the mourning of the lamb. // mayor nekane izar, post 96th.

She’d always known this was how things had to be –

– Ines Izar and Madame Death, synonymous. A girl of nothing gifted a greater purpose for her life, rewarded with a name and a home in exchange for her heart.

She’ll tell herself the deal was fair –

– just to keep from having to know the definition of a guilty conscience. Maybe that was why she kept her shielded from the world; she knew the alibi was paper-thin, that even a fool could see through to the other side of her cruelty.

She’ll tell herself she had prepared –

– that she would keep her distance, a carefully calculated three feet separating them at all times. Rooms on opposite ends of the house so that even when unconscious, the invisible string wouldn’t slacken. Every sentence shared over the last ten years had to be laced with a detached coldness, ensuring neither of them would ever know a mother-daughter bond. It’s better this way, that’s what she told herself.

Truthfully, she didn’t expect her to make it out of the Bloodbath.

Or Day Two.

Or Day Three.

Days, on and on and on, against all odds, but maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, Izars are the ones who die. And Ines? Well, she was never really one of them anyway. Try as she might to follow in the footsteps of ancestors passed and mount the crown of a killer, not even Iago’s blessing would welcome her home.

Day Four, Day Five, you might forgive her for entertaining the idea that she might make it home. Never had there been a reason to consider the fact that both Ines and Yani could survive, living long and happy lives together. Perhaps that’s where the first traces of remorse started to seep through the cracks.

Day Six, call her a murderer in the shadow of a Career dragging her through a frozen wasteland, until the inevitable separation of Day Seven. The least surprising revelation of all: Ines was never going to make it on her own.

A crueller twist of fate still: Ines was always going to die alone.

She’d always known Ines would die. After all, that was how things had to be, for the greater good, el bien mayor.

But Yani-Marie hasn’t been seen in months. And maybe it’s the collapse of her parents’ marriage that’s kept her house-bound into her well-deserved adulthood, but it’s impossible to shake the creeping feeling that she knows of a deep, dark agreement made between a girl of ten years old and a woman determined to never see another drop of Izar bloodshed.

She wasn’t supposed to care. An Izar through and through, self-preservation at the heart of her existence with a mission to keep the bloodline strong. But there’s been no payoff for the sacrifice that saw her surrender her own daughter as a lamb for slaughter. The only thing she has to show for any of it are bouquets of rotting flowers on her porch –

sympathetic looks from neighbours and citizens alike who will never know the depths of her own evil –

a house so silent she can’t even stand the deafening sound of her breathing anymore, to the point she sometimes wishes…

No.

She’s come too far. She’s worked too hard. And like any good Mayor, she knows how to adapt and overcome. Push down the evidence of her own humanity, el bien mayor, el bien mayor.

There are layers to the plans she’s set in motion.

They say the first call is always the hardest. And it’s true: asking for help isn’t second nature to her. But Vasco has never felt like a stranger; talking to him has never felt like losing herself. Time and time again, he’s been the one to understand her when she couldn’t even understand herself. It’s no surprise he’s the one she calls when she feels the first twinge of guilt, laced with undercurrents of grief – feelings she hasn’t felt since she watched Benat die on a television screen all of thirty years ago. And isn’t that where it all started?

Or maybe it was a girl called Uxue who sealed their fate on the turn of the century. Ninety years too long to not have adapted, to not have learned how to fight back.

The phone line rings something sinister.

“Something needs to change.”

She would smile, if only she remembered how.