Page 6 of Decimation

The voice comes from behind me, melodic and warm, with just a hint of an accent that speaks of expensive European boarding schools and summers spent in the South of France. I don’t need to turn around to know it’s her.

“Am I?” I keep my gaze fixed on the sprawling, pristine garden in front of us. “I thought I was being appropriately distant.”

She moves to stand beside me, close enough that I can smell her perfume, something floral and complex, something that lingers. Her braids are swept up tonight, secured with what looks like actual diamonds, and the dress she’s wearing is the colour of blood.

It’s fitting. Very fitting.

“He misses you,” she says softly. “He talks about you constantly. About how you used to do everything together, how you were inseparable.”

“Were being the operative word.” I say stupidly. I’m giving her ammunition. Weapons to use against me.

“Because of me.”

I finally look at her. Up close, she’s even more striking than from a distance. The kind of beautiful that makes men stupid, makes them forget about duty and honour and the promises they made to their dying fathers. Her blue eyes study me with an intelligence that sets my teeth on edge.

I want to put them out. I want to destroy that beauty, destroy all of her.

She’s not stupid. No, Ines is anything but that, and I think that’s the problem. I can’t put it down to naivety, I can’t put it down to selfishness. She isn’t wrapping my brother around her finger because she’s as lovesick as he is.

She’s after something.

She’s always after something.

“You said it, not me.” I say, studying the micro-expression as it flickers across her face. God, she’s good. Really fucking good.

She laughs, and it’s a genuine sound, not the practiced trill she uses with the senators and their wives. “I like you, Lazarus. You don’t pretend.”

“Unlike everyone else here?”

“Unlike everyone else here,” she agrees. She leans against the railing, her posture relaxed, as if we’re old friends sharing confidences. “They all smile, congratulate us, and tell Konstantine how lucky he is, and then they whisper behind our backs about how inappropriate the match is. How my family is unsuitable. How I’m going to corrupt him somehow.”

“Aren’t you?”

Her smile doesn’t falter. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

“Probably not.”

“At least you’re honest.” She tilts her head, studying me with those unsettling eyes. “Your father didn’t want us to marry. Did you know that?”

Of course I fucking know that. I was there, in that room that already smelled of death when our father grabbed Konstantine’s hand and made him promise. When he made him swear that he wouldn’t go through with it, that he’d break it off with the girl who was going to destroy everything.

Konstantine had nodded, tears streaming down his face, and said yes. Said he’d do it.

But barely three months later and they’re married.

“Konstantine told me everything.” She continues, as if we’re conspirators, as if we’re bosom buddies, baring out souls to one another. “…about the promise, about your father’s concerns, about how the Senate thinks I’m some kind of Trojan horse sent to infiltrate your family.”

“And are you?”

She turns to face me fully now, and there’s something in her expression that I can’t quite read. Something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

“I love him,” she says, and there’s a fierceness in her voice that almost sounds genuine. “I love him more than anything in this world. More than my family’s land holdings, more than their political connections, more than any amount of power or influence. When I’m with him, nothing else matters. Nothing else exists.”

“And that’s what concerns me.”

Her eyebrows lift. “That I love your brother?”

“That he’s so fucking obsessed with you that he can’t see straight anymore.” The words come out harsher than I intended, but I don’t take them back. “He broke a deathbed promise for you. He went against everything our Father wanted, everything the Senate advised. He’s willing to risk the stability of the entire Brethren because he can’t stand the thought of being without you.”