“And Volencia couldn’t allow that,” Nadi guessed, the pieces falling into place.
“Nope. She destroyed them, the way she destroys everything.” Ivan sighed.
Nadi looked down at Raziel, trying to imagine what it must have been like. To have the one person you trusted, the one escape you thought you’d found, turned against you by your own mother.
“What did Braen do?” she asked, though she suspected she knew the answer.
“Betrayed him. Set him up. Ensured that a deal went wrong and had left him for dead in a back alley in the lower city.” Ivan’s voice was flat. “I found him there, nearly dead. Multiple stab wounds, a silver blade left in his chest.”
“But he survived.”
“Barely. Raziel went after Braen, said Braen had done it on purpose. Braen denied it all, and said that Raziel was the paranoid, delusional one. Raziel walked away. He was never the same after.” Ivan’s grip on the steering wheel tightened again. “Volencia told him it proved he could never trust anyone. That only she understood him.” His laugh was hollow. “Raz believed her.”
The car fell silent, save for the hum of the engine and Raziel’s ragged breathing. Nadi tried to process everything she’d learned. It didn’t excuse what Raziel had become—the monster who’d slaughtered her family—but it helped her at leastunderstandhow he’d gotten there.
The layers of manipulation, the systematic breaking of his spirit, the isolation from anyone who might offer an alternative path.
“So tonight, in the garden,” she said slowly, “when Braen revealed that he knew Volencia had lied?”
“Dunno. How would you feel if your whole world was a lie?” Ivan finished for her. “Because he and Braen never…”
She thought back to the moment just before Braen had shot Raziel, the look of raw vulnerability that had crossed the Serpent’s face.
She’d never seen him so unguarded, so…human.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ivan said, his eyes finding hers in the mirror again. “You’re wondering if the ‘real’ Raziel—the one beneath the Serpent—is someone worth saving.” He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. There isn’t one.”
“I know that.”More than I can tell you, Ivan.More than the bodyguard could possibly understand, she truly, honestly, to her soul, knew there was no pulling the two apart. The thought had not ever crossed her mind.
There was norealRaziel hiding underneath the monster.
There was no monster to save him from. They were one and the same.
She had watched her entire family die at his hands. Her entire life had been spent plotting her revenge, learning to kill—honing her skills as an assassin. And what little she had, had been sacrificed to infiltrate his life for the sole purpose of destroying him and everything he held dear.
She had murdered her uncle Luciento in the name of the “greater good.”
And yet, here she was, cradling his head in her lap, desperately trying to keep him alive.
If there was a monster in the car…
She was starting to believe it might not be Raziel.
“I’m not looking to redeem him, Ivan. I can promise you that.” She turned her gaze out the window. No, if he died, it would be becauseshedecided he should. No one else. The words slipped out without her realizing it. “He’ll die when I say he dies.”
Ivan’s eyes widened slightly in the mirror, and he barked out a surprised laugh. “Yeah. I think I get why he likes you.”
Nadi didn’t answer, not wanting to examine that statement too closely.
She was afraid of what she might find if she did.
FOURTEEN
Nadi watched the electric lights transition to gas as Ivan drove the car from the central city to the outer areas that were less advanced—lesspolished.Wherever he was taking them, it wasn’t anywhere near Raziel’s usual crawls.
It was dangerous, being this far away from Nostrom turf. The Rosovs controlled grounds near here, but this particular area was consideredno man’s land,where the building structure and topography weren’t worth any major player holding onto it.
In fact, Ivan had taken them to a section of the old garrison wall. One of the ramparts that were meant to be the “last line of defense” against the Wild, before it was discovered that the Wild wasbeneaththe city not justaroundthe city. It stretched some fifty feet tall above them, and most of the stone structure, which was from around the same era as the Nostrom family estate, had long since crumbled away or had been taken down to make way for newer structures or buildings.
