Volume 1 Chapter 1 Queen VS King

TARA VYAS POV

It was Monday, and the sky looked like it hadn’t slept either. Grey clouds sprawled over the campus like an unfinished painting, heavy with mood and menace. The kind that mirrored mine.

Coffee in one hand, ambition in the other, I walked into the lecture hall like I owned it. Because I did. I was the name professors whispered about, the one others either envied or hated—never loved. I preferred it that way. Love made people soft. Vulnerable. Breakable.

My heels clicked across the floor with the rhythm of confidence—until he walked in.

Kian Raheja.

If arrogance had a body, it would wear his face like a crown.

Six feet of sculpted nerve, messy hair that somehow always looked styled, a jawline sharper than my eyeliner, and a pair of eyes colder than my ex’s apologies. Dressed like he stepped out of a luxury men's catalogue and smelled like forbidden plans and mint.

He didn’t look at me. He didn’t have to.

His presence was loud enough.

I didn’t believe in fate. I believed in stats.

In logic, rankings, gold medals, and sleepless nights wrapped in caffeine and cold ambition. The world wasn’t built by feelings—it was ruled by the ones who never blinked.

So no, I wasn’t threatened by him.

I just hated him. Like math hates chaos.

Kian Raheja.

Top of the damn scoreboard. Every. Single. Term.

I had earned my spot with blood and brutal discipline. He waltzed in with a smirk, an elite surname, and cheekbones that looked hand-chiseled by Olympus interns. The kind of guy who made professors drool and classmates fold. But I wasn’t folding.

Not for him.

“Still one mark behind me, I see.”

His voice slid across the lecture hall like a blade with a British accent. Smooth. Cutting.

I didn’t look up from my notes.

“Still measuring your worth by numbers, Raheja? Must be exhausting.”

“I don’t have to measure it. The scoreboard does it for me.”

Cocky. Polished. Absolutely punchable.

He dropped his bag on the seat beside mine—not by accident. He always sat there. Even when there were fifty other options. Like proximity was just another battlefield.

I snapped my pen shut. “You're blocking my light.”

He tilted his head, mock-sympathy in his eyes. “And yet you still shine. Incredible.”

I stared at him.

He smiled.

We both knew the truth.

If I was a hurricane, he was a glacier—slow, lethal, unshakable.

And in this college, we were the ones they watched. The valedictorian hopefuls. The overachievers.

The two names no one dared place in the same sentence unless it ended in versus.

Every club, every competition, every freaking scholarship—our names were always there. Tied, neck and neck. And every time one of us pulled ahead, the other came back sharper.

This wasn’t banter. This was war.

And war had rules.

Rule 1: No truce.

Rule 2: No mercy.

Rule 3: Never fall for the enemy.

Not that there was a risk.

Because I didn’t care how sharp his brain was, or how precise his posture, or how annoyingly elegant he looked solving equations like it was child's play.

He was a thorn in my crown.

And I was about to cut him down.

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