Page 22 of Craving Their Venom

ZAHIR

M y rage is a tool now. A weapon I have honed on a whetstone of pure, cold purpose.

The Prince’s command to gather my best was a hollow echo of a decision I had already in my bones.

I do not choose my warriors. I summon them.

They are extensions of my own will, creatures forged in the same crucible of violence and duty that shaped me.

Rhax is the first I call. My second. A mountain of scarred crimson flesh and unwavering loyalty.

He is my hammer. Then comes Kael, the Whisperer, a lithe, pale-scaled naga whose ears can distinguish the heartbeat of a mouse in a thunderstorm.

He is my ears. I summon the twins, Jax and Jaro, my Vipers, killers who move as one shadow and whose blades are always coated in a fresh layer of poison.

They are my fangs. And finally, I bring forth old Mok, a grizzled tracker with scales the color of dried blood, whose nose can follow the scent of a single, broken blade of grass across a field of stone. He is my instinct.

We assemble not in a strategy room, but in the stark, functional reality of the palace armory.

The air is saturated with the scent of steel and oil.

My chosen warriors stand before me, their silence a testament to the gravity of the situation.

They do not need speeches. They see the truth in the raw, murderous fury that radiates from me.

Varos is there. He stands apart, a black and gold column, his face reflecting cold, aristocratic control.

He holds a rolled map in one hand, a useless piece of parchment in a hunt that will be won by blood and instinct, not by lines on a page.

The hatred between us is a living thing, a coiled serpent in the space between us. But today, its venom is aimed outward.

Kaelen stands in the middle of the room, a figure of infuriating calm. His eyes are closed, his hands outstretched. He is the compass. The rest of us are the blade.

“The vision is a thread, not a rope,” the mystic says, his smooth voice a low hum that seems to vibrate in the very steel of the weapons around us. “I cannot give you a location. Only a beginning. They carry the scent of the Jalman swamps with them. A cloying sweetness. Rotting lilies.”

Mok, my old tracker, steps forward. He closes his own eyes, his forked tongue probing out, tasting the air as if the mystic’s words have left a flavor behind. “I know the scent,” he grunts, his voice a dry rasp. “It is a poison flower. It does not grow in the Capital.”

“They are not using the main gates,” Varos states, his voice cutting through the air icy.

He unrolls his map on a weapons crate, his movements precise, economical.

“Sealing the city was a public act. A declaration. They would not challenge it directly. They would use the hidden ways. The old ways.” He taps a claw on a section of the map that shows the underbelly of the Capital, a tangled web of forgotten tunnels and ancient aqueducts.

“The Serpent’s Gut,” I snarl, the name a curse on my tongue. A network of sewer tunnels and smugglers’ routes that honeycomb the rock beneath the city. A place of filth and shadow. A place I know well.

“We go there,” I command, my gaze locking with Mok’s. “Find the scent.”

We move not as a royal procession, but as a hunting party.

A pack of wolves. We descend into the bowels of the palace, through service corridors that smell of damp stone and rat droppings.

Varos moves with a silent, fluid grace, his aristocratic upbringing at odds with the grim determination on his face.

He is out of his element here, in the filth and the darkness, but his fury is a cold, hard shell around him.

The entrance to the Serpent’s Gut is a rusted iron grate in the floor of a forgotten cellar. Rhax tears it from its moorings with a single, brutal heave. The stench that rises from the darkness below is a physical blow—a foul miasma of waste, decay, and stagnant water.

“They went this way,” Mok rasps, his head lowered, his nostrils flaring. “The scent of the lilies is faint, but it is here. Mixed with the stink.”

We descend into the darkness, our only light the cold, magical glow from a crystal Kaelen carries. The tunnel is narrow, the walls slick with a foul-smelling slime. The sound of dripping water is a constant, maddening rhythm.

Mok leads, his movements slow, deliberate, his head swinging from side to side like a predator on the scent.

My Vipers, Jax and Jaro, flank us, their blades drawn, their eyes scanning the oppressive darkness for any sign of ambush.

Rhax is a mountain of muscle at our rear.

And I… I am a coiled spring of pure, murderous intent.

Varos walks beside Kaelen, his gaze fixed on the map he now holds open in his hands, trying to reconcile its neat, ordered lines with the chaotic, subterranean reality around us.

“This tunnel should lead to the old aqueduct system,” he murmurs. “If they follow it east, it will take them beyond the city walls, to the edge of the Dead Marshes. An ideal extraction point.”

“They are not just running,” I grunt, my eyes fixed on Mok’s back. “They are moving with purpose.”

“The Tikzorcu are not mindless brutes,” Varos retorts, a familiar, condescending edge to his voice. “They are strategists. They will have a plan.”

“Their plan ends when I find them,” I snarl, my hand tightening on the hilt of my axe.

The trail goes cold at a junction of three tunnels, each one a gaping maw of darkness. The stench of the swamp lilies is gone, washed away by the constant, foul drip of water from the ceiling. Mok growls in frustration, his head low to the ground, sniffing at the damp stone.

“The water has taken the scent,” he rasps, his voice tight with failure.

My own frustration is a hot, metallic taste in my mouth. A dead end. A delay. Every second we waste here is a second she spends in their hands.

“They could be anywhere,” Varos says, his voice dropping to a low, grim whisper.

“They are not anywhere,” Kaelen says softly.

He steps forward, into the center of the junction.

He hands his glowing crystal to me. “Hold this.” He closes his eyes, his silver-blue scales seeming to absorb the faint light, leaving him a figure of pure, deep shadow.

He holds his hands out, palms up, and begins to chant, his voice a low, rumbling hum that is at odds with the foulness of our surroundings.

He is opening himself to the echoes of this place, to the psychic residue left by those who have passed. It is a dangerous act, one that can invite madness.

A tremor runs through him. His head snaps to the left, toward the central tunnel. His eyes fly open, and they are no longer the calm, twilight eyes of the mystic. They are wide, unfocused, seeing a reality that is not our own.

“Water,” he chokes out, his voice a strained whisper. “The sound of a great, rushing water. And… a cage. Iron bars. The smell of fear. Her fear.”

The aqueduct. Varos was right.

“Move,” I roar, and we plunge into the central tunnel, our pace no longer a stealthy hunt, but a desperate, frantic charge.

The tunnel widens, the sound of rushing water growing from a distant whisper to a deafening roar.

We emerge into a vast, cavernous space. An ancient, underground river, diverted long ago to feed the city’s aqueducts, flows through the center of the cavern, a torrent of black, churning water.

A narrow, slick stone ledge runs along the side of the cavern, the only path forward.

And there, on the ledge, halfway across the cavern, is the proof we seek.

A body. A city guard, his throat cut, his armor stained with his own lifeblood.

He is a casualty of their escape. And beside him, dropped in their haste, is a single, perfect, white flower.

The same kind that was floating in the poisoned goblet.

They are close.

My rage, which has been a cold, focused thing, now ignites into a blazing inferno. I see her. I see her in my mind’s eye, trapped in an iron cage, her eyes wide with the same terror I see in the dead guard’s face.

I look at Varos. His face has become a mask of cold, lethal fury. The political strategist is gone. The Prince is gone. All that remains is the predator. His golden eyes meet mine, and in that moment, the hatred between us is burned away, leaving behind a single, shared, and absolute purpose.

We are no longer rivals. We are no longer a Prince and a General.

We are the storm. And we are about to break.