Chapter 24 #3
He dreamed of her atop him. Of her beside him in bed. Of the sight of her sleeping. Of her in the bath. Of the sound of her laughter.
Of the flash of her dark-scaled tail as she swam in his pool.
He had never seen this. But he had imagined it. And he had wanted to see it, so very badly. Her, in her natural form. In her true environment.
It came to him in a rush.
He felt himself crawling along the floor of his watchtower apartment. The wound in his stomach was still an open gash. His tongue was missing. He was dying. Standing before him—Nadi.
Nadi.
He loved her.
And he had never told her.
Now he never would.
Her blood was singing to him. And he was crying for it. For her.
Digging his nails into the wood, he needed her. Needed what ran through her veins.
Or he would die.
He didn’t attack her… he didn’t overpower her… did he?
She knelt at his side. “Raz…”
No. No, no, no. He remembered now. He hadn’t before. Weakly, desperately, he had begged her to run.
He remembered the girl in the alleyway now too.
Pressed against the wall. Her family dead on the street behind him. Tears streaking down a face that wasn’t hers.
He’d told her to run.
That night she’d listened.
But the night he’d been dying? She’d stayed.
“I’m going nowhere,” she had said, as she picked him up into her lap. Instinct had taken over. The last strength in his body demanding he feed. “I vowed to follow you straight into the void, Serpent. One way or another. So I need you alive.”
He’d torn her neck open like an animal.
She had been willing to die to save his life. But why?
Nadi.
He loved her.
And he had never told her.
Now he never would.
He hoped he would dream of her more. If the moons were kind, he would dream only of her.
Moonlight overhead. The silhouette of a siren, a tail, like tattered black lace.
Lips pressed to his.
Air filled his lungs.
And his mind went blissfully empty.
Raziel woke up, retching water from his lungs.
Someone held his hair back, their other hand gently on his shoulder. They were talking to him, though he wasn’t listening.
He was too busy attempting to breathe.
Collapsing onto his side, he coughed a few more times, wheezing, before finally his lungs seemed to want to obey him. Air.
Air.
Blessed, underrated, undervalued air.
Opening his eyes, he stared at his hand in front of his face.
His wrist had the handcuff still attached to it. The linkage that was meant to run to the other was severed. The coffin.
He was—
Where was—
What had—
He tried to sit up. And failed spectacularly. He wound up sprawled on his back with a groan, his vision spinning.
Someone laughed quietly beside him. “Be smart and stay down for a minute, will you?”
He knew the voice. He reached for them, needing to know that they weren’t a figment of his imagination. Needed to touch them.
She caught his hand and placed his palm to her cheek.
“I told you, I’m following you into the void. You don’t get to die until I say so. Leaving you chained up at the bottom of the ocean wasn’t an option.”
“Nadi—” he choked out between gasping, shuddering inhales.
“Focus on breathing. I’m here. You’re all right.”
All right was a matter of opinion. He hurt everywhere.
His whole body ached. It was a familiar pain—he had experienced it many times in his life as a child.
But that didn’t make it any less horrible.
Even nearly starving to death didn’t hurt quite like he did at the moment.
Feeling his stomach gurgle, he struggled to roll onto his side.
She helped him before he retched out the watery contents of his stomach one more time.
The noise he made afterward was hardly dignified. He didn’t particularly care.
She stroked his hair. “I know… trust me, I know.” She’d thrown up all that blood that night. She did have recent experience. “Here. Let’s sit you up a bit. Maybe that will help.”
Carefully, she helped get him up vertical. It did help ease his breathing, even if it did nothing to help his swirling head for a few moments. He clung to her until the world settled its reeling.
Once everything seemed calmer, he took a slow, deep breath, testing his lungs. Good. He didn’t immediately vomit up more water. Or cough. A second breath, and his head felt a little clearer.
Blinking, he finally tried to focus on where he was.
And realized the bottom of the ocean might have been safer.
“Nadi…”
They were sitting on the edge of a lake.
But they weren’t outdoors—not precisely.
They were underground. A great cavern stretched around them in all directions, soaring overhead some hundred or two hundred feet.
The rock walls shone in shades of blue and green.
Every surface was covered in plants and trees, and the space seemed alive with the movement of animals.
Even in the air of the great chamber, creatures with wings and feathers flitted from place to place.
The silver coffin was dragged half ashore, the chains sliced off. Nadi sat beside it, her long fish tail draped in the water, a set of bolt cutters in her hand.
Everything in the enormous cavern was illuminated by the glow of gigantic vines. Some of the vines were as thick as trains. And all of them glowed an eerie shade of purple that seemed to set off the world around them in every other color imaginable.
Nadi shifted her tail into legs and stood. She held out a hand to him to help him up. With a smirk, she confirmed his worst fear.
“Welcome to the Wild, Raziel Nostrom.”