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All Chapters of By The Blood of The Omega: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

97 Chapters

The Portrait

Rhydian The dream took her back to the post again.Same courtyard. Same light sitting heavy in the afternoon air. The wolvesstood where they had stood before, spaced along the edges like they belongedthere, like they were part of the stone itself. Only this time I wasn’t againstthe wall. I was in the center of it, where she had been.Ana looked at me over her shoulder.It should have been the same look—the one she gave when the bindings cameoff—but it wasn’t. There was something else in it now. Something harder. Itheld, and it stayed, and I tried to speak into it and nothing came out. Mythroat worked, my mouth opened, but the words never formed.Behind her, the guard lifted the strap again.I woke with my hand pressed flat against the mattress, fingers spread likeI’d braced myself for something that never arrived. The room was dark, thickwith it.Vessa lay beside me, turned away, breathing slow and even, lost to it in away I couldn’t reach.I stayed where I was, staring up a

Aziza

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

The Box

Rhydian My father's study had smelled of pipe smoke and old leather for as long as I could remember. The same two chairs, the same oversized desk, the same window positioned so that whoever sat behind it had the light at their back and whoever sat across from them spent the conversation with the sun in their face. I had been squinting at my father across that desk since I was seven years old. I was twenty-six now and my eyes still adjusted before I sat down, a reflex I had never managed to shake.He was finishing something when I came in, a letter or a report, and he set it aside without rushing and looked at me with the particular warmth he used when he had already decided what he was going to say and wanted the delivery to land softly. I had learned to recognise that expression early. It meant the conversation had an agenda I hadn't been told about."Rhydian," he said, leaning back in his chair. "How are you, son?""Well, Father.""Good." He reached for his cup and drank from it an

The Letter

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

Record's Room

RHYDIANI wasn’t supposed to be in the southern corridor at that hour.That was the truth of it, no matter what excuse I tried giving myself while walking there.I told myself I needed air after spending most of the evening buried in supply ledgers. I told myself the administrative reports had started blurring together badly enough that a walk through the lower halls would clear my head before sleep.None of it held together particularly well by the time I reached the southern passage.The compound had settled into that strange late-night quiet that only came after the second bell past midnight. Most of the braziers had burned low. The servants’ halls sat dark except for the occasional strip of candlelight beneath a door. Somewhere deeper in the compound, somebody laughed once, tired and muffled, before a door shut over it.Then I turned the corner and saw them.Ana stood with her back against the stone wall outside the records room, one shoulder angled toward the iron door. Sena hove

Question

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

River

RHYDIANThe supply route inspection was legitimate. I should start there.Three separate complaints had come in over the past month from the western route supervisors. One of the bridge crossings had softened after the autumn rains. A storage depot near the river reported water damage twice in the same week. And one of the runners had quietly started taking a longer road around the bend instead of using the river path directly, which usually meant there was a problem serious enough to inconvenience a man who spent most of his life on horseback.Winter runs would start soon. If the routes failed after the snow set in, people went hungry.The work needed doing.I told myself that was the reason I asked Ana to come.We left shortly after sunrise. Just the two of us.It wasn't improper exactly. Route inspections were often done with a smaller party when speed mattered more than appearances, though most officers still preferred to bring an extra guard or clerk to make the outing look offic

Evidence

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

After

AZIZAHe knocked at the ninth bell.I was sitting on the edge of my bed still in my day clothes, which told you something about the state I was in, because I was someone who changed out of work clothes the moment I was off duty and had been since I arrived in this compound. It was a habit, a small private order to impose on a situation that had very little of it. But I had come back from the hall that afternoon and sat down and not moved for four hours and the clothes were still on.I opened the door.Rhydian stood in the corridor in his day coat, no guard, no Daven, nobody behind him. He looked at my face for a moment and then past me into the room and back at my face."Can I come in?" he asked.I stared at him."Ana.""You want to come into my room," I said."Yes."I stepped back. He came in. I closed the door and stood with my back against it and looked at him standing in the middle of my servant's room — this small stone box with its single window and its narrow bed and its one ch

First Time

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

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