It all ran together after a while. It all sort of became…mundane. Dispatching someone had to go spectacularly wrong for it to stand out in her mind. Otherwise, it was just filed away in a cabinet in her mind and she had to strain for a name or specifics to recall one job over another.
There was only one death she waited for—pined for—in all those years. One thing she had been working toward. There was one death she had dreamed of.
Raziel Nostrom’s.
And now, she was watching him die.
She was watching him dieslowly. Painfully.
Instead of rejoicing, she was dragging him through another winding passage. Instead of celebrating, she was desperately trying to convince herself that he wasn’t dying. That he wasn’tallowedto die. Not after everything they’d been through.
That this unstoppable force of a vampire—this unkillablethingthat had represented every horror in her life for so long—was not fading with every step through the caves of the Wild.
A man that she had saved enough times now to know that there was no point lying to either of them anymore. For what good it would do them now? His weight against her shoulder had grown heavier with every step, his tall frame becoming more and more dead weight as the poison worked through his system. Black veins had begun spreading from the puncture wounds on his back, visible through his torn shirt, creating a spider web pattern across his pale skin. His breathing had become shallow, ragged, and every few minutes he would mumble something incoherent—sometimes, just broken fragments of words.
“Not the fountain,” he whispered against her ear, his breath too hot. The poison was boiling what little blood he had left in his body. “No more, please…”
“Shh.” She adjusted her grip on his waist, trying to ignore how his usually cold vampire skin now burned with fever. “Save your strength.”
“Can’t breathe.” His fingers clutched weakly at her shoulder. “The silver burns…Can’t claw my way out…”
He wasn’t in the coffin anymore. She’d freed him from that particular nightmare days ago. But his mind was trapped there all the same, reliving the drowning over and over. Thehebekpoison was known for bringing out a victim’s worst memories, their deepest fears. Trust the Wild to create a toxin that killed you twice—once in your mind, once in your body.
The passage opened into a small cavern, barely large enough for them both to fit comfortably. It would have to do. Shecouldn’t carry him much farther, and the trembling in his limbs told her they were running out of time.
She’d failed.
He…was going to die.
The thought sent a pang through her. Something she had wanted for so long, and now it hurt her so viciously. But the very least she could do was let him die comfortably. “Here,” she said, easing him down against the smoothest section of wall she could find. “We’re stopping here.”
“No.” His hand caught her wrist with surprising strength. “The caravan—” His eyes rolled into his head then. And all at once, he collapsed.
She barely was able to catch him. His dead weight was more than she could handle, and he wasn’t able to help her much in his current state. It took everything they both had just to help navigate him toward a mossy rock by the wall. It wasn’t much. But it would have to do.
She knelt down at his side. “If they’re here, Raz, I don’t know where. I don’t think we’ll…If I left, and you—” She felt a rock in her throat. Any chance she had of getting to the fae would require her going ahead on her own. It’d require abandoning him. And if he only had minutes left, he’d be dead by the time she returned.
When he smiled at her, it was weak. His temperature was fluctuating wildly, as now his skin was ice cold. If he were a human or a fae, he would be sweating profusely. He would also be long dead by now. But he was a vampire. The proof was in his eyes, however. They were glassy and seemed to stare through her. That, she recognized. That, stayed the same. “You finally will have what you wanted, little murderer. Perhaps this is where I deserve to die. For what I’ve done.”
Something shattered in her chest.
“Now isn’t the time to grow a conscience, Raz.” The Nostroms were a plague upon the world, and Raziel had been one of the worst. The one who carried out the family’s bloodiest orders without question or mercy.
“I think this is precisely the point where most people grow a conscience, isn’t it?” He coughed, a sound that was wet and ragged. “At the moment they’re about to die? At least that’s when everybody starts growing one from my experience. Yours?”
That made her laugh, quiet and sad and heartbroken as his statement was. “Yeah. Same.” They really were so similar in the end, weren’t they? Killers of someone else’s making, sure. But doing nothing to really ever change the course of their own paths. His mother made him, but he never fought to change. And he made Nadi, but she could have given up her quest for revenge at any time.
Here they were.
Without warning, Raziel shifted, sitting up straighter against the wall. The movement clearly pained him. “Nadi, I need to tell you something.”
“You should rest?—”
“No. If I shut my eyes, I might not open them again.” He grimaced. “So not until you hear what I have to say.” There was a look on his face that told her there was going to be no arguing with him. How someone could look so intimidating while as dragged-out and beaten as he did, she didn’t know.
Impressed, she gestured for him to go on.
“Your family loved you. You…have hadlovein your life, Nadi. You have known what it is to be loved. And to love someone else.” Raziel leaned his head against the wall behind him, his red eyes looking black in the purple glow of the vines. “The closest I have ever known in my life to anything like that is Braen. You’ve seen the kind of love I share with my family. Or don’t, as the case may be.”
