Page 28 of Craving Their Venom
I use my lower shaft to rub against her, against the small, hard pearl of her pleasure. She cries out, a sharp, sweet sound, and the vision shifts.
A great hall, filled not with fear, but with celebration. Naga and human, side by side. A child with her dark hair and my twilight eyes, laughing in Zahir’s strong arms.
“What do you see?” she gasps, her hips beginning to move with mine.
“Hope,” I whisper against her mouth, my voice thick with an emotion I have never known. “I see a world remade.”
I kiss her deeply, pouring all of my reverence, all of my awe, all of my burgeoning, terrifying love into the kiss. I feel her response, a surge of her own pure, human emotion that meets my cosmic vision and creates something new, something powerful.
The pleasure builds, a rising tide of light and energy. It is not the dark, frantic climax she has known before. It is a slow, inexorable ascent toward the stars.
“Stay with me, Amara,” I plead, my voice breaking. “See with me.”
I drive into her, a final, deep thrust, and the universe shatters. The vision explodes behind my eyes, a supernova of light and sound. I see it all. The final confrontation with the Tikzorcu. The fall of the old King. The rise of a new Nagaland, a kingdom forged not in fear, but in a strange, impossible love. And at the center of it all, her. Always her.
My release is a quiet surrender, a pouring of my very essence into hers. I collapse onto her, my body trembling with the aftershocks of the vision, my soul laid bare.
Our bodies are slick with sweat, the scent of sex and sacred herbs filling the air. I hold her, my heart aching with a love so vast, so profound, it feels like it might tear me apart. The cold stone of jealousy in my gut has melted away, replaced by the warm, steady glow of absolute devotion.
The prophecy is no longer a burden. It is not a riddle to be solved. It is a path. And Amara is not the key. She is the sacredground upon which that path must be built. I have touched her spirit, and in doing so, I have found my own.
19
AMARA
The days after the shared claiming are a strange, suspended reality. I am a ghost haunting the Prince’s chambers, a secret kept behind a locked door. The court whispers, I know. Kia’s expressive eyes tell me everything when she brings my morning meal. They tell me I am a source of scandal, a point of contention, a living wound in the pride of two of the most powerful naga in the kingdom. I am no longer just a pet. I am a territory that has been invaded by two warring nations at once.
The bond between them, forged in the crucible of my body, has not brought peace. It has created a tense, volatile truce, a silence that is heavier and more threatening than their open conflict. They do not seek me out together again. Instead, they come to me alone, three distinct storms approaching my small, fragile self from different directions.
It is Varos who comes first, in the dead of night. I am not asleep. Sleep is a luxury I can rarely afford. I am sitting by the high, barred window, watching the two moons of this world cast their eerie, silver-and-blue light over the sterile garden below. The door to the chamber opens without a sound, and he is there, a shadow in the moonlight.
He is not dressed in his formal court attire or his severe military tunic. He wears simple, dark trousers and nothing else. His chest is bare, the golden scales a river of molten metal in the dim light. He looks less like a Prince and more like a warrior in his own home. He does not speak, but walks to the massive obsidian table where his strategy maps are laid out, a miniature world of mountains and rivers carved into the stone.
He stares down at it, his shoulders rigid with a tension that seems to vibrate in the air. His hand hovers over a region in the south, a territory marked with the jagged lines of mountains and swamps.
“My father issued a decree today,” he says, his voice clipped, devoid of its usual cold control. It is rough, like stone grating on stone. “He has increased the tithe on the mining settlements in Tlouz. By threefold.”
I say nothing. I do not know what these words mean. They are the words of kings and politics, a language from another world.
“The mines are already failing,” he continues, his voice a low, bitter growl. “The veins are running thin. The laborers are starving. They are mostly humans, of course.” He says the last part with a familiar, casual cruelty, but there is no force behind it tonight. It is a hollow echo. “This tithe will not bring more wealth to the Capital. It will bring rebellion. It will force me to send Zahir and his brutes to put down starving, desperate miners. It is a waste of resources. A waste of lives. It is… inefficient.”
He says the word ‘inefficient’ as if it is the vilest curse in the naga tongue. He turns from the map, his golden eyes finding me in the darkness. They are not cold tonight. They are burning with a frustrated, helpless fury.
“He does this to spite me,” he whispers, the words a confession he does not mean to make. “He sees the plans I draw,the future I build in these maps—a Nagaland that is strong, ordered, its power reaching across the continents. He sees it, and he seeks to undo it, piece by piece. He would rather rule a kingdom of ash and bone than see it remade in an image that is not his own.”
He stalks toward the window, stopping beside me. He is so close I can feel the heat radiating from his body, smell the sharp, clean scent of his skin. He stares out at the garden, his jaw clenched.
“Your father… he is the King,” I say softly, the words feeling inadequate, foolish.
“He is a cancer,” Varos snarls, his voice a low, vicious hiss. “A rot that has taken root in the heart of this kingdom, and I am forced to watch as it spreads, powerless to cut it out.”
I look at him, at this cold, cruel Prince, and for the very first time, I’m able to see not a master, but a son. A son trapped in the shadow of a tyrant, his ambition not just a lust for power, but a desperate, visionary’s dream of a better world. A naga’s better world, to be sure, built on the backs of creatures like me, but a world with order, with purpose, with a future beyond petty cruelty. I see the soft, vulnerable naga hiding behind the mask of ruthless ambition.
“A vision is a powerful thing, Your Highness,” I whisper, my own voice surprising me with its steadiness. “More powerful than a crown, sometimes.”
He turns his head, his golden eyes locking on mine. The fury is still there, but it is tempered now with a raw, startled vulnerability. He looks at me as if he has never seen me before. As if I am not a pet, but a person who has just spoken a truth he has long held, alone, in the darkness of his own heart. He says nothing. But in the space between us, in the charged silence of the moonlit room, a new, fragile thread is spun. It is not a chain of ownership. It is something else entirely. And it is terrifying.
Two days later, it is Zahir who comes for me. There is no warning. The door to my chamber simply crashes open, and he is there, a crimson monolith of raw power. He grabs my arm, his grip a familiar, iron-hard cage.
