Page 212 of Famine

Then he’s lifting us both into the sky, our bodies rising higher and higher.

My breathing is still ragged, and though my anger burns hot, my life is still ebbing away from me.

The weaker I grow, the more my grief batters at me. I feel painfully human.

We rise high above the treetops as Thanatos drives us into the heavens. The sky around us is ablaze with lightening and wind. Hail pummels our skin and our hair sticks to our faces.

We’re covered with mud, the two of us a little worse for the wear.

“Brother,” Thanatos says, his face solemn.

I meet his depthless eyes.

“You may have started this fight,” he says, “but you know it is I who finish all things.Forgive me.”

With that, Death drops me.

For a moment, I’m weightless—so much so that I almost forget I have a form. I am the wind and the rain and the earth once more.

But then the lacerating pain of my injured arm reminds me—I am alive, Ana is not.

It takes the merest thought, and a plant begins to grow. It’s thin and malnourished because I have so little left in metogrow life, but I manage to make it grow tall enough for my purposes.

It reaches out and lovingly catches me from the sky. Its spindly arms lower me until my feet touch the earth.

I’m dusting myself off when Death slams into me, knocking me back down to the ground. I grunt as the pain from my broken arm radiates through me, the agony so sharp my vision clouds.

I blink away the darkness, and once again there’s my brother, looming over me. He gazes down at me, looking as patient and steady as ever, damn him, and his eyes are full of pity.

The pity undoes me.

I’ve burned my anger out. All that’s left is a weakened, broken man whose heart is full of grief.

I tilt my head a little, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Ana. Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but already she’s beginning to truly look like a corpse.

A keening sound works its way up my throat

Everything hurts. It all hurts so damn bad.

“Please, brother,” I say.

Death rearranges himself, pressing a knee on my chest. His dark wings are splayed wide, hiding the sky from me.

“I won’t bring her back, Famine,” he says, gazing down at me. “Not without your agreement. You can hate me, you can fight me, but you cannot change my mind.”

A few years of torture might make Death reconsider, but I won’t dare do to my brother what mortals did to me.

We are not the real problem, after all.

I turn my head and look over at Ana again. Lovely, vivacious Ana.

A tear slides down my cheek.

I won’t let her slip away. Not now. Not ever.

All I want is to have her back in my arms.

That’s all.

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