Page 38 of Craving Their Venom
Zahir stands over the body of the attacker he cleaved in two, his chest heaving, his axe dripping with blue blood. He looks at me, at the dead leader at my feet. His golden eyes are no longer filled with hatred. They are filled with a grudging, almost imperceptible, respect.
“Your blade is as sharp as your tongue, Prince,” he grunts.
“And your axe is as subtle as your rage, General,” I reply, my own voice a low, breathless thing.
It is not an apology. It is not friendship. It is an acknowledgement. A recognition of a truth that has just been proven in blood and battle. We are a weapon. A single, terrifyingly effective weapon.
Kaelen finishes his work on Jaro, the poison drawn out into a black, viscous pool on the stone. He rises, his face pale with the effort of his magic.
“They were a diversion,” he says, his voice sounding weary. “A delaying tactic. They were protecting something.”
He points a trembling hand toward a massive, gnarled tree that looms out of the fog on a small island of solid ground just ahead. Its roots are a tangled, writhing mass, like a nest of giant serpents. And at its base, hidden by a curtain of hanging moss, is a dark, unnatural opening. A doorway.
The entrance to their stronghold.
We have found the serpent’s nest.
I look at Zahir. He looks at me. The hatred is still there, a cold, hard thing between us. But now, it is overlaid with a new, shared purpose. A cold, lethal, and utterly unified resolve.
We will not be a diversion. We will not be delayed.
We are the storm. And we are about to break down their door.
26
AMARA
The cold, hard stone of resolve I forged in my heart is a fragile, brittle thing. It serves me in the long, silent hours, a shield against the creeping despair. But in the darkness, when the green glow of the fungi paints monstrous faces on the damp walls, the shield cracks. And the memories pour in.
I feel them. A ghost of a touch, a phantom ache. Varos’s cold, possessive weight, the shocking, reverent gentleness of his hands. Zahir’s savage, burning heat, the desperate, lonely kindness hidden in the belly of the monster. Kaelen’s soulful, healing light, a touch that saw me, truly saw me, and left me more exposed than any physical violation.
My body remembers what my mind tries to forget. A flush of heat, a deep, shameful throb between my thighs. My mouth saysno, my mind screamsmonster, but my wretched, traitorous body whispersmore. I hate myself for it. I hate this weakness, this craving for the very hands that hold my chains.
And then the deeper, colder truth settles in my soul, a poison that numbs everything else. It is a lie. All of it. Their desire, their protection, their strange, burgeoning tenderness—it is all a performance for the gods, a script written by a prophecy Ido not understand. They do not want Amara. They want the heart of humanity. A key. A tool. The thought shatters me more completely than any physical brutality ever could. I have fallen in love with three beautiful, terrible lies.
This is my new reality. I am a captive, my heart a broken, useless thing, my body a source of shame. All I have left is the cold, quiet rage that is slowly, steadily, burning away the girl I used to be.
The leader, the one with the tarnished silver ring, returns. His name, I have learned from the guards’ careless whispers, is Malakor. He enters my cell with the smug confidence of a man who believes he holds all the cards.
“The master grows impatient, little pet,” he hisses, his forked tongue flicking out. “He wishes to know the nature of the Prince’s plans. Tell me, and I will make your end a swift one.”
I look at him, at his dull, swamp-green scales, at the cold, empty cruelty in his eyes. And I feel nothing. No fear. Only a vast, chilling emptiness.
“The Prince’s plans are not for the ears of servants,” I say in a soft, deliberate whisper. I let my gaze flicker for a fraction of a second to the brutish second-in-command, Grol, who stands just outside the cell door, his scarred face a mask of resentful curiosity.
Malakor’s eyes narrow. “I am no servant.”
“Are you not?” I ask, my voice laced with a feigned, pitying surprise. I lean forward, as if sharing a great secret. “The Prince spoke of the prophecy. He said the reward for its fulfillment would be a place at his right hand. But only for the one who truly leads. He knows you are not the one in charge here, Malakor. He knows you are merely the messenger.”
It is a desperate, foolish gamble, a web woven from half-truths and pure invention. But I have seen the way Grol looks at his leader. I have seen the resentment, the ambition. I amplanting a seed of poison in the heart of their own rotten alliance.
Malakor’s face contorts with fury. He backhands me, the force of the blow snapping my head to the side, my cheek exploding with a white-hot pain. “You lie,” he snarls.
“Do I?” I whisper, tasting the salt of my own blood on my lips. I look past him, at Grol, my eyes wide with a feigned, secret knowledge. “Ask yourself, Grol. When the time comes, will he share the Prince’s reward with you? Or will he take it all for himself, and leave you to rot in this swamp with the rest of the secrets?”
It is enough. The seed has been planted. The poison has begun its work. Malakor turns, his eyes blazing, and sees the dawning suspicion on his second’s face.
“Get out,” Malakor roars at Grol. “Guard the entrance. Now!”
