a/n – for those who didn’t read Master, if you want a glimpse of Luciel beforehand, he appears in Chapter 49

Otherwise, I hope you enjoy his first official POV!

————

Luciel’s POV

Nimble fingers pluck at my scalp, the grip tight but not straining. Diligent in her craft, Atieno pauses only to collect more wax at her fingertips before returning to twist the new strands into my locs.

I sit still beneath her, as careful in maintaining my posture as I am in conserving our agreed-upon silence. 

It is only in the room that it is so quiet, for in the one that neighbours us, chatter and laughter rise without restraint. Many others are at work there—Atieno’s pupils. All performing the same task in one way or another. Locs are styled into crowns, thick curls braided flat to the scalp, and prepped to host the golden bands none in the clan would dare breathe without.

My thick bonds wait in a line on the table beside me, and Atieno soon works them back in to their rightful home, latching them around the base of each loc, but it is not until she is halfway through that I realise she adds a matching, thinner coil beneath each.

“Atieno,” I call, and she hums while her fingers continue her earnest work. I lift one end for her gaze. “What is this addition?”

“Change,” she replies, before falling back mute as if that is to be enough.

“I recognise what change is. I want to know why you are applying it.”

She laughs softly, her croon familiar. “Maeve says the clan is approaching its fourth millennium. It is a season of change, you are Pylen. You must change.” She pats my shoulder as she leans forward so that I can see her smile. “It is a small change.”

My lips twist, but I do not argue. At least not with Atieno. I save that for the guard posted outside these doors.

“We will celebrate. Will we not?” Atieno asks. She did not usually talk, knowing my preference to do without it, but I had spoken first, and she was taking advantage of the open gates.

“If the clan wishes it.”

“The clan wishes it,” she confirms, and my lips split as a laugh tumbles from me.

“You speak for the clan now?” I ask, brow rising as I crane my head to find her. “I thought that was one of my assignments.”

“We are all one, Pylen. I speak for you, you for me,” she replies before she gently tilts my head back into position. “Stay still.”

I laugh again and hear her’s join at my back before we fall back into our muted company. She finishes soon thereafter, spearing time only to oil my scalp before she pats my back in silent permission to leave.

I stand, stretching as I always must after a morning spent in her chair before I touch my forehead in thanks. Atieno returns it with a slight blow before she spreads the sheet of strung icicles that separates her room from the rest of the salunis.

A hush falls as all present dip their heads, fingers rising to their foreheads. I do not hesitate in returning the gesture, freeing them to continue their conversations. The chatter returns with a vengeance and I take my leave before my ears can begin to twitch.

“A season of change,” I echo the second I step out into the halls.

Maeve immediately falls into step behind me. “A period is coming to an end, another beginning— that is by definition a season of change.”

“And we must all change some part of ourselves to make it through this transition?” I challenge as we rise from the depths of the castle and into the cavernous halls of the Western Wing.

Vampires run to and fro, each pursuing their individual tasks that keep this fortress of ice afloat. The ones who note me pay me their respects before scuttling on in a blur. Maeve and I do not bother with anything above our sluggish pace to better stretch out this day and hurry along the next.

“If you do not want them, you can remove them,” Maeve replies instead of answering the question.

“And where is your symbol of change?” I ask while I follow her path. She is the one behind me, but I have long since learned how to hear her silent signals.

“Vigilance is a requirement of your station. See that you might apply it.”

I laugh for her, but the next time a glimpse of her is offered within the many passing mirrors that come naturally in these frozen walls, I make sure to catch it.

Maeve is the same as she has always been. A large towering force that has managed to find the line between beauty and braun so many struggle to traverse. The columns of her legs are as strong as those of her arms, both wrapped in tight, blue binds that match the ice around us well as the clan’s favourite hue. She narrows only in two places, at the waist and the planes of her face, where her cheeks drop from her high cheekbones.

Her long braids are plaited into a high bun that splinters out into the shape of an icicle. As always, golden creams lined the paths they take, but for the first time, a golden feather rests within one of those narrow paths.

“A feather,” I breathe, unimpressed. “Is your change to take in one of the penguins?”

Maeve huffs behind me as we spill into the Western Wing’s blood banks, the closest thing to a laugh that she would ever permit. “I believe they are just fine above the surface.”

Stepping before me, Maeve abandons her duty and sheathes her axe to survey the engraved shelves for her pick of the day. A library of vials stretches before us, climbing high to the ceilings to be easily snatched up by those transversing the floors above.

I survey the options before me, tasting varying traces of iron in the air. I chose a dark vial in the end. A tiny little thing with too much sodium that I toss back without preamble or severance. Blood was blood. A means to survival, nothing more.

Maeve is far more studious with her pickings, claiming a moment to savour each tasting until each of the four vials in between her fingers is emptied and the bloodlust clears from her large eyes.

“Only one?” She challenges as we slot the wide tubes back into their stations. They drop, and not a moment later are they replaced by fresh casings, filled with blood.

I catch her eye and do not bother with words. She frees her axe and reclaims her posture. The warning heard.

Leaving the open stores of the West Wing, we carry on. Her footfalls behind me are soundless, weighing only when she guides a left or a right. My keen ears follow until we slip into the beginning of the tunnels that will lead us back to the Eastern Wing.

There was no name for our home. Our founders, who slept still beneath these carved tunnels, saw no purpose in allotting this fortress of ice a grand title, but they had named us.

The Amaris Clan. Children of the Moon.

Forged long before the First rose to govern our kind, we already stood tall, a pillar in our species few could challenge. We were strength and power, dug out of each other by our own hands, just as our fortress had been chiselled from the ice.

My gaze follows the natural curve of the glacier walls arched over us. My awe for them never wavers. While some widen and narrow, this one remains a chasm that offers a myriad of paths ahead. Its walls are thick in nature, and yet the host of the most fragile shades of blue. And despite how deep we lie beneath the ice above, light remains our shuttered friend, illuminating every inch without bias.

“What is this celebration to be?” I ask when I can avoid it no longer. Maeve had not said a word, but she owned the skill of silently imposing her will long before she had her fangs.

“What would you like it to be?” She retorts, and I twist on my path so that I might challenge the footing of her boldness. “A simple affair,” she surrenders while she twists her axe within her palm. “We will shave the ice, allow the shades of the aurora to paint our walls,” she explains, tone watered despite her frown. “We will trace the borders, remember our land. There will be one affair for… dance.”

“Yes, dancing. Your mortal enemy,” I muse as I claim the steps between us and lift a hand.

Maeve’s dark eyes dart to mine before she carefully sets her battle axe upon my palm. I twist the beauty from side to side, eyeing the sharp edges that have recently been polished.

“This is ridiculously heavy,” I note, not because I have not before, but because I have. Maeve stays her course by frowning as she always does. I nurture my smile while I shift it between my hands. It takes only two exchanges for me to feel it. “The hilt is giving.”

Horror encompasses Maeve’s gaze as I hand it back over, before continuing my course. This time, I edge a little closer to the tunnel’s walls, wanting to feel the power that lives within. It buzzes beneath my fingertips, the strength of all our past leaders reaching forth to lend me strength.

“This tunnel needs attention,” I state as I snatch my fingers away. “Smoothening.”

“Scarred the one time, and now we must all suffer,” Maeve mutters in her version of acquiescence.

“Trust the pain I felt to be sufficient enough for you to mind my words,” I retort, whilst I shake my fingers out to rid myself of the echo of the phantom pain.

As a newborn, I had ignored the cautions of my predecessors and slid through these very halls without precaution and found my spine assaulted by a sharpened edge within the tunnel. Never again.

“So the dancing,” I prompt, and with no others to bear witness, Maeve frees a groan. “You were once very good at it, I recall.”

“I am still good at it,” she corrects. “One does not need to lack skill in a task to loathe it.”

“Wisdom you ought to add to the library,” I call over my shoulder, almost entirely serious. “Would you not want some kin four millennia from now to know how wise you were?”

“I think they will make do without the knowledge,” she retorts as we slip through one of the openings that spit us out into one of the smaller tunnels just wide enough for us to walk without craning our necks. “There were questions of whether outsiders might attend.”

My nose wrinkles. “Outsiders in our halls?”

“Outsiders like the Pylen Lincoln,” she clarifies, but that only deepens my frown.

The leader of our species and our people was a good man, if one could class a being as aged as he as a man, but that did not mean that I wanted him within my walls. He was invited to them, as was his right, but he had never imposed himself, and I was not keen to change that.

“What would the clan prefer?” I ask as we come out the other side of the cramped tunnel, finding ourselves in an underpass with far more room.

“We started on our own. The clan would like to celebrate on our own.”

“Then, so we shall.”

Maeve and I carry on, the two of us performing our worded steps in this eternal dance we did until my eyes catch the breach in light above, brighter ahead than it has any right to be. My feet still beneath me.

Maeve sighs, and any hope I try to muster of this being a mistake vanishes within my fingertips.

“Is this meant to be change as well?”

I take my time in facing her again as the cold seeps into my bones. Dark eyes meet mine, and there is no remorse in them. Only unrepentant indifference.

“Perhaps,” she offers while she returns her axe to the sleeve at her back. “If you are open to it.”

I grit my teeth, scrapping fangs. “You well know that I am not.”

“Then, it is no matter,” she replies while she works her shoulders back, reclaiming her watchful stance. “I will return you to your chambers and stand outside of them for the rest of the day. I will do the same tomorrow, and on the day set to follow that, and again on the next.”

Her lips twist with bitter contradiction to her pretence at impassivity. I do not bother to hide my rage, not now that she has thought to spill gasoline all over it.

“I do not ask you to do that,” I remind, while my tone drops to match the frigid temperature that surrounds us. “It is not part of your duties. I do not make you keep my side.”

“I am your right hand. Your second. Your spear,” she hisses as the anger she tries so desperately to tame claims its own air. “I will not leave your side, Luciel.”

“Then do not complain while you stand by it.”

I pass her by, retreating into the tunnels she tried to ease me from. Only with a conscious mind do I recognise how close she was to succeeding.

“You can,” I throw over my shoulders while she stomps after me. “Go to the surface. See all you wish. No more danger lingers, and none has ever breached these walls. I do not believe they will, should you abandon your post.”

Maeve fills my path before I can enter the narrow tunnel. I come to a stop, and she immediately falls to her knees. Head bowed, she leaves me to stare at her braided crown and her glaring feather until the fire in my lungs simmers enough for me to accept the apology of becoming my obstacle.

My fingers flare at my sides, and she is quick to rise. Her eyes meet mine, and there is no question that she apologises only for where she stands.

Maeve’s stare is lethal in its stillness, as is the pressure of her incensement.

“I surface often,” she whispers. I watch her throat tighten as she strains to control herself. “I enjoy the sun and the light it offers. I surface.”

Her insinuation is clear and obscenely loud in the otherwise empty tunnels.

“Will I be the only one of us to do so when the clan celebrates? Will you stay beneath here, alone, while the rest of us rise?” She asks, prodding the anger in me to rise again.

I hold her stare, the one that burns hot enough to turn her black eyes into a dark brown. Just as power lives in the walls around us, it sparks between us, threatening to destroy the tunnels and bury us within them if freed. We keep them tamed as smarter versions of the fledglings we were when we first met.

“I will decide in time,” I return when my temper cools enough for me not to spit the words. “Does that satisfy you, Maeve?”

“I do not wish to be satisfied, Luciel,” she replies, and there is a crack. A fissure in her hardness and anger that betrays a sadness beneath. “I wish for us to live not to pass the days by, but to savour them. We once enjoyed them.”

My chest tightens, and I shake my head as my eyes fall shut, but she does not heed the warning.

“It used to be impossible to bring you back from the coasts,” she reminds with a whistfulness that invites emotion I am ill-prepared to combat. “We would all go together. I would stare at the mountains, and you at the glaciers drifting out to sea and Arraya—”

“That is enough.”

Maeve allows the memories to die on her tongue and does not try to rouse them again as she steps aside. I carry onwards and she follows silently at my back, at a distance now, our dance forgotten.

My steps back to my room are my own, and I take them quickly until thick steeled doors shut firmly at my back, locking me inside. These are the very rooms that have cradled me for more than a millennium, and whilst the familiarity of them is comforting, it is not enough to soothe the grief Maeve has whipped anew within.

I stumble forth until my hands find the bannisters that overlook my empty courtyard, and the freshly prodded ache in my chest spreads its barbed claws. My grip tightens, the only thing that keeps me standing while war unfolds within my mind.

Why did she have to say her name.

She knows better. She knows that I can not hear it. Can not think it. Not if I am to be the Luciel this clan needs me to be. It has to be left alone— I have to be left alone.

But she said her name.

Ice splinters beneath my fingertips, straining to hold its form just as I do with myself.

Why would she say it?

I have half the urge to go outside and ask her the question, but that would be to pay more mind to the past, and I can not do that. I can not invite it any further, not when it came with all the pain, and the memories, and the look in her eye when she—

The ice shatters beneath my fingers, destroying the entire length of the bannister in a ripple effect that leaves a clattering in its wake as the pieces fall to the floor and over the edge.

The buzz of the castle stills, a knowing passing through us all.

Closing my eyes, I take a moment for myself. I empty my mind, purge it until there is nothing but the eternal stillness I have come to call a friend, and allow myself to move only when I am sure it consoles me.

I stop at my sculpting table first, claiming a set of chisels before I make for the door. I open it just wide enough to claim the two basins of water and carved ice already waiting for me before I disappear behind it again.

Sitting at the furthest edge of the wall, I find the base where the spidering web of the bannister once began and spill a measure of the water free before I place a block of ice atop and begin carving upwards while it freezes.

———————-

My man Luciel! I am prepared to defend his rights and all his wrongs, because I’m sorry your honour but this is a fineeeeee mannnnnnnn

Thoughts??????

Thoughts on Luciel? On Maeve?? On our first glimpse at the vampire clan????

Master readers are quite familiar with the lore of the Amaris Clan, but for those who don’t know or have forgotten, don’t worry, you’ll learn it all with Peter. Just know they black! lmfaoooo

Luciel was easier to write than Peter, but I’m excited to put them both in a bottle and see how they mix them up together. hehe

Please rememebr to vote and comment if you enjoyed! But this brings us to the end of this OMEGA launch weekend! 

I hope you guys enjoyed this taste of OMEGA! I’ll be working on a Patreon extra next and then an Aiasthlyn one, so the next OMEGA update should be in 2 weeks. I’m still working out the kinks of both updating books, but for now, it’s looking like updates every other weekend for OMEGA essentially

Until next time,
Byeeeeeeee Humansssssssss