Page 14 of House of Flame and Shadow

“I’d have liked to see that several more times. Not witness you flying into a rage and snapping the bull’s neck.”

She crooked a finger. That tugging in his gut increased. As if they possessed a mind of their own, his feet and legs moved. They carried him to the window, to her side.

He hated it—not the summoning, but the fact that he’d stopped any attempt at defying it.

“To make up for you blowing your load,” the Viper Queen drawled, “I told Ari to drag out her fight.” She inclined her head to the ring. Ari’s face had gone empty and cold as she made the lions scream under her flames.

Tharion’s gut churned. No wonder Ari hadn’t stayed long to talk to him. But she’d helped him anyway. He had no idea how to unpack that.

“Try a little harder next time,” the Viper Queen hissed in his ear, lips brushing his skin. She sniffed. “The mer punks really drenched you.”

Tharion stepped away. “Is there a reason you called me up here?” He wanted a shower, and the relief that only sleep could offer him.

Her lips curled upward. She tugged back the pristine sleeve of her romper, exposing her moon-pale wrist. “Considering how little heart you put into your performance, I thought you might need a pick-me-up.”

Tharion clenched his teeth. He wasn’t a slave—though he’d been stupid and desperate enough to offer himself as such to her. But instead she’d offered him something nearly as bad: the venom only she could produce.

And now, after that initial taste of it … His mouth filled with saliva. The scent of her skin, the blood and venom beneath it—he was helpless before her, a hungry fucking animal.

“Maybe if I offered you some before your fights,” she mused, forearm extended to him like a personal feast, “you would find a bit more … stamina.”

With every scrap of will left in him, Tharion lifted his eyes to hers. Let her see how much he hated this, hated her, hated himself.

She smiled. She knew. Had known when he’d defected to her, to this life. He’d told himself that this was a place of refuge, but it was getting harder to hide from what it really was.

A long-overdue punishment.

The Viper Queen slid one of her gold-painted nails down her wrist. Opened a vein churning with that milky, opalescent venom that made him see the gods themselves.

“Go ahead,” she urged, and Tharion wanted to scream, to weep, to run, as he grabbed her arm to his mouth and sucked in a mouthful of the venom.

It was beautiful. It was horrific. And it punched through him. Stars flickered in the air. Time slowed to a syrupy, languid scroll. Exhaustion and pain faded to nothing.

He’d heard the whispers long before he’d come here: her venom was the best high an immortal could ever attain. Having tasted it, he didn’t disagree. Didn’t blame those Fae defectors who served as her bodyguards in exchange for hits of this.

He’d once pitied them, scorned them.

Now he was one of them.

The Viper Queen’s hand trailed up his chest to his neck, tracing over the spot where his gills usually appeared. She scraped her painted nails over it—a mark of pure ownership. Not only of his body, but of who he was, who he’d once been.

Her fingers tightened on his throat. An invitation, this time.

The Viper Queen’s lips brushed against his ear again as she whispered, “Let’s see what kind of stamina you have now, Tharion.”

* * *

“We can’t just leave Tharion in here.”

“Trust me, Holstrom, Captain Whatever can look after himself.”

Ithan frowned deeply at Tristan Flynn from across the rickety table. Declan Emmet and his boyfriend, Marc, were chatting up a vendor at one of the Meat Market’s many stalls. The owl-headed Vanir was the third person they’d spoken to tonight, hoping to get news of their imprisoned friends—the twelfth lowlife they’d contacted in the past two days.

And Ithan was getting sick enough of their fruitless talking that he taunted Flynn, “Is this what Fae do? Leave their friends to suffer?”

“Fuck you, wolf,” Flynn said, but didn’t take his eyes off where Declan and Marc worked their charm. Even the usually unflappable Flynn now had bags beneath his eyes. He’d rarely smiled in the past few days. Seemed to be sleeping as little as Ithan was.

Yet despite all that, Ithan went for the throat. “So Ruhn’s life means more—”

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