Page 41 of Craving Their Venom
“The outer perimeter is secure, General,” his second grunts, his massive form filling the ruined doorway. “We took two prisoners contrary to our plan. They’re going to be useful. The rest are dead or have fled back into the swamp like the rats they are.”
“There is no escape for them,” Varos says, his voice once again cold and precise, the Prince’s mask sliding back into place, though it sits less comfortably now, the cracks still visible beneath the surface. He turns to me, his gaze sharp. “We cannot remain here. This place is compromised. The King…” He stops, the word catching in his throat.
And the terrible truth I carry slams back into the forefront of my mind. The King. The true serpent. The architect of this entire nightmare. I have kept his secret, a poison in my own soul,to protect Varos from the truth, to preserve the fragile unity we have just forged. But I cannot keep it any longer.
Every moment we delay, every step we take back toward the Capital, is a step back into the heart of the viper’s nest. The King did not just allow her to be taken. He sanctioned it. He wanted her removed. He will not be pleased that she has been recovered. Her life, which we just risked everything to save, is in more danger now than it was in this subterranean cell.
“Varos,” I say, urgent. “Zahir. We must speak. Now.”
Zahir turns from his men, his brow furrowed with impatience. Varos looks at me, his golden eyes narrowing, sensing the gravity in my tone.
“The Vipers will stand guard,” I say, my gaze fixed on Amara, who watches us with wide, wary eyes. “No one enters. No one leaves.” I look at her, my heart aching with the need to reassure her, but the words I must speak are not for her ears. Not yet. “We will return shortly, Amara. I swear it.”
I lead them a short distance away, into a smaller, adjoining chamber, the air thick with the smell of moss and decay. I need to do this now, before we begin the journey back. Before Varos walks back into his father’s gilded cage, utterly unaware that the bars were forged by the very hands he has been taught to revere.
“The vision in the cavern,” I begin, my voice a low, steady thing, though my own heart is a frantic drum against my ribs. “The one that showed me the lower path. It was a lie.”
Zahir’s head snaps toward me, a low growl rumbling in his chest. “You lied to us? While she was in their hands?”
“I stalled,” I correct him, my gaze fixed on Varos. “Because the truth I saw was a weapon more dangerous than any blade. A truth that could have shattered our purpose before it was even forged.”
Varos is utterly still, his face frozen with cold, analytical focus. He is piecing it together. He knows. He knows what is coming.
“I followed the thread of her abduction back to its source,” I say, my voice becoming a quiet, relentless whisper. “To the moment of its conception. I saw the throne room. I saw the Tikzorcu leader kneeling before the King.”
Zahir’s breath hisses out between his fangs. But Varos… Varos does not move. He does not even blink.
“I saw your father, Varos,” I say, the words a physical pain to speak. “I saw him sanction this. I saw him pay them. He wanted her removed. He wanted the prophecy broken. He wanted you and Zahir at each other’s throats, weakened and divided.” I take a shuddering breath, the final, most terrible blow yet to come. “He gave them one, explicit command. You were not to be harmed. She was the only target.”
The silence that follows is absolute. It is a silence so profound, so heavy, it feels like the world has stopped turning. Zahir stares at me, horrified. But Varos…
Varos’s cold, controlled facade does not just crack. It disintegrates. It turns to dust. For a single, terrible moment, I see him not as a Prince, but as a fledgling, his world shattered by a betrayal so monstrous it is almost incomprehensible. His golden scales seem to lose their luster, his posture, always so rigid with pride, seems to shrink, to collapse inward on itself. He does not rage. He does not weep. He simply… breaks.
“Why?” he whispers, the word a raw, broken thing, the sound of a soul being torn in two.
“Because he is a king who fears his own heir more than any external enemy,” I reply softly. “He fears the prophecy not because it predicts the fall of Nagaland, but because it predicts the rise of a new Nagaland. A Nagaland that is not his.”
I step closer, my hand resting on his shoulder. He does not flinch. He is a statue of ice, frozen in the heart of his own personal hell.
“There is more,” I say, my voice a low, urgent whisper. “The scrolls are ancient, their language obscure. I have only now, with the clarity of this moment, been able to decipher the final lines.” I look at him, shattered Prince, and I deliver the final, terrible truth. “The prophecy does not just say that a new kingdom will rise. It says,‘The old king must fall, his blood a sacrifice to the new dawn, so that the serpents may unite and the heart may be saved.’”
The words linger in the air, a death sentence and a coronation all in one.
Varos lifts his head, and the broken fledgling is gone. The coldness has returned to his eyes, but it is a different kind of cold now. It is not the cold of ambition. It is the cold of the grave. The cold of a son who has just realized he must kill his own father.
“I see,” he says, his voice flat, expressionless.
He understands what he must do. His path is no longer one of political maneuvering and strategic ambition. It is a path of blood and sacrifice. A path he must walk not just to save his kingdom, but to save the woman his own father condemned to death.
He turns and looks back toward the chamber where Amara waits, and in his eyes, I see a new, terrible resolve being forged in the fires of his shattered heart. The old kingdom is already dead. And we are the ones who must now bury it.
28
VAROS
The journey back to the Capital is a silent, grim procession. We move through the blighted swamp not as a triumphant rescue party, but as bearers of a terrible, world-shattering truth. The air is ripe with a stench of rot, but it is nothing compared to the decay I now know festers at the heart of my kingdom. My father. The word is a shard of glass in my mind, severing the threads of duty, of lineage, of a lifetime of cold, resentful obedience.
Amara is a fragile, silent presence in Kaelen’s arms. She is wrapped in the mystic’s dark robes, her face pale, her eyes wide and haunted. She gave us her challenge—I will see if your actions match your words—and now I must answer it by destroying the very foundation of my world. She is the reason for this treason. She is the reason for this necessary, righteous war.
