Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Raziel held Nadi in his arms.
A drop of blood hit her pale cheek.
It had fallen from his eye. He was crying. He didn’t care. He clutched her to his chest. He was too weak to stand. Too exhausted to move. Too dizzy to even think straight.
Everything was a blur.
He remembered Braen. The bullet wounds. He remembered Nadi pulling silver from his chest.
Darkness.
Pain.
Starvation. A burning need.
Then… honey. Salvation like nothing he had ever tasted before had filled him. He had been about to die. He knew that much. He had felt it, somewhere, in the back of his mind—calling to him.
But he was alive.
His room was in shambles. The bookcase had been emptied mostly onto the floor. A broken lamp. An overturned table. He had two bleeding bullet holes in his chest that had not been there before.
And in his arms… a dying fae siren. Her long, dark-scaled tail stretched out beside them. Beautiful and foreign, a creature so out of place in his watchtower loft. Her neck was covered in teeth wounds, as if gnawed on by a rabid animal.
One that should have been put down.
She had tried to put him down.
Clearly, he had overpowered her. There was a struggle. He had mauled her and ripped open her throat.
Nadi was still alive. But barely. He didn’t know if she would survive. He knew nothing about how to tend to her. What did she need? How could he help her?
Or was it already too late?
Had he killed her?
Had he fallen in love with a woman only to destroy her? Had his family been right? How perfect would that be? How utterly and wonderfully poetic.
“You can’t—you can’t leave me,” he murmured to her, his words still slurring and messy. He was weak. Healing. He had been on the brink of death. “Don’t go, don’t…”
His ears pricked at the sound of the door downstairs opening and shutting. “Ivan!” The shout was broken and sounded more like a cry from a child than anything else. But it was the best he could do. “Help—”
The sound of thudding footsteps told him that his bodyguard took it seriously. It meant that Nadi’s secret was about to be shared with someone else… but if it meant that she would live, he couldn’t care less.
Ivan burst into the room, carrying a case of glass bottles filled with crimson liquid in his hands. The bodyguard stared down at the scene in front of him with wide eyes. “What the fuck—”
“No time to expl—” He coughed. It hurt to speak. It hurt to do anything. “Monica. Help her.”
Raziel didn’t have friends in this world. But he had something better. He had Ivan. Because his bodyguard quickly set the bottles of blood on the ground with a thud and immediately scooped up the fae siren without a single hesitation—struggling a bit to offset the weight of the woman’s long tail.
“I don’t know wh—where to even start to—” Ivan was already heading to the bathroom with her.
“Try.” Raziel bowed his head, pressing his palms over his eyes, wishing he could curl into a hole and stay there.
And, if she died, perhaps he would. His words were a whisper, more to himself, than anything else. “I can’t do this without her.”
“Drink this, laeiga. You’ll feel better.”
Nadi turned her head away from the cup pressed to her lips, muttering back in fae. “Ni, ni’ha, laetesh.” She hated the taste of the boiled roots and herbs. She always did. Mother told her it was supposed to taste good. Nadi suspected it was a lie. It tasted like soap to her.
“Drink it, Nadi. Please.”
A hand underneath her neck lifted her head. The cup met her lips again. This time, she had no choice. The disgusting soapy flavor entered her mouth and she swallowed it.
Coughing, she whined, sinking into the warm water around her. At least there was that. It was too close around her, too tight—there were walls near her. But she was warm.
“Laetesh, ni…”
“What is she saying?” A deep voice. She could barely process it.
“I don’t know.” That first voice. A man’s voice. Not her mother’s. But one she knew. She just couldn’t remember from where.
A hand stroked her hair.
Everything faded away.
Waking up in a bathtub was a fascinating and unpleasant experience.
Nadi groaned. Moons, everything hurt.
“Boss—” Movement to her right.
Her head spun when she tried to look to see who had spoken. She felt feverish. She felt weak. Like she was still half asleep. What had happened…?
Where was she?
How did she—
A shadow in the doorframe, dimly outlined by the ambient light in the hallway behind him. A silhouette she knew.
Raziel Nostrom.
For a moment, instinctual fear took over, and she jerked. The adrenaline shock to her system was exactly what she needed, however.
“Fuck—” she groaned and sank into the water. At least it was hot water. With a shaking hand, she reached for her neck.
“Don’t. It’s still healing.” Raziel knelt beside the tub. It was one of those old-fashioned, claw-footed things. Big enough for a human to stretch out comfortably.
But not someone with an eight-foot fish tail. Her tail was draped over the lip of the tub and onto the floor. They’d… thrown a blanket over it. To keep it from getting cold.
That was so oddly thoughtful that her focus got stuck on that and she didn’t realize Raziel was talking to her for a solid few seconds.
“Nadi?” He gently placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Hm?” She turned her head weakly to look at him. “Sorry.”
“I’m just—” He cupped her cheek in his palm. He still looked like shit himself, dark bruised circles under his eyes. His lips were chapped. He looked as though he had been walking across the plains in the blazing sun for a week with no food or water. “I’m glad you’re awake.”
“Relatively… speaking.” She felt like her head wasn’t attached to her shoulders. “Why’m…” She furrowed her brow. “Why’m in a tub?”
“I… I didn’t know what to do.” He frowned. “You always seemed to like to be in the water, and with your tail and all, I—”
Nadi began to laugh.
It wasn’t much of a laugh. It was weak, it was dry, and it kind of hurt her, but she couldn’t help it. That was the funniest moons-damned thing she’d heard in a long, long time.
And probably one of the sweetest.
“I don’t need to be in the tub, Raz.” She smiled at him. Just barely, he smiled back. “But I appreciate it.”
“Good. It was getting annoying, constantly having to drain it and refill it to keep it warm. Ivan was starting to complain.” He sighed.
“Ivan—You mean he saw me like this?” Another wave of adrenaline rushed over her. The other voice. “No. No, no, no.” Struggling to move, she sat up, sloshing water over the edge of the tub and onto the floor.
“Nadi, don’t, you’re still too—”
Like fuck if she was going to listen to him. Forcing her glamor back over herself to summon her legs, she half clambered, half climbed out of the tub.
Raziel caught her before she fell and ate the floor. It seemed her legs, while they obeyed her summons, did not want to work properly. Her head spun, and she forced herself to slow her breathing down. She was going to black out if she didn’t. She couldn’t have that.
She had a bodyguard to murder.
Violently.
Quickly.
Immediately.
“Moons’ sake, calm down, Nadi.”
“He can’t—he can’t know, Raz. He can’t—” She tried to squirm out of his grasp, but it was pointless. She was a wet noodle. And one that was also entirely naked.
“Can we discuss this when you’re able to stand and breathe under your own power?” Raziel kept her up with one arm as he reached over to a hook on the wall and pulled a thick, plush dressing gown from it. He helped her put it on.
She couldn’t even put on a damn dressing gown without his help. The moment he took his arm out from around her, she nearly fell to the floor, and had to lean against the counter to keep from toppling.
He had a point. She hated when he had a point. Letting out a sigh, she shut her eyes. “Fine.”
“Good. Now. Come on.” Without giving her a moment to protest, he scooped her up in his arms. “Let’s get some food in you.”
“Why did you tell him?” She glared at the side of his face as he carried her down the stairs toward the kitchen area. She’d be angry at him for carrying her around, but he was right to assume that her and a spiral staircase would be a recipe for a very painful fall.
“I didn’t.” His expression smoothed into a hard one. “After I attacked you, I… snapped out of it, just before killing you. Ivan found me with you. As you truly are, tail and all. There was no point denying any of it at that point.”
He believed he attacked her. He didn’t remember?
She didn’t know how to feel about that. Relieved. Ashamed, weirdly. Like she had gotten away with something. “It wasn’t your fault, what happened.”
Raziel didn’t speak as he set her down on the sofa in his living room. Ivan was standing in the kitchen over the stove, stirring something that smelled phenomenal. Something that smelled very much like home.
“What are you making?” She very, very much wanted Ivan dead. But she wouldn’t stand a chance against the enormous vampire when she couldn’t stand. No, she’d have to wait. Or talk Raziel into it. But for the moment, a more pressing mystery was in front of her.
“Weird stew,” was all Ivan replied with.
Raziel rolled his eyes as he headed over to the kitchen and started rustling around for a bowl and a spoon. “I sent him down to the gray zone, near the Wild. Sent him to meet with some of your people. Asked them what would heal you.”
The tea. “You made an’ahnaka.” She snorted and then lost it again laughing. “That wasn’t a dream. Oh, Mother moon—how much did you pay them?”
“It’s not important.” Raziel’s back was to her as he nudged Ivan out of the way to ladle stew into a bowl.
“A lot,” Ivan interjected as he left his post by the stove to go stand by the wall, his arms crossed over his massive chest. “Said it was all fae magic.”
“You got played.” She laughed again. “Oh, that’s hysterical. Magic. It’s literally—it’s just one of those home recipes your mother made for you when you had the flu.”