Unable to scratch the name that had been at the top of her list for over eighty years.Thename. The whole reason she was stillalive.The whole reason she was still in the metropolis. The reason she had left a trail of corpses in her wake as an assassin.
Who was she, if she wasn’t Nadi, the fae who wanted the Serpent dead?
What did she have to live for, if she didn’t have that to drive her forward?
Nothing.
Absolutelynothing.
Pulling in a breath, it hitched halfway and she choked out a sob. No. No, this was all right. She could only hope that the gods would be kind and simply commit her soul to the endless oblivion. That they didn’t leave her to wander as a ghost.
She supposed she was about to find out.
Taking another deep breath, she readied herself, and muttered a quiet prayer to the moons and the lords of the deep. To her family, she prayed for forgiveness.
And to Luciento, most of all.
Slowly walking up to Raziel, she knelt down beside him. “Raz…”
The noise he made was a strangled, unintelligible thing at first. The hand closest to her twisted into a claw and jerked toward her before he pounded it into the floor.
He was trying to fight it.
“Run…”He pulled in a hollow, rasping breath. His voice sounded like the wind escaping from a tomb. Cold. Empty. Death itself. “Run…from…me…”He sank his nails into the floor, leaving white scratches in the dark wood.
“It’s okay. This is how it was meant to end between us.” She gently urged him to roll onto his side facing her.
His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow. He was fading away as she watched. Like a corpse decaying. “Run…”
“You told me to run, once, long ago.” She ran her hand down his cheek. He hissed, his mouth open, seeking the pulse of her wrist. “I’m not going to listen to you this time.”
“Na…di…”Her name, as best as he could manage it.
“Ssh…” Gently, she picked him up, grunting under his weight at first. But as she slung an arm underneath him to pull him close, his own arm, which felt so weak at first, snapped around her like an iron girder.
“Run…”He was still telling her to run. Sharp nails scraped her scalp as fingers tangled in her hair and fisted it, yanking her head to the side.
Suddenly, she was inhislap—a burst of strength from the last desperate attempts of an animal to survive. And she knew there was no escaping now.
Taking a deep breath, she settled into his grasp, tilting her head away from his already opening mouth. “I’m going nowhere. I vowed to follow you straight into the void, Serpent. One way or another. So I need you alive.”
It was then that the strange purr began in his chest. Rasping and broken, but there all the same. Shutting her eyes, she let thesound of it take her away. Let it soothe her, let it wipe away all the fear of what was about to come.
She felt the bite more as a jolt of her body as he sank his teeth into her. Then felt thatpull.That glorious, wonderful bliss as he began to consume her.
He moaned, clutching at her, deepening the bite. She stroked his hair, holding onto him as she let herself simply disappear into the pleasure of him. Of his kiss.
The world began to fade away, and she could pretend she was simply falling asleep in the arms of her lover.
At least this was a good way to die.
FIFTEEN
Raziel held Nadi in his arms.
A drop of blood hit her pale cheek.
It had fallen from his eye. He was crying. He didn’t care. He clutched her to his chest. He was too weak to stand. Too exhausted to move. Too dizzy to eventhinkstraight.
