Page 162 of Decimation

Leandra tries to stand, to get to me, and her legs give out beneath her. One of the guards catches her before she hits the ground and she fights him, weakly, desperately, her burned face twisting with pain and fury.

“Get her medical attention,” Someone barks. “Now.”

They start to carry her out.

I try to reach for her. My arm doesn’t work. Nothing works. I am staring up at the vaulted ceiling, at the torchlight dancing across ancient stone, at the shadows that have witnessed so much blood, so much pain and so many centuries of men doing terrible things in the name of gods and prophecies and power.

Leandra. I try to say her name.

The sound that comes out of my mouth is wet. Wrong.

“Don’t try to talk. Just hold on.”

They’re lifting me now, carrying me. The ceiling moves above me, stone giving way to darkness giving way to the cold night air. I can hear footsteps, urgent voices, the crackle of radios.

Somewhere behind me, Leandra is screaming.

Or maybe that’s just in my head.

Maybe that’s just the sound of her scream when the torch touched her face, playing over and over again in the darkness that is swallowing me whole.

I was supposed to protect her,

I was supposed to save her.

I promised.

Everything goes black.

The world comes back in fragments.

Pain first, a deep, pulsing throb that radiates from the right side of my face, spreading through my skull like cracks in ice. It’s dulled, wrapped in something chemical and syrupy that makes my thoughts sluggish, but it’s still there underneath, waiting. Patient.

Then light that is far too bright. I try to open my eyes, but only one responds. The left. My right eye refuses, held down by something thick and oppressive. Bandages. I can feel them now; the texture of gauze against my cheek, my temple, the ridge of my brow. They pull with every small movement, every twitch of my face.

Don’t move.

I don’t know if the voice is mine, or instinct or something else entirely, but I obey. I lie still, breathing through the fog, trying to piece together where I am. The air smells of antiseptic and something floral; lilies, maybe, and there’s a beeping somewhere to my left. Steady. Rhythmic. A heart monitor.

Hospital. I’m in a hospital.

But not a real one. I know this because I can feel silk beneath my fingers, not the starched cotton of institutional sheets. And the light is too warm, too golden, filtering through windows rather than fluorescents. The villa, then. One of the rooms converted for medical care.

I try to remember how I got here and come up blank. There was the ritual. The stage. Ezekiel’s screams. Blood on my hands, hot and sticky and so red against the white of the marble floor. I remember Lazarus’s voice announcing a new era, I remember the weight of him on top of me, inside me, the press of his body against mine as the crowd watched. I remember…Nothing after that. Nothing at all.

My left eye drifts closed, and I let it. The darkness is easier. The darkness doesn’t hurt.

But then something shifts beside me. A sound. A breath that catches on something raw and torn, and I know that sound. I know it down to my bones.

I force my eye open again and turn my head slowly, carefully, ignoring the way the pain spikes and the room tilts, and I see him.

Lazarus.

He’s sitting in a chair pulled right up to the edge of my bed, his body angled toward me like he’s been here for hours. Days, maybe. His hand is wrapped around mine, his fingers intertwined with my own, and the contact is the first thing I feel that isn’t pain or numbness. It’s warm. Steady. Alive.

But when I look at his face, my heart stops.

There are bandages wrapped around his throat. Thick white gauze circling his neck from just below his jaw almost to his collarbone, wrapped so tightly I can see the faint outline of padding beneath. His skin above the bandages is mottled, bruised in shades of purple and yellow that make my stomach turn. His lips are cracked. His eyes, those dark, fathomless eyes that I’ve seen fill with rage and obsession and something terrifyingly close to love, are fixed on my face with an intensity that hurts to witness.