Chapter 1: The Viper King (Part 2)
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Chapter 1: The Viper King (Part 2)
****Lucien’s POV****
The tunnels beneath Aurelion were older than the crown that sat on Lucien Avelar’s head.
Once, they were aqueducts built by mad kings and forgotten emperors. Now, they served another purpose—one far more efficient. They were arteries through which blood, secrets, and shadow flowed. The underworld breathed here. And it answered to him.
Lucien stood at the edge of a stone ledge overlooking a chamber lit only by a series of iron sconces. Below, two men knelt, bruised and bound. His cloak hung heavy from his shoulders, dark as the void. The silver clasp at his throat—shaped like a serpent coiled around a crown—gleamed in the torchlight.
“Do you know why you're here?” Lucien’s voice was low, steady. Deadly.
One man whimpered. The other, older and balding, spat blood on the ground.
“You’re making a mistake,” he rasped. “The East Gate shipments were—”
“Short. For the third time,” Lucien finished. “You think I rule by mercy?”
“We paid tribute—”
Lucien tilted his head. “Did I ask for tribute, or obedience?”
Neither man answered.
He descended the steps slowly, each footfall echoing like a countdown. The guards lining the walls remained motionless. His second-in-command, Cassian Vale—lean, sharp-eyed, with scars etched down his jaw—watched silently from the shadows.
Lucien crouched before the balding man, studying him like a specimen.
“You smuggle opal dust behind my back. You sell to buyers I did not approve. Then you lie about your weight counts.”
“I—I have mouths to feed.”
Lucien reached into his coat and withdrew a dagger. The blade was slender, curved, forged from obsidian and damasked steel. It shimmered unnaturally under the firelight.
He held it out.
“To feed your mouth, I must silence it.”
A heartbeat passed. Then he plunged the blade into the man’s neck.
Blood sprayed in a crimson arc, painting the stones. The man gurgled, collapsed. Dead before he hit the floor.
The other man wailed, curling into himself.
Lucien rose, wiped the blade clean with a silk cloth, and handed it to Cassian without looking.
“Send the rest of his family to the Frost Mines,” he ordered. “Let them dig until they learn what loyalty costs.”
Cassian bowed his head. “As you command.”
Lucien turned away, the click of his boots against stone echoing louder than the screams behind him.
He wasn’t angry.
Anger was for kings who ruled out of emotion. Lucien ruled by fear. By efficiency. By calculated fire.
And if the world below the crown required blood to thrive, then he would supply it—one betrayal at a time.
---
They called him The Viper King.
Above ground, he was His Majesty King Lucien Avelar—the golden ruler of Aurelion, seated on a gilded throne passed down through centuries of conquest. Below ground, he was a name whispered in shadows. The unseen hand. The enforcer of an empire carved in silence and secrecy.
It had taken him seven years to purge the rot from the royal court after his father’s death. Another five to carve the mafia families into one spine under his rule. Now, both daylight and dusk bent to his will.
But peace? That was a delusion.
Lucien stood before a large window in his private study later that night, staring at the glittering sprawl of Aurelion beneath the starlight. His reflection looked back at him: high cheekbones, dark eyes like shards of volcanic glass, and a jaw set like stone. The candlelight threw shadows across his sharp features, making him look more myth than man.
He poured a glass of dark brandy, ignoring the fine silk shirt clinging to his blood-smeared arm.
Across the room, Cassian leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
“The eastern trade lines are fracturing,” Cassian said. “Kael Dravien’s men are sniffing around again. If he’s planning a move, it’ll be soon.”
Lucien didn’t turn.
“Kael’s a dog barking at ghosts. He has no army.”
Cassian’s jaw tensed. “And Mireille?”
A pause.
Lucien’s grip on the glass tightened slightly.
“Mireille weaves silk from corpses. She won’t strike until she has a thousand strings wrapped around our necks.”
“She’s already in the ear of the High Council.”
Lucien turned then, eyes glittering. “Then I’ll remove the ears.”
Cassian offered no smile. “You’re running out of time. They think you’re distracted. Softened.”
Lucien scoffed.
“Because I hesitate?”
“No,” Cassian said. “Because you haven’t burned anything in weeks.”
That drew the faintest curve of a smile from Lucien’s lips.
---
But Cassian was right.
Restlessness coiled in Lucien’s chest like a waiting blade.
Something had shifted. Not just with Kael and Mireille—those vipers had slithered in shadows for years. No, this was different. Something colder. Older.
He felt it in his bones.
And that’s why he’d gone to the outer ridge last night.
Alone.
In disguise.
A false lead had sent him there—rumors of an underground rebel camp hiding a noble-blooded orphan. Nothing new. Whispers like that cropped up often, especially from drunk merchants or ex-soldiers looking to sell stories.
But this one had felt different.
And so, Lucien had gone. What he found was a lie, of course. Or so it had seemed.
A trap. Explosives rigged into the tents. His rib was still sore from the blast, though he hadn’t let it show. The traitors had meant to kill him, or someone of high value.
Instead, he survived. And in the aftermath—half-conscious, bleeding—he had stumbled into a small apothecary in a backwater village. The only light on in the entire town.
And she had answered the door.
A girl with dark gold curls, soot on her hands, and a voice like the hush before a storm.
She hadn’t recognized him. Not even a flicker of suspicion in those eyes.
Elara.
He hadn’t asked her name. But the way she moved, the way she looked at him—not with fear, not with flattery, but with precision—had unsettled him more than he liked to admit.
Not a noble. Not a spy. Yet... familiar.
She reminded him of something buried. Something dangerous.
He should’ve left her alone.
But he had taken the vial, dropped too many coins, and walked away with her face carved into his thoughts like a knife.
---
That night, Lucien slept in shadows.
And dreamed of wildfire.
He saw the throne aflame, nobles screaming, ash rising like snow. He stood at the center, unburned, unbending—and across from him stood the girl with the apothecary hands.
But she wore a crown.
And her eyes were not kind anymore.
---
He woke before dawn, breath sharp.
There were questions. Too many.
He needed answers.
Cassian entered the study moments later, a file in hand. “The girl,” he said without preamble. “Elara Vale.”
Lucien’s blood chilled. “You found her.”
“She works in Eldhollow. Orphan. No records before the age of six. No family. No connections.”
“No records?” Lucien said sharply. “In a kingdom this small?”
Cassian shook his head. “Nothing. Not even temple scrolls. Either her name was erased, or she never had one.”
Lucien took the file, eyes scanning.
The birthdate. The scar on her wrist. The old locket.
He froze.
“Bring me the locket,” he said, voice low.
Cassian’s brows rose. “You think she’s—”
“I don’t think. I verify.”
Because if he was right...
Then Elara Vale wasn’t just a common girl with clever fingers and kind eyes.
She was the last ember of a bloodline long thought extinguished.
The bloodline of the House of Varyndor—the royal family betrayed in the civil wars two decades ago. The ones he thought dead.
And if the nobles found out before he did—
He would lose more than the throne.
He would lose control.
---
He looked once more out the window, toward the east. Toward the hills. Toward Eldhollow.
A storm was coming.
And this time, he wasn’t sure if he would be the flame—or the forest it would burn through.
- Writer
