By the Blood of the Omega

AZIZA

I heard my mother scream once in my life.

It was when I was seven, a hunting accident. My father came home with an arrow through his shoulder and she made a sound I never forgot. She pressed her hand over her mouth after, ashamed of it.

I heard her scream tonight. It didn't stop.

I was in my chambers when the first explosion hit the east wall. The sound came up through the floor before it came through the air, a deep rolling boom that shook the water in my cup and knocked my mirror sideways on the dresser. I stood up. I stood there for three full seconds and then the second explosion hit and the screaming started everywhere at once and I ran.

The corridors were in chaos, smoke so thick was pouring from the east wing. Servants ran past me in both directions, some carrying things, most carrying nothing, faces frozen with pure fear. Guards pushed against the current toward the noise, weapons drawn, shouting at everyone to get back, get down, get out!

Someone grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise.

Pella, my handmaid, her face wet and her eyes huge. She was saying something I couldn't hear over the noise and I pulled free and kept moving and I didn't look back because if I looked back I would stop and stopping was not something I could do right now.

The throne room...I had to get to the throne room.

I took the east corridor and immediately regretted it. The smoke was thicker here, low enough that I had to hunch, and through the haze I could see the shapes of soldiers moving at the far end. These were not our soldiers. The silhouettes were wrong, the armour heavier and their formation was of ambush. They were clearing rooms methodically, kicking doors open one by one, and I pressed myself flat against the wall behind a collapsed shelf unit and stopped breathing.

I saw three of them. Moving away from me, thankfully, torchlight bouncing off dark armour.

One stopped and turned his head.

I did not move, I tried to stay as still as possible and held my breath. The smoke burned my eyes and I stared at the back of his helmet and made myself think about nothing, because fear has a smell and I could not afford to be found right now.

He turned back and kept walking.

I waited five seconds and then I moved fast, cutting through the servants' passage that ran parallel to the main corridor, the one I had used as a child to sneak to the kitchens at night. They were narrow and dark, smelling of old, damp stone. I knew every turn of it. I came out on the other side of the smoke, closer to the throne room, and I ran the last stretch without stopping.

I hit the throne room doors and shoved them open.

~

The smell reached me before the sight did.

The throne room mirror, the tall one framed in Goldencrest gold that had hung on the far wall since before I was born, was shattered. Something had hit it during the struggle, a body or a weapon or both, and the glass had come down in long jagged pieces across the floor, catching the torchlight, glittering like my mother’s gems.

My father was face-down on the steps of the dais. His crown had rolled several feet away. His hands were stretched out in front of him like he had been reaching for something when he fell.

My mother was on her back with her eyes open.

A cry came out of my throat, I pressed both hands over my mouth and walked toward her. My whole body went numb. I knelt and looked at her face. Her eyes were open and she was not breathing and she was—

Gone.

The warriors who did this were already moving through the outer compound. I could hear them; boots, shouts, the distant crack of something else breaking. They had not lingered.

I had minutes. Maybe less.

My hands found their way into her blood. It was still warm. I pressed my palms flat and I thought about Bram Ironfang, his expansion record, the packs he had swallowed, and the royals who ran and were caught. What came after for the women specifically, what was done to them before they were presented to the Alpha.

I was not going to run and be caught.

I pressed my hands deeper and I spoke the old words.

~

My mother taught them to me when I was twelve, sitting on the edge of my bed, her voice was low and her eyes serious in a way that made my stomach knot.

These words are a last resort, she said. You will know when. I pray you never know.

She was right. I knew.

The working started in my palms, a burning that went underneath the skin, grabbed and pulled from somewhere deeper than muscle. I kept speaking. Stopping halfway was worse than never starting.

It moved up my arms and hit my chest, I gasped and kept going, forcing the syllables out through my teeth because stopping was not an option, stopping meant dark rooms and Ironfang soldiers and things I was not going to let happen to me.

Outside the throne room doors I could hear boots. They were getting closer. Two sets, maybe three, moving with the same methodical patience as the soldiers in the corridor.

I spoke faster.

My face was the worst part.

It felt like hands gripping my features and rearranging them; my jaw, my cheekbones, the line of my nose, everything shifting and reshaping under the skin all at once. My wolf screamed underneath it all, fighting the suppression with everything she had, and I pushed her down hard and kept speaking and the pain crested so high my vision went white and there was nothing for a moment except the words and the blood and my mother's face, her eyes still open, still looking at nothing.

The boots stopped outside the door. Voices, low in a brief exchange.

I pressed my bleeding lips together and did not make a sound.

The boots moved on.

I let out a breath that shook the whole way out and the working finished and everything went very still.

I was shaking. Both hands flat on the floor, arms trembling. I raised my head slowly and looked at the broken mirror scattered across the floor.

The large pieces were still intact enough to show a reflection.

I leaned over the nearest shard and looked down.

A stranger looked back at me.