Chapter 16 #2
“Please.” She hated how her voice sounded—small and desperate and sounding nothing like the assassin she’d become. “Please, Kalo. Let us go. I’ll disappear. I’ll take him and we’ll vanish so completely that no one will ever find us. You’ll never see either of us again. Just… please.”
For a heartbeat—just one—she thought he might say yes. She saw the hesitation in his eyes, the war between what he wanted and what he believed he had to do.
Then he shook his head.
“I can’t.” His voice was rough. “Even if—Ebiti would have my head in place of yours.”
“Then kill us now instead.” The words came out flat. Dead. “Spare us the fucking torture and just put us out of our misery. You know what Ebiti is going to do to him. To us. A clean death is the least you can do.”
“That’s not my call to make.” Kalo opened the door. “Stay here. I need to have a conversation with your vuampi husband.”
“Don’t—” She lunged for him, but two guards were already there, grabbing her arms, holding her back. “Kalo! Kalo! Don’t hurt him! He can’t even defend himself! Don’t be such a fi’ti coward, Kalo!”
The door slammed shut between them.
Time moved strangely in that small office.
She didn’t even have the freedom to pace to kill the time. She just sat there and stared down at the floor.
Minutes might have passed. Or hours. Nadi couldn’t tell. The guards had shoved her into a corner in the small room and left her there, watching her with bored expressions while she tried not to think about what was happening in the other room.
She heard sounds. Muffled. Indistinct. But enough to turn her stomach.
The wet crack of something breaking.
A groan that was barely human.
Laughter—cold and cruel and sounding nothing like the boy she remembered.
She pressed her hands over her ears and shut her eyes, but it didn’t help. The sounds seeped through anyway, burning themselves into her memory like brands on flesh.
Raziel.
She should have fought harder. Should have found some way to stop this. Should have—
Should have what? the rational part of her brain demanded. Killed Kalo with your bare hands? Fought through a dozen armed guards? You’re not a god, Nadi. You’re just a fae in handcuffs.
The sounds stopped eventually. The silence that followed was somehow worse.
When the door finally opened and Kalo stepped through, there was blood on his hands. Dark and thick and smelling of copper and something else—something that made her fae senses recoil. Vampire blood, tainted with silver. Corrupted. Wrong.
“Come on.” His voice was flat. Businesslike. “Time to go back.”
She didn’t argue. Didn’t fight. Just let him lead her back down the corridor, her legs moving on autopilot while her mind screamed.
The room looked worse than before.
There was blood everywhere—sprayed across the floor, smeared on the walls, pooling in dark puddles that caught the light from the bare bulbs overhead. And in the center of it all, crumpled against the far wall like a broken marionette, was Raziel.
Nadi’s legs gave out.
She hit her knees, bile rising in her throat, horror clawing at her chest with ice-cold fingers.
Kalo had broken him. The silver stake was still in his leg, but now there were other wounds too—cuts that wept blackened blood, burns that looked like they’d been made with silver implements, bones that bent at angles that made her stomach turn.
His jaw was definitely shattered now. The gag was gone—probably because he couldn’t have spoken anyway, not with the damage they’d done. His crimson eyes were half-open, glazed with pain, barely tracking as she crawled toward him.
“Raziel.” Her voice was a whisper. A prayer. “Raziel, look at me. Look at me.”
Those red eyes found hers. There was still awareness there—still that fierce, burning intelligence that had made him the most feared vampire in the metropolis. But underneath it was something else. Something she’d never seen in him before.
Pain.
Real pain. The kind that went beyond physical damage and sank its teeth into the soul.
“I’m here.” She reached for him with her bound hands, touching his face as gently as she could. His skin was like ice—the silver was stealing everything from him, heat and life and strength. “I’m here, Raz. I’m not going anywhere.”
He tried to speak. Failed. Tried again, and what came out was a wet, broken sound that barely qualified as a word.
“… Na… di…”
“Don’t talk.” Tears were streaming down her face now—she didn’t bother to wipe them away. “Don’t try to talk. Just stay with me. Just stay…”
Behind her, Kalo cleared his throat.
“Touching. Really.” His voice dripped with contempt. “The fae assassin and the Serpent, brought low by love. If I wasn’t about to deliver you both to your deaths, I might actually feel sorry for you.”
Nadi turned to look at him, her eyes blazing with hatred she didn’t try to hide. “When I get free—and I will get free—I’m going to kill you, Kalo. I’m going to make it slow. Make it hurt. And when you’re begging me for mercy, I’m going to remember this moment and laugh.”
He smiled. “There she is. There’s the killer I’ve heard so many stories about.” He crouched down to her level, close enough that she could smell the blood on him. “But you won’t get the chance, Nadi. Because Ebiti and the other clan elders are on their way here. Now. Tonight.”
Cold dread settled in her stomach. “What?”
“The elders want to witness your execution personally.” Kalo stood, brushing off his knees.
“We have to walk a fine line down here. We have to look loyal to the fae to other fae, but we have to bark on a leash whenever the Rosovs come calling. We had to save you from the Nostroms so Ebiti can say that she’s brokered peace with the vampires.
The only reason we saved you was to show the Rosovs that we’re serious about our partnership—and to make clear to other fae what happens to traitors, they’re going to give up your heads. ”
Nadi felt the last flicker of hope die in her chest. It was a good play.
“So they come here. And the last hope of your fae war dies with your corpses as the centerpiece.” Kalo’s smile was sharp as broken glass.
“Ebiti will give her speech about the wisdom of alliance over conflict. The elders will vote—overwhelmingly, I expect—to formalize our arrangement with the Rosovs and by extension his siblings. And by this time tomorrow, the fae will be exactly where we’ve always been. Surviving. At any cost.”
He turned to leave, then paused at the door.
“For what it’s worth, Nadi…” His voice had lost some of its edge. Just for a moment. “I really did care about you. Once. A long time ago.”
Then the door closed behind him, and she was left alone with Raziel and the weight of everything that was about to happen.
The Serpent’s breathing was shallow now. Ragged. Each inhale seemed to cost him something, each exhale a small surrender. But when she looked into his eyes, she still saw that same unbroken defiance burning there.
Even now. Even at the end.
“We’re going to get out of this,” she whispered. The words were hollow, and they both knew it. But she said them anyway. “We’re going to survive.”
Raziel’s broken mouth twitched—what might have been a smile, if he could have managed it.
And outside, somewhere in the tunnels of the Wild, the fae elders were coming.
Coming to watch them die.