“I have let you enjoy your own space because it pleased you, and I enjoy pleasing you and your ridiculous human whims.” 
My ridicu—? “You want to please me?” I say, now officially peeved. “How about you stop killing people?” 
War gives me a piercing look. “There’s another I seek to please too, Miriam. And unfortunately for you, He wishes differently.”

I rub my forehead and then my mouth. Death is getting easier for me to dole out. That’s…worrisome.

“You cannot understand His will, but you will understand my vengeance.”

Pretty sure [his horse] senses my inadequacy as a human being. 

“Fight all you want, wife. Battle is what I’m best at – and I assure you, you won’t win this one.”

The ground is moving. Not just opening but moving. It looks alive, and I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing—until, that is, a desiccated hand erupts from the ground. 
“Dear God,” I breathe. 
From the earth, the dead rise.

The dead are killing the last of the living. This is why I heard nothing but rumors about those cities gone to the grave. War left no survivors, and without survivors there was no way to warn the rest of the world that the horseman was coming.

 “There is no such thing as a worthy sacrifice. There are only those who die, and those willing to let them. ”

I stretched my neck. “Identify yourself, soldier. I would like to know what name to mark on your grave.”

I studied the strong slope of his shoulders, the notches of his spine. I vaguely wondered if his back would be harder to break than the soldiers.

He looked at me like sheer willpower alone prevented him from tearing me limb from limb. This man is going to kill you. If not today, then someday soon.

“The way most men love is so boring. It is frequent and fickle and altogether unextraordinary. Arin would love to obsession. To madness.”

I smoothed a thumb over his brow. “I dream of killing you.”
Arin pulled my fingers away. Worry lashed me. Had I gone too far? Eyes dark with amusement searched mine. He smoothed the furrow forming in my brow with his thumb.
“My demented Suraira, we have much to discuss about seduction.”

"Five years of friendship, and do you know the only word I would use to describe you?” He glanced at me. “Mild. Just...mild. Which might have been the end of the story until two nights ago, when I watched you singlehandedly sever a man’s backbone without flinching.”

“What do you want?” 
What I meant to say was “Your severed head rotating on a spit.” 
What came out was significantly worse. 
“Freedom. Real freedom.”

"His will is strong. It always is, in the self-righteous,” I said to the empty room. “But the will of the damned is even stronger."

“You want to be hunted?” A branch snapped somewhere below me. “Then I will gladly grant your wish.”
A strangled cry tore through my teeth as searing pain cleaved my calf. “Son of a—” 
My hand flew to my leg, and there, inches above my ankle, was a knife. He stabbed me?

Arin had stalled a mere foot away, staring at my back. I clicked my mouth shut. I had forgotten to cover the evidence of Hanim’s favorite hobby. Until now, Rory and Raya were the only two with the misfortune of seeing my graveyard of scars. 
“Who did this to you?”

“There is much you don’t know about me, but understand this: I will fight for my freedom until my last breath. You took it away, and you cannot fault how ardently I choose to take it back. Until you have felt hunted, less than human, rejected from the moment you were born for something you did not ask for and cannot control—until then, do not speak to me of martyrs and mercenaries.”

"One, two. I’m alive. Three, four. I’m safe. Five, six. I won’t let them catch me."