Venom in Her Veins Read Online Free PDF

sought to usurp their power and wealth. In some ways, she was the most important member of the caravan, though she mostly just lounged around and smoked and drank. The family paid her well for very little work, but, then, they were paying her for the experience of her long years, not the labor of a few hours.
    “Ha. Any cave-dwelling scum who try to kidnap me will end up working for me, Krailash. So don’t worry on my account.”
    “There are things in the Dark that don’t have minds to meddle with, demonspawn. And an arrow flying toward you cannot be persuaded to strike someone else instead.”
    “Point taken, Rusty. Are you going to jump into the pit with a dagger in your teeth, then?”
    “That’s my usual preference. But I’m going to enlist the help of Quelamia.”
    A shadow crossed the tiefling’s face. Quelamia’s mind was exceedingly well-protected, and Glory didn’t like people she couldn’t read. She changed the subject quickly. “Who’s the newcomer to camp?”
    Krailash frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “I sense a new mind.”
    “Ah. A human infant left behind when her family was stolen away. Alaia is taking care of her now.”
    “Huh. There’s something strange about her mind.” The tiefling shrugged. “Probably just that she’s a baby. Their tiny minds are little maelstroms swirling with unregulated sensory inputs. Good luck with your monster-hunting, Rusty.” She disappeared back into her wagon, slamming the door and making the mobile of bones clatter.
    Krailash walked around her wagon to Quelamia’s home, the memory of his encounter with Glory already receding in his mind. He thumped the unbroken trunk of the tree-on-wheels where Quelamia lived with his fist, and a hole—a knothole, really—opened in the bark. The eladrin stuck her head out, pale gold hair hanging long past her shoulders, pointed ears peeking out. Her eyes were unbroken orbs of pale blue, like the glaze on a fine ceramic pot, and though her pupil-less gaze seemed blank, Krailash knew her eyes took in more than his ever could, sometimes in two worlds at once. She said, “Yes?” with her usual absent-minded quality, as if she were looking past him into the farther reaches of the Feywild, that world beyond this world that she had once called home.
    Krailash explained about the crying child, the signs of massacre, the pit he’d found in the temple, and the disappearance of his guardsman. Quelamia’s expression became vaguely troubled when he mentioned the Underdark. “If you want us to go down there …” she began, but Krailash shook his head.
    “Our duty is to the caravan. Sad as I am to lose Rainer and to see the human child made an orphan, we must protect the safety of Alaia’s holdings, and a trip into the dark against unknown enemies is too dangerous.”
    “Then what did you have in mind?” Quelamia asked.
    “Closing up the passageway from the Underdark to the surface,” Krailash said.
    Quelamia nodded. “I see. Let me get my staff.” She disappeared back into her tree, and returned to the small opening a moment later bearing a brown branch as long as she was tall, with leaves sprouting from shoots along its length—it was a part of her own living tree somehow detached and made into a weapon and implement of power. She flickered, and a moment later was standing beside Krailash, the tree’s trunk once again closed and unbroken. “Do the others in camp know what’s happened?”
    “No, I only told Alaia, and, ah—” He blinked. “Just … just Alaia, I think.”
    Quelamia nodded, looking pointedly at the spot between her wagon and Alaia’s—in other words, looking at nothing in particular as far as Krailash could see—and said, “Let’s see what we can do about this hole in the ground. Lead the way.”

    Krailash had no fear with Quelamia at his side. The jungle seemed to make way for her as she walked, rendering his usual hack-and-slash trailbreaking unnecessary. Branches swayed aside and