He’d have liked to have snapped her neck the first time he’d seen her, so many years prior. That entire litter—he’d wanted to slit their throats and drain their blood into the soil, but Kaena would not have approved of such an action. They’d stolen away her love, and Samael had been left to smolder in the background, hating them and hating everything that they represented to him. He and his siblings had been perfection—there was no need for her to have replaced them. Resentment, anger, hatred—he was close to no one within his own family. His own offspring hated him, not that he even kept track of them.
The name was spoken, seemingly striking him across the face like a physical blow. He didn’t reel from the impact or even shift from where he stood, but something in his demeanor changed. Memories came flooding back. He slunk in across the collapsed wall, drawing nearer, flaring his nostrils to take in her scent, mingled with the scent of rot and mildew from the decaying building. His bones creaked, threatening a shift, threatening to force him into another body due to the subtle emotion seeping through his veins, though he held it off with some effort.
What was she doing here?
His brain wracked memory, searching for what Kaena had said about her when she’d returned. “You left Mother to die,” he finally said, his voice low—spoken in a sickening tone, as though his throat and lungs were truly decaying.