Chapter 12 #2
“There’s something you should understand about our situation, Nadi.” His breath was warm against her face, smelling of rich wine and something metallic. Blood. “I don’t share my true plans with anyone. Not even you.”
“Especially not me, you mean.” She refused to flinch, to look away. “You’re still keeping secrets. And you have the balls to challenge me on mine?”
His grip tightened fractionally. “Mine aren’t going to get us killed. Shall we discuss your meetings with my siblings? Or perhaps how Mael has been contacting you privately? Or maybe we should talk about Lana’s offer to you?”
Ice flooded her veins. He knew. Of course he knew.
“You’ve been watching me.”
“I’ve been watching everyone,” he corrected, releasing her throat but not stepping back. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? I’ve been playing this game since before you were born.”
“This isn’t a game to me.” Her anger was making her reckless. She had to be careful. “This is my life. My revenge.”
“Your revenge?” His laugh was soft and cutting.
“Oh, my sweet, naive little fae. You think killing me or my family will fill that emptiness inside you? That it might bring you some kind of peace?” He placed a hand over her heart, the gesture somehow more intimate than his grip on her throat had been. “Nothing will. Trust me, I know.”
She slapped his hand away. “Don’t pretend to understand what I feel.”
“But I do understand.” His voice dropped, became almost gentle. “Why do you think I hate them so much? My own family? You think it’s just ambition that drives me?”
Nadi said nothing, waiting.
“I told you how my mother chained me in the fountain when I was eighty.” Raziel grimaced. “I lied. I was eight.”
She stared at him, eyes flicking between his in disbelief.
“And it wasn’t just once. Every time she held a soiree I was taken back. For a week prior and a week after. Raziel the mad dog couldn’t be trusted to speak. Might do something untoward or gauche.” He bared his teeth, his fangs extended.
“And… what would Mael and Lana do?”
“Lana would laugh and feed the pet fish my mother kept in the fountain. Mael would frown and claim he disapproved. But he never did anything to stop it.” He turned away from her, his shoulders rigid.
The moonlight cast his shadow long across the garden path, a darkness stretching toward the deeper shadows beyond.
“You can breathe underwater. You do not know what it’s like to drown,” he continued, voice so low she had to strain to hear it.
“Each time, I’d feel my lungs fill with water.
I’d feel the burning, the panic. It would never stop.
Eventually, the agony of it would blend with some part of my mind that sought shelter from the pain.
I am a madman, Nadi—make no mistake. But I cannot say if I was this way before… or only after. I do not remember.”
Nadi found herself stepping closer to him, drawn by something she couldn’t name.
“The worst part wasn’t the drowning.” His voice was hollow now.
“It was when they would drag me from the water. It was being pulled from whatever place in my mind I had retreated to. The world I had made that was safe. And far away from them. But when air filled my lungs, my mother was there. Mael was there. Lana was there. And I knew it wasn’t over.
That until they were dead, it would never be over. ”
She placed a hand on his back. She didn’t even know what she was trying to do. She had no words.
“Why haven’t you killed me yet, Nadi?” There was a pain in his voice, an ache that was raw. Exposed. A bleeding wound. “Can you say the words to me?”
“I…” The words caught in her throat. “No. I can’t.” She felt the words turn into poison. “Tell me something. When you killed my family, were you just following orders? Did you have a choice?”
Raziel lowered his head, his eyes shutting. His expression was unreadable. “I barely remember them, Nadi.” He didn’t try to soften it. She was grateful for that. “They were nothing special to me. Just another day. Just another assignment.”
“My father’s name was Talien Iltani. My mother was a human, Essira. My brother, Kaen. My two sisters were Meri and Lissa.” She had to say their names. She had to make sure he knew them. Because there were good odds that one or both of them didn’t survive tonight.
He nodded. “The warehouse beneath the overpass in the seventh district. I remember why, I don’t remember their faces.
Your father was helping Luciento smuggle more than just drugs—they were smuggling weapons, to a group of humans planning an insurrection against us.
Mael ordered a message to be sent. No survivors. ”
All of that, she knew. All of that, she could understand. But he hadn’t answered the most important question. “Did you enjoy it?”
Silence. He lifted his head again to gaze out at the Rosov estate. “Yes.”
There was no apology. Nothing but honesty.
He enjoyed it. Because he had been trained to.
Raised to. He was a product of the world that had made him.
And… so was she. She should have hated him in that moment.
She should have taken the knife in her belt and plunged into his back between his ribs like she’d done to so many of her marks before him.
Instead, she wondered if she had ever found herself enjoying her job. She thought back on every hit she’d ever performed. Every life she’d ever taken. And tried to remember a time she’d ever felt enjoyment over it.
She honestly… didn’t know.
But righteous? Righteousness, certainly. Taking out vampires and their goons, people who furthered the Nostrom family goals—that she had felt justice in doing.
And that was a slippery slope. Revenge was clear-cut. Justice was a moral high ground that she wasn’t sure she’d ever had any right to claim.
Definitely not anymore.
Not since she’d stared into the dead eyes of Luciento Iltani.
Every day that went by, every moment she spent by Raziel’s side, she hated how much more like him she felt.
He has to die. I have to kill him. I’m losing myself in him. Little by little, inch by inch, she was being devoured by the Serpent.
“Why are you telling me this?” She needed to find a way out of this damnable conversation.
“Because you need to understand why I want them dead as much as you do.” His hands tightened into fists at his sides. “This isn’t just about power. It’s about breaking a cycle that’s lasted centuries.”
“And after, if we succeed and your family falls—you take the throne?” It still sounded more like madness than anything else he’d said so far.
“Yes. Precisely.” His answer was immediate, absolute. “I rebuild this city into something better. Something that doesn’t thrive on suffering.”
She almost laughed. “You? The Serpent? Creating a kinder world?”
“Not kinder.” His smile was cold. “More honest. Under my rule, the predators would know they’re predators. The prey would understand their place. There would be… balance.”
“And what would be my role in this new world order?”
Taking his eyes off the estate, Raziel turned to her. He reached out, brushing a strand of hair from her face with surprising gentleness. “That depends on you, Nadi. On what you choose.”
The moment stretched between them, taut as a wire. Something was changing—had already changed—between them. Something that terrified her far more than his rage ever could.
Before she could respond, a faint sound drew their attention. Raziel moved back into the shadows, motioning for her to do the same.
“He’s here,” he whispered.
The crunch of gravel signaled an approaching figure.
Through the garden gate emerged the tall, lean figure of Braen Rosov, accompanied by two bodyguards.
He looked much as he had at the club—impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, his dark hair gelled back and shining in the moonlight, his posture that of a man who feared nothing.
“Remember the plan,” Raziel murmured, his voice barely audible even to her fae hearing. “Let me confront him first. You stay hidden until I give the signal.”
Nadi nodded, though doubt ate at her. After what Raziel had just revealed about the fae captives, after his confession about her family—could she trust him to follow their agreed plan? Or did he have his own agenda, as always?
She glanced at his profile, remembering the vulnerability she’d glimpsed moments ago. Had it been real, or just another manipulation? With Raziel, she could never be certain.
But one thing was clear—she was running out of time to decide whose side she was truly on. Mael, Lana, Raziel… or perhaps only her own.
She touched the knife at her waist, feeling its reassuring weight. Whatever she decided, she would need it soon.
She watched as Raziel stepped from the shadows, moving into Braen’s path with the casual grace of a panther. The older vampire stopped, dismissing his guards with a wave of his hand.
“Raziel.” Braen’s voice was smooth as aged brandy.
“Your letter was a surprise. I didn’t take you for a man who made veiled threats.
Or have you simply decided your new wife is lacking and you yearn for what you once had?
” He chuckled, his smile flashing white.
“It was you who broke it off between us, remember.”
“I regret to say this isn’t a veiled threat, Braen.” Raziel’s stance was relaxed, deceptively so. “We have very real issues to discuss.”
Braen raised an eyebrow. “Do we? Since when have you seen fit to meddle in my affairs again?”
“I have had my reasons of late.” Raziel’s smile was razor-sharp. “Let’s discuss this business somewhere more private than here. Somewhere we won’t be disturbed.”
“Is that so?” Braen’s expression remained pleasant, but something dangerous flickered in his eyes. “And what would this… business entail?”
Raziel stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Business that required detailed record keeping, Braen. Until recently.” The implication was clear without spelling it out. Just enough to leave the door open that this was merely about two men with a complex past.
Braen’s pleasant mask slipped, just for a moment. “You have always had a flair for the dramatic, Raziel. What is this about?”
“As I said, let’s go somewhere more private.”
Braen hesitated, then nodded. As the two vampires moved deeper into the garden, Nadi slipped silently after them, her hand on the knife at her waist.
Whatever happened next, someone wasn’t leaving this place alive.