Page 86 of Sweet Venom

I didn’t speak. Just pressed my fingers to the cool glass and watched the wind ripple the roses.

“You can’t sleep,” she said again, softer now. “Because she’s there.”

A crooked smile tugged at my mouth. “And how do you know that?”

There was a pause. Then that laugh—the quiet one that always makes my chest ache in the gentlest, cruelest way.

“Oh, my beautiful boy,” she said, warm and tired. “There’s nothing about my children I don’t know.”

I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against the glass.

“It’s too much…”

“What’s too much?” my mother asked.

“This feeling in my chest when she’s near.” My voice was low, frayed. “It grows stronger every day, and it terrifies me. What if she finds out who I really am and realizes she deserves better? God, I shouldn’t have let her into my world.”

“You and I both know she was always going to find her way in,” she replied, her voice like smoke curling through the line. “And there’s no one better than you, Azariel. No one. I care for Poe deeply, but if she doesn’t see that, then maybe she’s not as wise as we thought.”

I swallowed hard. My throat ached. “She’s going to find out soon.”

There was a pause. Long and quiet. Then: “Let her.”

“You talk like that’s easy.”

“It’s not,” she said, softly. “But it’s worth it.”

She had seen my father’s darkness—and kissed it. He’d done the same for her. I wondered if Poe would run from mine… or if she’d stay.

“I see through you, you know,” my mother said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve spent too many years loving that heart of yours. There’s nothing it can hide from me.”

I said nothing, jaw tight. She always saw through me. Through the masks. Through the lies I told myself. She even saw the part of me that belonged to Poe.

“Tell me, sun,” she said, a smile hidden in her voice, “what is it about her that makes you so... different?”

The words caught in my throat. I didn’t know how to say it. But she was right. Poe was different. The first time I saw her, something cracked inside me. Something I thought I’d buried. Ihad built walls to protect what little was left of me—what the life before my parents hadn’t already taken.

“I’m not different,” I said at last, though it felt like a lie the moment it left my lips. “I’m still broken.”

“Lies,” she said, gently. “You’re softening, Azariel. Don’t pretend you’re not. You’ve been softening since you were a little boy hiding in my garden.”

I closed my eyes. I remembered.

“You’re still that boy,” she said, “with anger in his eyes and pain in his chest, who once picked up a knife and offered to kill the ones who hurt me.”

Her voice was calm, but it cut deep.

“You, my sun... You are not your scars. You are not what they did to you. You are Azariel Solonik Parisi. And no one is more perfect for her than you. No one.”

The silence stretched between us, heavy and still, until the question slipped from my lips before I could stop it.

“How did you know you loved Dad?” I asked, voice rough, barely above a whisper.

“I knew,” she said, “because he made me want to live.”

Her words hit something raw inside me. A part I didn’t want to acknowledge. Her voice held that quiet ache that comes with remembering something beautiful and painful at once.

“With him,” she went on, softer now, “breathing was easy. And it never hurt.”

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