I choke again, my hold loosening around his neck. It’s a struggle simply to breathe as I try to force my body to revive itself.
Death pushes me off him easily then. Now it’s his turn to loom over me. He places a boot on my chest to hold me down.
“Do you still want to fight me?” he says, his black wings spreading wide behind him.
In response, I kick out at him, a blow he easily dodges.
He laughs, bending down to grab me. He drags me up by my shirt. My feet touch the ground for only a moment before I hear the great thundering thump of Death’s wings.
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 me to grow 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.
My gaze moves to Thanatos. I close my eyes and swallow.
“Alright, brother. You win—I accept. Just bring her back.”
Chapter 55
Ana
I gasp in air, my eyelids fluttering open.
Famine stares down at me, my body cradled in his arms. As soon as he sees me awake, he pulls me into a tight hug, crushing me against his armor.
Of their own accord, my fingers thread themselves into the horseman’s hair, holding him to me.
“What … ?” What happened to me?
“I’m sorry,” the Reaper whispers, his voice broken.
“Sorry?” I say, confused.
My mind is groggy. There’s a metallic taste at the back of my throat, and I have this deep-seated and inexplicable feeling of being off.
I turn to the Reaper. “How did you get to me so quickly? Did I faint?”
The last thing I can remember is that Famine stood across from me and … Death …
I pull away from Famine, searching for his brother.
Death meets my gaze, his expression pensive.
Famine cups my jaw with his hand, and he’s looking at me like I’m the most precious thing in the world.
“No,” he says simply.
“Then what happened?” Even as I say it, my voice wavers.
The answer is right there, in that taste at the back of my throat. Or maybe it’s my skin, which is cold and clammy in the most unnatural of ways.
But I want the Reaper to deny it.
To deny that I died.
He takes me in for a long time, and then he slowly nods his head.
I shudder, my spooked eyes moving back to Thanatos.
He killed me, and he did it so quickly that I didn’t even realize it. I try to recall anything that came after that … but there’s nothing there.
I couldn’t have been dead for very long. We’re still in that same bit of forest I last remember seeing, and the stormy sky looks about the same.
But if Thanatos killed me, then why am I breathing—?
The second awful realization hits me.
My gaze snaps back to Famine.
“You agreed to it,” I say. Death’s second offer. That’s why he’s apologizing to me.
The Reaper squares his jaw. “I did.” There’s no remorse in his voice.
It took months for Famine to set aside his murderous ways, but apparently only a few minutes to pick it back up.
All because of me.
I would’ve never imagined that the fate of the world might actually depend on me one day. I’ve always assumed my life was fairly insignificant. But somehow, without my say, I’ve now fucked everyone over.
I grip Famine’s arm. He winces, his arm jerking under my touch. I glance down. Seeing the odd bend to it, I release it immediately.
What happened to you? I want to ask. It’s clear there’s more to the story that happened while I was … gone.
“Why did you agree to it?” I ask instead, uncaring that we have an audience.
I don’t want to go back to the way things were. I barely coped with the horrors I already witnessed. I don’t know how much more I’d be able to bear.
Famine’s face is grim. “Because, despite how much or how little I care for humanity,” he says, touching my face again, “I still care for you much, much more.”
That’s the most beautiful, terrible thing he could have told me. It’s a compliment and a sentence all rolled into one.
The Reaper pulls me in close, pressing his lips to my ear. “All is not lost, little flower,” he says, his breath harsh against me. “Let Death see what it means to be human. If I can be swayed, so can he.”
Famine pulls away a little to meet my gaze. Keeping his voice low, he adds, “There is still hope for your world.”
“More people will have to die,” I say. My voice has grown rough.
“More people will die, regardless,” Famine says.
I hear the clatter of metal, and my gaze moves from him to Thanatos. The final horseman is picking up his armor and wiping the mud off. He inspects the silver breastplate, which looks badly dented, before tossing it aside. Death moves over to the two horses that wait nearby. He grabs their reins, then heads over to where Famine and I sit, leading the horses along behind him.