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I take her by the arm. “You need to get inside—”

“What does itmatter?” she says, frustration now coating her words.

She has a point, though I don’t bother saying as much. Instead I escort her back to her bedroom.

“Rest,” I tell her, lingering in the doorway. Nick is nowhere to be seen. “I’ll get you and your boys a glass of water.”

The house is eerily silent as I wander back to the kitchen. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was the only one inside the house. It’s only as I pass one of the sons’ bedrooms that I hear husky, masculine weeping behind the closed door. I know without peering inside that it’s Nick, broken by his grief.

Shortly after I enter the kitchen, I hear the front door open, and then the heavy footfalls of Pestilence, clad in his full regalia. My idiot heart speeds up at the sound. This slow burn I feel for the horseman is agony. Raw, exquisite agony.

As I grab glasses from the cupboard, Pestilence comes up behind me. Sweeping my hair out of the way, he brushes a tender kiss to the back of my neck, his lips lingering.

I forget myself for a minute. A long minute.

“You let him touch you?”

I startle, nearly dropping the glass cups at the sound of Nick’s voice. I swivel around, looking past the horseman.

Nick stands at the other end of the kitchen, his eyes bright with the beginnings of fever. There’s such disgust in his expression.

Unwillingly, my gaze moves to Pestilence, who for once doesn’t wear his usual, stoic expression. The horseman looks vulnerable and guileless and even a little unsure of himself.

He meets my eyes, and I see that he thinks he’s done something wrong.

That gets to me.

I touch his face.

It’s okay, I want to tell him.

“Un-fucking-believable.”

Now my eyes move back to Nick. He might be sick and weak, but he’s lucid enough, and there is such loathing in his eyes.

“I thought that maybe you were just fucking the freak,” he says, “which is bad enough—

Pestilence steps in front of me. “You walk a fine line, Nick,” he says, cutting the man off. “I hope you haven’t forgotten my earlier words.”

Nick gives me a look that lets me know this matter is far from settled, and then he retreats back down the hall.

I take a deep breath. I have to go back there to bring his wife and sons water, which means I’m going to have to interact with the man again.

“Every time you shake my belief in human wickedness, a man like that invariably reminds me just why I must eliminate your kind,” the horseman says.

I have several objections with that, but I voice none of them.

“We should go, Pestilence,” I say instead. “We don’t belong here.”

Notyoudon’t belong here, butwe.

“No, Sara. We stay until the deed is done.”

He wants you to suffer, even now, after you’ve tended to him, held him, kissed him.

“So that’s how it is?” I say.

“You are my prisoner.”