41. Leandra
The world is a black, muffled thing, bandages tight over my eyes, a thick fog in my head.
There is vibration beneath me, a low hum that rattles my bones, and the smell of leather and something sharp, chemical.
A car. I am in a car.
Panic claws up my throat. I try to move my arms but they are heavy, uncoordinated. Drugged. The word slithers through the murk of my mind. He drugged me. Konstantine.
Where is he taking me? What new horror waits?
I try to speak, but my tongue is useless. A small, pathetic sound escapes me, and I hate it. I hate how weak I am now, how weak he made me.
The vibration changes, the hum dipping lower as the car slows. Gravel crunches under tyres. Then the motion stops entirely, and I am left in silence save for the frantic beating of my heart.
A door opens. Cold air rushes in, sharp with the scent of pine and damp earth. Not a city, then. Somewhere remote. Somewhere no one will hear me scream.
Hands slide under my body, one beneath my knees, one behind my back, and I am lifted as though I weigh nothing. I flinch, a violent full-body spasm, and a low sound rumbles from the chest of the person carrying me. Not words. Just a soothing vibration, like you might offer a frightened animal.
It does not soothe me.
Nothing can soothe me.
The air changes. We are inside now. The cold gives way to warmth, the pine scent to something older; woodsmoke, beeswax, stone.
I know those smells, I recognise them. They smell like home, my childhood home.
Memories stir, unwanted and unbidden, and I think of my mother.
I think of how they caught her, how she too was brought to the Grand Master.
Is she dead? Did they kill her? No one has even spoken of her since the day we arrived.
My feet do not touch the ground. I am carried like a bride over a threshold, and the thought makes bile rise in my throat. I have been a bride before, in a nightmare. I will not be one again.
I am lowered onto something soft. A chair, upholstered, the fabric nubby under my trembling fingers.
The hands that held me withdraw, and I hear footsteps, the rustle of clothing, the soft click of a door closing but I am not alone.
I can feel him there, a presence in the room like a drop in pressure before a storm.
“Easy now.” Someone says, “I’m going to take the bandages off. Stay still.”
I do not trust myself to speak. I nod, a jerky motion, and then there are fingers at my temple, working gently at the edge of the gauze.
The bandages loosen, layer by layer, and I feel the air touch my eyelids for the first time in what feels like days.
I keep them squeezed shut, afraid. Afraid of the dark, afraid of the light.
Afraid that when I open them, there will be nothing at all.
That I will be just as blind as I fear I am.
“Try to open your eyes,” the voice says. “Slowly.”
I do, and it is agony. Light sears through me, a blade of white fire, and I wince, tears springing instantly to the surface.
I blink again and again, my vision swimming in a blur of shapes and shadows.
For one horrible moment everything is a smear, and I think he blinded me, he really blinded me, but then the world begins to resolve.
Edges sharpen. colours bleed into being.
I am in a room I do not know. Whitewashed walls, heavy drapes, a fire crackling in a hearth. It looks like something from another century, all dark wood and flickering shadows. And there, in front of me, is a face I know.
Konstantine.
The scream tears out of me before I can stop it.
I jerk back, the chair scraping against the floor, my body trying to fold in on itself, to disappear.
My hands fly up to protect my face, my throat, the soft vulnerable places he has already violated far too many times. I am shaking so hard my teeth chatter.
He grabs my hand.
His grip is firm but not cruel, his fingers wrapping around my wrist and holding me still. I wait for the pain, the twist, the punishment for my defiance. It does not come.
“I am not him.”
I stare at him, my breath coming in ragged gasps, and I do not understand.
His face is Konstantine’s face; the same sharp cheekbones, the same cruel mouth, the same dark hair swept back from a high forehead.
But his colours are wrong, I see that now.
Konstantine’s colours are yellow, a sickly, jaundiced yellow shot through with veins of black, like a bruise that will not heal.
But right now, they are deep, swirling hues of indigo, violet and something that glints like gold; mesmerizing, terrible and beautiful all at once.
“There’s, there’s two of you,” I whisper. The words feel too small for the enormity of the realization crashing over me. Oh god, there’s two of them.
He nods. A single, slow inclination of his head. No smirk. No gloating. Just confirmation.
The world tilts, and everything I thought I knew rearranges itself into a new and horrifying shape.
The shifts in mood, the unpredictability, the way he could be cruel one moment and almost tender the next, it was never one man fracturing into pieces.
It was two men, two brothers wearing the same identical face.
And I was passed between them like a toy, never knowing, never understanding.
Rage detonates inside me. White-hot and blinding, it burns through the fear, the exhaustion, the drugs still fogging my blood.
I lash out, my free hand swinging toward his face with every ounce of strength I have left.
My palm connects with his cheek, a sharp crack that echoes through the room.
His head turns with the blow, but he does not stumble. He does not strike back.
I try to hit him again. This time he catches my wrist, his fingers closing around it with an unbreakable gentleness that makes me want to scream.
“Where am I?” I demand. My voice is raw, shredded, but I do not care. I will not be quiet. I will not be meek.
“You are safe,” he replies.
Safe? As if such a thing could ever exist for me again. I screw up my face, feeling the lie in my bones but I look at his colours, those deep, swirling, impossible colours, and I see no deceit. No yellow rot. No black veins. He believes what he is saying. He believes it.
“Safe where?” I spit.
“Where he cannot find you.”
I search his face for the trick, the trap. There must be one. There is always one. But his colours remain steady, true, and I do not know what to do with that. I do not know how to exist in a world where a monster tells the truth.
“Why am I here?” My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate myself for it. I hate the weakness, hate the tears that are still leaking from my sore, burning eyes.
He tilts his head, studying me. “Because if I left you there any longer, he would break you in a way that cannot be fixed.”
A laugh tears out of me, jagged and ugly. “Who says he hasn’t already?”
He smiles, and it is not a soft smile. It is the smile of a predator, a wolf recognizing another wolf. It should terrify me. It does terrify me but there is something else in it, too, something that looks almost like respect.
“Because you’re still fighting,” he says.
I stare at him, my chest heaving, my wrists still caught in his gentle, unyielding grip.
I want to argue, I want to tell him that fighting means nothing, that I am hollowed out and scraped clean, that the girl who fought is dead and buried.
But the words will not come. Because some small, stubborn part of me is still here.
Still snarling. Still refusing to lie down and simply die.
He releases my wrists and steps back. I snatch my hands to my chest, cradling them against myself. He turns toward the door, and I see another figure waiting in the shadows. An older man with kind eyes and steady hands, a leather bag clutched to his chest.
“This is Nathaniel,” the not-Konstantine says. “He is a doctor, he will take care of you. Take away your pain.”
I do not bother to deny it. Every part of me hurts. The bruises on my body, the raw ache between my thighs, the burning in my eyes. It is a symphony of suffering, and I am so tired. So impossibly tired.
Nathaniel approaches slowly, the way you might approach a wounded animal. “I have something for the pain,” he says, his voice gentle. “And I need to check your eyes. May I?”
May I. As if I have a choice. As if anyone has ever asked my permission for anything.
But I nod, because what else can I do? I am too exhausted to fight, too broken to run.
I let Nathaniel tilt my chin toward the firelight, let him peer into my eyes with a small light that makes me wince.
I let him press a cup of water into my hands and swallow the bitter powder he gives me.
I let him tend to me, because I have no other option.
The not-Konstantine watches from the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, his colours swirling slow and dark. I feel his gaze like a physical weight, and I do not know if it is a threat or a promise. Maybe both.
“What’s your name?” I half ask, half demand.
“Lazarus.” He replies as if he’s granting me some great gift by letting me know it.
I don’t know what to say back so instead I just do nothing, letting the doctor continue to examine me without complaint.
“You will remain here,” he says when Nathaniel is done. “Where my brother cannot find you.”
I look up at him, my eyelids heavy now, the pain beginning to recede into a dull, distant throb. “You are so certain of that?” I ask, not caring if I make him angry because I have nothing left to lose.
“I am,” he replies. There is no hesitation, no doubt. Just absolute, unshakable certainty. “I will keep you safe, and when the time comes…” He pauses, and his colours flare bright, a sudden burst of gold and violet that steals my breath. “I will make you queen of everything.”
The word hits me like a physical blow. “What?”
I must have misheard. I must be hallucinating, the drugs and the trauma twisting his words into something impossible. But his face is serious, his eyes burning with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
He crosses the room in three long strides and cups my cheek. His palm is warm, rough with calluses, and the touch sends a shockwave through my entire body. I feel it everywhere; in my chest, in my stomach, in the place between my thighs that still aches with the memory of violation.
My body reacts before my mind can stop it; a flush of heat, a quickening of my pulse. I tell myself it is fear, I tell myself it is the lingering effects of the drug. But I know, deep down, that it is something else. Something darker, something I do not want to name.
His colours shift as he touches me. The indigo deepens, the gold brightens, and I see something in them that makes my breath catch. He feels it too. Whatever this terrible, electric thing is between us, he feels it.
I should pull away.
I should bite his hand, spit in his face, tell him I would rather die than be his fucking queen. But I do none of those things. I just sit there, frozen, my cheek burning under his touch, my body betraying me in every possible way.
“Rest now,” he says, his voice softer than before. “I will be back soon.”
He withdraws his hand, and the absence of his touch is almost worse than the touch itself. I feel cold. Bereft. And I hate myself for it. I hate him for making me feel it.
He turns and walks to the door, Nathaniel following silently in his wake. The door opens, and for a moment the firelight catches his profile; sharp, beautiful and utterly terrifying. Then the door closes, and I am alone.
I sit in the chair, my hands gripping the armrests, my body trembling with exhaustion, confusion and a dark, unwanted longing. The fire crackles. The shadows dance. And somewhere in the depths of this strange, ancient house, I hear the echo of his footsteps fading into silence.
I am not safe. I know that. No matter what his colours say, no matter what promises he makes, I am not safe.
But as I close my eyes and let the pain medication pull me down into a heavy, dreamless sleep I cannot stop thinking about his colours. The way they swirled, the way they burned. The way they told me, without words that he meant every single thing he said.
Queen of everything.
The words follow me into the dark.