By The Blood of The Omega의 모든 챕터: 챕터 31 - 챕터 40

AZIZAThe fever came in overnight.I woke with my back on fire and my head thick and the room tilting slightly when I tried to sit up. The flogging stripes had been dressed by the compound medic the evening before, a brisk woman who said very little and wrapped the wounds with the efficiency of someone who had done it many times, but the dressing had pulled in the night and two of the stripes had wept through the cloth and stuck to it, and peeling it away from my skin when I finally managed to sit upright was an experience I breathed through very slowly with my eyes on the far wall.I got up anyway. Moving was harder than I expected it to be, my back pulling with every step, my legs unreliable in a way I didn't have the patience for. I crossed to the basin and splashed water on my face and then raised my head and looked into the small mirror above it.My real face looked back at me.I stood there and stared at it. My actual jaw, the one I had been born with, my mother's cheekbones and

AzizaVessa sent for me at the tenth bell.The servant who came to fetch me avoided my eyes while delivering themessage, which usually meant Vessa had already been in one of her moods allmorning. I set aside the stack of unfinished correspondence on my desk, cappedthe ink bottle carefully, then followed him through the east corridor towardher rooms.By the time I reached the sitting room door, something low and unpleasanthad already started turning in my stomach.Vessa rarely called me in personally unless she wanted something beyondclerical work.I knocked once.“Come in, Ana.”Her voice drifted through the door smooth as cream.I stepped inside and understood at once why she wanted me there.The room smelled faintly of tea leaves and cedar smoke from the brazier nearthe windows. Sunlight spilled across the carpet in pale gold strips, catchingagainst the edges of the desk where three objects had been laid out withcareful attention.The flower.The portrait.The letter.My mo

Rhydian I found Ana in the eastern administrative corridor a little after seven,standing beside the supply shelves with a ledger balanced against her palm andthree pencils tucked behind one ear like she’d forgotten they were there.Morning in the compound always arrived in layers. The kitchens woke first.Then the guards changing rotation near the western gate. Then servants crossingcourtyards carrying laundry baskets or trays or armfuls of reports someoneimportant suddenly needed before breakfast.The administrative wing lagged behind the rest of it. Quieter halls. Dustyshelves. Ink stains on tables no one bothered replacing because more ink wouldappear by the end of the week anyway.Ana fit into those corridors too easily.She had her head bent over the inventory sheet, lips moving faintly whileshe counted supply totals under her breath. The overhead lantern beside herthrew pale gold across the page and caught against the short strands of darkhair escaping near her forehea

RHYDIANI spent the previous evening pulling records.I started with the kitchen logs from the past three weeks, every item that had gone from the kitchens to Vessa's household, every request logged by name, every delivery signed by the receiving staff member. I cross-referenced the logs against the household tea records my father had asked Mara to pull. I read the compound physician's report on the miscarriage, which was four pages long and concluded, in the measured language that physicians used when they did not want to commit to anything, that the loss appeared to be consistent with a natural early-term miscarriage and that there was no physical evidence of external cause.Then I found my two witnesses.Darrow, the eastern overnight guard who had been on rotation the night of the miscarriage and could confirm Ana had not left her quarters between the ninth bell and dawn. And the kitchen runner, a boy called Pell, who had delivered every item to Vessa's household for the past month

Rhydian I stood outside Ana’s door longer than I meant to.Not because I was uncertain about knocking. That part had already happenedsomewhere between leaving my rooms and crossing the western corridor for whatwas becoming a humiliatingly familiar reason. The uncertainty came afterward,standing there with my hand near the wood like an idiot while the compoundsettled into night around me.A pair of clerks passed the far staircase carrying records between them. Oneof them glanced at me and immediately looked away again, suddenly fascinated byhis paperwork.Fantastic.People were beginning to notice things.I waited until they disappeared downstairs before knocking once against thedoor.The latch opened almost immediately.Ana looked up at me, and there it was again. That tiny shift in herexpression she never fully managed to hide when she first saw me. Surprisefirst. Then awareness. Then the composure sliding back into place a secondlater.“You’re here again,” she said quietl