Page 32 of Craving Their Venom
I find Zahir in the armory, a cavernous space that smells of whetstones and steel. He is sharpening a massive, double-headed axe, the muscles in his back and arms cording with the effort. The sound of the stone on the blade is a rhythmic, angry hiss. He has not yet heard.
He looks up as I enter, his golden eyes narrowing with suspicion and a familiar, hateful fire. “Come to finish our… discussion, Prince?” he growls.
I walk toward him, my steps measured, my body a vessel of pure, cold fury. I stop before him, close enough to see the fine, blue line of the scar I gave him.
“They took her,” I say. The words are flat. Devoid of emotion. They are a simple statement of a terrible, undeniable fact.
The whetstone in his hand stops. The angry hissing ceases. He stares at me, his massive body going utterly still. “What?” The word is a choked, disbelieving whisper.
“From my chambers,” I continue, my voice the calm at the center of a hurricane. “While we were posturing on the balcony like fools. They came through the garden and they took her.”
The change that comes over him is terrifying. The smoldering anger in his eyes erupts into a raging inferno. A roar of pure, animalistic fury is torn from his throat, a sound of such profound rage and loss that the very weapons on the racks around us seem to vibrate in sympathy. He hurls the axe he was holding. It spins end over end and embeds itself deep in the far wall, the stone groaning in protest.
“I will tear this palace apart, stone by stone!” he bellows, his hands clenching into fists the size of boulders. “I will flay the skin from every guard, every servant, until I find who is responsible!”
“You will do nothing of the sort,” I say, my voice cutting through his rage like an icy shard. He turns on me, his fangs bared, ready to charge. I do not flinch. I meet his fire with my glacier. “Your rage is a blunt instrument, General. A forest fire that consumes everything in its path, including what you seek. We do not need a fire. We need a blade. Cold. Precise. And utterly without mercy.”
He stares at me, his chest heaving, his mind struggling to process my words through the red haze of his fury.
“They want us at each other’s throats,” I continue, my voice a low, deadly whisper. “They want you to rampage through the palace, to create chaos, to give them cover to escape. We will not give them what they want. We will give them what they have earned. A cold, silent, and very, very painful death.”
The fire in his eyes begins to recede, replaced by a dawning, terrible understanding. He sees the truth of my words. He sees the cold, lethal purpose in my eyes, a reflection of the same savage need that is clawing at his own soul.
“What do we do?” he asks, his voice a low, gruff growl. The word ‘we’ hangs in the air between us, a strange, new, and unbreakable thing.
“We find the mystic,” I say.
We move through the palace together, a storm of gold and crimson, of ice and fire. The rivalry is not gone. It is simply… irrelevant. A petty squabble in the face of a holy war. We are no longer our fancy titles. We are two predators, hunting the same prey.
We find Kaelen in the Orrery. He is not meditating. He is standing before his scrying bowl, his back to us. The water in thebowl is black and turbulent, swirling with dark, ugly currents. The air in the room is cold, tasting of ozone and despair. He knew. He felt it the moment it happened.
He turns as we enter, and his face reflects grim, terrible certainty. The sadness in his eyes has been replaced by a hard, cold resolve.
“Jalma,” he says, the sound a hollow echo. “The Tikzorcu.”
The name is a confirmation of the truth we already knew in our bones.
I walk to the center of the room, to the pool of starlight on the floor. I am the Prince. I am in command. “The vision,” I say, my voice the flat, dead tone of a judge passing sentence. “Give it to me. Every detail. Every scent. Every shadow.”
Kaelen begins to speak, his voice a low, urgent murmur, painting a picture of swamp rot and tarnished silver rings. As he speaks, I turn to Zahir.
“Gather your five best trackers,” I command. “The ones who can follow a ghost through a hurricane. And your five most ruthless killers. The ones who enjoy their work. We will not be taking prisoners.”
Zahir does not question. He does not challenge my authority. He simply nods, his golden eyes burning with a cold, murderous light. The beast has been leashed. And it is now aimed at our true enemy.
I look from the General’s savage resolve to the Mystic’s grim certainty. The three great serpents of the prophecy. United at last. Not by wisdom or by honor, but by a shared, savage, and absolute need.
The Tikzorcu think they have stolen a pawn. A fragile human girl to be used as leverage in their pathetic games of power. They have made a fatal, unforgivable miscalculation.
They have not stolen a pet. They have stolen the heart of a naga. And its wrath is now upon them. The hunt has begun.
22
ZAHIR
My rage is a tool now. A weapon I have honed on a whetstone of pure, cold purpose. The Prince’s command to gather my best was a hollow echo of a decision I had already in my bones. I do not choose my warriors. I summon them. They are extensions of my own will, creatures forged in the same crucible of violence and duty that shaped me.
Rhax is the first I call. My second. A mountain of scarred crimson flesh and unwavering loyalty. He is my hammer. Then comes Kael, the Whisperer, a lithe, pale-scaled naga whose ears can distinguish the heartbeat of a mouse in a thunderstorm. He is my ears. I summon the twins, Jax and Jaro, my Vipers, killers who move as one shadow and whose blades are always coated in a fresh layer of poison. They are my fangs. And finally, I bring forth old Mok, a grizzled tracker with scales the color of dried blood, whose nose can follow the scent of a single, broken blade of grass across a field of stone. He is my instinct.
