Page 192 of War

“You saved them,” I say.

He stares at me for a long moment, then squints into the distance. “It is … not so easy to destroy them, knowing that they could’ve been mine,” he says, his eyes dropping to my stomach.

My child, he means. He sees his own kid in them.

For a moment, I don’t breathe. This might be the first time I’ve seen true empathy from War.

“Is that why you spared them?”

He glances down at me. “I did it for your soft heart,” he says. “But still, they could’ve been mine.”

This becomes apattern—sparing children—until there are too many children in camp and not enough adults to attend to all of them. We’ve had to recruit the older kids to help with the younger, which isn’t ideal.

That all changes today. Today War doesn’t just bring back children along with his other war prizes. Today, he also returns with adults.

These people are blood-spattered and their eyes are wide from the things they’ve seen, but they come in with the children and receive meals and shelter all the same. They don’t have to kneel in the blood of their former neighbors while they swear allegiance or choose death. They don’t have to witness daily executions or face killing and dying in battle.

The worst they’ll have to deal with is the culture shock that comes with camp life.

War dismounts Deimos and comes up to me, one of his hands moving to my belly.

“For your soft heart.”

“Who are they?” I ask later that night.

“You mean the people I saved?” War says. He pulls his pants on over his legs, his hair still wet from his bath. His shoulders look a kilometer wide.

I can hear a few phobos riders belligerently shouting outside, drunk from tonight’s revelries. I’m sure if I strain my ears enough, I might even pick up the soft sounds of people weeping. This is the most terrible day of their lives, but they have no idea that it’s one of the horsemen’s most compassionate ones.

He runs a hand through his hair, looking impossibly sexy. “They are the innocents. I judged their hearts and found them pure—or at least as pure as a human heart can be.”

I raise my eyebrows. “What made you decide to spare the innocents?” I ask.

The children I understand; he saw his own child in them. What does he see in these people?

“I vowed to you that I would change,” he says. “I’m trying.”

My throat constricts at that. “So this is all for me?” I can’t say whether that makes me feel impossibly cherished or a little sad.

War narrows his eyes, studying my features for several seconds. “That is a rigged question, wife. I say it’s for you, and you fear I am changing my ways without changing my heart. I say it’s because I’ve suddenly grown a conscience, and I risk slighting your own significant involvement in this process.”

Him growing a conscience couldneverbe a slight against me. It’s what I’ve wanted since I first met him.

“Have you?” I ask. “Have you grown a conscience?”

He saunters towards me then, the tattoos on his chest glittering. War kneels down before me and lifts my fitted grey shirt. It’s probably just my imagination, but my stomach looks a little fuller.

Grabbing my hips, the horseman leans in and brushes a kiss along my abdomen.

“My entire world is right here,” he says, looking up at me. “Late at night, I tremble at the thought of something befalling either of you. Do you understand how crazed that makes me feel?” He stands, moving a hand to my stomach. “There is the barest tendril of another life in you, and it is so vulnerable.” His eyes move to mine. “And that is to say nothing of your own vulnerability. I am impervious to death, but anything can take you—and our child along with you.

“It’s hard to be aware of that fact and to not think about all the other fathers whose families I’ve killed. Whose loves I’ve killed. I am filled with growing shame at what I’ve done because losing you is already unfathomable.

“So yes, I believe I’ve grown a conscience.”

The horseman has done so many horrible things. He deserves to lose the only things he’s ever cared about. Maybe then he would actually know the price of his war. But I don’t want to die, I don’t want my baby to die, and most twisted of all, I don’t want War to feel pain the way he’s made others feel it. Even if it would be just.

He’s not the only one who’s been softened by this relationship.