Page 167 of Decimation

The applause that follows is thunderous. It rolls through the hall like a wave, building and building until the windows shake and the chandeliers tremble overhead. The Chapter Lords are on their feet. The Senate are standing in their elevated seats. Everyone is caught up in the victory, in the sheer undeniable force of what we’ve accomplished.

I turn to Leandra. My wife. My partner. My priestess of vengeance in crimson silk.

She’s looking up at me, her burned face beautiful in the golden light, her white eye staring straight into whatever remains of my soul.

I raise her hand to my lips and kiss her knuckles. The gesture looks romantic to the crowd, but it’s more than that. It’s gratitude, it’s worship. It’s the closest thing to prayer I’ve ever been capable of.

The night air is thick with jasmine and something darker, something that smells like earth after rain and the faint salt of the distant sea. Lazarus leads me through the veranda doors, his hand warm against the small of my back, and I let him. I let him guide me past the marble columns and down the stone steps into the gardens that stretch out behind the villa like a secret whispered to the dark.

The stars are out tonight.

Not just a few scattered pinpricks of light, but a whole sky full of them. More than I’ve ever seen, more than should be possible. They’re scattered across the black like someone took a handful of diamonds and threw them at heaven. The moon hangs low and fat and yellow, and beneath it, the gardens are transformed. The roses are silver and shadow, the fountain in the distance sounds like music. The cypress trees stand sentinel along the paths, tall and dark and patient.

I stop walking.

I don’t mean to. My feet just… stop. Something about the stars, about the impossible vastness of them, about the way they make me feel so small and so significant all at once. Three months ago, I was a weapon shaped by someone else’s hands. Three months ago, I was a girl with another woman’s face and a future that stretched out dark and hopeless. And now I’m here. Standing in a garden that belongs to me as much as it belongs to the man beside me, breathing air that tastes like jasmine and victory. Looking up at stars that feel like a promise.

“You’re thinking too loud.”

Lazarus’s voice is still rough, still scraped raw around the edges, but there’s something softer in it tonight. Something almost playful. I turn my head and find him watching me, his dark eyes catching the starlight, the scar across his throat silver in the moonlight. He’s been so serious for so long. We both have. Months of healing, months of planning, months of eliminating enemies and consolidating power. Tonight is the first night since the ceremony that we’ve been truly alone.

“I’m thinking,” I say, “that it’s beautiful.”

“Mm.” He steps closer, close enough that I can feel the heat of him, the solid wall of his body just inches from mine. “I was looking at you.”

I snort. It’s not elegant, refined, or any of the things a Grand Master’s wife is supposed to be. “That’s a terrible line.”

“It’s not a line.” He reaches up and brushes his fingers along my jaw, feather-light. “I’ve been looking at you all night. I looked at you during the ceremony. I looked at you when we were eating dinner. I’m looking at you now. I never want to stop looking at you.”

The sincerity in his ruined voice makes my chest ache. Even after everything, after the poison, after the healing, after the testing in the chapel and the words he whispered against my scarred skin, part of me still expects the other shoe to drop. Part of me still waits for the cruelty, the manipulation, the knife hidden behind the kiss.

But it doesn’t come. It hasn’t come. The colours around him are steady and deep; blue, violet and gold with no shadows. No lies. Just him.

“We finally have peace,” he says, and his hand moves from my jaw to my shoulder, his thumb tracing the line of my collarbone through the thin silk of my dress. “We can relax now. We can breathe.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. It bubbles up out of me, sharp, sudden, and a little bit bitter.

“We can never truly relax,” I tell him, and my voice sounds strange in the darkness, too loud and too honest. “You know that. There will always be someone who wants to kill us, someone who wants to steal our power. Someone who thinks they can do what Ezekiel couldn’t.”

“Let them try.”

He says it so simply, so matter-of-factly. Like it’s not a threat but a fact of nature. Like anyone who comes for us is already dead and they just don’t know it yet.

“Let them try,” he repeats, and his hand tightens on my shoulder, pulling me closer. “With you beside me, no one will ever manage it. You know why?”

I shake my head. I can’t speak. He’s too close, his body too warm, his eyes too intense. The colours around him are shifting, darkening, the deep blue bleeding into something richer, something hungry.

“Because you are the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen,” he says. “Because you survived everything they did to you and came out the other side stronger, because you stood on that stage today and turned four women into a warning that every Chapter Lord in the Brethren will remember for the rest of their lives. Because you are my wife. My weapon. My heart.”

And then he kisses me.

It’s not gentle. It’s not soft, tentative, or any of the careful, patient kisses he gave me during those months of healing, when I was too fragile to touch and too scared to want. This kiss is different. This kiss is three months of waiting, wanting, and holding back. This kiss is the ceremony, the victory, the painting in the chapel and the stars wheeling overhead. This kiss is Lazarus staking a claim, reminding me who I belong to, reminding himself that I’m still here, still alive, still his.

I kiss him back just as hard.

My fingers find the front of his shirt, the fine linen crumpling in my grip as I pull him closer. His mouth tastes like the wine we drank at dinner; sweet, dark, and faintly spiced. His hands move from my shoulders to my waist, gripping hard enough to bruise, and I want the bruises. I want the evidence. I want to wake up tomorrow and feel the ache of him on my body and know that this was real.

He walks me backward. I don’t know where we’re going, and I don’t care. My bare feet stumble on the grass, still damp from the evening watering, and he catches me. Of course he catches me. He always catches me.