Page 26 of Decimation

I grit my teeth and pull harder, feeling the skin of my wrists give way in a wet, tearing kiss. The pain is a clean, bright line compared to the fire burning in my chest. Ines. Konstantine. Their faces flash in my mind, her smile, his indifferent eyes, and their laughter echoes in my ears, a duet of mockery.

I’ll kill them. Both of them.

I’ll unmake them the way they’ve unmade me.

The rope finally surrenders enough for me to wrench my hand free. My wrist is a raw, glistening ruin. I sit up, my muscles screaming from the abuse, and I fumble at the other bindings. My body feels heavy, like I’ve been drained of everything but my hate and something worse, something that pulses low in my belly when I remember the things she did, the things my body answered against my will. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand, forcing those unwanted images back down. My knees buckle for a moment before I lock them. The room tilts, then steadies.

But the door creaks open. Ines steps inside, her silhouette a dark jewel framed by the light from the hallway beyond. She’s wearing a flowing gown that clings to her like a second skin, her hair loose around her shoulders, and she looks like a queen, like a predator who has already fed and is savouring the memory. The sight of her sends a bolt of something jagged through me. Hatred, yes, but also a crawling, unwilling recognition of what we did.

“Lazarus,” she says, her voice soft, almost tender, the same voice she used when she, no. I shut the thought down, refusing to allow it to properly form. “You’re awake.”

I don’t think. I move.

In an instant I’m across the room, forcing my cramped muscles to work, and my ruined hand wraps around her throat. The contact is horrifyingly familiar. She gasps, her eyes widening in a shock that looks almost genuine, as if all of this has been some little game we’ve been playing.

I slam her against the wall, my fingers tightening, feeling the delicate architecture of her trachea, the frantic flutter of her pulse against my palm. Her hands claw at my arm, but I don’t let her go.

“You…” I growl, my voice scraping out of a throat raw from screaming. “You think you can do whatever you want, don’t you? You think you can crawl inside me and rearrange my soul and I’ll just…”

“I’m pregnant,” she chokes out, her voice barely a thread of sound, her eyes bulging.

I freeze.

Her words hang in the air between us, like a third presence in the room. Pregnant. The word echoes in my mind, each repetition louder, more grotesque. It’s a violation that keeps on violating, a seed planted in her body that extends their union into the future, a future that has no place for me. I loosen my grip slightly, but I don’t let go.

My hand is shaking, and I can feel every ridge of her throat, the heat of her skin, the way her life pulses under my fingers like a secret.

“What?” I demand, my voice splintering.

“I’m pregnant,” she repeats, her voice stronger now, a sly, curving thing. “I’m carrying Konstantine’s heir.”

Is this a trick? It has to be. Ines doesn’t tell the truth unless it serves her, unless it’s a blade dressed as a gift. But the way she’s looking at me, there’s something in her eyes, a glint of triumph wrapped in vulnerability, and it makes me hesitate.

“Are you willing to murder the future of the Brethren?” she asks, her voice calm now, almost mocking, a teacher correcting a slow student. Her lips curve, and I remember those lips on me, the obscene tenderness of them as she slid them over my cock.

No, stop it. Just fucking stop.

I tighten my grip again, but I don’t squeeze. My hand trembles against her throat, my fingers itching to finish what I started, to feel the life go out of her and take her poison with it. But I can’t, not if she is telling the truth. The thought of killing an innocent, even one made of her and him, hooks into some weak, stupid part of me I thought they’d carved out entirely and she knows it. She’s always known.

“Call a truce,” she says, her voice soft again, a lover’s murmur. “I don’t wish you harm, Lazarus. I never have. I just wanted you to understand what Konstantine and I have. Why it’s so special.”

She says “special” the way someone might say “sacred,” and it makes my stomach turn because I can hear the echo of my own longing in it, the longing for a bond that excludes everyone else, that devours the world. She took that, she corrupted it, ruined it, turned it into something she could use, something depraved and disgusting.

I laugh, the sound harsh and bitter, tearing out of me like a sob. “You raped me,” I snarl, and the word is a grenade in my mouth, shattering the lie that this was anything but desecration.

She laughs too, the sound light and airy, like wind chimes in an abattoir.

“Please, Laz, you were enjoying it enough at the time.” Her eyes flick down my body, a deliberate, knowing glance that makes my skin crawl with a heat I can’t control. “Your body doesn’t lie as well as your mouth does.”

I slam her head against the wall, and the sound it makes is a dull, wet crack that echoes in the room. She cries out, her hands flying to her head, and a thin trickle of blood blooms at her hairline. But I don’t let go. I can’t. My hand is a claw now, a thing separate from my will.

“We can move on,” she says, her voice trembling now, but the tremor feels rehearsed. “I can speak to Konstantine. I can help you repair all the damage. We could even… find a place for you. Close to us. Close to me.” The offer is a silk-wrapped hook, and I feel it catch in my flesh.

“I don’t trust you,” I say, my voice low and dangerous, a growl from the pit of my ruined self. “Not for one fucking second.”

“It’s not Ines you need to look out for.” A voice says behind me.

I turn, spinning on my heel, but he’s too quick for me. And I’m too weak from how they’ve kept me tied up, kept me drugged, kept me as a plaything for their twisted games. My body betrays me again, slow and stupid.