Page 5 of The Serpent's Bride
She remembered those red eyes—his silhouette. The look in her human mother’s eyes as he told her to slit her own throat.
And his laugh as she’d done it. That monster’slaugh.
Downing another mouthful of the wine, she swallowed too much and coughed.
Raziel had destroyed her life.
And she had been on a quest to destroy his ever since.
Nobody wakes up one day and goes “You know? I think I’m going to murder people for money.”Everybody had a reason. She didn’t talk much with other assassins. It was a pretty lonely trade. But the few she’d bumped into—usually because they were going after the same mark, which was always extremely awkward but usually wound up with a game of rock-paper-scissors followed by beers at a bar—all had similar sob stories to her. Some were better, some were worse. But they all had a name to point to. The names were always different—but there was alwayssomeone.
Point being, Raziel Nostrom was a difficult hit for several reasons.
He was a vampire. While his two siblings were older andarguablystronger, that wasn’t saying much. Raziel was powerful, ancient, and notorious for being able to hypnotize his victims into effortlessly killing themselves. And he didn’t just have his victims kill themselves quickly—that wouldn’t be brutal enough to prove a point. Not to mention, usually Raziel didn’t simply just target the victim. He wanted to ensure that the message was sent loud and clear.
Crossing him usually meant losing more than just the right to continue living. It usually meant losing everything else, first. Family. Friends. Loved ones.
Even after over eighty years, the sound of her father’s screams, begging for mercy, still woke her from her nightmares.
She had vowed, a long time ago, to make sure that Raziel suffered just like his victims. She wanted him to watch everything he loved be taken away from him, bit by bit, before she ended his life.
And she was going to kill his bloodsucking, criminal family first. Just like he had hers.
For the longest time, it had seemed like that was impossible. That there was no way that she could get close enough to the Serpent to exact her revenge.
That was, until she’d met the dead fuck in the other room.
The wedding was in a week.
That gave her not a lot of time to go to work, but she had all the information she needed. But for tonight? Tonight, she couldrelax, enjoy the luxurious hotel room, and rest. It might be the last night of good sleep she’d get in a while.
So, for the first time in a long time, and probably for the last time, she let down her glamor.
All of it.
She felt the knot of tension between her shoulder blades, which was seemingly always there, slowly release. She didn’t fit in the tub anymore, enormous as it was. But that was fine.
Her long tail draped over the edge and along the marble platform and over the side. She’d get cold eventually, but it was worth it for now. Sinking as far down into the water as she could, she shut her eyes and basked in it. It felt like bliss.
Animal. Beast. Savage. Abomination. Liar. Cheat. Murderer.
Okay, that last one was accurate. But it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t wanted to be this way.
There was a mirror on the side of the tub. Lifting it, she looked at her reflection in the silvered glass. There was just enough moonlight drifting in through the big, tinted windows to see by.
Some parts of her might have almost passed for human, as fae went. Many of her kin were monstrous, twisted things—with too many arms or eyes, or who had their bones on the outside or all their organs the wrong way around. She looked fairly human…
Her hair was the color of pure onyx, flowing down around her in long waves and currently floating in the water, reflecting back shades of green and blue in the faint light. Her ears were only a little pointed and easily hidden within her hair. Her skin was pale, and only in the direct sunlight did it seem tinted just slightly sea-green around her temples or at her wrists. Even her eyes, which were the color of black opal and flecked with every color in nature, could be disguised with tinted glasses. She couldalmostbe mistaken for a human at a glance, if nobody looked down.
Since it was her eight-foot-long gods-damn fuckingfish tailthat generally gave it away.
It was the same color as her hair. Pure black and shining in the moonlight, tinted like spilled oil. It was like the tail of the colorful “laced fish” that her mother had brought her to see one day. Their fins had flowed through the water like the most delicate fabric, and many of them had more than one. As a child, they’d looked like elegant dancers to her.
Lifting the end of her tail, she studied it for a moment before dropping it back down. Sighing, she rested her head back and thought over her next steps. Memories of a home she no longer had weren’t going to do her any good.
Shutting her eyes, she took a deep breath and put the glamor back over herself that only altered her appearance enough to remove the tail. It was one she had been used to wielding ever since she was a child, as being an aquatic fae with a land-based clan was…inconvenient. Pulling her human legs into the hot water, she felt the tension return to that spot between her shoulder blades like an old friend.
She hadn’t hunted Denton with the intention of it leading to anything. She had only been pursuing him because he had an association with the Nostroms and a decent price on his head. It had been a way to both secure a few months of funds, and be a thorn in their sides, if even just a little.
