83. Lazarus
Three Months Later
The scar across my throat pulls as I swallow.
It’s a small thing now, a faint, silver reminder carved into my skin like a signature.
Most days I forget it’s there until I speak, until the words come out rough, scraped, and not quite my own.
The voice that once commanded armies now rasps like stone dragged over stone.
Some of the Chapter Lords flinch when they hear it.
Others lean in closer, straining to catch every ruined syllable, and that’s its own kind of power.
The morning light spills through the east windows of the grand hall, catching the gold thread woven through my ceremonial robes. Antonio stands at my left shoulder, Gabriel at my right. Both of them are silent, watchful, the way they’ve been since the attack.
Antonio and I have yet to speak, have yet to discuss the incident with his wife, with Ezekiel, with how I came to be Grand Master and how he came to be the instrument by which I achieved it.
Oh I know that conversation is coming, I know both of us are going to have some choice things to say, but ultimately he can’t do anything now unless he chooses to destroy the entire Brethren, and we both know he won’t do that. No, he’s far too fucking loyal.
Beside me sits Leandra. These last three months have reshaped her. The bandages are gone, the bruises faded, and the broken girl who arrived at this villa with another woman’s face has been replaced by something else entirely. Something harder, something holy.
The burn covers the right side of her face is a map of pain that starts at her temple and cascades down her cheek, to her jawline.
The skin is smooth and tight, pulled into patterns that catch the light differently depending on how she turns her head.
Some angles make it look like lace. Others make it look like war paint.
And her eye. God, her eye.
The right one is gone, replaced by a pupil that burns white as communion wafers, pale as bone, haunting as a ghost in a photograph.
It sees nothing, the doctors told me. The nerve was too damaged, the tissue too destroyed.
But looking at it now, watching it catch the morning light like a star trapped in her skull, I’m not so sure.
Sometimes I think that eye sees more than the other one ever could.
Sometimes I think it sees straight through me, into whatever black and twisted thing passes for my soul.
She is more beautiful than she has ever been. More divine.
She still doesn’t understand what she is to me, she still doesn’t understand that every mark on her body is a benediction, every scar a prayer answered.
The crowd before us is vast. Every Chapter Lord who could travel has gathered in this hall, their retinues spreading out behind them like the tails of peacocks.
The Senate members sit in their elevated seats, their faces carefully neutral, their eyes calculating.
They remember the last ceremony, they remember my brother’s blood on the marble.
They fear me more now, and fear is useful, but it’s not enough.
Today is about something else.
Today is about endings.
I raise my free hand slowly, deliberately, and the murmuring crowd falls silent. The acoustics of this hall are perfect which is why I chose it. Even the softest sound carries, and my broken voice will reach every corner without effort.
“Three months ago,” I begin, and the rasp of my voice fills the space like smoke, “someone tried to kill me. Someone tried to kill my wife too. Someone thought that by ending us they could undo what we began.”
I let the silence stretch. Let them feel it.
“They failed.”
A murmur ripples through the crowd, but I’m not finished. I squeeze Leandra’s hand once, a silent signal, and she squeezes back. Her fingers are cool and steady against mine, her palm dry.
She’s not afraid, she’s never afraid anymore.
She has faced too many demons, fought too many devils to feel anything akin to fear again.
“The Esau thought they could infiltrate us. They thought they could plant their seeds in our soil, twist our faith to their purposes, corrupt our bloodlines with their heresy. For centuries they’ve been a splinter beneath our skin, too small to notice, too deep to remove.
But they grew. They festered like a wound that would not heal… ”
I feel Leandra’s pulse jump. She knows what she was, what her family were, what they tried to make of her. But she’s not that girl anymore. She hasn’t been for a long time.
“Their leader was a man called Ezekiel. He thought himself a prophet. He promised his followers that they would inherit the earth, that the Brethren would fall, that he would sit on our throne and remake the world in his image.”
I pause. I smile. It’s not a kind smile.
“Ezekiel is dead.”
At my nod, Antonio and Gabriel step forward.
Between them, held upright by careful hands and concealed wires, is a body.
We didn’t give him the honour of clothes, we stripped him of the robes he wore, so right now, he’s as naked as the day he was born.
His dick hangs limp and pathetic. His body is stained with three-month-old blood that’s dried to the colour of rust.
His face is perfectly preserved, embalmed by the finest morticians money can buy because we wanted him to last. We wanted the Chapter Lords to see him, to know him, to understand that this is what happens to those who challenge us, challenge me.
His eyes are open. They’re clouded and empty, but they’re open. I made sure of that too.
“Behold Ezekiel,” I announce, and my ruined voice somehow makes the words more terrible, more final. “False prophet of the Esau. Enemy of the Brethren. And now, nothing. Just dead meat on a wire. A warning.”
Antonio and Gabriel rotate the body slowly, letting every corner of the hall see the dead man’s face, letting them see his rancid body. The silence is absolute, so much so that I wonder if half the audience has stopped breathing.
“The Esau are finished,” I continue. “Their leadership is dead, their followers are dead. Their safe houses are ash. There are no more left to fight us. No more splinters, no more threats. The Brethren are whole again, truly whole, for the first time in five hundred years.”
I turn then, deliberately, and look at Leandra.
She’s standing perfectly still beside me, her burned face tilted slightly toward the light, her white eye gleaming.
She’s wearing a gown of deep crimson, the colour of cardinals and martyrs and the blood we spilled together.
Her braids are pulled back from her face, exposing every scar, every mark, every proof of what she survived.
She looks like a saint from an old painting, the ones where the martyr gazes heavenward while the arrows pierce her flesh.
She looks like victory.
“But Ezekiel is not the only one who must face justice,” I say, still looking at her. “We have his wives to deal with…”
I gesture toward the side entrance, and the doors swing open.
Four women are dragged onto the stage.
They’re dressed in white, bridal gowns, delicate lace and flowing silk, the kind of dresses young women dream of wearing on their wedding day. The contrast against their terrified faces is obscene.
Two of them are crying. One is screaming, the sound muffled by the hand one of my guards has clamped over her mouth. The fourth walks in a daze, her eyes glassy, her mind already retreating to somewhere safer than this hall.
I look at Leandra. She’s watching them with an expression I can’t quite read, somewhere between satisfaction and a deep dangerous hunger. The white gowns were her idea. She wanted the theatrics. She wanted everyone in this hall to know, with a single glance, exactly what these women were.
“These women,” I announce, turning back to the crowd, “are Ezekiel’s wives. Covenant Brides, warped theology, living manifestations of his sin. By the laws of the Brethren, their lives are forfeit.”
I pause. The silence is absolute.
“But my wife has asked for mercy.”
The crowd stirs. Clearly, this is not what they expected. They came here for blood, for spectacle, for the brutal justice that’s been our tradition since the Founders first forged us in secrecy and sacrifice. They came to watch traitors die.
Leandra steps forward.
It’s the first time she’s moved since the ceremony began, and every eye in the hall follows her. She walks to the edge of the stage, her crimson gown sweeping the marble, her burned face held high. She looks down at the four women huddled in their white dresses like doves in a slaughterhouse.
And she smiles.
“These women,” Leandra says, and her voice rings clear and cold, “are Covenant Brides. They were married before God, consecrated in Holy Union, or so they thought. Their husband may have been a heretic, but the bond of marriage is sacred. It would be bad luck to kill them.”
She pauses, letting the word luck hang in the air. The Senate members lean forward. The Chapter Lords exchange glances. They’re trying to figure out her game. They’re trying to understand what she’s really saying.
“Bad luck,” she repeats. “And we have had enough of that, don’t you think?”
Her fingers find mine again, squeezing gently. I can feel the triumph radiating off her like heat from a fire.
“These women will not be killed,” she announces. “They will be kept in a special chapel, a chapel I have already commissioned, a chapel that will be consecrated by the end of this month. They will remain there, secluded from the world, perpetual brides of Christ.”
Her smile widens.
“They will serve the Brethren. They will serve any Chapter Lord, any Senator, any Guardian who chooses to visit them. They will be available at all hours, for any purpose, without refusal. This is their penance, this is their redemption. This is how they will earn their lives.”