And here, too, the patrols were thinner. Spread too far. Mael was trying to control too much territory with too few loyal soldiers, and it showed.
Openings, Raziel had called them. Places where the cracks in his siblings’ new empire were already starting to show. It wouldn’t ever hold. This was doomed, no matterwhatthey did. The Rosovs and the Nostroms would fall, it was just a matter of time.
They were just here to speed up the process.
The watchtower rose before them like a ghost from Nadi’s memories. The old garrison wall stretched away on either side, most of it crumbled or demolished to make way for newer construction. But this section remained—ancient stone darkened by centuries of coal soot, its narrow windows staring down at them like suspicious eyes.
“Looks intact,” she murmured.
“It would be.” Raziel studied the structure with the careful attention of a predator scenting potential danger. “This place has survived everything else. I doubt my siblings’ little coup would change that.”
They approached the wooden gate covered with iron bars, the chains that once locked it from the outside now hangingloose. That made Nadi pause. When she’d been here last—when Ivan had brought a poisoned Raziel here to recover—the chains had been secured tight.
Someone had been here. Or wasstillhere.
She caught Raziel’s eye. He’d noticed too. His hand drifted toward the pistol Kalo had given him, though he didn’t draw it yet.
“Could be scavengers,” she said quietly. “Place has been empty for weeks.”
“Could be.” His tone suggested he didn’t believe it any more than she did.
They moved through the gate and into the small cobblestone courtyard. The silence was absolute—no sounds of life, no rustling from within. Just the distant wail of sirens and the ever-present hum of a city under siege.
Raziel went first, because of course he did. The door at the top of the worn stone steps was unlocked, and it swung open at his touch with barely a creak. The interior was dark, the windows shuttered, but her eyes adjusted quickly.
The watchtower looked exactly as she remembered it. The blend of ancient architecture and modern comfort. The spiral staircase rising through the center. The enormous fireplace with its grotesque carved face. The leather sofas and thick blankets that had seemed so inviting when she’d been exhausted and terrified and tending to Raziel’s bullet wounds.
But someone had been living here. Recently. The blankets were rumpled. Empty cups sat on the table. And the faint smell of blood hung in the air—old blood, but not too old.
“Raziel—”
The click of a gun being cocked froze the word in her throat.
“Don’t move.” The voice came from the shadows of the staircase. A voice she recognized. “Either of you.”
Ivan stepped into the dim light, a rifle trained on them with the steady hands of a man who’d been pointing weapons at dangerous things his entire life. His face was haggard—thinner than she remembered, with several days’ worth of stubble darkening his jaw. But his eyes were sharp. Alert.
And then those eyes widened.
“Boss?”
“Ivan.” Raziel’s smile was slow and predatory. “You look terrible.”
“You look dead.” Ivan didn’t lower the rifle. “You’re supposed to be dead. Heard the fae got you after the raid.”
“Yet here I stand.” Raziel spread his hands, showing he was unarmed—or at least appearing to be. “Nadi retrieved me. From the bottom of the sea, no less. Quite the romantic gesture, wouldn’t you say?”
Ivan’s gaze snapped to her, and something complicated moved behind his stoic features. “You. You’re alive too.”
“Disappointed?”
“Relieved.” The word came out rough. “We thought—when Mael announced that the traitors had been dealt with—” He shook his head slowly. “We didn’t know what to believe.”
“We?” Raziel’s eyes narrowed. “Who else is here, Ivan?”
Before Ivan could answer, footsteps sounded on the spiral staircase. Light, careful footsteps. And then a figure descended into view, backlit by the faint glow filtering through the upper windows.
Azazel.
