Page 85 of War

“Why?” I say. “Reasoning with you accomplishesnothing.”

War steps in close. “And if it did?” he asks softly. “If I listened to you and tried to change, what then?”

I search his face. Everything about him is brutal—brutal beauty, brutal power, brutal personality.

“I think you know what would happen if you tried to change,” I say, lifting my chin a little.

I’m having a difficult enough time keeping my hands off War as it is. If he did give me a reason to believe he was capable of changing for the better, I might be tempted to sully his good name right here, right now.

The horseman’s gaze drops to my lips and his eyes noticeably heat. “And if I did this, if I …changed—would that make you less ashamed of the fact that the world hates me yet you are mine?”

“I amnotyours.” There’s a very big difference between wanting to fuck a pretty man versus beinghis.

The corners of War’s sinful lips curve upwards. “Youaremine. You knew it the moment you stared up at my face that day in Jerusalem. Just as I knew you were mine then too.” His gaze drops to the hollow of my throat, where my scar is.

War steps in closer, drawn by my old wound. “Mine by violence. Mine by might. Mine by divine proclamation.”

I think he might kiss me. He has that intense look on his face like he wants to, and he’s made it perfectly clear that he believes I am his in every sense of the word.

But instead of leaning down and pressing his lips to mine, he brushes past me and begins to set up camp.

I stare at his back as he works. Why doesn’t he just seal the deal? He’s strong enough, and he has no problem overpowering innocent humans on the battlefield. Why draw the line when it comes to his unwilling “wife”?

“What would you change about me?” he asks over his shoulder, interrupting my thoughts.

Whatever it is that drives you.

“Stop killing people,” I say.

He pauses in his work. “You would have me surrender my purpose?”

Yes. But that’s clearly too much to ask of him.

I walk over to him, grabbing the other end of the pallet he’s unfolding and help him spread it out.

“At least save the children,” I say.

War brushes my hands away, and for a guy that isn’t really a guy at all, he sure seems to know a bit about chivalry or whatever it is he thinks he’s doing for me.

“Children grow up,” he says, “and tragic childhoods make the most vengeful of men.”

Men who would try to stop War … if he could be stopped at all.

I think of my own childhood. Of sitting on my father’s lap and listening to him tell stories of faraway places and people he’d known. I remember being in the kitchen, making challah with my mom, the family recipe supposedly passed down over hundreds of years before I came to learn of it. I remember how peaceful, how loving, my childhood was.

At least, that was how it wasbefore.

After …

I close my eyes and I can hear the grinding smash of metal the day the horsemen arrived. The day my father died. And then, years later—

The water rushes in—

I can feel its icy chill, squeezing the life out of those memories.

The horseman is right. It’s hard to remember what you loved without also remembering what you hated.

“Besides,” War continues, unaware of my own thoughts, “children become adults, who then begetmorechildren.”

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