24. Lazarus
Blood. There’s so much blood.
I step into the room, and for a moment my mind simply refuses to process it; the sheer, glistening volume of it, smeared on the floor, the walls, the bedsheets, all of it. The air is thick with the stench of it, so dense I can taste it on my tongue, coating my throat like warm pennies.
I’ve smelled death before, metered it out more times than I can count but this, this is different. This isn’t the clean, purposeful death of a job. This is chaos.
The room is a slaughterhouse and I’m standing in the threshold, my feet sinking into the sticky pool of crimson that has already seeped across the floor, soaking through the soles of my boots, warm and obscenely intimate.
The walls are streaked with it, smeared in arcs and splatters, as if someone painted with their hands dipped in red, a frenzied, desperate art.
My eyes dart across the room, my pulse a dull roar in my ears, taking in the destruction.
The bed is overturned, the sheets torn and soaked, the mattress slashed open and its innards are spilling out like guts, pale and obscene.
The vanity mirror is shattered, shards of glass glittering like malevolent stars on top of the blood-soaked carpet, each one reflecting a tiny, fractured version of this nightmare.
And that’s when I see it; the hand.
It’s hers. Ines’s.
Her fingers are curled, frozen mid-grasp, her nails, painted a deep, glossy black are chipped and broken, some torn down to the quick.
Her usually dark skin is pale, almost grey, the warmth already leached away.
Her wrist is limp, dangling over my brother’s arm as he holds her pressed against him, a grotesque pietà.
Her throat is slit, no, not slit, - it’s like it’s been torn open.
A gaping chasm stretches from ear to ear, the edges ragged and raw, a second, silent mouth screaming.
Her head lolls to the side, her braids sticking to her neck, clotted with gore.
Her eyes are open. Those startling blue eyes, the ones I used to imagine dimming under my own hands are now glassy and vacant, staring at nothing. At everything.
Something hot and bitter rises in my chest, a tsunami of emotion I can’t hold back.
Hatred. Relief. Disappointment.
It all swirls inside me like the nastiest of cocktails, burning my throat, making my hands shake. God, how many years have I wanted, prayed, dreamed of her death? Every night in that cell, every scar she gifted me, I crafted her end in my mind; slow, intimate, a masterpiece of pain and suffering.
I wanted to be the one to do it.
To watch the life drain from those blue eyes, to feel her blood on my hands as I split her flesh open, to whisper in her ear that it was me as she fought for her last breaths.
But now… now she’s gone, and I have been robbed.
Robbed of my moment, of my revenge, of the one thing that kept me sane all that time in the dark.
Someone else took what was mine. Someone else got to watch her die, and the thought makes me want to burn the entire fucking world down.
I turn my gaze to Konstantine and the rage falters, replaced by something colder, more terrifying.
He’s sitting on the floor, his back against the bed, like he needs the very frame to keep him from collapsing into the abyss.
He’s rocking back and forth, his movements jerky, mechanical, his breath coming in shallow, wet gasps as he clings to her lifeless body.
His tattoos, the symbols of his power, his rank are smeared with her blood, like obscene hieroglyphs.
His eyes are wide and unseeing, fixed on some point beyond this room, beyond sanity.
His lips are moving silently, forming words I can’t hear no matter how desperately I try; prayers maybe, curses or just her name, over and over, like a broken record.
“Konstantine,” I growl, my voice a rasp.
He doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look at me.
He just keeps rocking, his hands clutching her tighter, as if he can will her back to life.
As if he has that power. As if love alone could stitch that chasm in her throat closed.
The sight of him, my invincible brother, the man who once held empires in his fist reduced to this mewling, catatonic thing… it should satisfy me.
Instead, it unsettles something deep in my bones.
This is what she did to him. This is how she broke him. And even in death, she’s still destroying him.
I step closer, leaving bloody footprints on the floor as I go, each one a deliberate mark. “Konstantine,” I say again, louder this time, tightening the grip on my sword while the urge to bury it in his spine practically overwhelms me.
Still nothing. I crouch down in front of him, my knees sinking into the blood-soaked carpet with a wet, sucking sound. I reach out, grabbing his shoulder with my other hand, shaking him.
“Konstantine!” My voice cracks, betraying a desperation I didn’t know I had.
He has to be present, he has to be here when I do it, when I kill him. Otherwise, what is the fucking point?
He flinches, his eyes snapping to mine, but there’s no recognition there. No awareness. Just emptiness, a vast, echoing void where my brother used to be. He’s gone. Broken.
I stand, my jaw clenched, my fists tight at my sides, nails biting into my palms. I look around the room again, my eyes scanning the chaos, searching for meaning in the madness.
That’s when I see it, the words scrawled on the wall above the headboard, written in that language I know so well, the language of our blood, of our enemies.
Mawtā l-mitdammā. Death to the pretender.
I tilt my head, staring at it. Oh, I know what it means, I know who wrote it.
The Esau. It’s part of their bullshit prophecy, their holy war against our family.
But why? Why her? She was meant to be one of them, or at least her family is.
A daughter of their covenant. Would they really murder one of their own with such…
fervour? Or was it Konstantine they came for, and she got in the way?
I glance back at my brother, still rocking, still clutching her, and a colder logic cuts through the heat.
No. They needed time to do this, time to cause such an injury, to smear her blood like war paint, to write that message on the walls. This wasn’t a failed assassination, this was planned, this was personal. This was justice metered out on a biblical scale, an eye for an eye, a throat for a throat.
I want to tear the room apart all over again,
I want to shake Konstantine until his teeth fucking rattle.
I want to find whoever did this and show them what true butchery looks like, but I can’t. Not yet. Because then I see what I’ve been missing, what my blinding, selfish fury has ignored. Footprints. A child’s footprints, smeared through the blood, small and frantic, leading away from the carnage.
“Where’s Ezra?” I demand, my voice cold, hard, a blade drawn from its sheath.
I haven’t seen the boy since he was born.
He must be four now. Four or five? The years in that cell have blurred into a single, endless night.
But the thought of him, small, dark-haired, with eyes that might be mine or might be Konstantine’s, cuts through the rage like a shard of ice.
Still, Konstantine doesn’t answer. He just keeps rocking away like he truly has lost it, like the world outside his arms has ceased to exist.
“Konstantine!” I shout, grabbing him by the shoulders, shaking him violently. Her head falls at an awful angle, exposing how close her neck was to being severed. “Where’s Ezra?!” My voice is a roar, raw and desperate, echoing off the blood-streaked walls.
Still nothing. Just that endless, rhythmic rocking, the whisper of his lips.
I let go of him, stepping back, my mind racing.
Ezra. My nephew. My… son? The thought makes my stomach twist, a knot of nausea and something terrifyingly close to hope.
If he’s mine… if he’s mine, then he’s in danger.
If the Esau did this, if they killed Ines with such ritualistic glee, then they could well have murdered him too.
Or taken him. Or worse. The possibilities spiral, each one darker than the last, and I realize with a jolt that I care.
I care whether that boy lives or dies, and that caring is a vulnerability I haven’t felt in years.
I move quickly, stepping over the overturned furniture, the shattered glass, the pools of blood that seem to be spreading, creeping outward like a living thing.
I check the closet first, throwing open the doors, my eyes scanning the darkness.
Nothing but shadows and the faint, cloying scent of her perfume.
I move to the bathroom, the door hanging off its hinges, the tiles cracked like every single one has been deliberately smashed by a hammer blow.
It’s empty. The silence here is different, heavier, expectant.
I move to the next room, my boots leaving bloody footprints on the pristine white carpet, a trail of accusation.
The nursery. Ezra’s room. The crib is overturned, the toys scattered like casualties, the walls smeared with blood, small handprints, a child’s height.
My heart pounds in my chest, a frantic, trapped bird as I see it.
Is it his? Is my son dead? The thought is a knife twisting in a place I’d long thought numb.
“Ezra!” I call, my voice echoing in the silence, cracking with a fear I can’t control. “Ezra, where are you?!”
A soft whimper, barely audible, comes from the corner of the room.
A tiny, wounded animal sound. I move quickly, yanking the furniture back with what little strength I have, my muscles screaming, still weak from captivity, pulling what feels like a mountain of wood away from the cupboard.
A broken dresser, a toppled bookshelf, all piled in a desperate barricade.
She hid him. She put him in here and hid him.
It’s the only thing that makes sense. Did she know what was coming?
Did she recognize death when it came calling, and in her final moments, did she think of her son?
My rage turns to something more complicated, something I don’t want to name, as I realize she at least tried to save him.
The woman I hated, the monster who kept me in chains, had this one flicker of humanity.
It doesn’t absolve her. It just makes the whole thing more unbearable.
I throw the broken pieces aside, tearing my fingers on bits of splintered wood, the pain a distant, irrelevant thing.
He’s hiding right at the back of the cupboard, his small body curled into a ball, knees drawn to his chest, arms wrapped around himself.
His face is pale, smudged with dust and a single streak of blood not his, I pray, not his.
His eyes are wide with fear, those big brown eyes that could be mine, could be Konstantine’s, staring up at me from the darkness.
Christ, he’s grown so much. He’s no longer a baby, not even a toddler.
How many years have I been trapped there?
How long has Ines kept me as she has, stealing time from me, stealing this boy’s childhood from my sight?
The thought fuels the rage again but I push it down, lock it away. Not now. Not in front of him.
“Ezra,” I say softly, crouching down in front of him, making myself as small as I can. “It’s me. It’s Uncle Laz. You’re safe now.” The words feel foreign on my tongue, a lie I desperately want to be true.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Just stares at me, with those big brown eyes filled with a terror so profound it seems to swallow the light. I don’t know if he even knew I existed. If he even realizes I’m not Konstantine, the man who held him, the father he knows.
I reach out, gently pulling him from the cupboard, lifting him into my arms. He’s trembling, his small body shaking uncontrollably, a fragile weight against my chest. I hold him close, my hand cradling the back of his head, my fingers tangling in his soft, dark hair.
He smells of dust, fear, and something faintly sweet; baby shampoo, a remnant of the life that was just obliterated.
“You’re safe,” I whisper, my voice low, soothing, a promise I have no right to make. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
I feel the lie in my throat, but I say it anyway, because what else is there? The world outside this room is still full of monsters. I know I am one of them, but for this moment, I am all he has.
I carry him out of the room, stepping over the destruction, the blood, the chaos.
I don’t let him look. I press his face into my shoulder, shielding him from the sight of his mother’s ruined body, his father’s shattered mind.
I glance back at Konstantine, still rocking, still clutching Ines’s lifeless body, a man who has become a monument to grief.
Perhaps I will still kill him. Put Ezra somewhere safe, somewhere he can’t witness it and then return here to see justice done. My lips curl at the thought and I hold Ezra tighter, feeling his small heartbeat against my own.