Page 41 of Famine

“When it comes to you creatures?” he replies. “No.”

My thoughts spin round and round. I feel untethered; my entire life is gone and now I’m here, riding alongside the horseman rather than meting out my revenge. This is … not how I imagined events unfolding.

I wiggle my feet in my heavy boots. There aren’t any stirrups for my feet, and gravity seems to be trying to pull my shoes off of me. I roll my ankles, trying to readjust my footwear to make them more comfortable. It works … for a few minutes. But then I’m uncomfortable again.

I can’t have been on the horse for more than thirty minutes or so when I draw the line. Stupid boots.

“Hold me,” I say over my shoulder.

There’s a beat of silence. Then, “If this is another one of your sex-starved ploys—”

Before the Reaper can finish the thought, I swing a booted foot up and into the saddle. As predicted, the effort throws my body off balance.

Reflexively, Famine catches me, his arm tightening around my waist.

“What the devil are you doing, Ana?”

My shackles clank as I unlace the leather boot. Once I’m finished, I grab the thick rubber heel and begin tugging.

“Taking off these damn boots.”

I pull the shoe off, along with the sweaty sock beneath it. Setting them on my lap, I begin working on my other shoe. The Reaper doesn’t say anything, but I sense his deep annoyance. Deep, deep annoyance. I’m pretty sure he finds every decision I make irritating.

Once both boots are off, I manage to open one of Famine’s saddlebags—which is massively hard when you’re handcuffed. But I manage it, huzzah!

At my back, I can practically feel Famine’s disapproval. He doesn’t stop me, however, so I press on.

Grabbing the boots, I attempt to shove the tips of both into the saddlebag, but then the manacles catch on the heel of one boot, jerking it out of the bag. I try to catch it as it falls, the action dislodging the other boot. Both tumble down the side of the horse before hitting the ground.

There’s a beat of silence.

Then—

“Not my problem,” Famine says.

I glance over my shoulder at him. “Youcannotbe serious,” I say.

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

Damn him, he doesn’t.

“I need those shoes,” I say. They’re my only pair.

“I’m not stopping.”

“Wow.” I face forward in my seat, settling myself back against him. “Wow.”

Chapter 13

As we ride, the fields wilt.

At first, I don’t notice it because Curitiba stretches on for so long, block after city block filled with buildings that cannot wither away. But eventually we do leave the city, and at some point, the structures are replaced with farmland.

But the longer I sit in the saddle with the guy, the more I realize thatthe land is changingbefore my very eyes.

Fields of corn and soybeans, rice and sugarcane—and everything in between—all wither away, the stalks blackening, the leaves curling. The color seems to drain away in mere seconds. By the time I glance over my shoulder at the crops we’ve passed, it’s a sea of dead foliage.

Famine’s power doesn’t, however, touch the wild things. Not the grass or the weeds or the indigenous plants that greedily press up against the edges of the fields. It’s our subsistence he wants to end.