Lucien's POV
We had once played as children in the collapsed basilica behind the old Veyra baths, a ruined place where rain pooled in stone bowls and moss claimed the carved faces of saints. It was my hiding place then, my refuge from tutors and sermons. Later, when the world grew uglier and the throne more vital, it became our council chamber, a secret hollow where plans were whispered, plans that would not survive daylight.
Tonight, as moonlight picked out the edges of stone, I stood where I had first learned to lie without flinching. My sister came to me then, as sharp and cruel as the Veyra blood that shaped her face. She never called herself by the soft titles the court expected, she went by Isolde's name alone, and when she walked into the hollow she carried a satchel of maps and a temper that could strip paint from wood.
"Good," she breathed, seeing me. "You were late."
"You know me," I said. "I prefer my enemies to wait."
She laughed, a thin sound, and we settled upon the damp stones like predators at a feast. Around us, the darkness was a cloak. In the distance the castle wheezed and slept, I could still smell the reek of celebration, the foolish music of a people who thought the killing of a single wolf king could stitch their wounds. They did not know how deep the wound cuts when it is you who made it.
"Tell me again," Isolde said, folding a map with impossible precision. "How long until Adrian breaks?"
I told her what I had already told myself a thousand times in the mirror, that grief eats a man from the inside, that a king who mourns can no longer command. I told her of the way Adrian's shoulders had slumped the night I returned, of how his eyes lost their edge when I spoke of Damien. I told her how his hand trembled when he lifted wine to his lips, how he could not face the feasting hall.
"It is a sickness," she murmured. "And every sickness has a remedy." She tapped the map. "We will not strike today. Nor tomorrow. Timing is an art. Strike too soon and you look like a coward who kills while the crown sleeps. Strike too late and you give him time to recover, awaken sympathy. No. We must be precise."
She had become my metronome, cold, patient, exacting. When Isolde set her mind to something, blood and time bent to her will.
"First," I said, "we consolidate our allies inside his court."
Isolde's pale eyebrows rose. "You have already?"
"A man named Lord Malrec is soft with our coin. He has had first loyalty to his family and second to Adrian. He will obey the current of advantage." I allowed the map to fall between my fingers, kept my voice casual. It was a skill to make treason sound like common advice.
She smiled. "Malrec is useful. He drinks too much and resents Adrian's lineage. He will speak to the minor lords, seed doubt. Whisper about the king's judgment. Paint his mourning as cowardice."
"A whisper stoked correctly becomes a roar," I said. "We will feed it. We will have Malrec plant the first seeds at the southern markets. He will mention empty granaries, delayed patrols, how the wolf king's death has left border patrols divided." I watched her, savoring the way her eyes glittered. "Then we bring in Valerius' men to 'expose' the failures, to 'protect' the provinces. Protection breeds dependency."
"You are patient," she said, and the praise in her voice was a knife with a gem on its hilt. "Now for the army."
My mouth tasted of iron. "We train. We hide.
The hunters and the Gray Pack already press at the edges, I will arrange their loyalty with coin and a promise of land. We will not send them in open banners, we will send small, precise units. Wolves do not expect a blade through the throat when they sleep. We will cut the rope that binds the throne to its illusions. One more rumor, one more misstep by Adrian, and the nobles will look to the man who can make them strong."
Isolde's hands were steady as she drew a circle in the dirt, then divided it into small triangles. "Fifty men here. One hundred there. A skirmish in the north, a cut supply line in the east. Strike at their morale, not only their bodies." She set a small, polished stone at the center of the map like a coronet. "We starve the people of confidence and feed them our order."
"Malrec will begin today," I said. "By week's end the southern traders will be agitating. By the next moon there will be murmurs at every hearth. People want the security of a hand that is not fumbling in grief."
"And we will be that hand," Isolde said. "Not just with swords. With law, and coin, and a face the nobles can sell to those under them."
We spoke strategy until the moon slipped past one seam of the ruined roof and the sky smoked with dawn. The language of plans suits me, angles and contingencies are comfort. I said nothing of the sting that pricked even when the plan was the exact thing I wanted: that a broken king was an offering to my ambition.
Eventually, footsteps at the hollow's mouth told us another presence approached. It was not Isolde's daughter or one of my recruited captains but a shuffling, careful approach the kind of step a courtman uses to cover the smell of false loyalty with patience.
It was Malrec.
He bowed low, breathless as though from errand or fear. "My lord," he whispered, voice oily with contrition and greed, "the trade winds are ready. The mill owners fret. They say the king sleeps while the wolves wander the roads."
"Good." I watched him with glass-cold humor. "Say it more elegantly. Men respond to fear dressed as counsel. Make them imagine famine, then give them hope."
He licked his lips. "And Adrian?"
He dared the name like a blade. I liked that.
"Adrian will be distracted for a while," I said.
"He will search for ghosts where there are none. He will order parades that mean nothing. Speak of his absence. Suggest a regent. Suggest someone to hold the peace while he mourns. Suggest..." I paused and fixed Malrec with a look that could strip a man of his secrets. "...suggest me."
He swallowed. "I...yes. I think many would listen."
"Then tell them what they want to hear, that the kingdom needs a steady hand. That Adrian's heart is clouded by madness. That stability is found in action." I kept my voice low, the stone was listening.
After Malrec left I watched the dawn straighten the sky and thought of the younger Lucien who crawled under table legs and listened to men speak of crowns. Then I called for my own captain.
Captain Soren was broad of shoulder and slow of smile, the sort of man whose ruthlessness was blanketed by a comfortable face. He came with details, men trained in midnight routes, caches hidden along forgotten roads, the poison trade we kept quiet to the outer court. He had lists of men loyal to pay, of blades kept grease-scented until promised gold warmed their palms.
"Sir," he said, voice shadowed by experience, "the wolf holdouts will scatter at the scent of pressure. We take their mills, line their roads with men who will then be paid for protection. When the nobles complain of banditry, we will appear to cleanse it. They will fall to us like fruit."
"And the palace?" I asked.
Soren's smile was a crescent moon. "We have men inside. Malrec's people. Even an old steward who owes a debt now works for me. They will close doors at the right time. Whisper false alarms. Ask the guards to double-check the inner gates, and we will have them occupied."
I could see the pattern like a table of bones laid out. You need not be the hand that kills if you are the one who arranges the chairs. You simply ensure the king sits alone when the blade comes for him.
We spoke like generals and thieves until the sun burned high. Word will spread, I thought. The kingdom will shift. People do not notice when their masters rearrange the furniture, but they will notice when the walls change color.
Isolde found me later in the council wing, her gown perfectly composed, a smile in place like a blade sheathed behind lace. She had an audience with Valerius, and I watched them together like a pair of predators testing a joint of meat. He placed a hand on her arm, the union of convenience and power, his eyes were always calculating like a man who counts favors as currency.
"You sound pleased," Valerius said when we spoke alone. He offered wine, which I took. It was bitter with spice, a blend I had come to associate with families who sweeten treachery with manners.
"This grief," I said, "will finish Adrian. He cannot heal in the open. He cannot lead. The nobles will not stand for a king who looks soft in the wind."
Valerius nodded. "We will press them, then. Gentle nudges. A rumor of lost grain, retold with color. A commander caught asleep, retold with rage. People will cry for someone to pick up the sword."
"You will be that someone to push them," Isolde murmured. Her voice was velvet and glass.
And I would be that someone to catch the crown when it fell.
But cleverness alone is thread, one must also weave fear, and so I tightened a network like a loom. I fed arguments to merchants, mentioning shipments delayed because of 'fear of wolves', and whispered introductions between disgruntled minor lords and my captain, who promised them protection and reward. I paid for a few tavern songs to suggest Adrian's court was more talk than bite. I paid for a woman who used to sleep in the royal kitchens to leak a story of a guard asleep on duty. Each small thing was a stone knocking at a foundation until the house shivered.
There was, too, the subtle art of offering answers. Men who fear the dark want the torch of a strong hand. We handed them torches gilded in our foil, Valerius' men to 'secure the trade', Soren's blades to 'clear the roads', Malrec's rhetoric to murmur the doubts. Everything we did was a favor in disguise.
At night I walked the corridors that Adrian now avoided. I watched him from a distance, that tragic figure alone at his windows. The thrill I felt was raw and ugly, that a man who had taken from me could now be hollowed by his own choices.
For years I had wanted only the throne, now I wanted it more because he had lost his claim by his own hands and because I had the strength to seize the moment.
Soon, I thought as moonlight carved a crown of pale on my shoulder, the web will be complete. The nobles will clamor for me. The people will ask for a hand that steadies. Adrian will be left alone with his grief and there will be no king to answer his cries.
And when the cry comes, I will be there. I will not be the man who lifts the blade, that belongs to the loyalists in the dark but I will be the man who steps forward with outstretched palm and promises of order.
Power tastes like metal and wine, like the first breath after a long, careful hunger. It tastes like home.
The web tightens. The throne waits. Adrian does not yet know that the strings are already in my hands.