“Well, well, well,” the one in front said, his mouth pulling into a lopsided, sarcastic smile. “What’s this, then?”
Wait.
She knew him.
Like a brick to the face, memories crashed over her as she recognized the fae pointing the gun directly at her. It had been decades. An image of him tugging on her tail, yanking her backwards as she tried to dive deeper to escape from him. Laughing as she caught him off guard and pushed him into atebitshrub.He’d picked the tiny green fuzzy sticky seeds out of his hair and clothes for days, turning them into tiny projectiles he’d flicked at her over dinner.
He was no longer that boy.
But she’d know him anywhere.
The name burst from her lips before she could stop herself.
“Kalo?”
FIVE
Why was it always nightmares of water?
At least this was a slight variant.
This time, he was choking on blood.
He remembered retching it up. Then being fed it against his will. A bitter, thick substance that his body tried to rebel against like the water in his lungs. But then she was there, shouting at him. Cutting through the agony. He tried to remember the words. But like a dream, it was gone.
Consciousness returned to Raziel like drowning in reverse—painful, disorienting, and entirely unwelcome. The first thing he became aware of was movement. Not his own movement, but a gentle swaying that made his stomach lurch. The second was warmth against his side, familiar and comforting. The third was that he wasn’t dead, which was both surprising and mildly disappointing given how he’d felt the last time he was conscious.
He kept his eyes closed, taking stock. The poison’s burn had faded to a dull ache, like the memory of pain rather than pain itself. His vampire healing was working again, sluggish but present. The black veins that had been strangling him from the inside were gone—he could feel their absence like missing teeth.
Voices drifted around him, speaking in the liquid syllables of the old fae tongue, mixed with words he could understand but barely grasp. He caught fragments—vampire,foolish,dangerous—but most of it flowed past his understanding. One voice he recognized instantly, however.
Nadi, her tone sharp and defensive, arguing with someone.
The surface beneath him was strange. Not quite wood, not quite stone. When he finally cracked his eyes open, he found himself staring at a ceiling that shouldn’t exist. It was curved like the inside of a shell, but made from what appeared to be a single piece of wood. It seemed it had been grown rather than carved. No tool marks, no joints—just smooth, organic curves that followed the natural grain.
“You’re awake.”
He turned his head—slowly, carefully, as his skull might as well have been stuffed with jelly—to find Nadi sitting beside him. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her opalescent eyes, her hair hanging limp around her face. But she was alive, unharmed, and the relief that flooded through him was embarrassing in its intensity.
“Where—” His voice sounded like he’d been gargling gravel. And felt about the same.
“Don’t try to talk yet.” She helped him sit up, pressing a flask of water to his lips. It tasted of minerals and something green, like drinking liquid moss, but it soothed the burning in his throat. “We’re with a caravan, traveling back toward the surface. You’ve been unconscious for almost two days.”
Two days. Memories came flooding back—the poison, his pathetic deathbed confession. Heat crept up his neck. Had he really told her he loved her? While dying ofhebekpoison like some romantic fool?
How far he had fallen.
He truly had lost.
What kind of ruler was he meant to be, like this? Brought so low? Lilivra was wrong. Whatever so-called plans or prophecies she had claimed to see were lies. He was nothing.Nothing.
“Stop that.” Nadi must have read his expression correctly. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. Not now. We have bigger problems.”
That’s about when he noticed the weight around his wrists. Looking down, he found the silver chain from the coffin wrapped around them—with fabric tucked under the loops as to avoid burning him, but secure enough that he couldn’t slip free.
How little they understood.
But he wasn’t in a position to demonstrate at the moment. Not when the world was spinning.
