By The Blood of The Omega의 모든 챕터: 챕터 41 - 챕터 50

AZIZAI woke before Rhydian did.The room still carried the cold from the night. It sat inside the stone walls and drifted through the narrow opening in the curtains, brushing faintly over my bare arms where the blanket had slipped lower in my sleep. His arm rested across my waist, heavy with warmth, and for a while I stayed exactly where I was beneath it.Just breathing.The dark. The warmth of him. The slow rise and fall of his chest against my back.At some point during the night he had said my name into my skin, rough with sleep, low enough that I felt it more than heard it.Aziza.Every time he said it, my body answered before my mind could interfere.I let myself stay there for thirty seconds before the thinking started.Because of course it did.His patience had undone me more thoroughly than anything else. Not his hands, though they had learned me carefully over the course of the night. Not his mouth against my throat or the rough warmth of his voice near my ear. It was the ge

Rhydian The water felt freezing when we first got in.Ana sucked in a breath beside me and laughed under it when the cold climbedhigher than expected, one hand grabbing my shoulder as she adjusted to it. Ilaughed too, mostly because her expression caught me off guard. She lookedyounger when she laughed like that. Less careful.A few minutes later neither of us seemed to notice the temperature anymore.Her legs stayed around my waist beneath the surface while I held her againstme, my hands moving over wet skin that still felt warm somehow despite thewater. Moonlight spread across the pool in shifting pieces. It caught againsther shoulders whenever she moved and turned her hair almost blue-black where itclung to her neck.She kissed my throat slowly at first.Then less slowly.I tilted my head back against the stone edge behind me and closed my eyesfor half a second because I was reaching the point where thinking requiredactual effort.Ana’s fingers slid through my locs, patie

AZIZAThe door banged open at half past seven.I sat up so fast I hit my shoulder on the wall and grabbed the blanket up tomy chest before I registered that it was Hessa from the third room down,wide-eyed and vibrating, with two women I recognised from the laundry rotationpressing in behind her."Is it true?" Hessa asked, already halfway across the room."People are saying — the garden last night, and Lady Vessa — is it true hewas with you?"I opened my mouth.More people came through the door.I didn't even know all of their names. A girl from the kitchen supply line.Two older women from the household administrative staff, one of whom had herarms crossed before she was fully through the doorway. A runner I had seen adozen times in the corridors but never spoken to, who was standing on his toestrying to see over the women in front of him."Someone said Lady Vessa threw a rock," the girl from supply wassaying to nobody in particular."She tried to hit her," Hessa confirmed, po

RHYDIANVessa was awake when I came back.The room smelled of herbs from the healer's kit. Someone had cracked the shutters and cold evening air moved through the gap. The attendants stood against the far wall with their eyes carefully elsewhere.Vessa sat against the pillows, back straight, hands folded. She watched me cross the room and pull the chair close without saying anything. I sat down and looked at her properly, her eyes were painfully swollen but her posture was unnervingly perfect. "I want to go home," she said. "I want the agreement dissolved."The first thing I felt was relief and I hated myself for it immediately."Vessa—""Don't." She shook her head. "Don't soften your voice at me right now."I sat back. "Alright.""You humiliated me. In the garden and again in that hall this morning, in front of everyone." She looked at the window. "The servants were talking outside this door. They think she satisfies you in ways I can't.""I don't care what they think.""I do." She

AZIZAThe circuit of the official duties was a bi-weekly tour that hit six locations. Rhydian had walked me through the schedule last night: the eastern supply depot, the border checkpoint, the agricultural quarter, the communal well and cistern system, the training grounds, and the main market. Six locations. He’d made it sound so simple and I’d written it down just as he'd said it and we had both made a pact to pretend the version of this circuit that occurred in my imagination-me trailing behind the Crown Prince of the pack who had killed my parents, with the entire compound staring-was not the version that was actually going to happen.The carriage departed at seven. The first two stops went fine in the way that things that were terrible but being polite go fine.Then we reached the agricultural quarter.The market square had been Goldencrest’s principal trading post. My father had tread this ground every quarter; he would stoop low and address the farmers in person-something not