All Chapters of The Viper's Queen: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

My father was four hours late. I know that doesn't sound like much. Four hours. People run late all the time. But not him. Not once in twenty years. Not even when the power grid failed and the whole outer rim went dark and the trains stopped running he still found a way to check in. Always. Four hours meant something was wrong. I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at my phone and tried to talk myself out of the feeling sitting in my chest. That heavy tight feeling. The one that started small and kept getting bigger no matter how many times I told it to stop. He was all I had. That was the thing. The whole thing. My mother was gone. No aunts. No cousins. No friends close enough to count. Just him and me and this small cold apartment in the outer rim of Vespera with its broken window latch and its smell of fried food coming through the walls from the place next door. Just him. And he was four hours late. I called his number again. Straight to the message. Same as the last seve

The car kept climbing. That was the first thing I noticed. We had been driving for a while already and I had assumed we were going to some building in the inner ring. Some towers. Some penthouse above the city where men like him kept their offices and their secrets. But the inner ring had disappeared behind us a long time ago. Now there were trees. I pressed my face closer to the tinted window. Pine trees thick on both sides of the road. Dark and close. The kind of forest that swallowed the sky. No streetlights out here. No neon. No sound of the city at all. Where was he taking me? I pulled at the zip-tie again without thinking about it. An old habit by now. The plastic had eaten so deep into my skin that pulling it was just pain with no result but my hands kept trying anyway like they hadn't gotten the message yet. The trees broke. And my stomach dropped. I genuinely did not understand what I was looking at for a full second. I had been expecting a house. This was Not A Hou

The steel door didn't just open. It flew off its hinges. The bang of it hitting the wall was so loud I felt it in my chest. Flashlight beams cut through the dust everywhere at once, wild and bright, making the shadows jump. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for a bullet. "Clear the door!" Tor's voice. Raw and rough. "Move!" Boots hit the floor all around us. Heavy and fast, not careful at all. The flashlights dragged over the broken glass and stopped on the dead man in the chair before finding Varek and me on the floor. Tor stepped into the light. His vest was wet with blood that wasn't his. "The lawn is quiet," he said, spitting dust off his lips. "Two down in the hall. Three outside." Varek shifted. He stood up, grabbed a fist of my gown, and pulled me up with it. Not careful. Not rough either. Just the way you'd pick something up that needed moving. My knees buckled the second I was upright. My bare feet found something wet and warm and I went sideways. Varek caught me by

Glass was sweating in my hand. Syris hadn't moved. I kept my eyes on a point across the room, a man in a gray suit talking to someone I didn't recognize... and I kept my voice very flat. "You have three seconds to walk away," I said. He made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh. It came out wrong. Like something loose rattling around in his chest. He didn't move. He leaned closer instead. The smell of cheap clove smoke hit the back of my throat and stayed there. "He isn't your husband," Syris said quietly. "He's your jailer. Nice cage though." I let my right hand drop to my side. My fingers found the gun against my thigh. "One," I said. "There was a fire," Syris said. I stopped counting. My hand stopped moving. A cold feeling started in my chest and spread outward fast. Like ice water finding all the cracks. "That was the official report, wasn't it," Syris said. Still quiet. Like we were talking about nothing important. "Electrical fire. Sector Four. Ten years ago." I

Varek shut the bedroom door before I could turn around.The lock clicked. One solid sound.I stood facing the wood for a moment. I pressed my palm flat against it. Not pushing. Just feeling how solid it was. How cold.I pushed off and let my legs take me to the window.The storm was still going. Rain running in sheets down the cliff face below. The ocean at the bottom was just black. No bottom to it. No edge.I reached around my back and fought the clasps of the armor. My fingers were still shaking from the car and the clasps weren't helping... stiff and hard to grip, designed for someone who wasn't falling apart. A hook caught my knuckle. Blood came up from the skin.The clasps gave.The armor slid off my shoulders and hit the floor with a heavy thud.I stood there and just breathed.In. Out. In. Out.Deep red marks lined my ribs where the armor had pressed in all night. I didn't touch them. I