Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
The words hung in the air.
A death sentence.
Raziel’s grip on the silver sword tightened until his knuckles went white.
The blade that had just claimed his brother’s life, his sister’s life, suddenly felt impossibly heavy in his hands.
Around them, the ballroom was silent save for the soft drip of blood pooling beneath the headless corpses of Mael, Lana, and Zabriel.
“Nadi must die.”
Lilivra repeated the words as if they were simply a minor inconvenience—a small task to be completed before moving on to more important matters.
Her starlight eyes held no malice, no cruelty.
Just the patient certainty of someone who had watched civilizations rise and fall and knew that individual lives meant nothing in the grand sweep of history.
“No.” The word left Raziel’s lips before he could stop it. Before he could calculate the risks or weigh the consequences or do any of the things that had kept him alive for centuries. Just—
No.
The refusal surprised even him, if he were honest with himself.
His entire life had been built on ruthless pragmatism, on the willingness to sacrifice anything and anyone for the sake of power. For this exact moment.
Raziel Nostrom had gone into the ocean. But the Serpent had been the one to emerge.
He had ordered deaths without flinching. Had watched houses burn without a flicker of remorse. Had carved his way through the world like a blade through flesh, leaving nothing but destruction in his wake.
And now, faced with the opportunity to have everything he’d ever wanted—the throne, the power, the absolute dominion over all of Runne—he was refusing. Because of her. Because of one fae assassin who had wormed her way into his blackened heart and refused to leave.
Lilivra tilted her head, her white hair cascading over one shoulder like spilled moonlight. The gesture was almost innocent. “No?”
“I won’t do it.” He stepped closer to Nadi, placing himself between her and his grandmother. His wife and his grandmother. The sword was still in his hand, still dripping with his sibling’s blood, and he raised it now—not in threat, exactly, but in warning. “She’s mine.”
“Yours.” Lilivra’s smile didn’t waver. “Yes. She is. And that is precisely the problem, my grandson.”
She began to circle them slowly, her bare feet making no sound on the blood-slicked marble. The white gown she wore should have been stained crimson by now—she’d walked through pools of it—but the fabric remained pristine. Impossible. Perfect.
“You were always meant to rule alone, Raziel. That was the prophecy I gave you. That was the destiny I’ve been cultivating in you since you were a frightened child who came to me seeking answers.
” Her voice was gentle. Maternal. Terrible.
“One sovereign. One throne. One absolute ruler over vampires, humans, and fae alike. There is no room for weakness in that vision.”
“She’s not a weakness.” Even as he said it, Raziel knew it was a lie.
Knew that Mael had been right all along.
Nadi was his weakness. The one vulnerability he’d never been able to eliminate, no matter how hard he’d tried.
The one person in the world who could make him hesitate, make him doubt, make him feel.
And he loved her for it.
Moons help him, he loved her.
“You know she is. She is the only weakness you have left,” Lilivra said, as if reading his thoughts.
Perhaps she could. Perhaps that was another gift the ancient fae possessed—the ability to peer into the minds of lesser creatures and see all the soft, vulnerable places they tried so desperately to hide.
“And it is a weakness that will destroy you if you let it fester. I’ve seen it before.
I’ve watched stronger vampires than you fall because they couldn’t bear to cut away the parts of themselves that held them back. Like your father.”
She stopped circling, coming to rest directly in front of them. Her opal eyes found Raziel’s, and he felt the weight of centuries pressing down on him—the weight of all her expectations, all her plans, all the careful manipulation that had led him to this exact moment.
“Kill her,” Lilivra said softly, “and you will have everything you’ve ever wanted.
The throne. The power. The chance to tear down this broken world and build something new from its ashes.
Everything I promised you, grandson. Everything you’ve sacrificed for.
You can build it in her honor, if you wish. ”
“And if I refuse?”
The ancient fae’s smile finally faded. What replaced it was something cold. Something patient. Something that had waited millennium and could wait millennium more.
“If you refuse,” she said, “then I will kill you both. And I will wait for the next opportunity to arise. The next broken child with enough hatred in their heart and power in their blood to be molded into what I need.” A soft laugh escaped her.
“You weren’t the first, Raziel. Did you think you were?
I’ve cultivated dozens like you over the centuries.
You’ve come closer than any of them—but if you falter now, at the final step…
” She shrugged elegantly. “I’ll simply try again. ”
The words hit Raziel hard. All his life, he’d believed he was special. Unique. But to Lilivra, he was just another tool. Another experiment. Another attempt.
Replaceable.
He should have known.
He was always nothing.
“Raziel.” Nadi’s voice was quiet behind him. Steady in a way that made something twist in his chest. “Look at me.”
He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to see the fear in her eyes, the accusation, the knowledge that she was about to die because he’d been too weak to save her. Too weak to change the inevitable path they were on. But he turned anyway, because she’d asked, and he’d never been able to deny her anything.
What he saw in her expression wasn’t fear.
It was understanding.
“Do it,” she said.
“What?”
“Do it.” She stepped closer to him, reaching up to cup his face in her hands the way she’d done a hundred times before.
The way she’d done on their wedding night, in that glowing cavern deep beneath the Wild, when they’d spoken vows that neither of them had truly believed would matter.
Her palms were warm against his cold skin, and he found himself leaning into the touch like a starving man reaching for bread.
“If I have to die, I’d rather it be by your hand than hers.
I’d rather the last thing I see be your face.
I’d rather—” Nadi’s voice broke, just slightly, the first crack in the armor she’d worn for so long.
“I’d rather die knowing you loved me. And that all of this—everything we’ve done—that it meant something. That I meant something.”
“You mean everything to me.” The words were ripped from somewhere deep inside him, from a place he’d thought long since cauterized. “Nadi—”
“She’ll kill us both anyway.” Her thumbs traced the line of his cheekbones, the gesture achingly familiar. “You heard her. She has no use for mercy, no use for sentiment. We can’t stop her, you know we can’t. At least this way, you survive. At least this way, there’s a chance—”
“I don’t want a chance without you.” The words tore out of him, raw and desperate and more honest than anything he’d ever said in his centuries of existence. “I don’t want any of it. Not the throne, not the power, not the burning world. None of it means anything if you’re not beside me.”
She smiled, and it was the saddest thing he’d ever seen. “Then we die together. Like we promised. Remember? One cannot die unless both of us die. That’s what it means.”
For a moment, he didn’t understand. Then—
The blood bond.
The fae marriage.
For one of us to die, we both have to die.
He’d dismissed it as superstition at the time. Hand-me-down tricks passed off as ancient wisdom. But Nadi’s eyes were burning into his now with an intensity that suggested she believed otherwise.
The vine-tree had withered and died. Something had happened down there in the Wild.
It was the only hope they had left.
Behind him, Lilivra was growing impatient. “This display is touching, truly. But I’ve waited long enough. Make your choice, grandson. Her life, or both of yours.”
Raziel looked at Nadi. Looked into those dark eyes that had seen him at his worst and somehow loved him anyway. The eyes of his wife. His partner. His weakness.
And the only strength he had ever truly known.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I know.” She tilted her head back, baring her throat to him the way she had so many times before. An offering. A gift. An act of trust so complete it took his breath away. “I love you too.”
He didn’t let her finish.
His fangs found her neck with the precision of long practice, sinking deep into the flesh he knew so well. Her blood flooded his mouth—copper and sweetness and something that tasted like home—and he drank. Drank like he was dying of thirst. Drank like this was the last thing he would ever do.
Because it might be.
He’d tasted her blood a hundred times before, but never like this.
Never with the knowledge that each swallow might be bringing them both closer to oblivion.
Her essence poured into him, hot and vital and achingly familiar, and he found himself cataloging every detail—the way her fingers tightened on his shoulders, the small sound she made as her strength began to fade, the flutter of her pulse against his lips as it grew weaker and weaker.
This was love, he realized. Not the pretty, sanitized version from songs and stories.
This was love in its truest, most terrible form—the willingness to destroy yourself for someone else’s sake.
The willingness to risk everything, sacrifice everything, become nothing, if it meant they might survive.
Nadi’s body went limp in his arms. Her heartbeat, which he could feel against his chest, began to slow. To stutter. To fade.
And something strange happened.