Chapter 11 #2
What she had found in the fae was broken. Fractured. But she’d only just met two small groups—she couldn’t judge them all by that tiny portion alone. There had to be more pockets that were like what she remembered from her childhood. That kept the old ways like what her mother had taught her.
“You really think we can do this?” she asked. “Take on both our families, unite the fae, and claim the city?”
“I think we can do anything.” His hands moved to her hair, fingers tangling in the dark strands. “Together, we’re stronger than any force they can bring against us. Apart…” He shrugged. “Apart, we’re just two broken souls with nothing left.”
His touch drew her in. There was nothing she could do to fight it. She placed her bowl aside as he pulled her close, drawing her into his arms.
Setting her conflict aside, she let herself find comfort in him. The Serpent. Raziel Nostrom. Her Serpent. They might become enemies again before long… but for now? For now, he was the vampire she had fallen in love with. “Together it is, then.”
“Together.” He kissed her.
It was soft at first, gentle in a way that spoke of the genuine affection beneath all the manipulation and violence. But it deepened quickly, becoming something hungrier, more desperate. As if they were both trying to anchor themselves to each other in a world that had proven utterly unreliable.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, she could see her own determination reflected in his crimson eyes. “Tomorrow night, we start taking back what’s ours. But tonight… I take what is already mine.”
The words lingered between them, a promise and a threat wrapped in one moment.
When Nadi pulled back slightly, her breath still mingled with his, she could see that the predatory gleam in Raziel’s crimson eyes had softened into something more complex—hunger, yes, but also a tenderness that should have been impossible for a creature like him.
“You’re thinking too much,” he murmured against her lips, his hands still tangled in her hair. “I can practically hear it.”
She was. She was thinking about the fae sleeping in rooms just down the corridor, about all the lies they’d both told in their lives to get here, about the empire he wanted to build on the bones of both their peoples.
But when he looked at her like that, when his touch made her skin feel like it was on fire, those thoughts became distant whispers.
“Maybe I should think more. Maybe it’s my idiocy that got me here in the first place.” She could complain all she wanted. Her hands were still wandering up his chest, feeling the solidness of him beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. “One of us should maintain some semblance of reason.”
“Reason is overrated.” His smile was lazy, predatory, but there was something almost vulnerable in the way he watched her face. “Besides, when has reason ever gotten either of us what we wanted?”
He had a point. Reason had kept her focused on revenge for eighty years, but it hadn’t brought her peace. It certainly hadn’t prepared her for this—for the way he could make her forget everything else with just a touch, just a look.
With a single movement, he pulled her to straddle his lap. She shifted her hips forward, and shut her eyes, feeling him there. Eager. Waiting. Impatient. So was she.
“Tell me something.” She traced the sharp line of his jaw. “Did you ever imagine it would come to this?”
“This?” His hands slid down to her waist before pulling her shirt up and over her head. She let him remove it without a fuss. “You mean sitting in a storage closet, eating questionable meat stew and planning the overthrow of two ancient vampire houses?”
“Well.” Despite everything, she laughed. “When you put it like that.”
Thumb tracing her lower lip, his gaze followed the movement with an intensity that made her breath catch. “But to answer your question—no. Once I learned I had a little fae assassin in my midst, I imagined breaking you, using you, discarding you when you’d served your purpose. I never imagined…”
“What?”
“That you’d break me instead.” The admission was quiet, raw in a way that made her chest tighten. “That I’d find myself willing to burn down everything I’d built if it meant keeping you safe.”
The honesty in his voice was devastating. This was Raziel without his masks, without the careful manipulation and calculated cruelty.
“You haven’t been broken,” she said softly. “Just… changed. We both have.”
“Changed.” He seemed to consider the word, rolling it around like he was tasting something new.
“Maybe. I suppose that’s one way to put it.
” He reached behind her, unclasping her undergarment, and tossing it aside with her shirt.
His hands stroked over her skin, and she let her eyes drift half shut.
His next words surprised her. “And what do you want, little murderer? Really? What would you build from this broken world?”