Bought By the Ophidian (Monsters’ Bride Market #13)

An Ophidian dying of his own venom. A poisoner with no where left to go. The last lot of the night. RUELLE I told a nine-foot venomous predator he was dying. Then I told him to buy me.

His venom should burn. It doesn’t. It rewrites my heartbeat to match his. It does something else I’m not writing in the notebook yet. I came for a roof and a locked door.

The specimen was not part of the plan. SIRATH Two thousand gold for a woman nobody wanted. She told me my dried meat tastes like someone preserved it out of spite.

She asks questions I haven’t answered in thirty years. She keeps count of every time I almost laugh. Every bite I give her is changing her.

And I’ve spent my whole life afraid of exactly what that means.