We went down to the dining chamber to find that the tower had arranged it with fresh food by the time we arrived, steam rising from the plates as if it had anticipated our arrival. Three places. The tower apparently remained committed to our presence regardless of what had occurred overnight.
She looked at the three settings for a moment before sitting.
I poured water from the pitcher on the table and set it in front of her. She drank without ceremony, both hands around the cup, and I watched the flushed color in her cheeks fade slowly.
Footsteps echoed on the stairs. Malric appeared in the doorway with the expression he wore when he had been doing something useful to manage himself and was not ready to stop being useful. He had a second pitcher—warmer water, I realized, with something steaming from it.
He set it on the table without speaking and moved to his usual position, which was standing when everyone else was sitting.
Aveline looked at the second pitcher. “What is that?”
“Willow bark tea,” he said. “For the cramping. If it’s still present.”
She looked at him for a moment with an unreadable expression. Then she held out her cup and he filled it without comment.
I watched this and said nothing, because something had shifted and I didn’t want to disturb it by naming it.
She wrapped both hands around the cup again, steam curling up to veil her face as her gaze fixed on the table. Her shoulders were rigid, drawn tight as though bracing for a strike—verbal or otherwise. After our last interaction, she likely expected us to resume our relentless questioning about her circumstances and about her father.
“Tell me what happened to me.”
Her voice was steady. That steadiness had cost her something—I could feel it through the thread, the effort of it—and I chose my words accordingly.
“A heat spike,” I said. “Not a full heat. A precursor—what happens when an omega is preparing for a full heat and their body encounters something that accelerates the process.”
She was very still.
“We believe the tower has been suppressing your heat,” I continued, “and has been keeping your biological cycle arrested. Your body has been in a state of suspension for a very long time. When we arrived, when the tower responded to us the way it did—” I paused. “Something began that the tower couldn’t—or wouldn’t—fully contain.”
“We triggered it,” Malric said. Flat, not apologetic, but trying to keep emotion out of the conversation.
Aveline’s fingers tightened around the cup. “My father never said the word omega. Not once.” She paused. “He said I was dangerous. That my power was unstable. Nothing else.”
“He was describing a heat,” I said carefully. “And telling you it was a weapon. How old were you when you came to the tower?”
Her jaw tightened and her eyes got a faraway look as she thought back in time. “I think I was sixteen. I remember my mother talking about balls and alphas and mating. My father hated it and told my mother no one was good enough for me.”
I exchanged glances with Malric. He cleared his throat. “Your omega side would wake up around that time. You were probably showing signs of it, especially if you were around any unmated alphas. It could have been why your power also came online.”
“Your heat is not a weapon,” I said. “It’s biological. It’s your body doing what it was designed to do. The wanting isn’t dangerous—it isn’t a precursor to harm. It’s just your system trying to complete something that was interrupted before it could finish.”
She looked at me directly. “I watched you,” she said. “Tonight. I came down the stairs and I”— the flush in her face deepened, not fever this time—“and then the spike…”
“Yes,” I said. “Proximity to alphas during rut can accelerate a suppressed omega’s heat response. Especially if there’s a scentmatch.” I maintained eye contact, as averting my gaze would have seemed like leaving her to face the awkwardness of the discussion alone. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Your body responded to stimuli. That’s all.”
“It doesn’t feel like that’s all,” she said quietly.
“No,” I agreed. “I know it doesn’t.”
Malric moved from his position by the wall—not much, just enough that he was closer to the table than he had been. He didn’t sit. But the adjustment was a concession of something, and I thought she noticed it.
“The word you used,” she said to neither of us in particular. “Omega.” She said it carefully, as if she were weighing each syllable. “I’ve read it. In the library. The histories of the courts. Before…”
“Before the purge,” Malric said.
She looked at him. “He told me they were gone.”
“He eliminated them,” Malric said. “There’s a difference.”
