81. Lazarus
The doors to the chapel explode inward before I even register throwing my weight against them. The sound is deafening, a thunderclap that reverberates through my skull, but it’s nothing compared to the roar of blood in my ears.
Ancient oak splinters. Iron hinges scream.
The sound ricochets off stone walls that have witnessed centuries of secrets, of rituals, of blood spilled in the name of power.
The air is thick with the scent of decay and incense, a heady mix that makes my stomach churn.
My boots crunch over debris as I step inside, my body moving before my mind can catch up.
I don’t think, I don’t plan. I act. Because if I stop to think, if I let myself feel the weight of what’s happening, I’ll shatter.
The chapel is lit by torchlight, dozens of flames mounted in iron sconces that throw dancing shadows across vaulted ceilings.
The shadows twist and writhe, alive with malice.
As if the chapel itself is a living thing, watching, waiting.
The air is thick with incense, frankincense and myrrh, the same combination they use at funerals.
The same combination they used at my father’s ceremony when I drank his blood, ate his flesh and told myself it was duty stopping me from usurping my brother.
The memory claws at me, sharp and unrelenting, but I push it down. There’s no room for it here. Not now.
And there, in the centre of it all, I see her.
Leandra.
She is bound to a stone altar. Her arms are stretched above her head, her wrists lashed with leather cording that has already cut into her skin.
Her ankles are similarly bound, forcing her legs apart in a mockery of surrender.
She is naked, completely naked. It makes her look like a sacrifice from some ancient text.
Her dark hair spills across the grey stone like ink bleeding into parchment.
My breath catches in my throat. My chest tightens, a vice squeezing the air from my lungs. She’s so still, so pale, like a statue carved from marble. But then I see the rise and fall of her chest, the faint tremor in her hands, and the relief is a knife to my heart.
She’s alive. She’s alive, but she’s not safe. Not yet.
Five women surround her. Their faces are hidden behind veils of white gauze, their bodies draped in white dresses, and they are chanting.
No, not chanting, singing. A low, melodic hymn that curls through the incense smoke like something alive.
The sound is wrong, unnatural, a discordant harmony that sets my teeth on edge.
It’s a song of death, of sacrifice, and it’s meant for her.
And standing above her, at the head of the altar, is Ezekiel.
He has not changed since I last saw him.
The same sharp features, the same hollow cheeks, the same eyes that burn with the certainty of a man who believes God speaks directly into his ear.
He is wearing ceremonial robes now, gold thread so fine that it catches the torchlight as if he were actual divinity.
In his hands he holds nothing yet, but I see the anticipation in the way his fingers curl and uncurl.
Something cold settles in my chest. Something that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the kind of rage that makes men do terrible, irreversible things.
It’s a fire, white-hot and consuming, and it threatens to burn me alive from the inside out.
I want to tear him apart, I want to make him suffer.
I want to make him pay for every second she’s spent in his clutches, for every mark on her skin, for every ounce of fear in her eyes.
“Ezekiel.”
My voice comes out as a snarl. It doesn’t sound human, it doesn’t feel human.
It feels like something dragged up from the depths of me, from the place where I keep all the things I’ve done and all the things that have been done to me.
It’s raw, guttural, a sound that belongs to a beast, not a man.
But I don’t care. I’m not a man right now.
I’m a weapon, honed and sharpened, and I’m ready to cut him down.
Ezekiel turns. Slowly. Deliberately. As if he has all the time in the world, as if I am merely an interruption to his evening’s entertainment rather than the Grand Master of the Brethren standing before him.
His lips curve into a smile.
“Lazarus,” he says, and the way he speaks my name makes my skin crawl. There is ownership in it. Possession. As if he has been waiting for this moment, counting on it, planning for it. “How good of you to join us. We were just getting started.”
“Let my wife go.”
The words are steel. They are a promise, a threat, and a prayer all at once.
They’re the only thing keeping me grounded, the only thing keeping me from lunging at him and tearing him apart with my bare hands.
Because if I do that, if I lose control, I might lose her. And I can’t lose her. Not again.
Ezekiel laughs. It is not a pleasant sound. It is the sound of a man who has spent too many years believing his own mythology, who has surrounded himself with followers who have never once told him no, who has mistaken obsession for faith and cruelty for divine purpose.
“Your wife?” He tilts his head, feigning confusion. “But Lazarus, Leandra was my bride first. Long before you ever laid eyes on her. Long before you ever…” his smile sharpens into something filthy “…fucked her.”
I see Leandra flinch against her bindings. Her eyes find mine across the chapel, and even in the flickering torchlight I can see the terror in them, but there is something else there too. Something fierce. Something that refuses to break.
My chest tightens.
“Your bride,” I repeat, and the words taste like ash. “Is that what you call it? Taking a woman barely older than a child?”
Ezekiel’s expression flickers, just for a moment. Just long enough for me to see the crack in his composure before it smooths over again.
“I called her to a higher purpose,” he says. “I gave her meaning. I gave her destiny, and then you…” his voice hardens “…you and your brother took everything. You filled her head with lies. You made her forget what she was made for.”
“She was never made for you.”
“She was made by me.” He says it with such conviction, such absolute certainty that for a moment I am struck silent. Not by the words themselves, but by the madness behind them.
This is not a man who can be reasoned with, this is not a man who can be negotiated with, bargained with or bought.
This is a man who has built his entire identity around a delusion, and I am standing right in the middle of it.
“She was given to me by her father,” Ezekiel continues, pacing slowly around the altar.
One of his hands reaches out to trail across Leandra’s bare shoulder.
She jerks away from his touch, and I see the muscle in his jaw tighten.
“Given freely. A gift. A tithe. And I shaped her, I moulded her, I made her into something worthy.”
“She was always worthy. It is you who is not. You who are tainted, everything you touch, you befoul. You might have broken her, but I made her whole again.”
Ezekiel’s hand freezes mid-reach. His head turns toward me, and the smile is gone now. In its place is something colder. Something that has been waiting beneath the surface all along.
“I forget,” he says quietly, “that you are second born. You do not know the prophecies, do understand them. You do not understand what is coming, what has always been coming.”
“I understand that you’re a fanatic who has been trying and failing to destroy my family for generations.”
“Your family.” He laughs, and this time there is genuine amusement in it.
“Your family is a branch. A splinter. The Brethren lost their way centuries ago, and your bloodline has done nothing but accelerate the decline. Your father was weak. Your brother was a madman. And you…” he tilts his head, studying me, “…you are an abomination. A twin who was never meant to rule. A shadow who stepped into the light only because the original burned out.”
I lunge.
I don’t think about it, I don’t plan it. One moment I am standing in the doorway and the next I am moving, my body acting on instinct, every muscle coiled with the need to get my hands around his throat and squeeze until there is nothing left but silence.
I don’t make it.
Two men in dark robes emerge from the shadows on either side of the chapel. They grab me before I’ve taken three steps, their hands clamping down on my arms, their weight throwing me off balance. I twist, trying to throw them off, but they are strong. Trained. They’ve been waiting for this.
“Ah, ah, ah.” Ezekiel wags a finger at me like I’m a disobedient child. “Not yet. You’ve arrived just in time to witness the ritual. It would be a shame for you to miss all the fun.”
I strain against the hands holding me. “What ritual?”
Ezekiel’s grin returns. It spreads across his face like a wound opening.
“A blood sacrifice.”
He reaches into his robes and pulls out a knife.
It is long and curved, the blade arching like a crescent moon.
The hilt is ancient, wrapped in leather that has darkened with age.
Even in the torchlight I can see the symbols etched into the steel, symbols I recognize from the oldest texts in the Brethren’s archives, texts that predate the Templars.
Texts that speak of things so fantastical they have to be madness.
“This,” Ezekiel says, holding the knife up so the blade catches the light, “is the very blade that killed Saladin. Do you know the story, Lazarus? Do you know how the great sultan fell? It was not in battle. It was not from old age or disease as they say. It was at the hands of men who understood that power requires sacrifice, that blood is the only currency that matters.”
I know the story.