บททั้งหมดของ By The Blood of The Omega: บทที่ 11 - บทที่ 20

AZIZANo one moved.The corridor was holding its breath. Vessa’s ladies-in-waitingwere standing exactly where they were; their faces molded into the carefullyblank expression of people who had learned that seeing something in thiscompound, something one was not supposed to see, had consequences. The adminrunner who had been thirty seconds behind me seemed to have entirelydisappeared.It was just Vessa and me and the word ‘thief’ sitting in the airbetween us."My lady," I said. My voice was steady. "I wasdelivering laundry. I took a wrong turn in the corridor. The Princeconfirmed-""The Prince," Vessa said, her tone perfectly sweet,"is not here."She stared at me for a moment more. Then she turned to the tallerof her two attendants, said something quiet that didn't reach my ears, and thewoman inclined her head and came towards me.I did not run.Running was worse than not running. Running was panic and guiltand a chase to catch, and that was not a gift I would give her. I r

RHYDIANMy father had called us in about the eastern supply route.A small disagreement between two absorbed pack admins – aterritorial spat he’d had languishing on his desk for three days and which ithad suddenly decided to declare itself urgent this morning. He sat at the headof the table, robed serenely, and discussed it at a snail’s pace that impliedthe leisurely unfolding of a week and not an immediate crisis. Jorin took noteswhile Vessa, folded hands with a placid smile while she sat at my elbow. Iconcentrated very hard on the dark sheen of the woodgrain table, and not Ana’sblue lips in the garden.It took forty minutes.Forty minutes while Ana was in my room upstairs running a highfever, and there was no one else there who cared or knew except me.When my father eventually waved us out I strode ahead. Vessa fellin behind me in the hallway and we walked without speaking. She was waiting forsomething I might say that she could use.I stopped at the foot of the stairs an

RHYDIANVessa came to me over breakfast.That was the first sign something was wrong. She did not usually seek me out at breakfast. She had her own morning routine, her own table, her own carefully arranged hour before the day started. The fact that she was standing in my doorway at this hour with her hands folded and her expression warm meant she had been rehearsing something."I wanted to talk to you about Ana," she said.I set my cup down.She came in and sat across from me and smoothed her sleeve in the way she did when she was about to say something she had prepared. "I've been thinking about what happened at the pool. I was wrong to let it go as far as it did." She looked at me with steady, earnest eyes. "I'd like to make it right."I looked at her."I want to take her under my wing," she said. "Bring her into my household staff. Keep her close, give her proper standing." A small, reasonable smile. "It would settle things. Give her protection she doesn't currently have."The roo

AZIZAThe room came with the position.That had been Vessa's phrase, two mornings ago, key held flat in her palm as if she offered it in the same spirit that one offered honey-cakes. A private chamber in the palace wing. Proper walls. A window facing south. A room that suggested one was not staff any longer, or at least not staff any longer to the same degree one had been before.In just days, I’ve moved from the slave quarters to the servant quarters and now, a bedroom of my own.I took the key and thanked her and went back to my work, though my fingers tingled with the effort required not to shake them.I had been born in the wing above this one; I had learned to walk on the courtyard beneath this window; I had put my forehead to the glass of a room two floors up on a snowy afternoon. I stood in another woman's home in my own body and was handed the key to the servant's room like it was a gift.I tucked the rings under my tunic against my sternum and pressed them there for a count o

AZIZAThe scent of dried roses filled Vessa’s sitting room.She was already at her writing desk when I arrived, her expression one of receiving a delegation rather than the opening of the household morning. When I entered, she looked up and offered me a genuine smile-the wide, open, pleasure-of-seeing-someone smile that I had been observing in her for weeks now, and that I knew at a visceral level the cost of applying to me."Ana," she said, setting her pen down. "Right on time. Come in, sit."I sat in the chair directly opposite her desk, folded my hands in my lap, and waited.She spent the first hour walking me through her daily structure. Correspondence sorted by sender rank, not topic, and opened first. Tea taken at second bell, always with honey, never with milk. Council minutes filed instantly and cross-referenced with the ledger she kept on the top left drawer. Visiting delegations’ itineraries posted three days prior, next to the door. Personal appointments recorded in the blu