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This is not a human I’m dealing with. He won’t hesitate to hurt me more if I resist.

And I’m tired of resisting. It just feels so … useless against this unstoppable force.

I shrug off my shirt, doing my best to cover my breasts with my arms.

Pestilence’s hand moves to my back, his fingers splayed out. His touch is gentle, but I jerk at the feel of it anyway.

“Hold this against your front,” he says from behind me.

I glance down at what he’s offering. It takes me a second to register that the white cloth he’s holding out to me is gauze.

Bandages. He means tobandageme.

I let out a shuddering sigh that ends up sounding like a sob. Alright, maybe it was a sob. And that sob turns into a hiccupping laugh, which turns into another laugh. And then I can’t stop laughing, even as tears begin to slip out from my eyes and I’m no longer sure whether I’m laughing or crying,because.

Because.

Because oh-my-fucking-God, I shot a man and lit him on fire and even now I want to throw up that I could do that to anyone, even a harbinger of the apocalypse. But the nightmare didn’t end there. I was tied up and forced to run behind the same undying creature that I thought I killed, the same creature that’s killing us all off. And I was then dragged, and my arm was wrenched out of its socket and my back feels like it was torn to bits—not to mention my legs—and I had to watch a man die the most horrific death, and now I’m being patched up when I thought I was going to be physically humiliated, and ugh, this nightmare is not going to end because Pestilence is an ungodly psycho who isn’t satisfied with destroying life as we know it. He must make an example of mine along the way.

Now I’m no longer laughing, and I’m not even sure you could call this crying. It’s a full body sob, like my mind’s trying to purge everything it’s witnessed

“I hope you’re enjoying this,” I say through my tears.

“I am,” Pestilence responds joylessly. “Here.” He passes me the roll of gauze. Still shaking with the force of my emotions, I take the bandages and wrap the linen across my torso, then pass it back. The two of us do this over and over again until he’s redressed my wounds.

I wipe my eyes, clear my throat, and pull myself together.

Deep breath.

It’s all going to be okay—or it isn’t, but that’s okay too.

Once I trust myself to speak, I say over my shoulder, “I appreciate what you’re doing, but if I don’t clean the wounds, they’re going to get infected.” I mean, they might not, but that’s a gamble.

I suppose I should simply be grateful for this little bit ofkindness.

“That’s unnecessary,” the horseman says.

“What do you mean that’s unnecessary?” I ask, trying to riddle out what he means.

“Your wounds won’t become infected.”

I swivel more fully to face him. “How do you know that?”

He looks heavenward, like he’s trying to find both God and his patience in the rafters. “Because I control infection inallits forms.”

Seriously? So not only can he prevent me from catching the plague, he doesn’t need to clean my wounds to keep infection at bay?

“Then why change the bandages at all?” I ask, facing forward again.

“An injury this large demands upkeep for it to heal properly,” Pestilence says. He rips the gauze from the roll and ties it off. “Now, give me your wrists.”

I do so, oddly mesmerized by the situation—and by Pestilence, if I’m being honest.

He leans over my wrists, his wavy golden hair falling in front of his eyes as he unwinds the old gauze. At this angle, the horseman looks heart-wrenchingly innocent, which is an odd thing to say about a man, particularly one who has a healthy kill rate under his belt. Perhaps it’s simply that he’s being gentle for once, or that I’m finally getting a glimpse of his (vanishingly small) humanity.

My brows furrow as I stare at his bent head. “Why are you doing this?”

“Suffering is meant for the living.”