Page 27 of Decimation

I was so busy focused on her, so consumed by that anger festering inside me that I didn’t even notice the sound of his footsteps, the fact that the door was wide open, that any guard walking past would see what was happening.

I feel the needle slide into my neck, a cold, precise violation. I stare at my brother’s identical brown eyes, my eyes, the eyes I’ve trusted since we were boys, the eyes that used to crinkle with shared laughter.

Now they’re flat, curious, like he’s watching an insect under glass before setting it alight.

“Why?” I whisper. The word is a child’s word, small and broken.

He’s killing me. He must be.

Whatever this drug is, it’s like ice slithering through my veins, a winter that starts in my throat and spreads outward, claiming me inch by inch. My legs go weak, my heart does one dramatic, desperate thud like it understands we’re in the fight of our life, like it’s reaching for him, for the brother who was supposed to be my other half and then it slows, far too fucking much.

“You’re her pet.” Konstantine replies, his voice casual, almost bored as he watches me fall. He watches my legs collapse, watches me crumble into a mass of limbs at his feet, and there’s nothing in his face but a faint, satisfied disgust. The words are a door slamming shut on everything I thought we were.

“My pet.” Ines repeats, curling around him in that snakelike way of hers, her body moulding to his side, her hand sliding up his chest in a caress that is both possessive and obscene. She looks down at me, and her smile is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen, because it’s fond.

As if I’m a beloved dog who’s finally learned its place.

“Guards.” Konstantine barks, and the word echoes over and over and over in my head, a hammer on the anvil of my skull.

Two men stride in. Men I know, men I have drunk with, shared jokes with, men I fucking trusted. Their faces are carefully blank, but one of them has the decency to look away. The other meets my eyes with a cold professionalism that cuts deeper than the needle.

They haul me up by my arms, and my body is a sack of meat now, a thing to be disposed of.

My eyelids grow heavy, and my body refuses to do anything but surrender to the ice spreading through me. But behind me I can hear that coo-cooing, Ines’s voice soft and lilting, a lullaby for the damned and I know this is the end.

That they have won.

That she has won.

The betrayal is a deeper cold than the drug, a black hole where my heart used to be and as the darkness swallows me, the last thing I feel is not the fear of death but the unbearable, intimate horror of being unmade by the two people who knew exactly how to break me.

The first thing I feel is the cold. It doesn’t just seep into my skin, it gnaws, a hungry, patient thing that chews through flesh and marrow until my bones feel like brittle glass. My head pounds with a sick, rolling rhythm, each pulse a fresh wave of nausea that blurs the edges of my vision.

I try to move but my limbs are dead weight, stuffed with lead and static. My wrists are bound above my head, the rope biting so deep that every twitch sends a bright flare of pain up my arms. My ankles are tethered too, spread wide, the vulnerability so absolute it feels like my skin has been peeled away, leaving every nerve raw and screaming. Panic surges but it’s distant, smothered under the thick, chemical blanket the drug has wrapped around my mind.

I can’t even feel fear properly, and I think that might be the worst part.

I blink, forcing my eyes to focus through the haze. Rough brick walls weep with dampness and a single bulb hangs from the ceiling, its light a sickly yellow that makes everything look dead. The air is thick with mildew and something sharper, metallic; blood, rust, or both.

I know where I am, where they are keeping me. I’m in the dungeons, where we keep prisoners.

It’s a cage. That’s where I am. My cage.

The word lodges in my chest like a splinter of ice.

I hear her before I see her. The soft click of heels on stone, the whisper of fabric. My stomach knots, acid clawing up my throat. Ines. She steps into the light, her silhouette framed by the huge one-way window behind her. In the glass I see my own reflection staring back, pale, dishevelled, trussed like a slaughtered animal. The image is so pitiful, so stripped of everything I thought I was, that for a moment I can’t breathe. She smiles, a slow, curving thing that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Good afternoon, Lazarus,” she purrs, her voice a silken knife. “You’ve been asleep for a few hours. How do you like your new room?”

I snarl, the sound tearing out of me raw and broken, and I yank at the ropes that don’t give. “Go to hell.”

She tuts, shaking her head with theatrical disappointment. “Such hostility, and after all the trouble we went through to make you comfortable.” The word ’comfortable’ drips with mockery, and I feel it like a slap.

Ines steps closer, heels echoing like a countdown. Her dress is black, clinging to her like a second skin, and she moves with the liquid grace of something that has never felt fear. She looks like exactly what she is now; a predator, sleek and patient, and the sight of her fills me with a dread so profound it’s almost religious.

“Until you learn your place,” she continues, her voice dropping to a low, sultry murmur, “you’ll remain here. I’m going to train you to be the perfect pet.”

I laugh, but it comes out jagged and wrong, more a sob than defiance. “You’re delusional if you think I’ll ever be that.”