Page 6 of Craving Their Venom
My chambers are a stark contrast to the rest of the palace. Here, there are no monuments to war, no displays of cruel wealth. The circular room is lined with scrolls from floor to ceiling, their aged parchment whispering of forgotten histories and cosmic truths. A high, domed window opens to the night sky, and the light of the million stars of Protheka spills onto the floor, a river of silver dust. The air smells of old paper, dried herbs, and the subtle, clean scent of ozone from the focusing crystals that dot the room.
I release her arm and gesture to a low cushion near the center of the starlit floor. “Please.”
She hesitates for a moment, her gaze sweeping the room, taking in the ancient texts, the glowing runes carved into the walls, the celestial charts painted on the ceiling. This is a place of knowledge, not violence. The tension in her shoulders eases almost imperceptibly. She sinks onto the cushion, her movements graceful.
I do not sit. I stand before her, a silent observer. I need to understand. The prophecy is a riddle written in the language of the gods, and she is its living grammar.When three fierce serpents, born from royal blood, claim one heart of humanity…
Varos is a serpent of ambition and ice. Zahir is a serpent of fire and blood. I am a serpent of spirit and shadow. We are the three, I know it. I feel it in my soul and we’re all from a royal bloodline, albeit distant. But what is this “heart of humanity”? Is it her courage? Her defiance? Or something more?
“Tell me of your home,” I say, my voice soft.
She looks up at me, startled by the question. “My home?”
“The place you were taken from. Describe it to me.” I am not making conversation. I am searching for echoes, for patterns.
“It was… quiet,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “A village by a stream. We had trees with white bark that peeled in the summer, and the air always smelled of pine.” She looks down at her hands, which are clasped tightly in her lap. “It was simple. Nothing like this.”
“And your people? What do they value?”
“Family,” she says without hesitation. “Courage. Telling the truth, even when it’s hard. And… kindness.”
Kindness. A concept so foreign in this court it might as well be a myth. I watch the way the starlight catches in her dark hair, the way her chest rises and falls with each soft breath. I note the crescent birthmark at the base of her neck, a sliver of a moon against her pale skin. It is a symbol of the Lunar Goddess, a deity of cycles and hidden truths. A coincidence? There are no coincidences.
“You have a name,” I state.
She looks up, surprised again. “Amara.”
“Amara,” I repeat, testing the shape of it on my tongue. It feels right. It resonates. “You were not afraid, in the throne room. Not in the way you should have been.”
“I was terrified,” she corrects me, her voice gaining a sliver of strength. “But fear is not a cage, unless you let it be.”
Her words are a perfect, polished stone of truth. They settle in my mind, and I see another piece of the prophecy fall into place. Her strength is not in defiance for its own sake. It is in her understanding of her own inner world. She is a master of her own fear.
I begin to pace slowly, my tail a silent shadow on the floor. “The threads of fate are tangled, Amara. A darkness gathers within Nagaland, a rot that gnaws at the heart of the kingdom. I was exiled for seeing it. I have returned to stop it. And the moment you arrived, the threads began to glow. They all lead to you.”
Her eyes are wide, filled with a confusion that is entirely understandable. “Me? I am… nothing. A human.”
“You are the eye of the storm,” I say, stopping before her. I crouch down, bringing myself to her level. It is an intimate gesture, one that goes against every instinct of naga dominance. But I must see her clearly. “I do not yet understand why. But the prophecy is clear. Your presence here will either save us or be the catalyst for our utter destruction.”
I reach out, my fingers hovering just above the back of her hand. I do not touch her, but I can feel the warmth radiating from her skin. “I need to understand you. I need to observe you, to learn what it is about you that can sway the fate of a kingdom.”
“So I am to be a subject of study now, instead of a pet?” she asks, a flicker of her earlier bitterness in her tone.
“You are to be a guest,” I say, and the word feels true, even as I know it is also a lie. She is a guest, but she is also a prisoner of destiny. “You will not return to the menagerie. You will not be given to the General. You will stay here, with me, under my protection.”
It is a declaration. A claim. Not of the body, as Zahir would have it, or of status, as Varos might. It is a claim on her fate.
Before she can respond, a sharp, authoritative knock sounds at my door. A royal guard.
“Mystic Kaelen. The King summons you to the throne room. At once. You are to bring the human.”
I close my eyes for a moment, the prayer beads cool against my wrist. Zahir has not wasted time. The game has been escalated.
“It seems,” I say, rising to my full height, “that your fate is not mine alone to decide.”
I lead her back into the cold, unforgiving corridors of the palace. When we enter the throne room, the scene is one of frozen tension. My father sits upon his throne, his cruel eyesglittering with amusement. Zahir stands before him, a pillar of contained rage. And Varos is there, standing beside the throne, his golden scales catching the light, his face an unreadable mask of cold calculation.
“Mystic,” my father hisses, his voice dripping with mock cordiality. “The General informs me you have taken an interest in his… property. He seems to believe you have stolen it.”
