Page 25 of Craving Their Venom
“The prophecy is real, Varos,” Kaelen continues, his voice a low, urgent whisper. “The serpent in our halls, the Tikzorcu of Jalma, they are not just seeking to cause chaos. They are trying to manipulate the prophecy for their own ends. They want you and Zahir at each other’s throats. They want you to destroy each other, so that they can rise from the ashes.”
He takes a step closer, his eyes blazing with a fierce, prophetic light. “But what you did, in all its brutality, was not what they intended. You did not destroy each other. You forged a bond. A dark, twisted, violent bond, but a bond nonetheless. Your shared desire for her, the very thing they sought to use as a weapon against you, can now be your greatest strength. If you are wise enough to see it.”
The pieces begin to click into place in my mind. The assassination attempt. The poison. The court’s whispers. The constant, escalating provocations between myself and Zahir. It is a pattern. A strategy. And I, the master strategist, have been a blind, witless pawn in someone else’s game.
The realization is a cold, hard fury that eclipses my anger at Zahir. I have been played. Manipulated. My own pride, my own ambition, used as a weapon against me.
“What would you have me do?” I ask, my voice a low growl. “Form an alliance with that… that animal? He would sooner see me dead than stand at my side.”
“He would sooner seehersafe than see you dead,” Kaelen corrects me gently. “That has changed. You are both bound to her now. Her safety is your own. That is the new reality. That is the foundation upon which you must build.”
A heavy, authoritative knock sounds at the door. It is Zahir’s knock. My hand flies to my dagger. Kaelen places a calming hand on my arm.
“He is not here for a fight,” the mystic says softly. “He is here for the same reason you are listening to me now. He has felt the shift. He knows the game has changed.”
I hesitate for a moment, then give a curt nod. “Let him enter.”
Zahir fills the doorway, a crimson monolith of contained violence. His face has become grim resolve. His golden eyes find Kaelen.
“You spoke of an enemy,” the General grunts, his voice a low rumble. “Of a serpent. Name it.”
“The Tikzorcu of Jalma,” Kaelen says, his voice clear and steady.
Zahir’s eyes narrow. He knows the name. He knows their reputation for cruelty and deceit. A low growl rumbles in his chest. “They are ambitious fools. But they are not powerful enough to strike at the throne.”
“They are not alone,” Kaelen says. “And they are more cunning than you credit. They are not striking at the throne, General. They are striking at its foundations. At us.”
We stand there, the three of us, in the cold, silent chamber. The Prince, the General, the Mystic. The three serpents foretold in the prophecy. The hatred between myself and Zahir is still a palpable thing, a chasm of bitterness and rivalry. But for the first time, we are both looking across that chasm, at the same enemy.
Kaelen is right. Our shared desire for Amara, the source of our conflict, is now the only thing that binds us. It is a volatile, dangerous, and deeply unstable foundation. But it is the only one we have.
“The human,” I say, the words feeling strange on my tongue. “They will use her against us.”
“They will try to take her,” Zahir growls, his hand clenching into a fist. “To break our bond. To turn us back on each other.”
“Then we must ensure,” I say, my gaze meeting his, a silent, grudging challenge passing between us, “that she cannot be taken.”
It is not an alliance. It is not friendship. It is a cold, hard, strategic necessity. A truce born of mutual hatred for a common enemy, and a shared, obsessive desire for a single human woman.
The camaraderie I felt was not a weakness. It was an instinct. The instinct of one predator recognizing another, and realizing that the only way to survive the coming hunt is to run in the same pack.
17
KAELEN
The Orrery is my sanctuary, a place of silent communion with the cosmos. The starlight that spills from the oculus in the ceiling is a living thing, a river of silver dust that carries the whispers of dying suns and nascent galaxies. It is a place of order, of balance, of profound and holy quiet. Tonight, it is desecrated.
I did not witness the act. I did not need to. I feel it. The moment the volatile energies of the Prince and the General converged upon Amara, a shockwave rippled through the palace, a discordant clang in the celestial symphony. It was a sound of raw, brutal claiming, of two raging fires attempting to consume a single, fragile candle.
Now, hours later, the echo of that event clings to the very stones of this place. It is a psychic stain. I can taste it in the air, a coppery tang of spilled passion and violent possession that overwhelms the clean, herbal scent of my burning incense. I sit in the midst of the starlit floor, my legs crossed, my hands resting on my knees. I try to meditate, to find the calm center of my being, to follow the threads of fate that have become so dangerously tangled.
But my mind will not quiet. It is a turbulent sea, and the image of Amara is the storm. I see her not as she is now, locked away again in the Prince’s cold chambers, but as she was in the moments of her violation. I see her through the chaotic swirl of their competing energies. I see the cold, possessive fire of Varos, a claim of ownership meant to be a political statement. I see the hot, desperate rage of Zahir, a claim of instinct meant to be a primal truth. I see them branding her, marking her spirit with their own unresolved darkness.
A feeling I do not recognize coils in my gut. It is a cold, heavy stone, a feeling so foreign it has no name in the lexicon of my soul. It is a sharp, painful pressure behind my ribs, a sudden, chilling conviction that what they did was not just a political act, not just a necessary step in the prophecy, but a profound sacrilege. They have touched something holy with profane hands.
The prayer beads at my wrist feel tight, the fossilized bone suddenly cold and dead against my skin. The Oracle’s words echo in my mind.A hearth supposed to be shared.This was not sharing. This was a tearing, a rending.
I tell myself it is necessary. The prophecy demands unity. Perhaps this brutal, shared act of possession is the only way to forge a bond between two such hateful rivals. Perhaps their shared claim on her is the first, twisted root of the unity that will save us. The logic is sound. It is a cold, clean calculation.
