Page 128 of Decimation

“What about her?” I ask, my voice hardening.

“She is unworthy,” he says bluntly. “But you know that already.”

“I will not put her aside.”

He narrows his eyes, clearly displeased.

“Zayn,” I continue, my tone icy, “I am Grand Master now. I am all that stands between the success and failure of our entire way of life. If you challenge me on this, I will destroy it all. I will destroy everything.”

“For a woman?” he sneers. “How very like your brother you are.”

The insult stings, but I take it, my lips curling into a grin. “Do you wish to support me or not? It is your call. You alone, right here, will decide if, after nearly eight hundred years, the Brethren are finished.”

I see the tension in his jaw, the way his hands clench on the handles of his wheelchair. He’s weighing his options, just as I am. Finally, he exhales.

“Fine,” he says. “But she has not been selected by the Senate or the Guardians. At least honour those traditions.”

A Grand Master’s wife must be chosen, a tradition we both know Konstantine flouted when he refused to let them inspect Ines’s bloodline. Leandra will fail the tests too; her parentage guarantees it, but she is mine. She always has been.

“She is my wife,” I state, though we are not legally married.

Zayn tuts with annoyance. “She is not your wife until we say so,” he corrects.

I open my mouth to argue, but he cuts me off. “You cannot disregard centuries worth of rules.”

“And you cannot expect me to give her up when I have killed my brother to ensure I have her for myself.”

The admission hangs in the air, raw and unvarnished. Zayn blinks, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far. “Lazarus…” he begins.

“Grand Master,” I snap, correcting him. He cannot call me that name. Lazarus is dead. I am not him, not anymore.

“Grand Master,” he concedes, “do not commit the very same sins your brother did.”

“I will not give her up,” I say, my voice firm, though I feel like a broken record.

“Then don’t,” he says, his tone softening slightly. “Hand her over. Let us inspect her. Let us perform the necessary rites to make her worthy of you.”

“And then?”

“And then we will sanctify your union. We will declare her truly as your wife.”

I shut my eyes, my mind racing. I hear what he’s not saying; that it doesn’t matter about her blood, that they will ignore her family’s sin and pass her anyway, but what will those rites do to Leandra? Is she strong enough to endure them? What if this breaks her further? I know if I refuse, I’ll be no better than Konstantine. And what then? Will God turn against me as it did him?

“Grand Master…” Zayn prompts, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Do it,” I growl, my voice low, resigned. “Make your damned preparations.”

The words taste bitter, but I swallow them for Leandra, for the Brethren, for the future I’ve fought so hard to secure. I’ll play this game, but I’ll be damned if I let anyone take her from me.

“What, what is this?” I gasp, staring at the two men, the two strangers in my bedroom, Lazarus’s bedroom technically.

One of them is in a wheelchair. He’s a black man, huge, despite his obvious disability.

And the other, the other is albino, the literal whitest skinned person I think I’ve ever laid my eyes on.

I know who they are. I recognise their faces from the photographs Isaac made me study all those years ago.

Zayn and Gabriel. Guardians.