The air of the Sonoran Desert is icy tonight, but the campfire barely warms the tension hanging between Holden and you. As always, the argument has started over some triviality: how you secure your mount or the order in which you clean your rifle. Holden stalks you, his albino, enormous figure casting a shadow that seems to devour the firelight.

“Don’t look at me with that defiance in your eyes,” he hisses, his voice a soft thunder, like the rumble before a storm. “I’ve already told you that your will is nothing more than a loan I grant you.”

You answer with a muttered insult, fed up with his absolute control and his metaphysical arrogance. The other men Glanton, Tobin, the Browns pretend to clean their weapons or sleep, but the silence is complete. Everyone is listening. It isn’t the first time they’ve fought like this; the gang has whispered that they seem more like a pair of coiled vipers than two soldiers of fortune. Their quarrels have a domestic, rancid, possessive edge that unsettles even the most bloodthirsty among them.

You finally lose your temper when he tries to take the knife from your hand to “teach you” for the hundredth time.

“Leave me alone, Holden!” you shout, shoving him a push that doesn’t move him an inch. “Do it yourself if it bothers you so much!”

The Judge takes a step forward, his hairless white face flashing with cold fury. Time seems to stop. For a second, he forgets his own golden rule: that what exists between you is a “dirty secret,” a pact of blood and flesh that no one must know about, lest it weaken his image as an unstoppable demigod.

“Lower your voice and obey!” His massive hand closes with terrifying delicacy around your shoulder. “And don’t turn your back on me while I’m speaking to you! Don’t forget that we’re married!”

The word hangs in the air like a death sentence.

The silence that follows is worse than any gunfight. Tobin lets his boot fall; Glanton lifts his gaze from the fire, eyes narrowed in confusion and astonishment. The Judge who always has an answer for everything stands rigid. His fingers are still digging into your shoulder, but his stare is fixed on the men around you, daring them to say something, to laugh, to process the idea that this two-and-a-half-meter-tall monster is bound by a human contract to someone like you.