Page 91 of Decimation

“Maybe.”

But even as she says it, the clock starts ticking again.

Somewhere close, my brother is waiting. Somewhere beyond these walls, Ezekiel is plotting. Somewhere in the shadows, the Brethren are watching, waiting for me to make a mistake.

I have a brother to destroy. A cult to steal. And a prophet to flay alive.

The study is my sanctuary as well as my war room. Walls of dark wood panelling surround me while the air is dense with the ghost of my father’s cigars. The massive windows overlook the formal gardens, a rigid geometry of boxwood hedges and gravel paths. Order imposed on nature.

It’s a lie, a beautiful, fragile lie, just like everything else in this fucking house.

I move to the sideboard, pouring myself two fingers of Scotch from a crystal decanter despite the fact it’s far too fucking early to be drinking. I need the fire in my throat, the anchoring bitterness.

And I need to face the window just for a second longer, to compose the mask before I turn around and face the man I know is waiting for me.

“Lazarus.”

His voice is closer. Not a request for attention anymore, but the beginning of an attack. I know this tone. It’s the one he uses right before he slides the knife home, so smoothly you don’t realize you’re bleeding until you’re already cold.

I turn to see him standing in the centre of the Persian rug. The morning light carves sharp angles from his face, leaving his eyes in shadow.

“I know what you’ve been doing,” he says.

The world narrows to a pinpoint. The glass in my hand suddenly feels like a block of ice. My entire body freezes, a system-wide shutdown. I can’t even feel my heartbeat. It’s just gone, leaving a hollow, echoing void in my chest where it used to be. He knows. The thought is a silent howl.

He knows, he knows, he knows.

I force the muscles in my throat to work. The words scrape out, raw and unfamiliar. “What do you mean?”

It’s a pathetic defence, a child caught with his hand in the sweet jar and his slight, pitying smile tells me he knows it. He leans forward slightly and the scent of him, whiskey and expensive cologne, invades my space.

“Don’t insult me, Lazarus. Not you.” His voice is low, a conspiratorial murmur that is infinitely more menacing than a shout. The mask of the calm U.S Chapter Lord has been stripped away. The real Charles is here; the sharp, watchful man who misses nothing. “You’ve fallen down the very same hole your dear brother crawled into. The hole he dug with his own hands and sealed himself inside.” He tilts his head, a predator sizing up its wounded prey. “You’ve fallen for a pretty cunt.”

A flash of sheer, incandescent anger whites out my vision for a second. It’s not a word for her. It’s a vile, reductive, ugly word for a thing of spitting fire and ancient pride. For the woman who looks at me as if I am not a title, not a bloodline, but just a man. A man she has the audacity, the breathtaking, terrifying audacity to truly see.

My hand tightens on the glass, and I have to consciously restrain myself from hurling it into his face just to shatter that cold, analytical calm. The violence of the feeling is a revelation.

My voice when I find it is a low growl, vibrating with a rage I can barely contain. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He’s utterly unmoved. He just looks back at me, a faint, knowing smile playing on his lips. “Don’t I?” He leans closer, close enough now that I could reach out and touch him. Close enough to strangle. “Tell me, Lazarus, is it a coincidence? You, a man who prides himself on his logic, his strategy... tell me it’s a coincidence that she has Ines’s face. Tell me it’s a coincidence that she is also Esau, of that same cursed bloodline too.”

He pauses, letting the horror of it sink in, letting me see it through his eyes. The pattern. The perverse, repeating pattern.

“So, which is it?” he asks. “Do you and your brother just share a type? A biological predilection for the daughters of our enemies? Or have you both simply decided that the cardinal sins are a shopping list to be ticked off? Pride, greed… lust. The lust of the flesh and the lust of power, all tangled up in one forbidden, treacherous little body.”

My infuriation is complete. It’s a beast with claws, shredding my insides. It’s rage at him for saying it. It’s rage at myself because from the outside, stripped of the agonizing, soul-deep truth of it, he might be right. That’s the worst of it. He has taken the most profound, terrifying and beautiful thing I have ever felt, and he has held it up to the light, showing me only its warped, monstrous shadow.

But my rage is a luxury I can’t afford. I see, with a chilling clarity, the precipice I’m standing on. To defend her, to scream her name, to articulate the shape of her defiant soul, is to prove his point. So I swallow the hot, caustic bile of my anger and say nothing. I just stare at him, letting my silence be my shield.

He sees it; the shift in my posture, the strategic retreat. His smile widens, just a fraction. He thinks he’s won a point, and then he says the words that change everything.

“If you want my support, then you need to get rid of the girl.”

The air leaves the room. “Excuse me?” I manage. The words are nothing, just air shaped into a question. My mind is roaring.

“Don’t play the fool. It doesn’t suit you.” He leans back, beginning to make a slow, deliberate circle around me. A shark. “You think I don’t see it? Every meeting, every manipulated report, every carefully placed doubt you sow among the families. You’re building a scaffold, Lazarus. A scaffold for a coup. You’re going to take his power.”

He’s seen it. Of course he’s seen it.