Bought By the Naga

A bride auction. A Naga alone in a temple. A touch that should destroy her and doesn’t.

BRYN
I walked onto the auction block carrying a fragment of my mother’s unfinished map and nothing left to lose.
The Naga who buys me is not what I expected. Vadh lives alone in a temple so deep in the jungle that the trail disappears behind us. His touch is dangerous. Every human woman brought here before me was harmed by his venom.
I’m not.
His venom runs through my body and comes back clean. Dead stone greens where I sleep. Ancient channels stir beneath the walls. And every time his skin meets mine, the temple wakes a little more.
So does he.

VADH
I bought her for the work. For the channels that need clearing and the system that is failing and the seal that will not hold much longer.
I did not buy her for the way she moves her breakfast stone closer to mine every morning. I did not buy her for the grin she gives a leaf when she finally gets the word right. I did not buy her for the berries she asks me to put in the bread.
But healing the man and healing the building are not the same thing. The deeper we go, the clearer it becomes: what is growing between us is the only thing that could save this place, or destroy everything it was built to hold.