He was alwaysnothing.
“Raziel.” Nadi’s voice was quiet behind him. Steady in a way that made something twist in his chest. “Look at me.”
He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to see the fear in her eyes, the accusation, the knowledge that she was about to die because he’d been too weak to save her. Too weak to change the inevitable path they were on. But he turned anyway, because she’d asked, and he’d never been able to deny her anything.
What he saw in her expression wasn’t fear.
It was understanding.
“Do it,” she said.
“What?”
“Do it.” She stepped closer to him, reaching up to cup his face in her hands the way she’d done a hundred times before. The way she’d done on their wedding night, in that glowing cavern deep beneath the Wild, when they’d spoken vows that neither of them had truly believed would matter. Her palms were warmagainst his cold skin, and he found himself leaning into the touch like a starving man reaching for bread.
“If I have to die, I’d rather it be by your hand than hers. I’d rather the last thing I see be your face. I’d rather—” Nadi’s voice broke, just slightly, the first crack in the armor she’d worn for so long. “I’d rather die knowing you loved me. And that all of this—everything we’ve done—that it meant something. ThatImeant something.”
“You meaneverythingto me.” The words were ripped from somewhere deep inside him, from a place he’d thought long since cauterized. “Nadi?—”
“She’ll kill us both anyway.” Her thumbs traced the line of his cheekbones, the gesture achingly familiar. “You heard her. She has no use for mercy, no use for sentiment. We can’t stop her, you know we can’t. At least this way, you survive. At least this way, there’s a chance?—”
“I don’t want a chance without you.” The words tore out of him, raw and desperate and more honest than anything he’d ever said in his centuries of existence. “I don’t want any of it. Not the throne, not the power, not the burning world. None of it means anything if you’re not beside me.”
She smiled, and it was the saddest thing he’d ever seen. “Then we die together. Like we promised. Remember? One cannot die unless both of us die. That’s what it means.”
For a moment, he didn’t understand. Then?—
The blood bond.
The fae marriage.
For one of us to die, we both have to die.
He’d dismissed it as superstition at the time. Hand-me-down tricks passed off as ancient wisdom. But Nadi’s eyes were burning into his now with an intensity that suggested she believed otherwise.
The vine-tree had withered and died.Somethinghad happened down there in the Wild.
It was the only hope they had left.
Behind him, Lilivra was growing impatient. “This display is touching, truly. But I’ve waited long enough. Make your choice, grandson. Her life, or both of yours.”
Raziel looked at Nadi. Looked into those dark eyes that had seen him at his worst and somehow loved him anyway. The eyes of his wife. His partner. His weakness.
And the only strength he had ever truly known.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I know.” She tilted her head back, baring her throat to him the way she had so many times before. An offering. A gift. An act of trust so complete it took his breath away. “I love you too.”
He didn’t let her finish.
His fangs found her neck with the precision of long practice, sinking deep into the flesh he knew so well. Her blood flooded his mouth—copper and sweetness and something that tasted like home—and he drank. Drank like he was dying of thirst. Drank like this was the last thing he would ever do.
Because it might be.
He’d tasted her blood a hundred times before, but never like this. Never with the knowledge that each swallow might be bringing them both closer to oblivion. Her essence poured into him, hot and vital and achingly familiar, and he found himself cataloging every detail—the way her fingers tightened on his shoulders, the small sound she made as her strength began to fade, the flutter of her pulse against his lips as it grew weaker and weaker.
This was love, he realized. Not the pretty, sanitized version from songs and stories. This was love in its truest, most terrible form—the willingness to destroy yourself for someone else’ssake. The willingness to risk everything, sacrifice everything, become nothing, if it meant they might survive.
