Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Omega's Crown: Kabanata 51 - Kabanata 60

Selene's POVThe east wing kitchen was warm at night.That was the first thing.The whole Keep was cold in the evenings now that the harvest moon had passed and the air had turned. The corridors were cold. The throne room was cold. My own bedroom in the Luna wing was cold until the maid lit the fire at seven. The library was cold even in the afternoon.The east wing kitchen was warm.My mother had been working in that kitchen for twenty-one years. She had figured out, in those twenty-one years, exactly how to keep the heat in the room. She kept a small fire going in the second hearth. She kept a kettle on. She had hung old quilts on the inside of the heavy wooden door, which sealed the warmth in when the door was closed.The kitchen was warm.I went there every night.The first night, I went because she had told me to.The second night, I went because I had wanted to.The third night, I went because I had spent the afternoon adding nothing to the wall in my study, because the wall was

Selene's POVThe package arrived on a Thursday.It came on the morning courier from the Voss pack. The senior secretary brought it up to my study with the morning correspondence and set it on the corner of my desk and did not say anything, because the senior secretary had been at Draeven Keep for eleven years and had learned, in those eleven years, that some packages required announcement and some required silence.This one required silence.I knew because of the wax seal.The seal was the Voss household crest. The crest was the one I had grown up under. The crest had been on the back of my chair at the dining table for nineteen years. The crest had been on the door of my room. The crest had been pressed into the wax that had sealed every formal communication my adoptive father had ever sent to me, which had been four — one for my naming day, one for my coming-of-age, one for the bonding ceremony, and one for the rejection ceremony.The crest was on this letter.I had not seen the cre

Selene's POVThe wolf had been asking for two weeks.She had been asking quietly. She had been pressing forward against my ribs in the mornings, the way she had pressed forward during the rejection scar moment and the Archive moment and the night above the Council city. Not urgently. Patiently. The way a wolf pressed forward when she had been kept inside for a long time and was reminding the human that the outside existed.I had not let her out.I had not let her out because the hex had been broken for eight weeks and I had not yet shifted, not fully, not in the courtyard, not in front of the Keep. I had shifted the silver in my hair the morning Kael had told me about the Council, the silver of the rejection scar in his bed, the silver in the wolf I could feel inside me. I had shifted pieces.I had not shifted the whole wolf.I was forty-eight days into being Luna of Draeven Keep and I had not let the staff see me as a wolf.I told my mother about it at the kitchen table."Mama.""Yes

Selene's POVIri left at the end of the month.She had been at Draeven Keep for thirty-one days.I had taught her every morning in the south library and every evening in the east wing kitchen. The morning sessions had been to pack genealogy and Council law and the registry system, the things she would need to know as a beta candidate. The evening sessions had been quieter. We sat across from each other at the small table. We talked. We did not always talk about useful things. Sometimes we talked about her younger sister, who was nine and was being raised the same way Iri had been raised, and who Iri was going to come back to as soon as she could. Sometimes we talked about my mother. Sometimes we talked about nothing.I had given her a wolf-shaped pin to put on her dress collar.The pin had been made by the goldsmith at Draeven Keep, the same one who had set the broken disc into the back of my pendant. The wolf on the pin was the small wolf, the listening wolf, the one on my grandmothe

Selene's POVKade took the beta seat on a Thursday.The ceremony was small. Riven had asked for it to be small. Kael had agreed. The seat-taking would not be public, would not be announced to the wider Council, would not be a thing the staff lined up for the way they had lined up for the silver shift.The seat-taking would be in the throne room.Five people were present.Kael, Riven, Kade, my mother, me.That was the full attendance list.Riven had drafted it himself. He had sent it to Kael for review. Kael had returned it without changing anything, which Kael had been doing with Riven's drafts for two weeks since the morning of the announcement, because Kael had decided that the leaving was Riven's, and the choices around the leaving were Riven's, and Kael was going to be the man who agreed.Riven had thought about it for a week.He had brought the list to my study on the eighth day after sitting in the chair."Luna.""Riven.""I want your mother there.""My mother.""Yes.""Why.""B