Page 88 of Decimation

For a moment, I see it.

The shape of him. The truth of him. A man who has done monstrous things for monstrous reasons, but who loves with the same intensity he kills. A man who looked at me and saw not a thing to use, but a sanctuary to fall into. A man who will never, ever let me go.

We lie there in the aftermath, tangled together, sweat cooling on our skin. He doesn’t pull out, doesn’t move except to stroke my hair, my cheek, the curve of my shoulder.

“I meant what I said.” His voice is hoarse. “I love you. I know what that makes me, I know what it means. I don’t care.”

I turn my head and look at him. His colours are settling now, softening to something quiet and steady. The gold is still there, the amber, the absolution-blue.

“I know,” I say.

And in the dark of the room, in the warmth of his arms, I realize something terrifying and wonderful; I might just be beginning to love him too.

I’ve been awake for an hour, maybe more. Time moves strangely in this room, in this bed, with her body curved against mine like she was carved to fit there. The light creeps across the floor in slow increments, painting the marble in shades of rose and gold, and I watch it because if I look at her too long, I’ll lose myself entirely.

The clock is ticking.

I can feel it in my bones, that relentless countdown. Somewhere beyond these walls my brother is edging closer and closer to insanity, and the whole charade is balanced on a knife’s edge. One wrong move. One moment of inattention and everything I’ve built, everything I’ve sacrificed comes crashing down.

But I can’t make myself leave this bed.

Leandra sleeps with her face half-buried in the pillow, her dark hair spread across the linen like spilled ink. The sheet has slipped to her waist, leaving her back exposed to the morning light, and I let myself look. Really look. The way I haven’t allowed myself to before because looking meant acknowledging, acknowledging meant feeling, and feeling is a luxury I’ve never been able to afford.

Her skin is a map of suffering.

The scars start at her shoulders, thin, precise lines that speak of blades wielded with surgical intent. They cascade down her spine in patterns I recognize. Runes. Prophecies. The mad scrawling of a man who believes himself to be the mouthpiece of God.

Ezekiel.

The name curdles in my gut like spoiled meat.

I trace one of the scars with my fingertip, barely touching, not enough to wake her. It’s a spiral, intricate and deliberate, carved into the meat of her shoulder blade. The tissue is old but not ancient, years, not decades. She would have been young when this was done. Young, terrified, and alone.

I know what it is to be violated, to have your body turned into a canvas for someone else’s desires. Even now, I can still feel the ghost of Ines’s hands on me while the drugs turned my limbs to lead, her mouth on my neck while I screamed inside my skull. The way she laughed when she climbed off me, wiping her lips, telling me that now we shared something special.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do anything but lie there while my brother’s wife used my body like a toy, and my brother watched from the doorway with that fucking smile on his face.

The memory rises like bile, and I force it back down.

This isn’t about me.

This is about the woman beside me whose body tells a story I’m only beginning to read. There are more scars on her lower back, these ones different, less precise. Punishment marks. The kind left by belts, switches, anything else that came to hand. They crosshatch her skin in pale silver lines, and I count them without meaning to. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.

Seven major ones. Dozens of smaller ones.

My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache.

She stirs in her sleep, a small sound escaping her lips, and I go still. The sheet shifts lower, revealing the curve of her hip, and there, more marks. These ones aren’t scars. They’re tattoos, inked into her skin with the same ritual precision as the carvings. A serpent eating its own tail. A crown of thorns. A chalice overflowing with what might be blood or might be wine.

Ezekiel marked her like property, like livestock. Like a page from his fucking prophecy.

I should be disgusted, I should be horrified. I should look at this woman and see only the tragedy of what was done to her. Instead, I see a survivor.

She endured, she survived. She crawled out of whatever hell they built for her and kept breathing, kept fighting, kept existing in a world that had done nothing but hurt her. I’ve done terrible things, survived terrible things, but I was born into this world of blood and shadow. I was raised for it – my father ensured that. She was thrown into it with no preparation, no protection, no one to catch her when she fell.

And she’s still here.

Still soft enough to moan when I touch her. Still brave enough to meet my eyes, still human enough to love, despite everything.