Page 8 of Craving Their Venom
“A lovely new acquisition, Your Highness,” she says, her voice like honeyed poison. Her eyes rake over me, and I feel a chill despite the warmth of the hall. “She has a certain… fire. One hopes it will not be too difficult to extinguish.”
“I will manage,” Varos replies, his tone bored. But I see the slight tightening of his jaw.
The music swells, and a space is cleared in the hall. Dancers appear, their bodies moving with a fluid, serpentine grace that is both hypnotic and unsettling. They are beautiful, and they are predators. Everything in this world is beautiful and predatory.
I am watching the dancers, lost in the strange, alien beauty of the spectacle, when I see it. A flicker of movement in the shadowed alcove behind the Prince’s dais. It is not a servant. It is a naga, smaller than the others, cloaked in dark, non-descript clothing. He raises something to his lips. A blowgun. It is aimed directly at the back of Prince Varos’s head.
Time seems to slow. The music, the laughter, the whispers of court—it all fades to a dull roar in my ears. There is no time to think, no time to scream a warning that would be lost in the din. There is only instinct. Primal, unthinking instinct to prevent the death I am about to witness.
My body moves before my mind can catch up. I lunge sideways, my hand outstretched. My fingers brush against the leg of a tall, ornate brazier standing beside the dais, its bowl filled with glowing, white-hot coals that cast a warm light on our faces.
It teeters.
For a heart-stopping moment, it hangs in the balance, and then it crashes to the floor with a deafening clang of metal on stone.
White-hot coals scatter across the polished floor like angry, glowing insects. A collective gasp ripples through the court. Themusic stops. The dancers freeze. Every head turns toward the commotion.
In that single, chaotic moment of distraction, I hear a softthwipsound, and a tiny, black-fletched dart embeds itself in the silken tapestry behind where Varos’s head had been a second before.
Chaos erupts.
The Royal Guard, who had been standing like statues around the perimeter of the hall, surge forward. They form a living wall of black armor and drawn blades around the Prince, their tails lashing in fury. Shouts and screams echo through the vast hall. Nobles scramble away from the scattered coals, their silks hissing where they brush against the heat.
Varos is on his feet, his body tense, his hand on the hilt of the dagger at his belt. He is whisked away by his guards, but not before his head whips around, his golden eyes finding mine. The expression on his face is one of utter, stunned disbelief.
I am on my knees on the floor, my hands braced against the cool stone, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I think it might break free. The heat from the coals is intense on my face. The smell of burning silk fills the air.
I have just saved the life of the naga prince who owns me.
The thought is so absurd, so impossible, that a hysterical laugh bubbles up in my throat. I choke it down.
The assassin is gone, vanished back into the shadows from which he came. The immediate danger has passed, but a new, more insidious danger is just beginning. The court is in an uproar, but their attention is slowly, inexorably turning from the scene of the attack to me. The human pet. The ornament that just moved.
I look up, and my eyes meet the gaze of naga lady. The others called her Lady Xaliya. She stands across the hall, perfectly poised amidst the chaos. There is no fear on her face. Only asharp, calculating intelligence. Her violet eyes are fixed on me, and I see a brief flicker of something new in their depths. It is not contempt. It is not amusement. It is a master strategist who has just seen an insignificant pawn make a move that changes the entire board.
I am no longer an ornament. A pet.
I am a variable. A weapon. A key.
And in this court of serpents, that is the most dangerous thing a person can be.
6
VAROS
The silence of my chambers is a lie. It is a thin veneer stretched taut over the screaming chaos of the last hour. My guards stand like obsidian statues outside the door, but here, within these walls of polished stone, the echoes of the attack remain. The sharp clang of the fallen brazier, the collective gasp of the court, the soft, almost inaudiblethwipof the dart that should have ended my life.
I hold the dart between my thumb and forefinger. It is a vicious little thing, no longer than my hand, its tip coated in a black, viscous substance. A fast-acting neurotoxin, my royal physician confirmed, capable of stopping a naga’s heart in three beats. The assassin was skilled. The opportunity was perfect. My back was turned, the court distracted. It should have been a flawless execution.
It was thwarted by a human pet. By the clumsy, instinctual act of a creature who should have been nothing more than a decorative piece of flesh.
A cold, precise rage builds within me. It is not the hot, explosive fury of the General. My anger is a glacier, slow-moving and unstoppable, grinding everything in its path to dust. It isanger at the incompetence of my guards, at the vipers nesting in my own court, and, most illogically, at the human herself. She has made herself a variable in an equation that was already dangerously complex. She has disrupted the order of things. She has made herselfmatter.
And things that matter become targets.
“Bring her to me,” I command, my voice low and clipped. The guard captain outside my door bows his head, his face impassive. He knows better than to question my tone when it takes on this particular edge.
I place the dart on the obsidian table that dominates the center of my room. It lies there, a small, dark promise of the treachery that surrounds me. I walk to the high window, my hands clasped behind my back. The walled garden below is a masterpiece of control—every plant pruned, every stone placed with intention. It is a reflection of the order I crave, the order that was so nearly shattered tonight.
