Page 150 of Famine

I nod.

He moves me a little so that he can peer at the scars. Whatever he sees makes him sit up further.

I begin to move myself, but he holds me in place, inspecting my back.

“There aredozensof welts,” he says, horrified.

I didn’t think he had it in him to be disturbed by something like this. He inflicts worse on people all the time.

“I’m aware.” I remember all too clearly the sharp, lacerating burn as my skin split open, and the stiff, lingering pain that lasted for days and days afterwards as the injuries healed.

“Why would she hit you?” he says. Famine doesn’t usually show his anger, but I hear it in his voice now.

I lift a shoulder. “It varied. Sometimes it was because I’d forget to do my chores. Sometimes it was because I was too slow—or too lazy. Sometimes I’d say something she didn’t like, and sometimes it was just a look I’d give her.”

“A look,” Famine repeats. He’s staring at me like he can’t fathom it. “And you still lived with her?”

“I was a child,” I say a little defensively. “I had nowhere else to go.”

“Anywhereelse would’ve been better.”

I give him a disparaging look. “Spoken like a man who has never been powerless.”

“I have been powerless.”

My breath catches. Of course. I don’t know how I forgot.

He traces my scars some more. “And you wonder why I despise your kind.”

My throat works. What he’s saying is terrible, but I don’t feel his hatred; right now I feel his empathy. If there was one person who understood my pain, it would be him.

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” I admit, “but sometimes … sometimes—God this is perversely fucked up—sometimes I’m actually grateful you and the other horsemen are killing us off.”

Famine goes still, those unnerving green eyes tracking me.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t really want to make him believe that he’s doing some good deed by wiping us all out.

I rub my temples, feeling like I need to explain myself. “When I think of all that’s been done to me and others like me, when I think of every mean act I’ve seen—acts done without remorse or a second’s thought—sometimes it feels like there’s something fundamentally wrong with human nature. I don’t understand why we can be so hateful to one another.”

I feel shame as I speak, but then—in the wake of my words—lightness, like I’ve unburdened myself.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Famine asks.

“That I sometimes hate people just as much as you do?” I say. “Was I supposed to? Would it have changed anything?”

The look he gives me says plainly that,yes, it would’ve.

There’s a long pause. Finally, the Reaper says, “If you feel this way, then why do you get upset when I kill?”

A hollow laugh slips out. “I don’talwayshate humanity. And even people who do bad things aren’t always bad.”

Famine gives me an incredulous look. “Like your aunt and the woman who was going to give you to me.”

“Elvita,” I say.

“Fuck her and her name too,” Famine says. “You can’t give someone away like they’re a sack of flour or a candlestick. You are aperson.”

Does the horseman realize he just basically said that humans have some inherent value? That’s new …