85. Lazarus
Three Years Later
The light in our new hall is different.
I designed it that way. The old villa faced west, it caught the dying sun, painted everything in shades of blood and mourning. I never noticed it when I was young, never noticed how the shadows gathered in the corners, how the walls seemed to lean inward as if listening.
But Leandra noticed.
She noticed everything, even before her eye was changed. And after, well. After, she saw more than any of us.
So we burned it. Every room where my brother plotted, every corridor where Ines walked, every stone that remembered what was done to us both there. The Guardians argued against it, too much history, too many relics, but I overruled them.
I would have burned the whole world if she asked.
The new palace rises from the cliffs like something grown rather than constructed. White marble veined with gold, columns that catch the morning sun and hold it prisoner until dusk, windows positioned so that every room floods with light at every hour of the day.
There are no shadows.
No corners where conspiracy can fester.
No darkness at all, except the darkness we carry within ourselves.
And this hall, this great hall, where we hold our feasts and our councils and our triumphs, this hall is my favourite.
The ceiling soars three storeys overhead, painted with scenes from the Brethren’s history.
Not the sanitised version we told the outer circle, but the truth.
The Templar Knights receiving their sacred charge.
The Founders breaking away from a church that had grown corrupt.
The blood rituals, the sacrifices, the centuries of secret rule.
All of it rendered in gold leaf and precious pigments, a testament to what we are and what we have always been.
At the far end of the hall, dominating the eastern wall, is a stained-glass window.
The image is familiar to everyone who sees it; a woman in crimson, her face divided between ruin and radiance, her hands outstretched in benediction.
Some of the Chapter Lords think it’s the Virgin Mary.
Others think it’s Mary Magdalene, the apostle to the apostles, the first witness to the resurrection.
I let them think what they want.
Only Leandra and I know the truth. The artist worked from the same sketches he used for the painting in our private chapel.
The face in the window is hers; scar, white eye and all.
She’s been immortalised in glass and lead, and every Easter morning the sun rises directly behind her, setting her ablaze with holy fire.
Today she sits beneath her own image, and I cannot stop looking at her.
Her gown is gold. Gold for Easter, gold for resurrection, gold for the child growing in her belly.
It falls in heavy folds around her body, draped like ancient statuary, and the burnished colour makes her dark skin glow.
The scar on her face catches the light differently than it used to, she’s learned to tilt her head just so, to let it shine rather than hide it.
Her white eye moves constantly, scanning the crowd, reading colours I can only imagine.
She’s cataloguing threats and loyalties, measuring the weight of every soul in this room.
She’s magnificent.
I rest my hand on the swell of her belly, feeling the warmth of her through the silk. Our child shifts beneath my palm, a flutter, a promise, and Leandra’s lips curve into the smallest smile.
“She’s restless,” she murmurs, low enough that only I can hear.
“She knows her father is impatient to meet her.”
“You’re always impatient.” She covers my hand with her own, her fingers cool and steady. “Patience, Grand Master. She’ll come when she’s ready.”
I lean closer, my ruined voice scraping against her ear. “You’re certain it’s a she?”
“I am.” Her white eye flicks toward me, and for a moment, I swear I can see something moving in its depths. Something ancient. Something knowing. “She burns like you do. All that ambition, all that hunger. She’s already plotting in there.”
A laugh scrapes its way out of my throat. It’s barely a sound anymore, more of a vibration, a rumble that only she can interpret, but she understands. She always understands.
Around us, the feast is in full swing. The tables stretch the length of the hall, laden with roasted meats and fresh bread, with wine from our own vineyards and fruits imported from every corner of the empire.
The Chapter Lords are in their places, arranged by precedence and power.
The newly loyal sit closest to the dais, eager to prove their devotion.
The old guard sit further back, their eyes still calculating, still measuring whether these years of peace will last.
They will. I’ll make sure of it.
My gaze travels to the table of honour, where the Guardians sit in their ancient seats. Six of them, protectors of the bloodlines and arbiters of our sacred law.
I don’t need their love.
I need their obedience, and I have it.
Antonio sits among them. Even now, he’s never asked me about what happened because asking would mean acknowledging what he did, and acknowledging would mean consequences neither of us wants to face.
So he stays silent, and I stay grateful.
We both pretend that the blood on his hands is righteous.
He’s brought his children today, a boy and a girl, both dark-eyed and serious, both watching the festivities with the wariness of children who’ve learned young that the world is full of knives.
The boy is the heir, already being groomed for his future role.
The girl is younger, softer, but there’s something in the set of her jaw that reminds me of her father.
She’ll be dangerous someday, if she’s allowed to grow.
His wife, Grace, is not with them. She’s at home, in their Scottish castle, far away from the heat and the politics and the memories. I don’t blame her. Some wounds don’t heal, especially not the kinds inflicted by her own spouse.
Antonio catches my eye across the hall and raises his glass. A toast. A benediction. I raise my own in return, and something passes between us; acknowledgment, perhaps, or a warning.
He knows enough to destroy me.
I know enough to destroy him.
We are balanced on a knife’s edge, and the only thing keeping us steady is the knowledge that if one of us falls, we both do.
I turn my attention to the other tables.
Paitlyn sits near the front, radiant in blue silk, her son balanced on her knee.
The child has his father’s dark hair and his mother’s stubborn chin, and he’s trying to grab everything within reach; silverware, napkins, the tablecloth itself.
Devin takes it all with the patience of a man who’s learned that some battles aren’t worth fighting.
How he survived that attack by my brother I don’t know. When I saw him at the mansion, he had enough blood around him to fill a reservoir. I believed he was dead. He looked dead, but clearly God had other plans.
Paitlyn laughs at something he says, her head thrown back, her throat exposed.
She has no idea who she is. No idea that the blood running through her veins is a legacy that could destabilise everything my family has built.
Her father took that secret to his grave, I ensured it.
I made a call to my old reliable, Chris Casey, got him to break into the Brethren archives after dark and destroy everything they had; every record, every mention of his background.
I know I could have had her killed. It would have been easier, cleaner, the kind of swift solution my father would have favoured.
But Paitlyn is no threat as long as she remains ignorant.
She’s happy with Devin, content in her role as a wife and mother, blissfully unaware of who she is.
Why create a martyr when you can have a loyal subject instead?
At the next table, Magnus Blake sits with his wife. I still haven’t decided what to do about them.
The woman is technically an infidel, an unworthy, someone who should never have been allowed to marry into our circles.
Konstantine’s ineptitude made it possible, he was so consumed with Ines, so distracted by his obsessions that he let all the rules slide.
By the time I took power, the marriage was done, the vows were spoken and undoing it would have caused more problems than it solved.
Besides, it feels like she’s earned herself a reprieve.
Perhaps it’s the quiet dignity with which she carries herself, the way she’s navigated our world without ever quite becoming part of it.
Perhaps it’s simply that she’s never given me a reason to act against her, and in our world, that’s rare enough to be valuable.
Magnus meets my gaze and nods. I nod back. The gesture is small, but it carries weight. He knows he owes me, he knows his wife exists solely at my pleasure. He knows that the stability of his family depends entirely on my continued goodwill.
Good. Let him know. Let all of them know.
Leandra shifts beside me, and I feel her hand tighten on mine.
“You’re brooding,” she says. “I can feel it. The colours around you are going dark.”
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s the same thing, with you.” She turns her head, fixing me with that impossible gaze, one blue eye, one white, both seeing more than they should. “Enjoy the feast. Enjoy the victory. You’ve earned it.”
“Have I?”
Her fingers trace the scar on my throat, the one that turned my voice to gravel and nearly ended my life. It’s a familiar gesture now, almost casual, but I feel it everywhere. I always do.
“You’ve earned everything,” she says. “Now stop worrying about the future and be present for once.”
I lift her hand to my lips and kiss her knuckles. The gesture is second nature now, I’ve done it a thousand times, but it still makes her blush.
“As my queen commands.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. The smile transforms her face, softens the scar, makes her look almost like the girl she used to be.
Almost, but not quite. That girl was broken and remade, cut apart and reassembled, trained to be a weapon and a sacrifice. This woman is something else entirely.
The feast continues. Course after course arrives and is consumed.
The wine flows freely, loosening tongues and softening tensions.
I watch the Chapter Lords as they eat, drink and pretend to be allies.
I catalogue every alliance, every rivalry, every potential crack in the facade of unity we’ve built.
The Brethren is stable now, more stable than it’s been in centuries.
The Esau are gone, truly gone, their name erased from our histories, their memory permitted only as a cautionary tale.
The Chapters are in line, their Lords loyal or replaced, their resources directed toward our shared goals.
We control the banks again, the governments, the institutions that shape the world.
From this hall, we direct the course of nations.
It’s everything my father wanted.
Everything my brother failed to achieve.
Everything I was born to do.
But as I sit here, my hand on my wife’s belly, feeling our child move beneath my palm, I realise that power means less than it used to. The thrones, the titles, the rituals and the reverence, they’re tools now, not ends.
The real victory is beside me.
The real legacy is yet to come.
I think of my father sometimes. The way he whispered on his deathbed that it should have been me.
He was right, but not in the way he meant.
He thought I should have been the heir, the chosen one, the Grand Master who inherited his power and his vision.
He couldn’t see that the inheritance itself was poisoned, that Konstantine was doomed the moment the blood touched his lips.
I was never meant to be the chosen one, I was meant to be the one who chose.
And I chose Leandra. I chose this child. I chose a future that belongs to us, not to the ghosts of the past.
The stained-glass window catches the last of the evening light, and my wife’s image blazes above her.
Saint Leandra, the martyr who survived. The woman who was forced to drink poison and vomited it up, who was marked by God and spared for a purpose.
The woman who stood beside me when everyone else would have run, who helped me end the Esau, unite the Brethren and build something new from the ashes of everything we burned.
I reach up and touch her face, the scarred side, the ruined side, the side that still makes some of the younger Chapter Lords flinch when she turns her head too quickly.
My thumb traces the ridge of burned skin, the tight smoothness of it, the way it catches the light like silver.
“Beautiful,” I rasp. “More beautiful than the day I found you.”
“You didn’t find me,” she says. “You dragged me out of hell and claimed me as yours. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
She considers this for a moment. “No. I suppose not.”
The feast winds down. The Chapter Lords begin to depart, some to their chambers in the palace, others to their own estates scattered across the globe.
The Guardians linger longer, their ancient duty keeping them watchful until the last guest has gone.
Antonio gathers his children and ushers them out, where they’ll sleep under guard until morning.
And then the hall is empty except for the servants clearing the tables, and the guards standing silent at the doors.
And Leandra. Always Leandra.
She turns in her throne, facing me fully. The white eye gleams. The blue eye searches my face. Her colours, those magnificent colours that only she can see must be doing something extraordinary, because her expression shifts from amusement to something deeper. Something raw.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” she says. “Every day, I’m glad you’re alive.”
I pull her closer, as close as her belly will allow. My ruined voice scrapes against her ear, like a prayer that only she can hear.
“I’m glad you’re alive too.”
Outside, the sun sinks below the horizon. The stained-glass window darkens, and my wife’s image fades into shadow. But she’s still here, warm and solid in my arms, carrying our future beneath her heart.
The Brethren is ours. The world is ours. And I am hers, until the day I die.
God help anyone who tries to change that.
The End