He stares back at me, his expression unreadable. Still, I read that motherfucker’s face all the same.
“You haven’t.”
Of course he hasn’t. I don’t know why it’s only dawning on me now. That very fact is what has made pursuing him so damn difficult. Death never stopped, never slept. He rode and rode and killed and rode and on and on forever, his travels only ever interrupted by me.
I glance around us again. “So now that you’ve captured your human, you want to keep me in a nice … home?” I might as well have said cage or sty. An enclosure meant for an animal. Not an equal. “Is that it?” I press.
“Would you prefer I slit your throat? Break your neck? Fight you until the memory of all things have faded away and only pain remains?” With each question, Thanatos takes a step forward, his wingtips making a soft noise as they drag across the rotted flooring. “Because I can do that. I don’t want to—but I can, if that is what you yearn for.”
I frown at him. “What I yearn for is for you to leave Earth and never return.”
Death laughs, his eyes flashing. “Kismet, that will never happen. Even once humans are banished from the earth, I will still remain. So long as there is life, I will always remain.
“But for now,” he continues, reaching out and lightly touching my cheek, his thumb brushing my lower lip. “I want to discover what more there is to you besides violence and strategy.”
A part of me is mesmerized by this entity whose eye I’ve caught. I get the strangest sense that there is so much more that he wants than death and destruction—he just has no idea what that might be or how to attain it—aside from, you know, capturing unwilling women.
I clear my throat, not liking the personal turn this moment has taken.
“So,” I raise my eyebrows, glancing around, “you have never lived in a house before, yet you not only expect to start doing so now, but you also intend to keep me captive while you’re at it?”
“I don’t plan on keeping you a captive.”
My eyes widen. That’s news to me. “So you’re planning on turning me loose at some point?”
“Never,” he vows.
“So what then?” I ask. “You think I’ll come to enjoy captivity?”
“Humans can get used to all manner of things,” Death says smoothly. “I’m sure you’ll get used to this.”
The gall.
I spin around. “Where are the beds?” I ask, looking at the empty room. “Where’s the food?” I gesture around me. “Where is the table, the chairs, the cups and dinnerware? Where are the books to read and the chopped firewood to warm our house on cold winter nights? Where are the fresh linens? The soft mattress and clean sheets?”
Thanatos keeps his face carefully controlled.
“You are a fool if you think I’ll just grow content in some empty, rotting house.”
He steps forward, his massive form looming over me, his beautiful face menacing in the shadowed light. “You’ll enjoy it or you won’t, but this is your fate, kismet.”
I ignore his words, because right now, I’m a hunter who’s caught the scent of my prey.
I’ve hit a nerve. I know I have.
I flash him a mocking smile. “Were you hoping to impress me?” I laugh at him the same way my sister Robin would laugh at me when she wanted me to feel small. I learned long ago how to wrap an insult into a sound. “This isn’t impressive. You’ve hurt me, you’ve killed me, and now you’ve kidnapped me and locked me away in a prison bare of any comforts. It’s pathetic.”
Across from me, Thanatos’s jaw clenches and unclenches.
There. I’ve found my mark.
All at once, his wings snap out, wrapping around us and forcing me to stumble closer to him. “I don’t care what the fuck you think,” he says, his eyes flashing. “Insult me all you want. It changes nothing.”
I stare up at his turbulent eyes. Ever-steady Death isn’t so steady after all. Not when it comes to me.
A malicious smile spreads across my lips. “We’ll see about that.”
I sit out on the sagging back porch of the house, watching the sun set. So far, the only perk of this place seems to be its bathroom, which I’ve discreetly used. Otherwise, this house blows. Not even the well I found on the property worked. So I’m fated to go without food and water for as long as we’re here.
For the last hour, the horseman has given me some space. His horse, however, hasn’t. Every so often the dapple gray beast will plod up to me and snuffle my shoulder then nudge my hand, as if looking for treats. It’s actually pretty endearing.