74. Leandra
He says he will protect me. He says he will keep me safe.
They’re such pretty words, but how do I know he actually will? And how do I know that this isn’t some trick, some awful repeat of last time, that I’m once more in love with a monster and ignoring all the screaming red flags that are dangling before me?
I spend the next few days watching him, observing him, trying to figure out if he is really just another monster or if he is my monster, my saviour.
He clearly notices, because on the third day he is gone, he has vanished. Zayn tells me he will be back, that he has gone on urgent business. He informs me that he is here to help me study, to help me learn my new place and ensure I perform exactly as the wife of the Grand Master is expected to.
When I look at him, it’s hard not to blush. He saw me naked, he hurt me, but he also made me come on his tongue. How on earth am I meant to look him in the eye after that?
Only, he doesn’t seem bothered. He just sits there, at Lazarus’s desk with a pile of papers, calmly reading out loud pieces of scripture that I apparently have to learn by heart.
The words Zayn reads aloud blur together, a monotonous drone that makes my eyelids heavy.
My fingers trace the edge of the parchment on the desk, the texture rough beneath my skin.
The room feels stifling, the air thick with the scent of ink and old paper.
Zayn’s voice is steady, unwavering as he recites the scripture I’m supposed to memorize.
“The wife of the Grand Master shall be a beacon of virtue, a pillar of strength, and a vessel of…”
I tune him out, my mind wandering to Lazarus. Where is he? What urgent business could possibly pull him away so abruptly? Zayn insists he’ll return, but the uncertainty gnaws at me. Is this another test? Another game?
Zayn pauses, his sharp gaze cutting through my thoughts. “Leandra, are you listening?”
I blink, forcing a polite smile. “Of course.”
He arches an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced, but he continues anyway. I try to focus, but my mind keeps drifting. The memory of Lazarus’s touch lingers, a phantom sensation that sends a shiver down my spine. His hands, his mouth, the way he made me feel, both terrified and exhilarated.
And then there’s Zayn. Sitting there, so composed, so unaffected. As if he hadn’t seen me at my most vulnerable, hadn’t been the one to…I shake my head, pushing the thought away. My cheeks burn, and I focus on the parchment, pretending to study the words.
Hours pass, or maybe it’s only minutes. Time stretches and contracts in this room, and the walls feel like they’re closing in around me. Just as I’m about to lose my mind, the door creaks open.
I look up, and there he is. Lazarus.
He leans against the doorframe, his presence already commanding the room. His dark eyes meet mine, and a smirk tugs at the corner of his lips. My heart skips a beat, and I quickly look away, pretending to focus on the parchment.
Zayn sighs, clearly annoyed. “We still have hours of study left.”
Lazarus waves a hand dismissively. “Such things can wait.”
Zayn huffs, folding his arms across his chest. “You’re disrupting her progress.”
“Progress,” Lazarus repeats, his tone mocking. He steps into the room, his gaze never leaving me. “Leandra, come here.”
My stomach twists in a mix of anticipation and apprehension. I glance at Zayn who looks thoroughly pissed off, but I stand anyway. My legs feel unsteady as I walk toward Lazarus, my pulse quickening with each step. When I reach him, he takes my hand, his grip firm but not painful.
“What is it?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
He smirks again, his eyes gleaming with what I’ve come to realise is mischief. “Patience is a virtue.”
I frown, but he doesn’t elaborate. Instead he leads me out of the room, his hand still holding mine while Zayn’s protests fade into the background as we walk down the hallway.
“Close your eyes,” Lazarus says, stopping before a heavy oak door I’ve never noticed before. The villa is full of doors, it’s a labyrinth dressed in marble and silk, and I am still learning its secrets.
I close my eyes.
His hand finds the small of my back. Warm. Grounding. “I told you I would give you vengeance.”
My heart stutters. “Yes.”
“I told you I would make them pay for what they did to you.”
“Yes.”
The door swings open. The smell hits me first; sweat, fear, and the copper-tang of old blood. My stomach clenches.
“Open your eyes.”
I do.
And the world stops.
They hang from the ceiling like slaughtered lambs in an abattoir. Chains looped around wrists rubbed raw and bleeding, bodies suspended just high enough that their toes scrape the stone floor. The position stretches their shoulders at angles that will ache for days, if they have days left.
My father.
And Astrid.
My father’s head lolls forward, chin against his chest, grey-streaked hair plastered to his forehead with dried sweat.
He’s thinner than I remember. Smaller. The man who filled every doorway of my childhood, whose voice shook the very rafters of our house, whose hands, God, his hands, shaped every nightmare I’ve ever had.
He looks like nothing now.
Astrid hangs beside him, her face twisted in defiance, her dark hair matted with sweat and grime.
She’s thinner than I remember too, but her eyes burn with the same venom they always did.
The same venom she had when she stood beside our father, urging him to sell me to Ezekiel.
The same venom she had when she watched Cass be taken away too.
I cannot move.
I cannot breathe.
Lazarus’s hand remains on my back with a steady, reassuring pressure.
“They were found in Istanbul.” he says, his voice low and intimate, meant only for me.
“They’ve had a somewhat difficult journey over here…
” His words remind me of my own journey.
How my poor mother and I were bound, gagged, and transported like livestock to the slaughter.
God, I hope he experienced the exact same treatment.
My father lifts his head.
His eyes find mine, and he sneers.
“Leandra.” My name in his mouth is a curse, a dismissal. The same way he’s always said it, like I’m nothing. Like I’m worthless and always have been. “I should have known you’d spread your legs for whoever would…”
Lazarus moves.
One moment he’s beside me. The next he’s standing before my father, and there’s a sound like a branch snapping, and my father’s head whips to the side with the force of the blow.
Blood sprays from his split lip, arcing across the stone floor in a pattern that my synaesthesia paints in such pretty crimson streaks.
“You will address your daughter with respect,” Lazarus says, and his voice hasn’t changed at all. Still calm, still measured, still that same deep timbre that whispers love against my skin in the dark. “Or I will remove your tongue before we begin.”
My father works his jaw, spitting more blood onto the floor and then he really looks at Lazarus; at the tattoos that cover his skin, the symbols of the Grand Master that I’ve traced with my fingers a hundred times already now.
His face changes.
The sneer crumbles, the arrogance flickers. Something that might be genuine fear, the kind I never thought I’d see in my father’s eyes, creeps in at the edges.
“Grand Master,” he breathes. “I, I didn’t…”
“You didn’t know.” Lazarus steps back, and I can see his colours shifting now, the blue darkening to something almost black, shot through with lightning-flashes of silver rage.
“You didn’t know that the daughter you sold to the Ezekiel, the daughter you gave to be carved up and remade now sits at the right hand of the Brethren itself. ”
My father’s gaze swings back to me. I watch him reassess, watch him register the fine silk dress I wear; the jewels at my throat, the way Lazarus’s hand returns to my back with such possessive familiarity.
“How?” The word comes out strangled. “How did this happen? You were a Covenant Bride. How did you go from that to-to-to, the wife of the Grand Master himself?”
God it’s good to hear him stammer, to hear him for once show a little fear. I open my mouth to answer, but Lazarus speaks first.
“By the grace of God.”
He steps between us, blocking my father’s view of me, and I am so desperately grateful because my legs are shaking.
All these colours are screaming, and I can feel the ghost of unwanted hands on my body, the phantom pain of being forced to do things, forced to comply with situations I wanted no part of.
My father bows his head. I’ve seen him do this before, to Chapter Lords, to Guardians, to anyone with more power than him. The gesture is smooth, practiced, and yet utterly hollow all the same.
“Grand Master, I am loyal to the Brethren. I have always been loyal. Whatever my daughter has told you…”
Lazarus laughs. It’s not a pleasant sound, it’s the sound of a man who has seen the worst the world has to offer and found it wanting. It’s the sound of a man who has been betrayed by everyone he ever loved and survived anyway. It’s a sound that matches to the beat of my soul.
“Loyal?” He circles my father slowly, and I watch the way my father’s body tenses, the way the chains rattle with his trembling. “You are no such thing. You are a traitor to the Brethren, a traitor to your blood, a traitor to God himself.”
“I have never…”
“You sold your daughter.” Lazarus’s voice drops to something barely above a whisper, and somehow that’s worse than if he’d screamed.
“You treated her like a whore to bargain with. You gave her to men who cut her soul open and tried turn her flesh into a hell of their own purposes. You drowned her in sin and called it righteousness.”
My father’s mouth opens and closes. No sound comes out.
“But today,” Lazarus says, reaching into his jacket, “today you will meet your justice.”