“Tell me about your mother,” he said quietly.
So she did. She told him about the lessons in herbs and poisons she’d thought she’d never need. About how her mother had been patient with her, even when she was more interested in learning to fight than to heal.
“She would have hated you,” Nadi said, running her fingers through his hair.
“Most mothers are suspicious of their daughters’ suitors.”
“Yes.”
“And most mothers would hate the person who murdered them.”
“That too.” She felt him smile against her shoulder. “But I…think she also would have understood how we wound up like this, somehow. She always said the heart was the stupidest and wisest part of any person. That it would lead you wrong and right in equal measure.”
“Which is this?”
“Both. Neither. Does it matter?”
His breathing hitched, and she held him tighter.
“Stay. Please.” His voice was getting weaker again, the brief reprieve the incomplete cure had given him fading. “I don’t want to be alone. Not again. Not at the end.”
Fear gripped her heart. “You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone again, I promise.”
They stayed like that, holding each other in the purple-lit darkness as the poison began to overwhelm him. She sang to him—old fae lullabies her mother had sung, songs about the sea and stars and impossible love. She told him of the AncientGrove, the heart of the Wild and the old fae grandmothers who kept it alive.
“Nadi?” His voice was barely a whisper.
“I’m here.”
“Can’t see you. Everything’s dark.”
She was crying again, hot tears falling onto his face as she held him. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
“Love you,” he mumbled, the words slurred. “Wanted to say it again. In case…”
“I love you, Raziel Nostrom. Too much.” She pressed her lips to his forehead, tasting salt and fever.
But his breathing was getting shallower. The black veins had spread across his entire torso now, reaching for his throat like strangling hands.
“Te’eilim, ish wu’iel. Drustish, ish wu’iel.”She whispered an old prayer to the lords of the deep to come and claim his soul. She’d failed. The one person she’d chosen to save in her life—irony be damned—and she’d failed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
His hand twitched in hers, maybe trying to squeeze back, maybe just a reflex. She couldn’t tell anymore.
The sob that escaped her echoed off the cave walls, raw and broken. She’d been a fool to think they could have this. That two killers could choose each other and somehow make it work. That love could overcome the blood between them, the impossibility of what they were.
But she’d do it again. Even knowing how it ended, she’d save him from that coffin again. She’d choose him again.
“Please,” she begged the Wild, the gods, anyone who might be listening. “Please. I’ll pay any price. Just don’t take him. Not like this. Not when we just found each other.”
Raziel’s breathing grew weaker, barely visible now. His skin had gone gray beneath the web of black veins.
She was so focused on him, so lost in her grief, that she almost missed the sound of footsteps.
Almost.
Instinct kicked in a second too late. She looked up to find three figures standing at the entrance to their small cavern, guns drawn and pointed directly at them.
Fae.
