Page 90 of Famine

The Reaper pours the water from the pitcher into the basin, and dips the cloth in. Then, taking my arm, he begins to clean my wounds, brushing the washcloth over the small, bleeding puncture marks that dot my skin.

This is ridiculous.

I try to withdraw my hand, but the horseman holds it fast, refusing to stop, and I’m left watching him work.

Methodically, he cleans one of my arms, then the other, being extra diligent with my shoulder wound. He then moves on to my neck and chest. As he does so, I catch sight of his injured hand. It’s still open, still bloody, but he’s made no mention of it and gives no indication that it hurts. But it must. I know he feels pain.

And I feel a whisper of shame. Even this monster feels more remorse for what he did to me than I do for what I did to him.

You also haven’t killed hundreds of thousands of people.

There is that.

Famine pauses halfway through, shucking off his armor. Beneath the metal, his wet shirt is plastered to his chest. After a moment, he removes this too.

I jolt a little at the sight of him.For the first time in five years, I see his bare flesh and thestrange, glowing green tattoos that are etched onto it.

Lines and lines of them snake around his wrists like shackles, and more rows of them drape over his shoulders and around his pecs, giving the markings the appearance of a heavy plated necklace.

The symbols look like writing, but it’s written in no language I’ve ever seen.

Famine resumes cleaning my wounds, and I continue to stare at his chest.Before, I thought that Famine looked like some mythical prince. Now he looks far more like the archaic, otherworldly creature he is.

“Inniv jataxiva evawa paruv Eziel,” he says.

My breath catches for a moment as the words wash over me, drawing out goosebumps.

“The hand of god falls heavy,” he translates. His eyes flick to mine. “You were wondering what they said, weren’t you?”

I nod, my brows drawing together.

“What langua—”

“The one God speaks.”

I pause, staring at the words a little longer.

“I shall take their crops and cast them out, so that nothing may grow,” Famine continues without my prompting. “And many shall hunger, and many shall perish. For such is the will of God.”

There it is, the proof that this is supposed to happen.

It’s quiet for a long time. Then, softer, Famine says, “I was always meant to be the cruel one.” His eyes flick to me, and for once there’s something more than seething anger in those eerie green irises. “Pestilence, for all his disease, has always been perversely drawn to humans. And War was made from human desires. Terrible as my brothers are, I am worse.”

After all I’ve seen the Reaper do, I believe him. Yet if you had asked me which of the four brothers was most awful, I wouldn’t have placed Famine at the top of that list.

“How could you possibly be worse than Pestilence and War?” I ask.

He finishes cleaning my wounds, then sets the cloth aside. Sitting back on his haunches, he slings his arms over his knees. “Before your kind built fancy buildings and created technology that rivaled God—before that, I existed.”

I’ve heard plenty of stories of the days that preceded the horsemen. But I haven’t heard much about the world beforethat. The deep past that he’s alluding to.

“Humans would pray to me, they would sacrifice to me, they would kill and die for me.” Famine’s eyes are too bright as he tells me this; he doesn’t look sane. “They gave their lives to me so that I might spare the rest of their kind.”

His words make me think of the man tonight—the one who was asked to die for the rest of us. He wasn’t able to do it, but Famine makes it sound like others once regularly did so.

“And did you?” I ask. “Did you spare them?”

He lifts a shoulder. “Sometimes.”