“Victoria had a sister. A twin, to be exact.”
A twin.
My chest tightens.
The word twinenters my awareness and detonates against the particular neural cluster that has been sensitized to the concept since my own twin decided that his survival was worth more than mine.
“She couldn’t handle any of the poisons.” Hawk’s voice drops further—not in volume but in emotional register, entering the particular territory of someone describing damage that was done to a person they love by the systems that were supposed to protect her. “Almost died, actually. The conditioning that Victoria’s body adapted to—accepted, survived, converted into biological armor—her sister’s body rejected. Violently.”
He shakes his head. The motion is small, heavy.
“So they decided only Victoria would continue the conditioning. Which made it obvious, eventually, who would be able to handle taking on the empire.”
The heir selection.
Not by choice but by biology.
Not by ambition but by the body’s ability to survive what was poured into it.
Victoria didn’t choose to be the heir.
Her bloodstream chose for her.
“Especially with Victoria’s level of combat.” Hawk’s back straightens, and something that sounds like pride—bruised, complicated, but unmistakable—enters his voice. “Her fighting ability and agility are unmatched for most women, let alone an Omega. And she’s a strong observer.”
He turns now. Faces us. His amber-gold eyes carry a rawness that I haven’t seen in them before—the protective layers stripped away, the casual amusement and the vulgar tenderness and the strategic nonchalance all removed to reveal the person underneath who has been carrying this woman’s history on his shoulders alongside his own.
“She only needs to watch something once to replicate it. And do it better than the original.”
We’re silent.
The three of us—Lucien at the cutting table, Cassian in his rolling chair, me standing at the room’s center where I’ve been positioned since we arrived—absorb the information with the particular quiet of men who are recalculating their assessment of a person they’ve been evaluating on insufficient data.
Lucien asks the next question. His voice is quieter than usual—the theatrical register dampened, the performance stripped away, replaced by something approaching the genuine curiosity he usually conceals behind charm.
“Is that why Violet’s confident in her?”
Hawk looks over his shoulder at us. The rawness in his eyes hasn’t receded—if anything, it’s deepened, the amber-gold darkening with the particular intensity of a man who is about to deliver information that he knows will change the dynamic in this room and has decided to deliver it anyway because the stakes have passed the point where withholding serves anyone’s survival.
“Victoria is the longest Omega to last on Knot Academy soil.”
The statement lands with the weight of a monument being placed.
“Her kill count is beyond ten thousand.”
Ten thousand.
The number enters my brain and my brain rejects it.
Not the number itself—I’ve encountered kill counts in the thousands during my years in the world that generates them, and the capacity for sustained, systematic violence is not something I find inherently unbelievable. But ten thousand applied to her—to the woman who dances ballet and wears brass knuckles and pouts involuntarily when her kitten meows and carries a void where most people carry a personality?—
Ten thousand.
And she danced like it was the only time she felt alive.
Both things can be true, apparently.
Both things are true.
