Chapter 5
FIVE
Why was it always nightmares of water?
At least this was a slight variant.
This time, he was choking on blood.
He remembered retching it up. Then being fed it against his will. A bitter, thick substance that his body tried to rebel against like the water in his lungs. But then she was there, shouting at him. Cutting through the agony. He tried to remember the words. But like a dream, it was gone.
Consciousness returned to Raziel like drowning in reverse—painful, disorienting, and entirely unwelcome.
The first thing he became aware of was movement.
Not his own movement, but a gentle swaying that made his stomach lurch.
The second was warmth against his side, familiar and comforting.
The third was that he wasn’t dead, which was both surprising and mildly disappointing given how he’d felt the last time he was conscious.
He kept his eyes closed, taking stock. The poison’s burn had faded to a dull ache, like the memory of pain rather than pain itself.
His vampire healing was working again, sluggish but present.
The black veins that had been strangling him from the inside were gone—he could feel their absence like missing teeth.
Voices drifted around him, speaking in the liquid syllables of the old fae tongue, mixed with words he could understand but barely grasp. He caught fragments—vampire, foolish, dangerous—but most of it flowed past his understanding. One voice he recognized instantly, however.
Nadi, her tone sharp and defensive, arguing with someone.
The surface beneath him was strange. Not quite wood, not quite stone.
When he finally cracked his eyes open, he found himself staring at a ceiling that shouldn’t exist. It was curved like the inside of a shell, but made from what appeared to be a single piece of wood.
It seemed it had been grown rather than carved.
No tool marks, no joints—just smooth, organic curves that followed the natural grain.
“You’re awake.”
He turned his head—slowly, carefully, as his skull might as well have been stuffed with jelly—to find Nadi sitting beside him.
She looked exhausted, dark circles under her opalescent eyes, her hair hanging limp around her face.
But she was alive, unharmed, and the relief that flooded through him was embarrassing in its intensity.
“Where—” His voice sounded like he’d been gargling gravel. And felt about the same.
“Don’t try to talk yet.” She helped him sit up, pressing a flask of water to his lips.
It tasted of minerals and something green, like drinking liquid moss, but it soothed the burning in his throat.
“We’re with a caravan, traveling back toward the surface.
You’ve been unconscious for almost two days. ”
Two days. Memories came flooding back—the poison, his pathetic deathbed confession. Heat crept up his neck. Had he really told her he loved her? While dying of hebek poison like some romantic fool?
How far he had fallen.
He truly had lost.
What kind of ruler was he meant to be, like this? Brought so low? Lilivra was wrong. Whatever so-called plans or prophecies she had claimed to see were lies. He was nothing. Nothing.
“Stop that.” Nadi must have read his expression correctly. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. Not now. We have bigger problems.”
That’s about when he noticed the weight around his wrists. Looking down, he found the silver chain from the coffin wrapped around them—with fabric tucked under the loops as to avoid burning him, but secure enough that he couldn’t slip free.
How little they understood.
But he wasn’t in a position to demonstrate at the moment. Not when the world was spinning.
Nadi sighed, drearily. “They’d been following us,” she continued, keeping her voice low. “Not long after we entered the Deep Wild. It wasn’t until they saw you were about to die that they saw fit to get involved.”
“How charitable of them to finally intervene.”
“The only reason you’re alive is because their laws—our laws—forbid killing someone who’s injured and seeking aid.” She glanced toward the wagon’s entrance. “And now you’re a guest. Which means they can’t kill you for three days and three nights. Unless you give them a reason.”
“Mmh.” His head was aching. “And I’m certain they are itching to have one.”
“Exactly.”
Now that he could think a little more in a straight line, he took in his surroundings more fully.
They were in some sort of wagon, but like nothing he’d ever seen on the surface.
The entire structure seemed to have been grown from a single organism.
Through gaps in the twisted vines that served as windows, he could see other wagons arranged in a circle. “What is this thing?”
“Living wood. Fae grow them from seeds. Takes decades to cultivate a wagon like this.”
He pulled his hand away in disgust.
“It’s alive, but it’s not thinking. It isn’t sentient.” She chuckled, watching his discomfort with amusement. “Think of them like… very specialized trees.”
Through the window gaps, he could see the camp properly.
Each wagon was pulled by creatures that looked like a cross between oxen and beetles—massive, armored things with too many legs and horns that curved like scythes.
They were arranged so the creatures faced outward, creating a defensive ring with the wagon openings facing inward toward a central fire.
“Those things—”
“Ushil. They’re herbivores, mostly. Unless you threaten the caravan.”
“Mostly?”
She smirked knowingly. “They make exceptions for threats.”
Beyond the wagons, he could see the camp’s inhabitants. Figures moved between the vehicles. By his count, only a few were clearly fae with their distinctive features, but the rest were human. Interesting. “Where are the rest of the fae? I see mostly humans out there.”
Nadi nodded. “Most you would consider ‘fae’ are human, Raz. Only maybe one in a dozen are true-blooded fae like me or Luciento. Or like—” She paused before clearly changing her mind on finishing her sentence.
“The rest are like my sisters or my brother. Or my mother. Human, for all intents and purposes.”
Raziel furrowed his brow. “You are simply… born one way or the other? Human, or like you?”
She nodded again and looked out into the camp. “Luck. Or you marry in, like my mother, who was human. We take in people with nowhere else to go.”
Odd.
Odd, and a very dangerous way to live.
But he had never once paid attention to the Wild, or the fae, so he couldn’t be terribly surprised to learn he had gaps in his knowledge. Better to focus on the now, he supposed. “I take it these aren’t coming off.” He lifted his chained wrists.
“Right now, they’re the only thing keeping some of these people from gutting you. The Serpent himself is in their camp.”
Which led neatly to his next question, and precisely why he was growing a little suspicious.
He was restrained. She was not. And while she was fae, the only reasons he could see for leaving her unbound were beyond foolish and sailed right into the territory of sheer idiocy.
He couldn’t figure that a band of fae—be they fae in name only—lived in such a dangerous and violent place and could also be so stupid as to trust her.
It meant something else was going on. “And why are you not similarly chained?”
The slump in her shoulders and the fact that she wouldn’t meet his gaze confirmed his theory. She kept her tone flat when she replied, “The fae who found us is a name you’ll recognize.” He watched as she shut her eyes, and visibly braced herself for what she had to say. “Kalo Lohti.”
The shock he felt was brief but total. It snapped over him like a strike of lightning. Kalo Lohti. The flesh trader who was selling his own people to Braen? Kalo was the name of the fae the Rosovs were doing deals with, according to the ledger Nadi had stolen.
Once the shock had faded, all he could think of to do was laugh. The odds were impossible. So impossible that it meant someone had put Kalo there on purpose.
Here, he had foolishly believed that in the Wild they would be free of schemes, if only momentarily.
That they’d have a chance to cut the threads that bound them to their respective families. But now, he knew that that was just a lie he’d told himself. They were trapped right back in the thick of it. They were simply just underground, and even worse off than they had been before.
Shutting his eyes, he rested his head back. “This isn’t a coincidence.”
“I know.” At least she didn’t deny it. “I don’t know what the play is. But I know he didn’t find us by accident. And he won’t tell me.”
“It still doesn’t answer my question of why you’re unrestrained. If he knew Braen, he has even less of a reason to trust you.” Here would come the real reason why Nadi didn’t want to tell him. Because there was clearly a history there.
“Kalo and I grew up together.”
There it was. “And?”
Nadi let out a long, heavy sigh. “The Lohti and Iltani clans often met to trade. We would often travel together as a pack. Kalo is a few years older than me.”
“And?” He was too tired for games. Well. Too woozy. “Don’t bother. You’ve confirmed enough by omission. Was the marriage ever officially arranged, or just speculative?”
“There wasn’t ever—” She sighed heavily again. “He was a bully. He picked on me endlessly, and my mother used to tease me that was how boys showed interest at that age. We were children. It means nothing.”
“It means enough that there aren’t shackles on your wrists, Nadi.”
“It doesn’t mean they don’t all have guns at the ready the moment I move.” There was something tight and strained in her voice. When he opened his eyes to look at her, she was gazing out the door of the wagon at the figures moving outside by the firelight. “It has more to do with…”
If Raziel wasn’t mistaken, it looked like she might be about to cry. “What is it, Nadi?”
“I am the only Iltani fae left, Raziel. I—I killed the only other one, when I—when—” She broke off, grimacing.
Luciento.