By The Blood of The Omega
Elizabeth Ukeh
Aziza
I was dressed in the cold and heavy silk of the black tunic, wet and sticking to my ribs and leaving a trail of water in the grooves of the floorboards on the polished wood of the hall beyond the doorway of his room. Stray tendrils of hair from my pins had sprung loose and flattened to the back of my neck, and my toes caught in a raised sliver of the wood as I staggered into Rhydian's room. He didn't speak; he merely glanced up briefly to my face, then shifted his stance, gesturing. My knees didn't bend well and so I fell to the edge of the bed long before I got to the washstand beside it, my thigh connecting with the frame a heavy blow and my hands flung up to the hollows of my eyes as I pressed them, hard, until black, then blood red. Then the noises came from my own throat—a thick, gasping, hiccuping sob catching in your ribs so hard you can't catch your breath. I had been building up to them since the edge of the pool, since the scrape of the wet gravel under my boots, since Vessa had leaned in so close I could feel the
heavy coconut oil of her hair caress the air around my head, to tell me he came to her rooms every night.