FIVE
Nadi woke to an empty bed.
It took her a moment to orient herself—the silk sheets beneath her, the high ceiling above, the gentle whisper of drapes against the floor as they moved in the night breeze. Raziel’s bedroom. She’d been sleeping here for weeks now, first while pretending to be his human wife, now as his unlikely conspirator.
The space beside her was cold. He’d been gone for some time.
Sitting up, she scanned the darkened room, her fae eyes easily adjusting to the low light. A sliver of whitish-blue moonlight spilled across the floor from the partially open balcony doors.
She found him there, standing at the railing, staring out over the metropolis. He was only wearing a pair of black silk pants, his long hair unbound, tendrils of it dancing in the breeze. His pale skin seemed almost to glow in the moonlight, the lean muscles of his back defined by shadow.
For a moment, she simply watched him. The creature who had woken her up from her nightmares in a cold sweat for the past eighty years. The monster who had murdered her family.The man who had begun to stir something inside her that she didn’t dare to name.
Wrapping herself in one of his dressing gowns—the one he’d given “Monica” was too flimsy for the cool night air—she approached the balcony. The stone was cold beneath her bare feet as she stepped out to join him.
“I think I already know the answer, but…are you all right?” She knew she shouldn’t care.
Raziel didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge her presence at all. His eyes remained fixed on the distant lights of the city, on the spires and towers of the metropolis that reached toward the Father moon like worshippers.
The silence stretched so long that Nadi thought he might not answer at all. When he finally spoke, his voice was distant, hollow.
“The first time my mother used me as her weapon, I was thirteen.”
Nadi kept her eyes on the cityscape, giving him the privacy of her averted gaze.
“There was a human merchant who had offended her. I don’t even remember how—refusing to sell her something she wanted. I remember even thinking as a child, it was trivial. Petty.” He paused, his fingers curling around the railing. “She told me to make him eat his own fingers, one by one. And I did. Because I knew if I didn’t, my punishment would be even worse. You can imagine how I had already learned that lesson.”
A chill ran down Nadi’s spine that had nothing to do with the night air.
“That’s how it began. Small cruelties that grew more elaborate as I grew older. My brother and sister were trained for politics, for business. I was trained to be something that families like ours need but never speak of openly.” His lips curled in a mirthless smile. “The monster in the closet. The shadow at theend of the hall. The serpent slipped into the sheets to poison you.”
Nadi remained silent, sensing he needed to speak more than he needed her response.
“Mael was always the golden son. The heir. Lana, the precious daughter. And I was…the spare. The one they could afford to break.” He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. “Volencia would have me punished for the slightest infractions. Not by her own hand, of course—that would be beneath her. She’d have others do it. Usually, Mael. To ‘toughen him up.’”
He turned then, leaning back against the railing to face her. The moonlight carved his features into sharp relief, throwing his eyes into shadow.
“Did you know vampires can starve for years without dying? We simply…waste away. Become living skeletons, mad with hunger. I spent my twenty-first birthday locked in a cell beneath our ancestral home, starving, because I had shown mercy to one of my mother’s enemies.”
Something twisted in Nadi’s chest. “How long did she keep you there?”
“Six months.” His voice was flat. “When she finally let me out, she brought me a girl. Human. Terrified. Said she was my birthday present.” His jaw tightened. “I was so hungry…I drained her dry in minutes.”
Nadi felt sick. She had known, intellectually, that the Nostroms were cruel. But this was beyond cruelty. This was systematic destruction.
“When I turned eighty, I was punished for no reason at all. Volencia simply wished to show me the depths to which she could make me suffer. Simply to remind me what I could be made to endure. I was chained to the bottom of the fountainin her garden.” His tone was almost nonchalant. As if he were describing a trip to the store.
A deep coldness settled over her as the horror of his words dawned on her.
“Vampires cannot die by drowning. We simply continue to exist within that state of drowning in perpetuity. I was left there to watch while she held parties…I can still see their faces gazing down at me, smiling and laughing as they sipped their wine while I hung there in delirious agony.”
Her hand tightened on the railing to keep from reaching out to him.
“Eventually, I became what she wanted,” Raziel continued. “The perfect weapon. The merciless killer. The torturer who could make anyone do anything he wished with a single word.” His eyes found hers in the darkness. “I learned to enjoy it, Nadi. That’s the worst part. Ibecamethe monster she created, because it was the only way to survive. And I trulydoenjoy it…on so many levels.”
She could see it now—what had once been a frightened boy. The child who had been twisted and broken until he became something unrecognizable even to himself.
“Lana was always her favorite,” he said, turning back to the city. “Even when she failed, she was forgiven. Mael was the heir, so he was protected, groomed for power. But me? I was expendable. Useful only as long as I was willing to get my hands dirty.”
