Famine by Laura Thalassa

Chapter 28

The horseman stands, his chair scraping out behind him. A few pieces of food fall out of his lap as he does so, but he doesn’t seem to notice them.

He closes the distance between us, looking just as scary and intimidating as ever. The Reaper steps in so close our chests nearly touch, keeping eye contact the entire time.

I’m still angry, but now there’s this confusion to add to it. I assumed acting out would piss Famine off. Instead, he’s looking at me like I’m wine he wants to taste.

The horseman takes my hand, his own dwarfing mine, and then he leads me from the room. And damn him and damn me, but I go along with it as though I didn’t learn my lesson the first time with Heitor.

“What are you doing?” I say as he pulls me along, moving through the expansive house. “Aren’t you mad?” I ask.

“That you lost control? Little flower, I’m enchanted. Your antics have been the best entertainment I’ve seen in a while.”

Really now? Killing people suddenly got boring?

The Reaper and I leave the main building and cut through the courtyard.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“To my room, of course,” he responds.

I stumble over my feet.

Famine glances at me and smiles secretively, like he knows exactly where my mind is.

My gaze goes to his lips, and a sudden, shocking realization hits me: I want to kiss him again. Not to tease him or to distract him, but to taste those lips again in earnest and to feel the press of his body against mine.

I’ve absolutely lost it.

“W-why?” I ask.

He gives me another loaded glance, and I feel that look right to my core.

“Would you rather I leave you at the door to your room?” he asks.

“No,” I say too quickly, and ugh, I want to cringe. I sound like a horny teenager.

The Reaper’s mouth curves up on one side and the world feels like it’s turned on its axis.

Famine stops at a door just down the hall from mine. He opens it, then holds the door open for me.

I step inside the room. The place is already lit by candlelight, the flames dancing in wrought iron sconces.

I move towards a side table that has a globe made entirely from inlaid stone. I spin it a little before my attention moves to the stack of books sitting next to it, their names painted along their spines.

“Why yes, please explore my room,” Famine says, his voice laced with sarcasm.

“Was I not supposed to?” I say, raising an eyebrow as I turn to him. “You invited me here, after all.”

Famine doesn’t say anything to that, which I take for capitulation, so I continue to peruse his quarters. I toe the rugs, eye the bar in the corner of the room, stare at the mounted paintings, touch a sculpture of a nude male with a huge phallus—clearly wistful thinking on the artist’s part—and eye the bed. The entire time I feel Famine’s gaze on me.

I keep waiting for him to make some sort of move; he’s the one who led me here after all. He was the one with desire in his eyes and suggestion on his lips. But he doesn’t even try to approach me.

So weird.

As he watches me, Famine begins to unfasten his bronze armor. And now my blood heats. This is what I’ve been waiting for.

It doesn’t take him long to remove it all. The sight of the horseman in his black shirt and breeches has me swallowing. The candlelight does nothing but heighten his beauty, dancing over his sharp jaw, high cheekbones and bemused lips. He watches me like a panther, arms folded over his chest.

The sight causes my heart to leap and my abdomen to tighten in the strangest way …

Still, I am reluctant to move to the horseman, now that I’m acknowledging my own desire. I don’t want whatever this is between us to echo every other experience I’ve had, but I don’t know how to make it different. That’s why, when my gaze snags on the Reaper’s bronze scales, I move over to them instead of the horseman.

I’ve only caught glimpses of this device since I started traveling with the horseman.

I step up to the scales, drawn in by their odd existence. The delicate circular pans are polished to a shine. There are a series of symbols etched onto each, and I think it might be the same markings that cover Famine’s body.

“Are you ever going to tell me what these scales are for?” I ask.

“They’re for weighing items.”

I give the horseman a look. “I figured as much.” I touch one side of the scales with my finger, the shallow metal pan bobbing a little at the contact before it resettles. “Why would a horseman need to weigh anything?” I ask.

Famine runs a thumb over his lower lip, watching me for a moment, like he’s deciding on something.

“It’s a metric to weigh men’s hearts,” he finally says.

He walks to my side, unaware that I was trying to put some space between us. “The scales represent truth, order, peace—essentially, the world as it ought to be,” he continues. “Whether humans are worthy of that world is for these scales to judge.”

I glance over at him, my heart beating a little faster at his nearness. It takes me a few extra seconds to process what he said.

“That sounds like the story you told me,” I say. The one about the Egyptian goddess who weighed men’s hearts. She had scales too.

“Ma’at and I have much in common,” the horseman says softly.

I touch one of the shallow pans again. Of all the beings who should wield such a device, vicious, violent Famine seems like the worst candidate for the job.

“Would you like to see how it works?” he asks.

Yes. It’s an unearthly contraption that can seemingly measure something as intangible as peace and truth.

I nod.

The Reaper smiles a little and reaches around to his belt, where he’s strapped a dagger.

I take a step away from him. “What are you doing?” I demand as he unholsters the blade.

“You didn’t think it would be painless, did you?” he raises an eyebrow. “I need a bit of your blood for this to work.” He reaches out a hand and beckons for me. “Now, let me see your finger.”

I don’t give it to him.

The horseman gives me a look. “I’m just going to give it a prick. Nothing more.”

“I’ve seen your definition of a prick; it’s a little more intense than my own definition of it.”

“Fine.” He begins to put the dagger back.

I watch him.

If he was interested in hurting you, he would’ve already done so.

“Wait,” I say.

He glances at me.

I hold out my index finger.

His gaze flicks from it to my eyes. Here his gaze lingers. Without looking away, he grasps my hand and lifts his blade once more. He angles my hand over the shallow pan.

“This might sting,” he says.

Before I can react, he slices his dagger across the pad of my finger.

There’s a brief flash of pain, then several beads of blood drip onto the circular tray. The metal pan dips as it takes on the weight of my blood, then lifts, then dips again, until it’s only a little lower than the other, empty pan.

My eyes flick to Famine. “What does that mean?”

“It means that you’re a decently good person.”

I give him an incredulous look. “Decently good?” I say. “I saved your ass once upon a time. That didn’t earn me any heaven points?”

“You’ve also tried to kill my ass, in case you’ve forgotten, so no.”

“Fine. Let’s see how you size up then on your little holy scale,” I challenge.

Famine smirks at me. Using his shirtsleeve, he wipes my blood first from the scale, then from the edge of his blade. A moment later he brings his wrist up to the tray.

In one swift motion he slices open his skin and lets his blood spill onto the pan.

I wait for his blood to weigh down his side of the scales, but it never comes. Instead, his pan begins to lift, rising higher even as more and more blood drips onto it.

The most unnerving part of the whole thing is that other, empty scale. In the horseman’s story of Ma’at there was at least a feather being weighed against men’s hearts. Here, there’s nothing, nothing at all.

Famine stands there, bloody arm extended, those sinister green eyes watching me as the scales continue to tip in his favor.

“I may be crueler than you,” he admits, “but my heart is still purer.”

“Your scales are obviously broken,” I say. “There’s no way your soul is purer than mine.”

If I’m really to believe that this set of scales measures truth and justice and peace, then Famine should be weighing his end of the scales way down. Out of all the devils that inhabit this earth, he’s the worst of them.

Which means the scales are rigged.

God hates us and loves his evil reaper.

There’s a long stretch of silence, and in that silence, I feel the horseman’s nearness. All over again it reminds me that he took my hand and brought me here. That all of this is just a prelude to … to whatever comes next.

I turn to the horseman, and I suck in a breath at the sight of him. Seeing him without all that heavy armor feels intimate. Particularly when the two of us are in his bedroom.

“Why did you bring me here?” I ask.

You know why, his eyes seem to say.

I exhale, my pulse speeding up. I’ve been worried since entering this room that this night might play itself out like every other experience I had at the bordello, but I realize now how wrong I was. No one—no one—has ever made me feel as self-aware as Famine. No one has ever made me want them so badly in spite of every awful thing they’ve done. Not even Martim, the first boy I loved.

Only the horseman.

My hands move to my shirt, ready to remove the garment.

Famine catches my hands. His fingers tighten over mine. I stare down at our entwined hands.

“Not everything is about sex, flower,” he breathes. That low, velvety voice seems to rub me in all the right places.

Contrary to his words, my reaction to him has everything to do with sex.

“What else is there?” I ask.

Why did he bring me here then, if not for intimacy?

I glance up at Famine then, and in the low light, I see him as he truly is. Something ancient and full of secrets; a being that has thoughts and dreams that a mortal like me can’t hope to grasp.

“Do you think I have lived for eons to be consumed by something as trifling as sex?” he says softly. “Everything comes and goes. Animals, plants—even people. You are all so very … transitory.

“So what consumes me?” He smiles a little hollowly at that. “Things that endure.” His gaze doesn’t waver from mine, and Lord help me, I feel something in that gaze. Not lust, not attraction—though there’s plenty of both—but raw connection.

He releases my hands, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what the Reaper wants, or what I want, but he basically just said no to sex, so I’m not sure what else …

Famine steps in and cups my face, his gaze searching mine. At his touch, I still.

“The truth of the matter is, you’re the one human I actually like.”

As far as compliments go, this one is mediocre at best. But coming from Famine, I feel myself soften.

The Reaper’s attention dips to my mouth, and there it lingers. Suddenly, I think Famine might be full of shit when it comes to his opinions on sex because he is giving me that hungry look again.

There’s a knock on the door, and in an instant the moment and all of its unexpected sweetness is gone.

The horseman curses under his breath. “I almost forgot about that human pox, Heitor.”

At his name, I stiffen.

The action is subtle, but Famine’s gaze immediately shifts from the door to me.

His gaze narrows. “Why is it that every time Heitor is brought up, you get jumpy?”

“I already told you why—because he’s as evil as we humans get.”

The Reaper tilts his head a little, still scrutinizing me. “As I see it, I’m the thing you should be most scared of, not some aging human with an overdeveloped ego and an underdeveloped conscience.”

“You won’t hurt me,” I say. “He will.”

Famine studies me for a moment longer before reaching out, his hand slipping under my shirt. I suck in a breath at the contact. His warm palm runs over my flesh, then settles on the jagged scar left over from where his men stabbed me. Men who are themselves long dead.

“In case you’ve forgotten, I have hurt you,” he says. “And as for Heitor, why would you think he’s going to hurt you?”

“Because that’s what he does,” I say.

If the Reaper needs proof, all he has to do is remember how the cartel boss had Famine’s men killed, dismembered, and hung for display outside his walls. We were Rocha’s enemies before we arrived, and we’re his enemies now. And, when given the chance, men like him eliminate their enemies.

Famine is still watching my expression carefully. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Jesus, this man is relentless.

“You mean besides the fact that we know he’s not afraid to kill?” I say.

Another knock comes from the other side of the door.

“Besides that,” the Reaper says.

I almost don’t mention my little encounter with Rocha. It’s such a small thing, and I pride myself on handling my own business. But the horseman is not letting it go, and I don’t care enough to keep it from him.

“Earlier,” I say, “when Heitor was showing me my room, he grabbed my ass.”

“He did what?” Famine’s inflection doesn’t change, but suddenly he is way more menacing.

“He squeezed my ass.” It was nothing, I almost tack on, but fuck that asshole.

Again the horseman’s eyes rove over my face. Whatever he sees causes a muscle in his jaw to jump.

The knock on the door comes again, and the Reaper drags his attention from mine. The cruel smile I’ve gotten familiar with now blooms across his face.

“It’s long past time I dealt with that nuisance.” He grabs his scythe and strides to the door. To himself I hear him say, “Perhaps I’ll take his hands. Heitor doesn’t need hands to help me. He doesn’t need legs either.”

Holy shit.

Famine grabs the door, then pauses. “I’ll be right back,” he says to me. “Stay in my room as long as you like.”

And then he’s gone.