Page 69 of Venomous Lust
“Yes. I thank you for your care.” Hazel inclined her head in gratitude, steeling herself for the mental battle to come. Yalko would not be one easily convinced to work alongside the Eoks. A few wrong words might send them both back to the surface and at the mercy of the Medina. “But I would ask more of you yet.”
“I know what you will ask me.” Yalko’s tone cut through Hazel’s confidence like a knife. “You will ask of me that I send my people to be butchered for the sake of a government bent on our destruction. You will ask that I ally with the same Eoks who have killed so many of my kind that our homes are filled with orphans. You will ask and ask, but have little to offer in return.”
Yalko’s tone wasn’t unreadable anymore. Hostility was as obvious in his voice and face as Hazel had ever seen. Around her and Khal, people spoke low in their native language, the sound so much like the chirping of the Medina Forest that it made her shiver.
“No.” Hazel cast a wide glance around. Her words had to convince Yalko, but she also had to convince his people. “I am not asking you to die for the Ring. Humans have little love for the Ring as well. We were hunted to near extinction, enslaved, and kept in laboratories for hundreds of years. The Ring means nothing to me.”
Khal grew very still at her side. She knew he didn’t share her distrust of the Ring’s authority, but she also knew that the Muharee were likely to share it.
“Then why not let it burn?” There was a cold kind of anger in Yalko as he asked his question, a hatred that ran bone deep.
“Because it would mean letting a trillion people burn with it.”
Her answer hovered in the air as the chirping of people talking became louder. Yalko stared at her, his eyes flashing, his body tense.
“Where were those trillion people worth saving when Gerkin slaughtered my mate and three offspring?” Yalko got to his feet, his movement fluid, but anger radiating through the tiniest motion of his features. “Would any of those trillion people have put their lives in danger to save any one of us? Would any of them even have cared?”
The end of Yalko’s sentence was barely a whisper, but it felt to Hazel as if he had shouted it. Khal inched closer to her, still silent, his blue eyes shining with a fierce glint as the Muharee crowd grew agitated. Their conversations became louder, some even shouted at Khal and Hazel, hatred and violence glittering in their yellow-eyed faces.
“This is getting out of hand,” Khal whispered to her, his talons elongating from his fingers. She knew he was going to react at the first provocation.
And that would mean more bloodshed, when too much blood had already been spilled.
“I did,” Hazel replied, her eyes steady on Yalko, her chin high and her voice even. “I cared. I put my life, my freedom, on the line for you and all the other prisoners. I had nothing to gain by freeing you, but I did it anyway, because it was the right thing to do.”
Yalko stood just in front of Hazel, his eyes full of grief and rage, but there was something else beneath the thick fog of emotions in his reptilian face. A hope for better days, maybe?
“Nothing you can do will bring back the ones you lost.” Hazel spoke again, not taking her eyes off Yalko. Danger exuded from him like a perfume, thickening the air, sucking the oxygen out. “But you can bring them peace by stopping Knut.”
Seconds ticked by as his yellow eyes peered down at her, then Yalko took a single step backward. “I am sorry, Hazel.” His voice was heavier, the tones of broken glass more pronounced. “I cannot do what you ask, blood owed or not. I will escort you and your mate to the edge of the Medina, will provide you with any assistance you may need, but I will not attack Knut. Too many of us have died, what is left must be protected.”
When Yalko turned his back to her, Hazel felt her hope being torn to shreds in the back of her mind like paper.
We’re all going to die.
Then a great commotion spread through the assembled Muharee as the golden light above them flickered, then died. Soon after, the golden veins in the walls flickered as well, fading fast.
“What’s happening?” Hazel instinctively pressed herself closer to Khal as panic spread amongst the Muharee.
Yalko barked a few orders in his chirping language, bewilderment on his face. Tall Muharee warriors ran into the room, out of breath and with eyes wide and full of fear.
“The Medina,” the first one said, looking at Yalko with an expression of pure terror. “It’s dying.”
Chaos broke out in the great hall of the Muharee. Females and young ones cried out, looking up at the flickering light with broken expressions, the horror so clear in their faces that Hazel’s heart lurched for them. Some of them ran, shouting the names of loved ones.
As if moved by a single thought, warriors moved to the front of the crowd, their yellow eyes gleaming and fear on their faces. Fear, but also resolve. Resolve to protect their own, to save their Mother Forest and the lives of all those they cherished.
“Stay calm,” Yalko ordered, his voice rising above the great clamor, even and controlled. “We must not panic.”
As if he had shouted, calm settled over the Muharee until all that remained was the fractured crying of a small child here and there. A silence made of dread and death settled over the entire people as they turned their eyes to their leader.
“Females and young offspring will head south to the other tribes to alert them of what is happening here.” A wave of nods answered Yalko’s command. “Warriors will stay. I will go to the edge of the Medina and find out what happened.”
Above them, the light flickered once more, plunging the crowd in a darkness as liquid and complete as the void of space, then returning to its original soft glow.
“This won’t hold long. Whatever is happening to the Medina, it’s spreading, and fast,” Khal whispered in Hazel’s ear, his voice low and full of worry. “Once those lights die, there is no telling how the Muharee will react.”
Because if those lights died, so would the Muharee.
