BLUE VENOM

Eighteen

I was pretty sure that it had to be night time, by the time I first heard faint, echoing, but very surely approaching steps in one of the nearby corridors.

I sat up with a jolt. I hadn't even realized that I had fallen asleep. My face was crusty with dried tears and I rubbed my cheek and squinted into the faint gleaming of the blue torch.

A tall, broad figure aopeared at the open doorway.

"Who are you?", I whispered. My throat was dry. I wasn't even going to beat around the bush - I was afraid. Very.

The figure stepped closer and into the light. The blue gleam hit his dark hair, black eyes, narrow white face. He was still in armor although the cape I had seen him earlier in was now missing.

He came closer and atood in front if my cell, looking at me intently.

I just stared back.

"Now would you look at this", his deep voice rolled out.

"Oh. Screw you", I moaned and turned back around on my stone bench, legs pished up against the wall in the narrow space.

He stood there and watched me. Finally I ahd enough and turned my head, meeting his eyes. Shock went through me. His gaze was still as brooding and intense as this day earlier on the dead strip of land.

I had to avert my eyes. To make things easier and so I didn't have to embarrassingly search for some inanimate object that I could look at, I decided to close my eyes. I folded my arms under my head.

"So why did you come here, Kor Silverkor", I said in a drawn out voice.

I could feel his eyes roaming my face. "So you do know who I am."

"Sure" I suddenly sat up on the stome bench, folding my hands on my lap. I stared him right in the eyes, this time orepared for his intensity. "Your the anger issue guy who poked a sword at my friend Joon earlier this day."

Kor's face stayed expressionless. Joon had said he was the adopted prince but he still reminded me of the arrogant blond one in a way. Maybe it was the way they had been raised. Or the environment they grew up in. Or Syren alltogether.

Not a single muscle in his face moved now. His dark eyes looked down at the metal door. "He stole my horse", he said, his rough voice filling the entirety of this cave like space.

""He said you lost a bet."

His eyebrows shot up.

He came even closer to the cell door. His hands rested against some of the bars. His black eyes pierced through the half dark. "I can see it on you", he said calmly.

I just stared at him. His face was perfectly cut, the jawline so perfectly angledz that he looked almost unreal. There was a split in his lip that just recently had dried from bleeding. Anither split in girls right ear.

"Okay", I said, leveling him with my eyes. "I'll take your baits alien prince or knight Kor or whoever you are. What can you see on me?"

He stood there, huffed. Then laughe. The shirt, very deep sound surprised me.

He cane even closer to the bars, with his face. His black eyes flared up. "That you have been marked", he said.

"Marked?" I stared back at him. "I'm sorry. I don't speak Alien."

"Come over here", he ordered. Just his very tone made me want to very much stay put but my curiosity won. I walked over to the cell door.

His eyes seared into my face. "Yes" He nodded slowly. "Marked."

"What do you mean?", I whispered.

His right hand came through the bars and I flinched back.

He looked at me like I was a bit pathetic. "I'm unarmed."

"That's not comforting at all." The tall man could still squeeze me like a lot, even through the bars, I had no doubt. I was pretty tall and strong myself but then again, I was not an Alien knight.

I was so I'm thought that I totally missed how his hand reached further through the bars. Before I could process it, he grabbed me by the side and oulled me towards the cell door. I tried to struggle free and his breath was very close to mine, hot on my chin.

"Don't a fool", his deep voice boomed. "If I wanted to I could open this cell door and come inside"

The very thought made me still.

His grip on my side lightened, leaving a burning feeling back like it had been a branding iron touching me, not a human... Aliens hand.

Instead, he reached through the door and grabbed my chin lifting it up. His fingers felt blazing on my skin.

He stared at my temples, left to right, turning my head as he pleased.

"Yes. You have been definitely marked. So was the boy that was here before you but the difference is, that his mark wore off. " He stared at me, fascinated and his dark eyes goeamed. "This means you are eanted here."

"What?"

"They can't see it. The Syren. And it's best if you keep this hidden"

"Wh- what?"

I was about to urge him to explain when somebody called out in Alien language somewhere in the back corridor.

The tall alien knight got up without another word and I knew that he would never answer me. He saluted me and left the fore room in front of the cell, retreating up the steps and leaving me alome with my stome bench. Again.