I mean for you to suffer. I can hear Pestilence’s words clear as day. Pestilence, who wandered off hours ago and who still hasn’t returned. Pestilence, who didn’t like what I had to say earlier, either because lust is not nearly so lofty an emotion as love, or because feeling anything at all is simply problematic for him.
He’s been gone for hours, and in all likelihood he’s probably waiting just out of sight for me to bolt so that he can punish me in some cruel and unusual way and force things back to how they once were.
I think it would do us both good, to have things go back to the way they were. But there’s no way that’s going to happen. You can’t unmake a kiss, or unsee a look. We’re both so screwed.
It’s late by the time Pestilence returns, and the rain has all but stopped. I can hear his boots as he crosses over pine needles. He doesn’t try to mask his approach.
A moment later the tent flaps are thrown open, and the space is filled with his unearthly presence. For several long seconds he doesn’t move.
Eventually, the horseman kneels next to me. He painstakingly takes off his armor and his crown for the second time that evening. And then he slides into the space beside me.
“I assumed you didn’t sleep,” I say. My voice seems to echo in the silence.
There’s a pause. After a moment, he says, “I do not need it, but I can.”
He moves closer to me, and after a hesitant second, the horseman drapes an arm over my body and pulls me in close.
I close my eyes at the sensation, torn between enjoying his touch and knowing that I shouldn’t. My body shakes against his, shivering at the temperature.
“You’re cold,” he says, surprise coloring his voice.
I’m more than just cold; I’m pretty much a human Popsicle at this point.
“I’m fine.”
He tucks me even closer into him, throwing one of his legs over mine, pinning me against his body. Motherfucking snuggling. I don’t even have the dignity to be upset by this because I’m so bloody grateful for Pestilence’s heat.
You also like the way he fits against you …
“Try to sleep,” he says, his voice deep. “Tomorrow we leave at first light.”
Awesome.
Freaking hate waking up early—along with the cold.
Once this is all over, I’m moving to Mexico and sleeping in as long as I want.
Pressed against the human furnace that is otherwise known as Pestilence, my frigid body soon warms. Not long after, my eyes begin to droop.
Just as I’m on the very edge of sleep I think I hear Pestilence murmur against my hair, “This is not lust I feel, dear Sara. And I hope you are half as frightened of it as I am.”
But I was probably just dreaming.
Chapter 26
I wake slowly, languidly, a delicious heat enveloping me. I stretch, my spine cracking as I arch my back. The arm around my waist tightens, the hand stroking up and down my back.
I open my eyes and stare into two blue ones.
My body goes rigid. Pestilence’s face is only inches from mine, and the rest of him is pressed against me. The edges of sleep cling to his expression, and his hair is mussed. It pains me, how attractive I find that.
Unlike me, the horseman doesn’t look surprised to find us so close. He watches me, his gaze both wary and fascinated. Slowly, he releases me.
Kissing, snuggling, and now sleeping together.
Moving awfully fast, Burns.
Technically, this isn’t the first time we’ve slept together. There was that instance back when I was hypothermic.
Feeling somewhat reassured, I push myself out of his arms and run a hand through my wavy brown hair. I don’t look at him as I collect myself, but damnit, I can feel his presence all around me.
Got to get out of this tent.
Shoving on my boots, I slip out of the small space without giving the horseman another look.
Outside, the sun sits high in the sky.
So much for leaving at first light …
The tent flaps open behind me, and the horseman comes striding out. His mouth is set in a grim line, and his eyes are sad when they meet mine. The monster that is my horseman is a lonely, melancholy being.
He grabs his armor and begins strapping it on, moving away from me, towards where Trixie waits.
“Come, Sara,” he calls over his shoulder, “The hour of our departure grows late.”
I glance back at our tent, realizing that he doesn’t mean to take any of our unpacked supplies with him. So I hurry to grab what few things I can’t bear to part with and head after him.
He doesn’t look at me as he slings on his bow and quiver. Nor as I stow away the items I grabbed from our camp. Nor even as he hoists me onto Trixie.
He won’t acknowledge me just as I didn’t want to acknowledge him when I fled the tent. I’m getting a taste of my own medicine, and it’s driving me insane. There’s so much reassurance and connection in a look. Having him withhold it only makes me want it all the more.
“You’re sure we shouldn’t pack the tent?” I ask, throwing one final look at the thing. It looks so lonely next to the remains of our fire. There’s a chance we’ll still be in the middle of nowhere when we stop later today.
Pestilence follows my gaze, giving it a black look. “We won’t be needing it again. Tonight we’ll find a house to sleep in—or we won’t sleep at all.”
There’s more than one way to hurt a person. This time I didn’t have to shoot the horseman or light him on fire to cause him pain. All I had to do was act like last night was a mistake.
And was it?
I want it to be a mistake, and Lord knows I feel bad right now, but not because I kissed the horseman. Or because I snuggled with him. I feel like crap right now because he’s still giving me the same silent treatment hours later, and it’s freaking working.
Driving me mad.
I’ve already told him random stories from my childhood, like the time I chipped my tooth because I literally tripped over my own shoelace, or about how my friends and I had an annual tradition of jumping into Cheakamus Lake as soon as the ice melted from it. I even admitted to him how I developed stage fright. (I fell in front of my entire middle school class as I walked up to the podium—I couldn’t get a word out after that.)
He didn’t react to a single one, though I know he was listening raptly by the way his hand would tense and relax as it gripped me.
So I try poetry for a change.
“‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, …’” I begin, quoting Poe’s “The Raven.” I recite the whole poem, and again, I can tell just by the way Pestilence holds himself that he’s listening to me.
But like my stories, he says nothing after I finish reciting it.
I move from “The Raven” to Hamlet. “‘To be or not to be, that is the question …’”
I quote the play for as long as I can, but eventually, the lines get jumbled in my mind and I have to abandon the soliloquy.
Still nothing from Pestilence.
I recite Lord Byron (“Darkness”) and Emily Dickinson (“Because I could not stop for Death”) and more Poe (“Annabel Lee”), and the entire time the horseman doesn’t utter one single word. Not even to tell me to shut the hell up.
I give up.
“What are you thinking?” I finally ask.
He doesn’t respond.
I lay my hand over the one that presses against my stomach, securing him to me. “Pestilence?”
His hand flexes.
“Last night I could not decide which you were—a tonic or a toxin,” he says. “Today I’ve discovered you’re both.”
I wince a little at his words.
“You have woken in me things I did not know slumbered,” he continues. “Now that I am aware of them, I cannot ignore their existence. I fear I am becoming … like you. Human and full of want. I need this longing to go away.”
“Longing?” I almost choke the word out.
“Don’t tell me I am mistaken in this too,” he says bitterly. “Love, lust, longing—you cannot refashion my feelings. I know my heart, Sara, even if it’s alien to you.”
What did I walk myself into?
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
“Nothing! Everything! Fuck,” he swears, the profanity shocking coming from his tongue. “This is so confusing.”
I’m about to speak when he cuts in. “I want to taste your lips again. I want to hold you like I did in the tent. I don’t understand why I want these things, only that I do.”
My face heats. Is it wrong to feel flattered when Pestilence is clearly having an existential crisis?