Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Raziel was impressed, quite honestly.
Organizing the fae to attack their own extravagant party, all to stage a situation where Volencia could be murdered and he himself could be taken out of play?
Masterfully done.
He’d told his siblings as much, as Mael had punched him in the jaw. The single hit had knocked him unconscious. The next day and change had been ones of confinement and solitude. No one spoke to him. Nor did he particularly care.
Tonight, however, that changed.
He was dragged out to the family yacht. He would know the rumble of the engine anywhere. He was forced to his knees, his hands cuffed in front of him to a loop in the deck usually reserved for tying down furniture.
The bag was pulled from his head. And he watched as Lana, Zabriel Rosov, Mael… and Nadi, wearing her own face, approached.
She was unrestrained. But by the way she was rubbing her wrists, and her uncertain, unhappy expression, it hadn’t been for very long.
Betrayal burned in his chest. If he had cut him open, gutted him like a fish, it might have hurt less. No, it would have hurt less.
But something bothered him more. Something that pushed through the realization that Nadi had turned on him to side with his siblings.
They were going out to sea. Why?
“You didn’t have to go through this kind of effort to hide my body, brother.
They will celebrate my death. It’ll hardly be a crime.
” He tugged on the handcuffs that tethered him to the deck.
No. They wouldn’t budge. And they were edged in silver—which meant he couldn’t change his form into a swarm of bats. Fantastic.
“This isn’t about hiding evidence. This is about punishment.” Lana smiled, hugging Zabriel’s arm. “Besides, we have to dump Mother’s ashes somewhere. I don’t want that dusty cunt wafting around Runne.”
In a strange way, Raziel was honestly relieved that Lana and Zabriel were truly in love. He wanted his sister dead. He hated her. But in the same breath, he wanted her to be happy.
Families were complicated.
“We figured that since you’ve spent so many decades creatively making your victims suffer, it only made sense to ensure that you suffered creatively in return.
” Mael walked over to an object on the deck that Raziel hadn’t noticed before.
It looked like a couple of crates covered with a canvas tarp.
As he pulled the covering away, however, Raziel understood.
He began to laugh.
It was a coffin.
A silver coffin, with silver chains. One with a decorative R.N. emblazoned on the lid.
“Oh brother… you truly have outdone yourself.” He tilted his head back, grinning his best, most sadistic expression. “I am truly flattered. Mother would be so proud of you. How did you have it made? No one in our circles would have done it without alerting my men.”
“I commissioned it.” Zabriel Rosov’s tone was surprisingly cold and level. “I told my men it was for Braen. He was no more loved by me than you are by your siblings.”
Raziel was also impressed with the middle Rosov sibling. He was clearly the calculating one. Good. Mael and Lana would need someone who could handle logistics.
“Take care of her, Zabriel. Keep her bloodlust contained.” Raziel leaned forward slightly. “I am not the mad dog in the family. She is. You’ll learn that soon enough.”
“Shut up.” Lana spat at him. “You don’t get to talk!”
“You’re—” Nadi was staring at the coffin, quietly interrupting. “You’re going to… chain him in the coffin, and… throw him… overboard?”
Mael opened the lid. “He will drown. Forever. The blood in his body will not be consumed, as he’ll enter a sort of stasis.
But it will be agony. It will shatter whatever is left of his twisted mind.
If anyone is ever unlucky enough to dredge him up, there will be nothing left of him but a raving madman. ”
“Mother did it to several of his bursars who betrayed him. Raziel will have good company!” Lana sounded downright pleased with herself.
“And this is where you have your first choice to make, Nadi.” Mael turned to face her. “The coffin is big enough for two. Will you let this happen? Or will you join him?”
Nadi was unrestrained. She could shift forms. Take the shape of Ivan, himself, or even Mael. Cause total chaos. They could escape. She had the opportunity to upend everything.
All he needed was a distraction. If she could get the cuffs off him, his hypnotism could work on the few humans that were on the deck.
But then he did the math. Even with the humans, they would lose. They were outnumbered. The moment Nadi’s form began to shift, she would be riddled with bullets. And so would he.
Raziel grimaced, lowering his head. “Remember your promise, Nadi.” Survive. That was what he had made her vow to him. Survive.
Nadi walked up to him, gently lifting his head in her palms to make him look at her. If he wasn’t mistaken, he might be about to cry. “Tell me something, Serpent… What is there between us? Can you name it?”
He gazed into those dark, opalescent eyes and said the word in his mind.
Love.
He loved her.
Moons, he loved her.
And he wanted to whisper the word to her. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her. How she was the only one he had ever loved. That he hadn’t even known what it was to love until her.
But he had made her make a promise. That she would survive.
And if he said those words? If he told her that he loved her?
It would throw it all into question.
So he shut his eyes. And felt a warm, bloody tear run from his cheek.
As he said nothing at all.
Leaning down, she kissed him. Slowly. Clearly savoring the embrace. Knowing that this would be the last time she ever felt the shape of his lips against hers.
It was all right. This was how it should be. She deserved his death. She deserved to watch him die. She never should have cared for him. This was simpler. Easier. Cleaner.
The universe had a funny way of correcting its mistakes, didn’t it. After she broke the kiss, he felt her breath wash against his ear.
“I’ve already told you what you need to know.”
That had him blinking his eyes back open as she stepped away from him. What did she mean?
She pulled the wedding ring from her finger that she wore as Monica and slipped it into the lapel of his suit coat. “Goodbye, Raziel.”
Mael jerked his head. Two men standing nearby came forward. One unclipped Raziel’s handcuffs from the loop in the deck. Both forced him toward the silver coffin.
Fear—terror—instinctual and raw came over him in a wave. “No—! No! Brother!” He screamed and began to kick at the men. Baring his fangs, he thrashed. “Don’t do this—don’t!” But it was too late. A punch to the stomach, another to the head, and he was down.
Panic overcame him. He was a feral animal. Teeth. Nails. Anything he could use to defend himself. Anything he could summon.
Another punch to the jaw, and he was in the coffin. The gas lamps of the ship went dark. “No!” He screamed and beat his fists against the lid, the handcuffs still holding them together. “Let me out! Lana! Mael! Mael!” His screams were deafening in the small space. He didn’t care. “Please, no! No!”
He still had air with which to shout. For now. The sound of the lid locking shut. The sound of chains feeding through loops.
“No!”
He wailed.
“Please! No! Please!”
Darkness. Movement.
He screamed. He begged. Gravity ceased to exist for a split second.
And then it came crashing back.
For a moment… nothing.
And then the cold began to seep in.
It triggered a memory, buried deep in his soul.
One that woke him up at night when he least expected it.
An image burned in his mind of lying at the bottom of a fountain, gazing up at the ripples of the surface of the water.
Feeling the water in his lungs. The ache of the desperate need for air that would not come.
Seeing the distorted faces of his family above him.
Judging.
Celebrating.
Laughing.
Water began to fill the coffin. “No, no, no—” he moaned. “Please, no—please—please—” Maybe it was all just a joke.
A prank.
Like they used to play on each other as children. That was all it was. That was all it had to be. Mael was just playing one of his cruel tricks. That was it. This was just like the times he spent at the bottom of the fountain.
They had attached a chain to the coffin, surely.
They wouldn’t do this to him.
He pounded on the lid. “Let me out! Anyone! Please! Mael!”
The water reached his chin. It was coming in fast. It was so cold. He lifted his head, trying to hold onto what little air he could in the pitch-black space.
“Nadi! Lana!”
Clawing at the lid with his nails in desperation, he wept. “Please, someone—anyone—!”
He pulled in his last gasp of air before water filled the space.
It wasn’t a prank.
It wasn’t a game.
Panic welled in his body. He thrashed, kicking violently in the coffin, punching at the lid, the sides, trying to destroy the silver box in any way he could.
But it was hopeless.
Utterly hopeless.
His lungs began to burn.
He thought they might explode.
When he could not hold onto the air any longer, it left him in a rush.
And what took its place was so much worse.
It was so very cold.
It reached a tiny hand out to him, broken wrist bones jutting from a child’s arm.
“It’s not so bad, look—” He reset them back into his arm with a sickening crunch.
“You see? Just like that. I don’t know why he’s screaming so badly.
Raziel is such a baby. Mael didn’t mean to push him from the tree.
Raziel’s just so much smaller than he is.
But off he goes, crying to Daddy, like he always does. ”
A shattered memory. He pushed it away. But another one came to take its place.
“What have I done, Mother? What did I do wrong?” He stared down at the silver shackles that bound his wrists. They ran through loops buried in the stone blocks at the bottom of the fountain in the garden.