Page 35 of Craving Their Venom
The betrayal is a living thing, a serpent of ice coiling in my own gut. It is a poison far more potent than any the Tikzorcu could devise.
“What did you see?” Varos demands, his voice sharp, impatient. “Where are they?”
I cannot speak. The words are lodged in my throat, a knot of horror and grief. How do I tell him? How do I tell this proud, ambitious Prince that the hand that guided the kidnappers’blade belongs to his own father? That his entire world, his entire understanding of his place in it, is a lie?
“Mystic!” Zahir growls, his grip on my arm tightening. “Speak!”
I look from one to the other. The serpent of fire. The serpent of ice. Two powerful, hateful rivals, who have just now, in this desperate, hopeless moment, begun to forge a fragile, unwilling alliance. This truth will not just wound the Prince. It will shatter him. And it may well shatter the very bond I have been trying to build.
“They are close,” I finally manage to say, my voice a hoarse, unfamiliar rasp. I point a trembling hand not across the chasm, but down, toward the churning, black water below. “There is another way. A lower passage. Hidden.”
It is a lie. A desperate, stalling tactic. But I need time. I need to find the words. I need to find a way to deliver this fatal blow without destroying everything.
Varos looks at me, his golden eyes narrowing with suspicion. He is too intelligent, too perceptive. He sees the lie in my eyes, the tremor in my hand. He knows I am hiding something.
“That is not all you saw,” he states, his voice dangerously soft.
I look at him, the proud, cold Prince, and my heart aches with a profound, terrible pity. He is a pawn in his own father’s cruel game, and he does not even know it.
“No,” I whisper, the word a confession of the terrible burden I now carry. “It is not.”
The hunt for Amara is no longer the most dangerous game we are playing. The true serpent is not in the tunnels ahead of us. It is on the throne behind us. And I am the one who must now choose how, and when, to strike.
24
AMARA
Iwake to the smell of my own fear. It is a sharp, metallic tang, mingling with the foul, thick scent of rot and stagnant water. My head throbs with a dull, heavy ache, a lingering ghost of the sweet poison that dragged me into darkness. I am not in the Prince’s cold, silent chambers. This is a different type of prison. A truer one.
The floor is rough, damp stone that leeches the warmth from my body. My wrists are chained, the cold, heavy iron biting into my skin, the chains leading to a ring set high in the wall behind me. I am tethered like an animal. The air is thick, humid, and alive with the chirping of unseen insects and the soft, constant drip of water. The only light is a faint, sickly green glow that seems to emanate from the moss and fungi clinging to the walls of this small, subterranean cell.
I am not alone.
A naga sits on a crude stool just beyond the reach of my chains. He is one of my captors, his scales a dull, mottled green-brown, like a snake hiding in swamp mud. He is cleaning his claws with the tip of a long, wicked-looking knife, hismovements slow and deliberate. He does not look at me, but I feel his presence, a cold, indifferent weight in the small space.
My mind, sluggish from the drug, begins to clear, and the memories rush back in a torrent. The garden. The shadows detaching themselves from the trees. The hand over my mouth. The despair.
And before that… the balcony. The three of them. Varos, Zahir, Kaelen. A united front. A council of serpents. My heart gives a painful, stupid lurch.
Are they looking for me?
The question is a spark of foolish hope in the darkness of my despair. I imagine Zahir’s explosive rage, the barracks erupting in a call to arms. I imagine Varos’s cold, precise fury, the palace locked down, his spies slithering into the city’s underbelly. I imagine Kaelen, his face tortured with ancient sorrow, his spirit reaching out through the cosmos to find me.
Then another, colder thought follows. Maybe this is for the best. I am the source of their conflict, the wound in their pride. Without me, perhaps the fragile truce between them would solidify. Perhaps my absence is a relief. A problem removed. The thought is a shard of ice in my gut, sharper and more painful than any physical chain.
The naga on the stool finally looks at me, his slitted pupils contracting in the dim light. “It wakes,” he hisses, his voice a dry, rasping sound. He gets to his feet and approaches, the knife still held loosely in his hand. He crouches before me, his face clinical with cold, reptilian curiosity. On his hand is a ring, a tarnished silver serpent eating its own tail.
“The Prince’s little pet,” he says, his forked tongue darting out to taste the air. “You do not look like much. I do not see what has the two strongest warriors in the kingdom at each other’s throats.”
I say nothing. I press myself back against the cold, damp wall, my gaze steady on his. I will not give him my fear.
He reaches out with the tip of his knife and traces a line down my cheek, the cold steel a promise of the violence he is capable of. “Our master wishes to speak with you. He is curious about the nature of the Prince’s… affection. He wants to know what secrets you keep.”
My mind flashes back to the Prince’s chambers. The feel of his cold, smooth scales against my skin, the weight of his body, the shocking, unexpected gentleness in his hands that warred with the brutal possession of his mouth. He called me his property, a tool. But he touched me like a treasure. The memory sends a wave of heat through me, a shameful, unwilling desire that I crush with a fresh wave of self-loathing.
“I keep no secrets,” I say.
The naga laughs, a dry, rattling sound. “All pets keep secrets, little human. The question is, how much pain will it take to make you share them?”
