“Especially not me, you mean.” She refused to flinch, to look away. “You’re still keeping secrets. And you have the balls to challenge me on mine?”
His grip tightened fractionally. “Mine aren’t going to get uskilled. Shall we discuss your meetings with my siblings? Or perhaps how Mael has been contacting you privately? Or maybe we should talk about Lana’s offer to you?”
Ice flooded her veins. He knew. Of course he knew.
“You’ve been watching me.”
“I’ve been watching everyone,” he corrected, releasing her throat but not stepping back. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? I’ve been playing this game since before you were born.”
“This isn’t a game to me.” Her anger was making her reckless. She had to be careful. “This is my life. My revenge.”
“Yourrevenge?” His laugh was soft and cutting. “Oh, my sweet, naive little fae. You think killing me or my family will fill that emptiness inside you? That it might bring you some kind ofpeace?” He placed a hand over her heart, the gesture somehowmore intimate than his grip on her throat had been. “Nothing will. Trust me, I know.”
She slapped his hand away. “Don’t pretend to understand what I feel.”
“But Idounderstand.” His voice dropped, became almost gentle. “Why do you think I hate them so much? My own family? You think it’s just ambition that drives me?”
Nadi said nothing, waiting.
“I told you how my mother chained me in the fountain when I was eighty.” Raziel grimaced. “I lied. I waseight.”
She stared at him, eyes flicking between his in disbelief.
“And it wasn’t just once. Every time she held a soiree I was taken back. For a week prior and a week after.Raziel the mad dog couldn’t be trusted to speak. Might do something untoward or gauche.”He bared his teeth, his fangs extended.
“And…what would Mael and Lana do?”
“Lana would laugh and feed the pet fish my mother kept in the fountain. Mael would frown and claim he disapproved. But he never did anything to stop it.” He turned away from her, his shoulders rigid. The moonlight cast his shadow long across the garden path, a darkness stretching toward the deeper shadows beyond.
“You can breathe underwater. You do not know what it’s like to drown,” he continued, voice so low she had to strain to hear it. “Each time, I’d feel my lungs fill with water. I’d feel the burning, the panic. It would never stop. Eventually, the agony of it would blend with some part of my mind that sought shelter from the pain. I am a madman, Nadi—make no mistake. But I cannot say if I was this way before…or only after. I do not remember.”
Nadi found herself stepping closer to him, drawn by something she couldn’t name.
“The worst part wasn’t the drowning.” His voice was hollow now. “It was when they would drag me from the water. It wasbeing pulled from whatever place in my mind I had retreated to. The world I had made that wassafe.And far away fromthem.But when air filled my lungs, my mother was there. Mael was there. Lana was there. And I knew it wasn’t over. That until they were dead, it wouldneverbe over.”
She placed a hand on his back. She didn’t even know what she was trying to do. She had no words.
“Why haven’t you killed me yet, Nadi?” There was a pain in his voice, an ache that was raw. Exposed. A bleeding wound. “Can you say the words to me?”
“I…” The words caught in her throat. “No. I can’t.” She felt the words turn into poison. “Tell me something. When you killed my family, were you just following orders? Did you have a choice?”
Raziel lowered his head, his eyes shutting. His expression was unreadable. “I barely remember them, Nadi.” He didn’t try to soften it. She was grateful for that. “They were nothing special to me. Just another day. Just another assignment.”
“My father’s name was Talien Iltani. My mother was a human, Essira. My brother, Kaen. My two sisters were Meri and Lissa.” She had to say their names. She had to make sure heknew them.Because there were good odds that one or both of them didn’t survive tonight.
He nodded. “The warehouse beneath the overpass in the seventh district. I remember why, I don’t remember their faces. Your father was helping Luciento smuggle more than just drugs—they were smuggling weapons, to a group of humans planning an insurrection against us. Mael ordered a message to be sent. No survivors.”
All of that, she knew. All of that, she could understand. But he hadn’t answered the most important question. “Did you enjoy it?”
Silence. He lifted his head again to gaze out at the Rosov estate. “Yes.”
There was no apology. Nothing but honesty.
He enjoyed it. Because he had been trained to. Raised to. He was a product of the world that had made him. And…so was she. She should have hated him in that moment. She should have taken the knife in her belt and plunged into his back between his ribs like she’d done to so many of her marks before him.
Instead, she wondered if she had ever found herself enjoying her job. She thought back on every hit she’d ever performed. Every life she’d ever taken. And tried to remember a time she’d ever feltenjoymentover it.
She honestly… didn’t know.
