ONE
Raziel Nostrom was dead.
He remembered the water filling the silvered casket. He remembered it filling his lungs. Screaming, clawing at the lid of the box where his brother and sister had placed him—exiled him—for all eternity.
Death…versus the reality of what was now sinking into his thoughts.
Sinking.
But it wasn’t death that greeted him. It wasn’t death that his siblings had tried to pay him—it was an eternity ofsuffering.
Killing him would have been one thing. Killing him would have beenmercy.It would have beenkindness.It would have been an act of love. They loved him, didn’t they? Sure, they were all out to kill each other—they had been destined for that since children.
Grandmother Lilivra had seen to that. And then his dear mother had placed the seeds of division between them and grown them like the vines of the Wild. The two matriarchs of the Nostrom clan had ensured that he, Mael, and Lana were bound to rip each other to shreds by the end of it all.
They each had been given a prophecy,certainly.Lilivra must have whispered into the ears of his brother and sister just the same as she had whispered into his, so long ago.
Raziel wasn’t a fool.
He wasn’t the only one with dreams of grandeur—with aspirations of solitary control over Runne and the family empire. This bloodbath had always been inevitable.
Moreover, it was by design.
So why,why?
Why such cruelty?
Why cast him into the ocean where he would suffer for eternity…?
Why suchbetrayal?
Because they never loved him.
Because they never cared about him. Because for all his bloodlust, for all his dreams of murdering Mael and Lana, Raziel had never wished them to suffer. He had wanted to win. But he had loved them.
They were family.
Clearly, he was alone in his madness.
No.
He was alone in hisweakness.
That was what had led him here. To this point. To this death.
To this pit of suffering.
To this unfathomable failure.
Weakness.
Raziel Nostrom was dead.
Because he had been too weak to survive.
Raziel Nostrom was still in that casket. And there he would remain. There, he would leave him. Screaming and begging for help.
Retching up more water from his lungs, he shut his eyes.
