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 of boots on—scuffed, mud-covered boots that are certainly not mine. I took them anyway, despite the knot of guilt I felt. They fit surprisingly well.
I also happened to take a leather belt, which I used to cinch the billowy white garment I wear, which, in the light of day, is nothing more than a nightgown.
I look ridiculous, but at least I’m alive. That’s more than I can say for most other people around these parts.
“The day we first reunited,” Famine says, interrupting my thoughts. “Why did you seek me out?”
Here I am thinking about belts and nightgowns; meanwhile, the horseman’s going all existential on me.
“I didn’t seek anything out,” I say. “You came to my town.”
“You could’ve fled,” he says.
“You would’ve eventually caught up with me.”
“Mmm.” One of his hands rests on my hips, and now it idly strokes the material there. He leans in close. “You thought I’d recognize you.” His voice and the nearness of his mouth give me chills.
Yes. Of course I thought that.
After a moment, the horseman speaks again.
“I remember exactly what you looked like the day you saved me,” he admits. “If I was truly looking for it, I would’ve recognized you, but I have spent the last five years not truly seeing anyone.”
I remember how angry Famine was right before he destroyed my childhood home. I don’t know the specifics of what happened to him while he was imprisoned—those secrets died with the people who hurt him—but it’s obvious that whatever happened to Famine, it made an already cruel man much, much crueler.
“Why did you save me at all?” the Reaper asks.
It’s not the first time he’s asked me this, but apparently, he wants to hear my answer again. Or maybe he wants a different answer; I don’t think human altruism sits well with him.
“Because I was young and foolish.” A touch of bitterness enters my voice.
I can feel those intense eyes boring into the back of my head. I shift under his scrutiny, and I feel the need to explain myself further.
“I lost my mom when I was an infant and my father when I was twelve. After my dad’s death, his sister took over raising me. She … wasn’t kind. She already had five children, and she didn’t want another. She made it clear I was a burden.”
I take a deep breath. “When I saw you lying there, covered in mud and blood and rain, your body …” I can’t even find the words to describe the state he was in. “It was awful.” It truly was. It didn’t matter who he was or what he did. No one deserved to be treated like that.
“Even once I figured out you were the horseman, I couldn’t leave you.” I swallow, glancing down at my nails. “I knew what it was like to be unwanted. I spent my teenage years feeling as though my family didn’t care whether I lived or died. If it were me laying on the side of the road, I would want someone to care. So I helped you.”
I feel the burn of Famine’s gaze. For a moment, his grip on my hip tightens.
“So you saw yourself in me,” he says, his voice a little hoarse. “I should’ve known at the very heart of it, you’d have selfish motives.
I glance heavenward. Lord give me strength. “It’s called empathy.”
“I’m aware of what you humans consider kindness.”
“Oh, and like you’re some shining example of compassion,” I snap.
“I never said I was—though I should point out that I did spare you all those years ago.”
“Me and no one else,” I respond. “You killed the last of my family when you destroyed my hometown.”
“Was I supposed to save your aunt?” He sounds remorseless. “You said it yourself—she wasn’t kind.”
I glance over my shoulder at him, giving him a look like he’s mad. Maybe he is. “What’s the point of sparing me if there’s no life for me to return to?”
Famine gazes back at me curiously, and I think he might legitimately believe that people don’t need each other the way we so obviously do. “They didn’t save me, when they could’ve,” he says. “You did.”
“You didn’t have to kill all of them.”
I feel him stiffen behind me in the saddle, his already unforgiving armor all the more uncomfortable against my back.
“Did I ever tell you how I came to be a prisoner?” he asks far too calmly.
I shake my head, a shiver sweeping down my spine.
His voice is as low as a lover’s when he whispers into my ear. “I spared a family who was kind to me.” As he speaks, his fingers stroke my hip, his touch menacing. “They didn’t save my life—not like you—but they welcomed me into their home. They fed me, let me sleep in their bed even knowing what I was.
“Foolishly I enjoyed their hospitality, lingering a little longer than I should in one place. They didn’t mind my killing so much—or at least they never complained of it. And that whole time I assumed I was above harm.
“But word eventually got out that a human family was housing me.
I left their house to lay waste to the crops surrounding a nearby village. When I returned, the family—husband, wife, and three young children—were butchered.
“There I was captured and killed. The next time I awoke, I was in an abandoned building that had been turned into a makeshift prison. And that’s when the true horror began.
“There aren’t words to describe what happened to me—the inflicted agonies, the twisted violations. And even if there were, I doubt a human mind could understand the depth of what I suffered. You have never had your head kicked in, your teeth ripped from your gums, your eyes gouged out, or your fingernails pried off. You’ve never been staked, burned, disemboweled, or dismembered—sometimes at the same time. You have never been killed, only to return to life and bear it all again and again and again.” His lips are soft against my ear, even as his words fill me with second-hand dread.
“I saw the true extent of the pain and suffering humans can inflict on each other, and I endured every conceivable manner of torture.” As he speaks, his voice rises.
I swallow.
“I believed in my task before I was captured, but after what I went through, it’s become personal. Each death is reparation for the atrocities committed against me.”
No wonder Famine savors our misery, lapping it up like cream.