Page 84 of Decimation

“She was Esau.” Ezekiel murmurs. “Her parents were…”

“I know.” I reply, cutting across him. Like I need the history lesson. Her father was meant to be Chapter Lord before we discovered that little detail. He paid for that sin dearly, he and his wife. She’s in Oblivion now, she’s a sex slave, a living example to us all of what happens when you don’t follow the rules.

Ezekiel stands, finishing his drink. “I’ll be in touch,” he says, before disappearing into the crowd.

The house feels like it breathes around me in the dark. I’ve learned its rhythms now, after seven days of silence. The sigh of old stone settling at midnight, the whisper of servants’ feet in the corridors before dawn, the crack and spit of fires being fed in rooms I have no need to enter. They come and go like ghosts, these silent keepers. They prepare my meals, draw my baths, stoke the flames and never once meet my eyes.

I am a thing to be maintained.

A possession in waiting for the very devil to come back and claim me again.

I sleep because there is nothing else to do. I sleep because each day stretches endless and empty, because the walls hold no answers and the windows show only winter-dead gardens and grey sky. I sleep because when I’m unconscious, I don’t have to think about my mother and where she might be. I don’t have to think about Konstantine and what he will do if he finds me, and I don’t have to think about his brother either. I don’t have to think about his motives for keeping me here, for whisking me away as if he’s some knight in shining armour, when we both know he is the complete opposite.

A sound pulls me up from dreams I won’t remember. A shift of fabric. A breath that isn’t mine. The soft, certain tread of someone who belongs here.

My hand finds the lamp before my eyes fully open. The switch clicks.

And there he is, the monster himself.

Lazarus stands in the doorway of my bedroom, still as carved marble, still as a predator who has cornered his prey and wants to savour the moment. He wears exhaustion like a second skin. Shadows bruise the hollows beneath his eyes. His jaw is dark with days of stubble. His shirt is wrinkled, collar askew, sleeves rolled to the elbows in a way that shows the corded muscle of his forearms and the whispers of ink.

He looks like he’s been fighting wars in hell itself.

“What are you doing?” My voice comes out steady. I’m proud of that. My heart might be a wild thing right now, but my voice does not shake.

He doesn’t answer, not with words.

His eyes hold mine as his fingers find the top button of his shirt. He works it free with deliberate slowness. Then the next, and the next. The fabric parts to reveal the landscape of his chest, the black ink of all those tattoos that mirror his brother’s, the ridges of muscle, that deep pink scar that practically splits his chest in two.

I should look away, I should tell him to leave. I should remember everything I’ve survived, everything he’s done, and every reason this is madness.

Instead, I watch his hands.

“You’ve been gone,” I say, and there it is; the crack in my composure, the need I’ve been swallowing for seven fucking days, pretending it isn’t there.

“I’ve been fighting monsters.” His voice is rough as gravel. Low. The kind of voice that vibrates in the hollow of my throat even from across the room. “I’ve been dancing with the devil himself to make sure we win.”

The shirt falls to the floor, and he moves toward me.

The colours rise around him like dawn breaking; gold, amber and deep, impossible blue. They’re calm tonight. Calm and yet still burning, the way the ocean is calm before a storm. The way a candle flame is calm while it consumes its wick.

Devotion. That’s what the gold means. Devotion like a physical force, like gravity, like something that could crush me if I let it. The amber is hunger. The blue is something I don’t have a name for yet.

“Monsters,” I repeat. The bed creaks as I shift backward, propping myself against the headboard. I’m not retreating, I’m making room. “What kind of monsters?”

“The kind that wear friendly faces.” He stops at the edge of the bed, and looks down at me as his hands go to his belt. “The kind that think they’ve won before the game is even over. The kind that don’t realize I’ve been playing them since the moment I learned they existed.”

The buckle clicks open.

“The Esau?”

His jaw tightens at the name. “And others.”

The belt slides free with a whisper of leather. He loops it once around his fist, and my stomach clenches at the casual violence of the gesture. But he only sets it aside on the nightstand, carefully, as if he’s handling something precious.

“I’ve made deals with worse.” He braces one knee on the edge of the mattress. “I’ve knelt at altars that would make your blood run cold. I’ve shaken hands with men who deserve to have their hearts cut out, and I’ve smiled while doing it.” The other knee joins the first, and the bed dips beneath his weight. “All of it. Every compromise, every sin. Every drop of blood I’ve spilled and will spill. It’s all been for this.”

“For what?”