I don’t know if I truly thought it would, just as I didn’t know if warning Mansoura would work, but I had hoped that threatening him—then perhaps incapacitating him—might at least dosomething.

Foolish, foolish girl.

War stands, and even though he’s naked, he is excruciatingly menacing.

“Youbetrayedme.” In the horseman’s eyes, that’s one of the worst crimes one can commit.

He takes an ominous step towards me, his massive frame looming.

For the first time since Jerusalem, I catalogue each thick bulge of muscle not as an aspect of his otherworldly beauty, but as proof of all the ways he can hurt me.

I take an uncertain step back. All of my former bravado has left me.

How to get myself out of this situation?

War notices me backing up, and he laughs low, the sound terrible.

“It’s too late to run, savage girl.”

All at once, he’s closing in on me, and God save me, this is it.

The horseman grabs me, his blood smearing onto my skin like war paint.

“Did you really think that I could be so effortlessly dealt with?I created violence. You cannot outmatch me at my own game.”

My knees go weak with my fear. I was an idiot to evernotfear this man.

War’s hands move to my hair, his blood smearing against my cheeks, my ears, my scalp.

“This is where you surrender, wife,” he says, his voice hushed. “Surrender to me truly, just as you vowed you would.”

There are so many things War can take from me, but my word isn’t one of them.

“I surrender tonoone,” I say. “And if you once believed otherwise, you are afool.”

---