Page 26 of Craving Their Venom
AMARA
T he cold, hard stone of resolve I forged in my heart is a fragile, brittle thing.
It serves me in the long, silent hours, a shield against the creeping despair.
But in the darkness, when the green glow of the fungi paints monstrous faces on the damp walls, the shield cracks. And the memories pour in.
I feel them. A ghost of a touch, a phantom ache.
Varos’s cold, possessive weight, the shocking, reverent gentleness of his hands.
Zahir’s savage, burning heat, the desperate, lonely kindness hidden in the belly of the monster.
Kaelen’s soulful, healing light, a touch that saw me, truly saw me, and left me more exposed than any physical violation.
My body remembers what my mind tries to forget. A flush of heat, a deep, shameful throb between my thighs. My mouth says no , my mind screams monster , but my wretched, traitorous body whispers more . I hate myself for it. I hate this weakness, this craving for the very hands that hold my chains.
And then the deeper, colder truth settles in my soul, a poison that numbs everything else.
It is a lie. All of it. Their desire, their protection, their strange, burgeoning tenderness—it is all a performance for the gods, a script written by a prophecy I do not understand.
They do not want Amara. They want the heart of humanity.
A key. A tool. The thought shatters me more completely than any physical brutality ever could.
I have fallen in love with three beautiful, terrible lies.
This is my new reality. I am a captive, my heart a broken, useless thing, my body a source of shame. All I have left is the cold, quiet rage that is slowly, steadily, burning away the girl I used to be.
The leader, the one with the tarnished silver ring, returns. His name, I have learned from the guards’ careless whispers, is Malakor. He enters my cell with the smug confidence of a man who believes he holds all the cards.
“The master grows impatient, little pet,” he hisses, his forked tongue flicking out. “He wishes to know the nature of the Prince’s plans. Tell me, and I will make your end a swift one.”
I look at him, at his dull, swamp-green scales, at the cold, empty cruelty in his eyes. And I feel nothing. No fear. Only a vast, chilling emptiness.
“The Prince’s plans are not for the ears of servants,” I say in a soft, deliberate whisper. I let my gaze flicker for a fraction of a second to the brutish second-in-command, Grol, who stands just outside the cell door, his scarred face a mask of resentful curiosity.
Malakor’s eyes narrow. “I am no servant.”
“Are you not?” I ask, my voice laced with a feigned, pitying surprise.
I lean forward, as if sharing a great secret.
“The Prince spoke of the prophecy. He said the reward for its fulfillment would be a place at his right hand. But only for the one who truly leads. He knows you are not the one in charge here, Malakor. He knows you are merely the messenger.”
It is a desperate, foolish gamble, a web woven from half-truths and pure invention. But I have seen the way Grol looks at his leader. I have seen the resentment, the ambition. I am planting a seed of poison in the heart of their own rotten alliance.
Malakor’s face contorts with fury. He backhands me, the force of the blow snapping my head to the side, my cheek exploding with a white-hot pain. “You lie,” he snarls.
“Do I?” I whisper, tasting the salt of my own blood on my lips.
I look past him, at Grol, my eyes wide with a feigned, secret knowledge.
“Ask yourself, Grol. When the time comes, will he share the Prince’s reward with you?
Or will he take it all for himself, and leave you to rot in this swamp with the rest of the secrets? ”
It is enough. The seed has been planted. The poison has begun its work. Malakor turns, his eyes blazing, and sees the dawning suspicion on his second’s face.
“Get out,” Malakor roars at Grol. “Guard the entrance. Now!”
Grol hesitates for a moment, his eyes narrowed, then turns and stalks away. Malakor turns back to me, his face reflecting pure, murderous rage. He is about to teach me the true meaning of pain.
And then, the world explodes.
A sound from above, a deep, guttural roar of fury that is not naga, but something else. The very stone of the cell shudders. It is followed by a sharp, cracking sound, and the screams of naga from the outer chambers.
Malakor freezes, his head snapping toward the door. The sounds of battle are no longer distant. They are here. A brutal, efficient symphony of steel and death.
He forgets me. His own survival is now paramount. He draws his curved blade and turns to the door, his body tense. This is my chance. The fight between him and Grol, the chaos from outside—it is the opening I prayed for.
My eyes dart around the cell. A loose stone in the wall, near the ring where my chains are anchored. I begin to work at it, my fingers raw and bleeding, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs.
The door to my cell bursts inward, not from the outside, but from the main chamber. Grol stands there, his blade dripping with the blue blood of his own kind. He has made his move.
“The reward is mine, Malakor,” he snarls.
The two of them launch at each other, a whirlwind of mottled green scales and flashing steel. They are no longer my captors. They are just two beasts, tearing at each other’s throats.
In the chaos, I manage to pry the stone loose. It is heavy, jagged. I bring it down, again and again, on the iron link of my chain where it meets the wall ring. The sound is a dull, rhythmic clang, lost in the din of their fight.
The link begins to give.
And then, the main entrance to the chamber is no longer there. It is simply… gone. A wave of pure, concussive force blows it inward, sending a shower of stone and splintered wood across the room.
And they are there.
Varos, Zahir, and Kaelen. They do not enter as a royal party. They enter as an apocalypse.
Varos is a blur of both black and gold, his dagger a flicker of silver light, his movements a cold, precise dance of death.
Zahir is a crimson hurricane, his axe a brutal, cleaving arc of pure, untamed fury.
And Kaelen… Kaelen is a silent, silver-blue storm, his hands weaving illusions of shadow and fog that turn the chamber into a chaotic, terrifying nightmare for our enemies.
They move as one. A single, three-headed serpent of retribution.
The fight is over in heartbeats. Malakor and Grol, already wounded from their own conflict, are no match for the unified wrath of the three most powerful warriors in the kingdom. They are cut down, their lives extinguished in a spray of blue blood and a final, choked gasp.
And then, there is silence. A ringing, profound silence, broken only by the sound of their own ragged, desperate breaths.
They turn to me. Their faces are masks of grim, savage triumph. But as their eyes fall on me, on my chained, bruised form, the triumph evaporates, replaced by something else. A raw, profound, and utterly devastating anguish.
“Amara,” Varos breathes, his voice a broken thing.
They rush toward me, but as they do, I see it. Grol, in his dying moments, his body twitching on the floor, his clawed hand reaching for a tripwire hidden in the mud and slime. A final, spiteful act of a dying naga.
I see the cracks forming in the ceiling above me. I hear the low, groaning sound of stone giving way.
And in that moment, a strange, terrible peace descends upon me.
This is it. The end. My death will be a release.
It will free me from this impossible love, from this terrible prophecy.
It will free them . They will be unbound from the human heart that has caused them so much pain. It is for the best.
I close my eyes. I do not scream. I do not try to run. I simply… surrender.
The world erupts. A roar of pure, animalistic terror from Zahir. A sharp, desperate cry of my name from Varos. A surge of raw, cosmic power from Kaelen.
I am thrown sideways, a massive, crimson body shielding mine, the impact knocking the air from my lungs.
I feel a searing heat as a massive block of stone crashes down where I was a second before, shattering on the floor.
A shimmering, silver-blue shield appears above us, deflecting a shower of smaller rocks and dust. And Varos…
Varos is there, his hands outstretched, his face a presentation of pure, agonized effort, as he uses his own body to hold back a collapsing section of the wall.
The dust settles. I am alive. I am pinned beneath Zahir, his massive body a heavy, protective weight.
His arm is bleeding freely, a deep, jagged gash where a piece of stone has torn through his scales.
Varos is trembling with the strain of holding back the wall, his golden scales slick with sweat.
And Kaelen is on his knees, his face pale, the light from his shield flickering and dying.
They saved me. All three of them. At a terrible cost to themselves.
They scramble to me, their movements frantic, desperate. Their hands are on me, checking for wounds, their touches a chaotic symphony of terror and relief.
“Amara,” Zahir chokes out, his voice a raw, ragged thing. He cradles my face in his massive, blood-stained hands. “By the gods, I thought… I thought I had lost you.”
“You are safe,” Varos whispers, his voice shaking with an emotion I have never heard from him before. He sinks to his knees beside me, his cold, controlled mask utterly shattered, his golden eyes filled with a raw, naked terror. “You are safe.”
“The light… I felt your light begin to fade,” Kaelen says, his voice a broken whisper. He touches my cheek, his fingers trembling. “It was like the stars going out.”
I stare at them, at these three terrible, beautiful monsters, and I see not triumph, not possession, but a profound, soul-shattering fear. A fear for me .
“Why?” I whisper, the word a raw, aching thing. “Why would you do that?”
“Because the thought of a world without you in it is a void I cannot bear to face,” Varos says, his voice thick with an emotion so raw it is almost unrecognizable.
“Because you are woven into the very fabric of my being, Amara,” Zahir growls, his voice a guttural confession. “To see you die is to feel my own soul being torn in two.”
“Because I love you,” Kaelen whispers, the words a simple, devastating truth. “Not the prophecy. Not the key. You.”
The words are a barrage, a desperate, overlapping chorus of a truth so profound it shakes the very foundations of my world.
“No,” I choke out, pushing at their hands, at their chests, at the overwhelming, suffocating weight of their impossible emotions. “No. It’s the prophecy. It’s making you feel this. It isn’t real.”
“It is real!” Varos insists, his grip on my arms tightening, his eyes pleading.
“The prophecy brought you to us, yes. It forced us to see you. But what we feel now… this terror, this… this love… it has absolutely nothing to do with scrolls and everything to do with you. I don’t have any idea what is love, but this must be it.
That moment the stone came crashing on you, it felt like a hand reached into my chest and pulled out my heart. ”
“This is new to us, Amara,” Zahir says, his voice a low, desperate rumble. “This feeling. It is a madness. A terror. We do not understand it. But we know it is true. We know that the thought of your heart stopping beats is a death sentence for our own.”
“We know we have hurt you,” Kaelen says, his voice aching with a sorrow so deep it’s almost a physical thing.
“We have been brutal, and possessive, and blind. But we are not blind anymore. We see you, Amara. And we are begging you. Do not surrender to the darkness. Stay with us. Give us the chance to show you, to prove to you, that what we feel is real. Let us try to love you. Not as a pet, or a prize, or a prophecy. But as our heart. Our soul. Our eternity.”
They are kneeling before me in the wreckage of my prison, three of the most powerful beings in the kingdom, their pride shattered, their hearts laid bare. They are begging. Not for my obedience. Not for my surrender. But for my belief.
I look into their eyes—the Prince’s desperate gold, the General’s tormented fire, the Mystic’s pleading twilight—and I see not lies, but a terrifying, beautiful, and utterly impossible truth.
The tears that come now are not of fear, or of shame, or of grief. They are the tears of a heart that has been shattered into a thousand pieces, and is now, impossibly, beginning to heal.
But can I ever trust again?