16. The Antivenom
THE ANTIVENOM
ELENA – THE GREEN REACH
Rythar refuses to let anyone carry him. When I try to support him, he fixes me with a look that says you did this. And now you’re going to walk with me into whatever comes next.
He's not wrong. He's choosing not to say it out loud in front of his men. Even envenomed, even furious, he wants me unbroken.
His body should be too weak, but he rises to his full height. The wound bubbles as he stands. I see his jaw set, the cords of his neck standing out as he grinds down the pain. The venom is still in there. But the antivenom is doing something.
The other guards step back. It’s like they’re giving him space to die, but he’s refusing to do it.
Even with him in this condition, I have to walk quickly to keep up. I watch the way his hand trembles, just once, before he clamps it to his arm and keeps moving. The sweat slicks his back, and discharge from the wound trickles down to his wrist, but he doesn’t falter.
With a grunt to Drenz, he rejects the path to the medical suite. Instead, he turns up a winding path that narrows with every step. Only Drenz and I follow.
We reach a large door, which opens automatically as Rythar approaches. Inside, the air is bright with cinnamon and the smell of fresh citrus fruit.
I tell Drenz to bring me the equipment I need to work with. I’ll use Xytheos tech to analyze, then use simple materials to create the antivenom. Rythar has been walking remarkably well so far, but I’m not sure how bad off he truly is.
I step through with Rythar, and the doors close, sealing us.
He sinks onto a huge bed.
Rythar breathes hard, every exhale a punch against the quiet.
The venom is still affecting him. His skin glows dark burnished copper in the light, but a fever sheen mists it over, and I can see the pulse in his temple beating fast. Sweating, muscles straining with the pain, he stares straight ahead.
We’re alone until Drenz returns with supplies.
“You should have learned the rules of Xytheos,” he finally says. His voice is like sandpaper. “You should not have lied. You should not have run.”
I don’t flinch, but my body tenses so fast my hands shake. “I crash-landed on this planet. I never meant to come here. I’m loyal to my friends. To New Terra.”
He grits his teeth, chest heaving.
I want to hate him. Instead, I feel guilty. And I shouldn’t feel guilty for trying to help Sophia. To stay true to humanity.
He reads my expression, sees my guilt.
“Drenz did not expect your lies. He did not think you would leave the chamber. He reported at once.”
I process that. “He told you I escaped.”
“Yes.” The word is loaded. “He will not be fooled again. But he is loyal to me.”
The words to me land between us like a challenge.
Exhaustion is creeping in. I sit beside Rythar, keeping the medkit between us. “So what now? You going to chain me up? Lock me in?”
He looks down, then up, his eyes hot. “No. You are a fire only I may touch. If I hold you, I will be burned. If I do not hold you, you will burn everything. Even yourself.”
“You’d rather die than let me be hurt.”
He grunts. “Yes.”
Rythar reaches for my wrist. His hand is feverish, and I jump.
“You are not weak,” he says. He traces the line of my pulse, then lets go.
The door hisses and a trio of Rythar’s warriors steps in, pushing a large cart loaded with Xytheos medical equipment. Drenz follows them in.
The tools are gorgeously high-tech. Most are nothing I’ve ever seen. One tray holds a bank of nanobot syringes, the tips so fine they could pierce a single cell.
“Which of these will kill someone who's been bitten by a serpent-panther?” I ask Drenz, wary of the earlier warning.
Drenz flashes a look at the others. “None,” he answers. “We brought only basic medicine. No advanced healing. Nothing here will speed up the venom. Or cure it.” The others leave, but Drenz remains.
I nod and set to work. I scan Rythar’s vitals, muttering under my breath, letting the numbers anchor me.
His heart is pounding at a rate I’d call lethal in a human.
His body temperature is 42°C and rising.
I’m not sure how bad that is. He was hotter than human even before this.
The venom is wrecking his blood chemistry, but it’s slowed by the antivenom I gave him. It’s buying time.
I pull up deeper diagnostics because the numbers are outside any human baseline I know. My frame of reference is human. Rythar isn’t.
The numbers keep correcting themselves.
His heart rate spikes, then stabilizes before I can intervene.
Blood oxygen levels dip, then rebound without supplemental support.
His temperature should be catastrophic. Human proteins start to denature well before this.
But his cellular readouts don't reflect a death spiral. They reflect adaptation.
That’s when it hits me.
I’m not treating organ failure. I’m watching an engineered system reroute. The serpent-panther venom isn’t just slightly different from rat venom. It’s deadlier. How is he still alive?
I isolate his circulatory data, frown, then pull it apart layer by layer.
The vessels aren’t just enlarged. They’re reinforced, working in a way I’ve only seen once before, in a classified fertility augment case that never made it past animal trials.
There are secondary channels running in parallel to the primaries, ready to take over if one of the primaries collapses. Redundancy built in.
I swallow and keep going.
His liver is processing the venom faster than it should, enzymes flaring in waves rather than spiking and crashing.
His kidneys are doing the same thing, cycling load between structures that don’t exist in the human body.
Even his blood—there’s something wrong with it.
The cells are larger, tougher, and the membranes are resistant to rupture. They’re dying, yes, but slower.
The only reason Rythar is alive is a combination of my base Hushbite antivenom and his freakishly overengineered physiology. My hands still as the implication settles in.
Whatever Xytheos calls him, a warlord, a protector, a stabilizer, he wasn’t just trained to endure.
He was built for it. Designed to stay on his feet long after pain should have taken him down.
Designed to keep fighting when a normal body would have failed.
Designed so that death has to work harder.
I look at him then, really look. My fingers hover over the scarred chest rising and falling under his shallow breaths. I trace one old mark, a pale ridge that runs along his ribs, wondering what blade made it, what enemy, what year.
His hand twitches beside mine. Not a tremor from the venom. Something else. His fingers curl, reaching, as though to close over mine.
I pull my hand back.
His hand stays there, open, waiting, fingers half-curled where mine had been.
Even half-dead, he knows where I am.
It all builds up to one thing—
This isn’t a male who happens to be dangerous. He was made this way.
I move fast, dosing and scanning, tweaking the ratios as I see the numbers shift.
I remember the rats in the tunnels, the way the venom moved through the blood, how only the tiniest change in pH could make the antivenom ineffective.
I adjust and adjust again until the cocktail is stable.
I inject him with a walloping dose of it, then follow it with more New Terran cellular repair.
I’m not sure he needs the latter, with his physiology, but it hasn’t hurt him so far.
Rythar’s breathing evens out, but the fever still burns.
Ex O Drenz walks to the threshold and beckons me. I step outside with him.
He clears his throat, barely above a whisper. “He breathes.”
“Yes,” I say.
Drenz looks at me for a long moment. Then he gives me a full, formal bow. “No one survives the serpent-panther venom,” he says quietly. “Not in my lifetime. Not in the records.” He straightens. “I will remember what I watched you do. Rythar will remember.”
Something hot rises in my chest. I thought my training wouldn’t matter here. Now it saved a Warlord. Saved my Warlord. “My antivenom is from New Terra. It shouldn’t have worked on Xytheos at all. On an alien,” I say carefully.
The Ex O looks away, then back at me. “It is a strange coincidence. Or someone violated the laws against contact with primitive human planetary breeding grounds,” he says.
I frown and fold my arms. “New Terra isn’t primitive human breeding grounds. We were an advanced civilization with space travel. And medicine that cures a venom when yours can’t.”
Drenz stiffens. “I realize that the word ‘primitive’ may have offended you. I apologize.”
I’m caught off guard by his swift apology. I straighten, arms to my sides, and the anger falls away. I search for the words, realizing that in a society full of male warriors, offending someone may be a more serious matter than I’m used to.
“Apology accepted, Ex O Drenz,” I say stiffly. “We didn’t really worry much about offending anyone on New Terra. We were too busy fighting to survive.”
Drenz gives one swift nod, and turns to leave.
“Wait,” I say quickly.
He stops immediately, but we stand there for an awkward moment while I consider what to say next.
“I’m not sure what you meant,” I admit. “And since you didn’t mean any offense, I would appreciate if you explain further. Why did you call us primitive human breeding grounds?”
He gives another nod, softer this time, careful. “The Astra Conventum forbids unpermitted contact with New Terra. If not for this protection, New Terra would have been taken over long ago. Many planets would have warred to take your resources. Natural and genetic.”
“No, that’s why we had a planetary defense system. Aliens couldn’t get past it,” I say.
“The Astra Conventum put the defense system in place. Long ago,” Drenz replies, giving me a serious look. “Your people would not have survived otherwise.”
“You’re talking like New Terra was some sort of isolated island for endangered species,” I say in disbelief.
Ex O Drenz’s lips purse thoughtfully. “Yes,” he says. “I believe that is the same concept.”
“But you live in a jungle,” I say, gesturing. “You die from venom that we have an antidote for.” What he’s saying can’t be true. I was always taught that New Terra was superior. That humanity was superior.
Don’t question why New Terra is dying from the inside. Why food is scarce. Why fertility is failing, even there.
Drenz’s face is careful again. His voice is careful again, taking on a softer tone that I haven’t heard from him until now.
“You are mistaken. Xythean medicine is designed to kill upon contact with serpent-panther venom. We have no one to change this. The Concord Stone governs our medicine. It knows what is best.”
I noticed it at the crash site, how their beautiful tech is all the same, like nothing has been redesigned in centuries. They don’t invent. They maintain. And the Stone is doing more than I feared.
“That Stone does more than just play matchmaker?” I say in alarm. “That AI is running your planet?”
“The Concord Stone has kept peace on Xytheos for over a thousand years,” Drenz says stiffly.
I recognize the anger he’s keeping down. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” I say quickly. “Your ways are unfamiliar to me. And I’m afraid I may be causing more trouble.”
“You have caused more trouble than I have seen in a very long time. But you are forgiven,” Drenz says.
“You say the Stone decides. And the Stone made Xythean medicine so that it can’t cure serpent-panther venom. And now I’ve cured it. I’ve gone against the Stone. What will happen to me?”
Drenz considers it seriously. “Rythar is a biome lord of Xytheos,” Drenz says. “These are questions best left for him.”
“What happens if he dies?” I ask. I can’t keep the possibility out of my mind.
Drenz is silent for a minute. “I saw you at the Claiming Ceremony. You were unhappy to be matched. To anyone.”
I nod.
“The Claiming Ceremony happens only once. After that, I am uncertain. The High Lord has kept courtwives.” Then he adds, “You cannot leave the Green Reach. If you can cure the serpent-panther venom, we must guard the knowledge. You must tell no one. Some will want the cure. Some will want to eliminate the cure.”
I hear what he doesn't say. If Rythar dies, I belong to whoever takes the Green Reach. If he lives, I'm still his. Either way, I don't leave. I nod, not trusting my voice, and turn away. I leave him standing outside the room.
I sit down on the bed, exhausted, as Rythar sleeps. His chest rises and falls steadily.
What am I doing here? Saving a warlord who wants to own me, for a future I don’t want?
I wish I’d never touched that anti-fear oil. I wish I’d been smarter, colder, more like the woman I was trained to be.
But I couldn't have known how futile escape really was. Not until I tried it. Dawn peeks through the window. I’ve been up all night synthesizing antivenom and watching Rythar’s chest as his breathing eases. I lie down on the bed. Exhaustion takes me, and I fall asleep.
Rythar wakes sometime in the morning. I hear my name rumble from his chest before my brain comes back online.
“Elena,” he says, voice hoarse.
I lift my head. He looks at me like I’m the only thing he’s ever seen, like he needs to memorize me before the world disappears again.
He pulls me closer, curling his arm around my back and dragging me against his chest. The warmth is overwhelming.
My dress tangles around my thighs, and I feel every inch of him, the hardness of his muscle, the steel of his bones.
When I look up, there’s a slow, patient hunger waking behind his eyes.
I don’t fight it. I don’t forgive it either. I rest my cheek against his shoulder, listening to the steady, freakish beat of his heart. He takes my hand and presses it over that heartbeat and holds it there. He doesn’t say thank you. He gives me the proof.
His hand slides up my spine gently. He nuzzles my hair, breath tickling my scalp. "You're safe here," he says, voice gone thick.
He passes out again, his body still battling the venom. I give him more antivenom and lie down next to him again.
Safe here. Not on this planet. Not in this jungle. Right here. With this male.
If he lives.