Page 10 of Craving Their Venom
It is the closest I can come to gratitude. It is a pathetic, twisted version of it, but it is all I have to give.
I turn my back on her, striding to the obsidian table. I pick up the dart. “You will remain here. You will not leave these chambers. The guards outside have orders to kill anyone who tries to enter. And to kill you if you try to leave. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Highness,” she whispers to my back.
“Your life is mine to take,” I say, my gaze fixed on the deadly object in my hand. “And therefore, it is also mine to preserve. Do not make me regret my decision.”
I do not wait for a reply. I do not dare to look at her again. I sweep from the room, the heavy door closing behind me with a sound of utter finality.
I have done it. I have asserted my dominance. I have threatened her. I have caged her.
But as I stand in the silent corridor, the cold fury has been replaced by a gnawing, unfamiliar conflict. I have caged her not to punish her, but to protect her. I have claimed her life not out of cruelty, but out of a terrifying, burgeoning sense of responsibility.
The softness is no longer a possibility. It is a reality. A poison in my veins. And I have just willingly, knowingly, embraced it.
7
ZAHIR
The news of the assassination attempt reaches the training yards not as a whisper, but as a tremor in the very air. It is a disruption to the clean rhythm of steel on steel, a sour note in the song of glorious violence. My warriors falter, their movements losing their brutal precision. I feel the shift instantly, a prickling along my scales. Order has been broken.
Rhax brings the details, his voice a low grunt of disgust. An assassin. A dart. A failure. And at the center of it all, the human pet.
A low growl rumbles in my chest, a vibration of pure, possessive fury. The King promised the creature to my men. A reward. A thing to be used and broken for their amusement. Yet the Prince now has it. It has been under the Prince charge, but now, his hold on her has tighten.
He claims it is for its protection. For the investigation. Lies. Varos does not protect things; he acquires them. He has put his scent on what is mine.
“He oversteps,” I snarl, my claws digging into the leather grip of my practice blade. The rage is a familiar fire, a clean heat thatburns away all thought. It is the fire of the battlefield, the fire that has won me a hundred victories.
“The men are… displeased, General,” Rhax says, his meaning clear. Their morale, their reward, has been stolen by the Prince’s political maneuvering.
“Their displeasure is my own,” I say, my voice dropping to a dangerous low. I slam the blunted practice sword back into the rack with enough force to splinter the wood. “The Prince forgets that the strength of this kingdom is not forged in whispered deals and silken chambers. It is forged here, in sweat and blood.”
I storm from the training yards, my warriors parting before me like a tide of crimson and black. My destination is set. I will not be summoned. I will not send a messenger. I will go to the Prince’s den myself and retrieve what is mine.
The palace corridors are an affront to my senses. The air is permeated with the cloying scent of flowers and incense, a perfume designed to mask the stench of decay that festers at the heart of this court. The guards outside the Prince’s chambers are his own elite unit, their armor polished to a mirror shine, their loyalty absolute. They move to block my path, their hands on the hilts of their blades.
“The Prince is not to be disturbed,” one of them says, his voice flat and emotionless.
I do not slow my stride. I look through him as if he is glass. “I am the General of Nagaland’s armies,” I growl, my voice resonating with the authority of a thousand battlefields. “And I will go where I please. The only thing you will disturb is my patience. Move.”
They are good warriors. They are disciplined. But they are not fools. They have seen what my displeasure looks like. They have seen the bodies I leave in my wake. They hesitate for a mere fraction of a second, and that is all the opening I need. I shoulderpast them, the impact sending one stumbling back. The heavy, carved door to the Prince’s chambers is not barred to me.
I shove it open and step inside. The room is as I imagined it. Cold. Silent. Perfect. A mausoleum of black stone and silver light. And in the center of it all, she stands.
Amara.
She is tending to a small cut on her forearm, a thin line of red against her pale skin, likely from a shard of the broken brazier. She dabs at it with a piece of silk cloth dipped in water, her movements careful, her focus entirely on the small, meticulous task. She is a picture of quiet self-sufficiency.
The sight is a punch to my gut. I came here to find a cowering pet, a terrified creature I could intimidate and dominate. I came here to unleash my rage upon her, to make her understand the true meaning of power. Instead, I find this. This quiet dignity. This gentle act of self-care in the serpent’s den.
The fire of my rage does not extinguish. It changes. It transmutes into something else, something hotter and more complex. It is a possessive, protective inferno that roars to life within me. The urge to smash, to break, is replaced by an overwhelming, primal need to shield. To stand between her and the cold, cruel world that would see her torn apart.
She looks up as the door closes behind me, her eyes widening. The cloth falls from her hand. The scent of her fear is sharp, but it is the scent of a startled fawn, not a cornered rat.
“General,” she whispers, her voice barely audible.
I stalk toward her, my heavy boots silent on the polished floor. My shadow falls over her, and she flinches, but she does not look away. That infuriating, captivating defiance is still there, a steady flame in the depths of her brown eyes.
