All Chapters of The Omega's Crown: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

22 Chapters

Nightmare

Selene's POV"Lirien."A woman was saying my name in the dark.It was not my name. I had been Selene for twenty-one years.The woman in the dark was saying Lirien.I tried to look at her. I could not. The dark was thick. She was three feet from me. She was sitting on the edge of a bed I did not know. She had her hand on my forehead. The hand was cool. The hand was small.The hand had been on my forehead before.I knew it."Lirien. You are safe. I am with you. You are safe."I tried to speak.I could not.The room shifted. The bed became the Voss longhall platform. The hand became Tyler's. The voice became Diana's. Diana was saying Lirien in Tyler's mouth. Tyler's hands were too still. The scar at my collarbone went silver-hot under the cream silk and silver ran down the front of the dress, and the longhall filled up with silver the way a room filled up with water, and Diana smiled, and the woman kept saying Lirien, and the silver kept rising, and I could not breathe.I woke up sitting

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

Midnight meeting

Selene's POV"You should not be awake, Luna."Riven was at the bottom of the stairs.He had a small lantern in his hand. He had a coat over his shirt. He was on his way somewhere, or back from somewhere, and he had stopped when he had seen me on the third-floor landing in my nightdress and the wool wrap I had pulled around my shoulders."Neither should you.""...That is fair.""Where is he?""Library.""Has he been there long?""Three hours.""Doing what."A pause."...He has been pouring."I looked at Riven.He looked back."Pouring.""Yes, Luna.""Not drinking.""No, Luna.""How many glasses?""Two so far tonight. There are three on the side table from earlier in the week. He pours them. He does not drink them. He waits.""For what."Riven did not answer.I waited.He set the lantern down on the small table at the bottom of the stairs."For three years he has been pouring glasses he does not drink, Luna. I have stopped counting. He will not let me throw them away. He pours a new one

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

Catches Again

Selene's POV"Six this month, sir. Three of them inside the gate."I stopped on the half-landing.I had been on my way down to the lower courtyard. The mid-morning sun was on the stone. The voice was Riven's. He was somewhere to the left of the landing, behind the small wooden door that opened into the south guard room.I had passed that door fifty times in the last three weeks.I had never heard a voice through it."Inside the gate."That was Kael.His voice was very low."Yes, sir. The one in the orchard last Tuesday. The one at the south wall on Thursday. The one this morning in the lower kitchen passage.""This morning.""At dawn. While she was still in her room."A pause."Where is the body?""In the south cellar. He had a Cole-house token in his right boot. The third Cole-house token in nine days, sir. They are not even trying to hide it now.""And the routes.""Three new ones since last week. Two doubled guards. The healer is now sleeping in the small room beside her bath corri

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

What Silver Means

Selene's POV"You are at my door at eight in the morning, Kael.""I am.""You do not knock at eight in the morning.""I am knocking now."I opened the door a hand's-width.He was in shirtsleeves. He had a book in one hand and the small folded paper from last night in the other. His hair was wet at the temples. He had run a hand through it twice already this morning. I knew this because the hair on the left side of his head was standing up more than the right.I had never seen Kael's hair standing up before.I forgot, for one full second, why I had been planning to be cold with him today.I remembered."You broke the rule.""I know.""I am still cataloguing what you broke.""I know. I came to give you something.""What."He held up the book."Pictures of you.""...What?""There are pictures of you in this book. They are sixty years old. Some are older. You are not in any of them. You are in all of them. I have been carrying it under my arm to your door for three days and have not yet f

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

Shared Dinner

Selene's POV"I am tired of not eating with you."He was at the door. Two trays. He was carrying both of them. The right tray was higher than the left tray because he had not done this in three years and had forgotten which arm was the steady one.I had been sitting at the writing table with the book open to a photograph of a woman from 1851. I had been reading her name out loud. I had been about to read the next one when the knock had come.He had brought dinner.He had brought TWO trays.He had carried them himself. There was no servant behind him in the corridor. There was no Riven trailing with a wine bottle. There was a King of Draeven standing in my doorway with two trays in his hands and a slight tilt to the right tray because he had been carrying both of them down a flight of stairs and the right tray had the wine glass on it."...Kael.""Will you eat with me?""You are tilting.""...Am I.""Yes. The right tray. The wine is going to spill."He looked at his right hand.He adju

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

Picks Side

Selene's POV"You are at the gate forty minutes early, Luna.""I have decided I am the kind of woman who is early to her own beatings now."Riven stopped at the rack. He turned. He looked at me."...Your own what.""I have signed up. Voluntarily. To be beaten with a wooden sword by the King's beta at four in the morning, for the next fourteen days, until either I improve or one of us dies. The kitchen head has been told. There is going to be a small ledger in the south guard room. The captain is calling it the omega-beatings ledger. He thinks it is funny. I will not correct him."A pause.The corner of Riven's mouth, which had not moved in any of the conversations I had ever had with him, moved."...You are going to be a problem, Luna.""I have had a problem since the third row of the bonding hall. I am simply better dressed for it now.""You are in trousers.""Better-dressed in the sense that the trousers belong to a person who can move in them. The cream silk had not been designed f

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

Full Moon

Selene's POV"You should not be out of bed at this hour, child."The cook was at the end of the corridor.I had stopped at the window halfway down the hall because the moon was not quite full yet, and the moon was the thing the small animal at the base of my ribs had been trying to tell me about for the last six hours, and I had wanted, very much, to look at it.I had not heard her on the stones.She was three steps behind me. She had a basket of bread on her hip. She had a candle in her left hand, unlit. She had been on her way somewhere. She had stopped because she had seen me at the window.I turned."Cook.""Lirien."The name came out before she stopped it.I did not move.She did not move.The window above us caught the not-quite-full moon and the silver of it fell across the floor between us. We were eight feet apart. She was not looking at me. She was looking at the basket on her hip, at the small spool of grey thread tucked between the rolls, at her own knuckles where they hel

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

Silver Shift

Selene's POV"Come, Luna. The moon is up."The cook was at the foot of the tower stairs.She had a lantern. She had a wool shawl over her shoulders. She had not been there a minute ago.She did not look at the pendant. I knew that the way I had been learning to know things about her was by what she did not do. She did not look at the pendant because she could not yet look at it. She would look at it, I thought, after."...Cook.""...Lirien."The name again.She had said it three times today. I let her have it. I did not press her on it. I had decided in the corridor four hours ago that I would not press her on the name until the name pressed back. I would let the name come.I let it come."Where am I going?""The high parapet above the south wall. The one with the iron bench. You will know it when you see it. The pack is in the woods below. They will not look up. The King is in the courtyard. He will.""You knew I was coming up here.""I knew you were coming up here before you knew yo

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

The Almost

Selene's POVThe paper was on the chest at the foot of my bed before I had opened my eyes.I knew because I had not put it there. I had put my own paper there last night with one line on it, in the dark, and I had set the pendant beside it, and I had gone to sleep on top of the blanket with the wool over my shoulders and a wolf in my chest who had been awake for the first time in twenty-one years and was settling.The paper had two lines now.The first was mine. Your wolf called me his.The second was his. In his hand. Three words written in the dark in the steady careful script of a man who did not waste ink.Mine. Always was.I read it.I read it sitting up in the bed in the gold morning light, with the pendant in my right hand and the paper in my left, and the small ancient thing at the base of my ribs lifted her head from her paws and looked at the words on the paper through me.She did not speak.She did not need to.She let me have the reading.I did not see him that morning.I

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

Three Weeks

Selene's POVThree keys were on the writing table when I came down for breakfast.They had not been there last night. They had been put there by someone who had walked into my room while I had been asleep, set them on the table, and walked back out.The first key was small and dark. Iron. The kind that opened a study drawer.The second was longer and brass. The kind that opened a library cabinet.The third was the smallest of all. Silver. The kind that opened a strongbox.A folded paper was beside them.I picked the paper up.Selene.All three. Your access. From this morning. The first opens the lower drawer of my desk. The second opens the cabinet at the back of the library where the intelligence files are kept. The third opens the strongbox in the south guard room. The captain has been told. Riven has been told. The healer has been told. Walk into any room. No one will stop you.Yours.Kael.The signature was different than usual. He had signed his other notes with the bare word. Th

Last Updated : 2026-05-21

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