His gaze swept past them, past the carnage of the hallway, and found the body of his sister crumpled against the wall. Asha’s dress was torn, her dark hair splayed around her like a halo, and there was a silver blade protruding from her chest—directly through the heart.
Somethingbrokebehind Zabriel’s glasses. Something that might have been grief, or rage, or some terrible combination of both.
“Asha,” he breathed. Just the name. Nothing more. But the weight of it filled the corridor like a physical thing.
Then his gaze shifted to Raziel and Nadi, and the temperature in the hallway seemed to drop by ten degrees.
“Take them.” His voice was quiet. Controlled. Somehow that was worse than if he’d been screaming. “Alive. My wife and brother-in-law will want to deal with them personally.”
Raziel’s grip on Nadi tightened. She could feel the tension thrumming through him, could see him calculating odds that had just shifted dramatically against them. Vampires, all of them fresh and uninjured. He was wounded. She was worse. There was no way out—not this time.
“Zabriel,” he said, his voice carrying that old, familiar smoothness despite everything. “This doesn’t have to end badly. Your sister attacked us. We?—”
“Silence.” Zabriel didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The single word cut through Raziel’s protest like a blade through silk. “Your little fae and I have something in common now…you have slaughtered my whole family, Raziel. Braen. Nabrisi. Now Asha.” His lip curled with undisguised contempt. “There is no version of this that doesn’t end badly for you, Serpent. The only question is how much you suffer first.”
The vampires didn’t rush. They tightened the circle slowly, almost leisurely, like wolves content to let exhaustion do most of the work for them. Nadi counted six of them, their pale faces catching the dim light as they drifted closer from every direction.
She tried to raise her blade. Her fingers tightened on the grip and her shoulder hitched upward an inch, maybe two, before the muscles seized and refused to carry the weight any further. She gritted her teeth and willed her arm to move. It trembledin place, useless. Too much blood loss, too much pain, too little strength left.
Raziel snarled beside her—a low, guttural sound more animal than human. He shifted his weight, trying to angle himself between her and the nearest cluster of them, but he dragged a hiss through his teeth as he did. His left arm hung wrong, the shoulder visibly misaligned, and she could see the way he compensated, leaning hard to one side, every movement costing him something.
For a few seconds, the circle just held. The vampires watched them with flat, patient eyes, and Nadi understood with a sick lurch that they were waiting. Not out of caution. Out of amusement. They could see what she and Raziel apparently looked like from the outside—two broken things propping each other up—and they were savoring it.
One of them moved first. Not fast. Just a calm step forward, then another, closing the gap with Raziel the way someone might approach a dog they expected to bite but knew couldn’t do any real damage. Raziel swung at him anyway, a clumsy right hook that had nothing behind it. The vampire caught his fist at an almost insultingly calm speed, then drove his own into Raziel’s stomach with a force that folded him in half. He dropped to one knee, gasping.
Nadi lunged—or tried to. She got half a step before hands closed around her arms from behind, and she hadn’t even seen the one who grabbed her. The grip wrenched her arms back and a white spike of pain tore up through both shoulders. She heard herself scream before she could bite it back. Her fingers spasmed open and the blade rang against the stone floor, spinning once before it skittered out of reach.
Her last weapon. Gone. And the sound of it hitting the ground felt louder than it had any right to.
After that, it was efficient. Iron cuffs for her wrists—already waiting, already sized. Silver for Raziel, and he bucked against them with a strangled noise when the metal touched his skin. Too convenient. Too well-prepared. They’d known exactly what they were coming for.
The iron against her skin was agony—a burning, constant pain that made her wounds feel like nothing by comparison. But Nadi barely noticed. She was too busy watching Raziel struggle futilely against his captors, crimson eyes blazing with impotent fury.
“Don’t,” she whispered to him. “Save it.”
For what, she didn’t know. But the alternative was watching him get beaten to a pulp for nothing.
Zabriel observed the proceedings with cold satisfaction, his amber eyes never leaving the silver blade still embedded in his sister’s chest. “Bring them,” he said finally. “Mael and Lana are waiting.”
They were dragged through the ruined hallways of the Nostrom estate, past bodies and bloodstains and the evidence of Kalo’s assault. The sounds of fighting had faded now—either the fae forces had retreated, or they’d been overwhelmed. Neither option boded well.
It meant they were on their own.
There would be no rescue.
The grand ballroom was exactly as Nadi had imagined it—all crystal chandeliers and gilded mirrors and polished marble floors. Cracked and faded as it was, they had done their best to resurrect the corpse of the Nostrom estate, but the rot still showed.
The orchestra had long since fled, their instruments abandoned on the stage like the remnants of a dream. The elegant guests had scattered as well, leaving behind overturnedtables and spilled champagne and the general chaos of a party gone terribly wrong.
And at the center of it all, seated on a raised dais that might as well have been a throne, sat Mael Nostrom.
He looked good. Better than Nadi had ever seen him, despite it all. The broad-shouldered vampire radiated power and contentment in equal measure, his massive frame draped in a suit that probably cost more than most people made in their lives. His golden eyes gleamed with satisfaction as he surveyed the ruins of the party, like a king surveying a conquered kingdom.
Beside him, perched on the arm of his chair like a particularly decorative bird, sat Lana.
The Sweetheart Mistress was in a shockingly practical gown—black leather and silk that clung to her frame like a second skin. Her blonde hair was pulled back severely, and her magenta eyes gleamed with predatory anticipation as she watched Raziel and Nadi being dragged before them.
“Well, well,” Mael said, a smile spreading across his handsome face. “Look what the tide washed back in. It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it, brother?”
