Page 8 of The Serpent’s Bride (Bloodlines #1)

FOUR

Nadi looked at herself in the bedroom mirror. Sarah, one of Raziel’s staff, had come by to drop off “proper clothes” and makeup for her. The woman barely made eye contact before leaving and shutting the door.

It was clear how little Monica meant to these people.

And that was fine—if they paid her no attention, it would be easier to dismantle them from the inside.

Leaning in, she touched up the deep red lipstick that had been brought for her.

It came as no surprise that she was wearing his colors—black and red.

The dress was revealing, with a plunging neckline that made wearing undergarments impossible, and thin straps on the back criss-crossing down to the waistline.

But it was hardly the most scandalous thing she’d ever worn in her life.

Besides, fae in the Wild usually wandered around stark naked, anyway. She was used to nudity.

The silk fabric and lack of a brand label told her it was expensive. The black stilettos and the makeup she had been brought were also clearly the best that money could buy.

Not because Raziel wanted to give his fiancée nice things, of course. But because he wanted her to look exclusive, like everything else in his life.

She was just an accessory to him.

Disgust boiled in her, but she swallowed it down. He was playing a game with her. And she was playing with him too. But they weren’t playing on the same board.

Curling her hair up into an artfully messy bun, she stuck the two long, pointed pins into it to keep the knot of hair secured. They were her only weapons here.

If Raziel attacked her, they wouldn’t be of much use. In her line of work, she relied on stealth and surprise. Not brute strength.

But she could at least turn them on herself if necessary. Nadi refused to become another rumor of the disgusting things Raziel did to his enemies. And his lovers. She knew only too well what he was capable of.

The sound of screams echoed in her memories.

Jaw twitching, she took a breath and let it out. The memories of that night flashed back to her unbidden.

The underground caverns of the Wild were something to behold. She honestly sometimes pitied the humans and vampires who had never seen them. The darkness held wonders, if you weren’t too afraid to see them.

All fae clans were nomadic, traveling in packs and wandering with the chaotic currents of the Wild.

Any attempts to build structures and civilizations like the humans did would be a total waste of time and effort down there.

Fields of crops would turn to forest overnight.

Twisting roots and vines would tear buildings down days after they were made.

Her father had been an Iltani, a member of the few fae clans who dared to trade illicit goods with the upper world and whose ranks were more human than fae, half the time.

It had left her and her family cast out from most of the other fae in the Wild, but…it had also meant that Nadi and her family had never gone hungry, or without the finest fabrics, or really had ever wanted for anything.

So, Nadi had spent her youth gathering mushrooms from the Wild that her family would then sell to the humans, and she spent her life living closer to the surface than most—in those places where the faintly glowing vines had begun to overtake buildings and structures that the humans and vampires had surrendered to the fight against nature.

All the world was a gradient. Nothing was truly black and white.

Good and evil. Life and death. Civilization and Wild.

And growing up, she’d lived in those liminal places, those forgotten spaces—abandoned by humans and shunned by fae.

Neither in the metropolis nor in the Wild, but in the spaces in between.

At the time, Nadi didn’t understand why the humans were so interested in the ugly mushrooms she worked to gather. They couldn’t even be turned into anything useful.

Now, she understood that they made for some incredible hallucinogenic drugs.

It had made her clan influential, if not wealthy.

But she hadn’t known why. As a child, she hadn’t known why her uncle Luciento had joked with her father that “he could really use a shapeshifter like her in his ranks when she got older.” And why her father would laugh and say it’d cost him the two moons in the sky to let him recruit her. Luciento would snort and say “Sold.”

They had been staying in a warehouse recently overtaken by the Wild when it had all gone wrong. Their clan had overstepped their bounds. They had grown too bold. And like the Wild, they needed to be beaten back.

But it was not their blades and their fire and their machines that came to destroy them. It was something much, much worse.

A vampire had come for them. But not just any vampire.

It had been him.

The Serpent.

Even then, she had stared at him. At his stark beauty against the natural world around him. He didn’t belong there, with his long black hair, pale skin, and sharp red eyes. Her world was untamed, all tangled vines and leaves. Not pinstripes and tailored suits.

She hadn’t known his real name then. Only the title. Only the legend that when the Serpent came, everyone died. She’d never seen a vampire until that moment.

Chaos had struck almost instantly. He and the other vampires had swarmed into the warehouse, coming at them from all sides. They had moved faster than she could even see. Things with wings like bats, or—things that could become a swarm of bats, she hadn’t been quite sure.

The vampires had set fire to the warehouse, forcing her family farther out above ground, blocking any safe escape into the Wild.

They’d driven them out into the street. At the time, she hadn’t known where she was.

Now, she could see it in her mind’s eye.

Somewhere deep within the metropolis, underneath an overpass of the stacked roadways that hid the undesirable world from those above.

They’d run directly into a waiting squadron of humans. The sound of gunfire had echoed in her ears. Her mother had grabbed her arm. “Hide—shift! Be one of them—” And had pushed her down behind some crates by a wall.

In her head, time and time again, she replayed that night. In her dreams, in her nightmares, in her waking moments. She imagined herself being brave. She imagined herself standing up and saying no and fighting alongside her family.

Instead, she had done exactly what her mother had told her to do. She’d shifted her form into that of a human, crawling along the ground in the smoke and the dirt, glad that her clan generally wore the clothing common to human women. It made it easier to blend in if she needed to.

And in that moment? She’d needed to.

She had been a coward that night.

But that was when she had heard his laugh.

The gunfire had ceased.

Nadi had stared up in awe at the overpass—at the time one of the many great twisting structures of the metropolis.

Road built over road built over road built over homes and offices and workshops.

A dizzying sea of twisting girders and metal that looked like madness made from straight lines and lit from stinky glowing flames in glass lamps on metal sticks.

The vampire from before—the one with the suit and the red eyes—had stood before her family. Her mother, father, brother, and two sisters. They had all been on their knees before him, bloody and covered in soot, her father already bleeding from a bullet wound in his side.

“Mm. I apologize for this. It really isn’t personal.” The vampire’s voice had been smooth. Calm. Friendly. As if this were any other day. “But, unfortunately, your brother has been testing our patience—and a message must be sent. So…here I am, the messenger—and you, the message.”

“You hideous, inbred bloodsucker . ” Her father had spat down at the vampire’s expensive shoes, defiant to the last.

The vampire laughed again. “Oh, my dear, sweet savage. As if I could be hurt by any insults you can levy against me.” He had strolled casually over to her brother and…snapped his neck with a sickening crunch.

Her mother’s scream would replay in Nadi’s mind for the rest of her life.

As would the look on her brother’s face as he fell lifelessly to the ground.

“ Damn you! ” Her father’s shouting had been pointless.

“It’s a shame my powers are useless on your kind.” The vampire had sighed. “I do hate getting my hands dirty. Though, I suppose it is nice to have the practice now and then. Now, do remember, your brother Luciento is to blame for this, not me.”

Nadi’s eldest sister had followed next.

Followed by the youngest.

None of the desperate pleas for mercy from her parents did any good. Nor did they do anything to change his calm, casual, friendly , demeanor.

The vampire had put an end to her mother’s suffering next before smiling warmly down at her father and shrugging. “Luciento knew the price he would pay for acting out of turn.”

Her father never had the chance to respond.

But Nadi’s terror had not ended yet. Because the vampire had then turned his attention to her . She was still cowering there, wearing the face of a human she had seen once, crying and weeping, bunched up in the corner of some crates against what she recognized now as bricks.

His expensive shoes had echoed on the cobblestones as he approached her. The silhouette he made against the light from the gas lamps still haunted her nightmares. “Wrong place, wrong time…” He chuckled, then said one more word to her. “ Run. ”

And she had.

But she’d decided, then and there, that she would carve that word into his skull as he died.

There was a knock on the door. “ Dinner. Ready? ” Fucking Hank again.

And he was summoning her to dinner.

With Raziel Nostrom.

Shutting her eyes, she took a deep breath in, held it, and let it out. Taking in the reflection of Monica one more time in the mirror, she braced herself. Yeah. She repeated the phrase in her mind that had kept her going all those years.

I am going to kill you, Raziel Nostrom.