A hand fell on his back.
His assassin.
His fae.
The only one in this world who understood him. The only one who dared to stand beside him. The one who might understand why Raziel Nostrom had to die and stay dead. He would let her live. He would let her stay, even if she was his greatest weakness. Because he knew she might be strong enough to survive what he would have to become.
Besides, he would have need of her.
“Welcome to the Wild, Raziel Nostrom,”she had said, not realizing Raziel Nostrom no longer existed.
He needed his fae to guide him through this new torment. To take him back to the place he knew so he could burn it all down. Straightening up, he spat the last of the saltwater from his lungs onto the stones at his feet and took stock of his surroundings.
The water of the lake behind him might as well have been made of obsidian, the surface was so smooth and black. The only disturbance in its glassy surface was the silver coffin on the shore, half-dragged out of the water, its lid carelessly tossed aside, the silver chains draped haphazardly over the rocks of the cavern, revealing the fact that its prisoner had escaped.
The cavern looked like some pit of despair where souls like his were sent to suffer after death.
But despite the blackened surroundings, the environment wasn’t trulydark. Everything was bathed in a ghastly purplish-blue hue, cast by the thick vines that burst through the walls and the ceiling some hundred or so feet overhead. The vines pulsed with their own organic light, like the veins and arteries of a living creature, spreading out and thinning as they tangled over each other and spiraled and grasped every surface.
He could see creatures—thingsthe like of which he had never witnessed before—flitting from branch to branch. Animals withtoo many wings. Too many limbs. Too many eyes. They chittered and called to each other in sounds like shattering glass.
He reflexively bared his fangs.
The Wild.
He wanted it alldead.To crush it beneath his heel.
And moons, thesmellof it. It was everything at once—earth and decay and growing things and water and something else, something raw and untamed that made his vampiric senses scream. The air was thick and humid, pressing against his skin like a living thing.
He put his hand in his pocket and blinked in surprise when he felt a small, circular object there. Pulling it out, he stared down at it. A golden coin. And on both sides, a serpent, twisting around itself. On one side, it devoured its own tail. On the other, its jaw was open and its fangs extended in violent victory, another snake dead beneath it.
It was one of his favorites, for obvious reasons. He had put it in his pocket prior to Lana’s doomed wedding and had entirely forgotten about it in the chaos that had ensued. Shutting his eyes…Raziellaughed.
The sound was haggard and wet. He still had water in his lungs from his brief-but-still-too-long stay in the coffin at the bottom of the ocean. But he laughed all the same.
Because he was now convinced, with his entire being, that the gods did exist. Throughout his childhood and his many years of life, he’d been certain they were a lie. Just some fable told to idiots who needed to make themselves feel bigger and safer. Who wanted to believe they might matter in the emptiness of the void once their little meaningless lives ceased to burn.
But, no. The gods were real. They were sentient. For what other reason would he still be alive, andhereof all places,with herof all people,if the gods were not real?
What an unexpected gift.
A reminder of who and what he really was.
Of who and what really mattered in his life.
The gods had stripped it all away from him. Taken everything from him that he thought had mattered to him. His riches. His resources. His men. His guns. His cars. His home.
All of it.
Raziel Nostrom wasdead.
Because he had been weak.
But now?Now?
What remained…was only the Serpent.
Grinning, he let out a long, wavering sigh.
