Shadowlands Omega (Beasts of Gatamora Book 2)

1 | Kiandah

Orias Village

“Omegas say boom!Haaaaaa! Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha boom!” The words whip through the air, my older sister Zelie and youngest sister Audet leading the chant. It’s old school and everybody in the kitchens picks it up by the second line. “Alphas say grrrrr! Oooooh! Ah-ah-ah! Ah-ah grrrrrr.” Half the kitchens erupt in laughter as we do our best to imitate an Alpha growl.

I take the fresh spices Zelie hands me, separate half, and hand her back the rest. There’s a reason I’m the one who seasons the food. “Betas say blisssssss. So ah-ha. So ah-ha. Blisssss!”

The soup bubbles in front of me and I stir it absently, confident in the consistency and the fact that the okra won’t stick to the bottom of the pot. Meanwhile, I concentrate as most folks in the kitchens glance my way, waiting for me to solo this next part. My voice lifts and I grin as the words spill out of me, swirling through the room, adding a certain serenity to the chaos.

“Sing the song of shadows, quick before he comes…” While my voice carries louder than the others, we turn towards one another, setting aside the pots we’re drying, the soups we’re stirring, the breads we’re baking, as we beat a steady tempo against the ground with our heels.

We get lower and lower to the ground and, in the shadow of my words, the others repeat, “Quick before they come…”

“The Beast will steal your heart, taste your fear, lick your bones…”

“The Beast will lick your bones…”

“Beware his battle axe and lay down your swords…”

Mercy, my mama, steps into the open doorway leading out to the herb gardens, Owenna, my oldest sister, behind her. My dad would have definitely rolled his eyes and slapped a palm over his face and said something like, I don’t pay you to sing all day! Get back to work! even though he doesn’t pay us at all and loves our singing, besides. We’d have laughed and he’d have been caught by Mama bobbing his head along to the beat and murmuring the lines under his breath, and when I finished singing solo, he’d be looking at me with pride and love…but he isn’t here now. And Mama? She’s got the pot in her hand turned upside down and is beating on it like a drum.

“Lay down your swords…”

“Your only chance is to run and sing the shadow song.”

“Sing the shadow song…”

Then everyone, in a hushed tone, chants, “Omegas say boom! Alphas say grrr! Betas say bliss! Be lucky if you don’t ascend and cheat his deadly kiss. Boom! Grr! Bliss! Boom! Boom! Bliss! Grr! Grr…” And soon the words are overlapping. I’m off of my stool, my hands up like I’ve got claws as I prowl around and paw at my friends and my family. My brother and I clash and he pretends to chomp at me with his teeth. He lunges fast and I can’t help the giggle-scream that I release.

Soon, everyone is laughing, pounding on the floor with their feet, stumbling around. The sounds of our overlapping chants get louder and louder and louder until the tension threatens to devolve completely, and only when it almost does — when the giggles are too violent to contain — does Zelie release us.

She cups her hands around her mouth, her loose and fluffy twists flying around her face as she spins, and shouts, “Betas say what?”

“BLISS!” Everyone screams and, even though we’re twins — and grown-ass adults — I lunge to tickle my brother. I’m tall for a woman, but he’s taller and has always been muscular where my limbs are more willowy, so it’s no surprise when he easily takes me down. His fingers are wiggling under my armpits and I’m screaming with laughter, and grateful when Mama rushes up behind him and tickles him in the sides. He arches back on a howl and I roll to avoid getting trampled by Justine and Farro locked in a tickle frenzy, but accidentally get kicked by Owenna who’s not even participating in this.

Owenna rolls her eyes — looking so much like our father in that moment even though she has the same dark brown irises as our mama — reaches down and easily picks me up and sets me on my feet. “Your soup.” She points with the jar of vinegar in her hand and I squeal when I see my soup burping angrily at the edges, thick globs of the spicy tan-nam threatening to spill out and over.

I have to push my way through the crowded room, laughing as I do, in order to return to my spot at the stove. From there, I turn down the heat and stir. I’m still chuckling to myself as the room quiets back to its normal level of chaos.

“No matter how many times,” Zelie says, stepping up to my side, Audet moving into place beside her. She shakes her head.

I nod, knowing exactly what she means. “She’s always going to give us that look — you know how much she hates it here in the kitchens… Can you hand me that bottle of red wine?”

“What’s to like?” Audet hisses, staring at her fingernails instead of handing Zelie the bottle in question.

“Are you going to chop that onion?” Zelie says as she reaches for the red wine.

“I did.” Audet waves her hand at the massive chunks. I snort, but Zelie says, “Try again.”

In retribution, Audet pinches Zelie’s side and she slips, letting go of the bottle. I try to catch it, but my sisters move at the same time I do and all three of us end up knocking our heads together. The bottle crashes to the ground, glass pieces spraying across the black tiled floor — and I fall right after it.

I scream as I go down, prepared for the painful sting, but a hand catches the back of my dress — a wrap dress, which means she nearly pulls it off of me — and I squeal as I’m quickly yanked upright. Owenna’s glaring at me now. “You three, get it together and clean up this mess before somebody gets hurt.” Her skirt swishes as she collects another few items in the woven basket hanging off of her arm and follows Mama out the back door into the garden.

Through the flashes of open door I see in between so many jostling bodies, I spy pink and purple light streaking across the sky. It’s a magnificent sunset. Thoughts of it plague me for the next half an hour as I mindlessly stir until my soup simmers a perfect, rich brown and tastes absolutely divine. A slight variation on kandia soup, with some added spices that come all the way from the northernmost cities on the North Island, I set this perfect pot off to the side for our Lord and then move on to make the second. The second one doesn’t have to be so perfect since it’s just for us staff, so I take Audet’s chunks of unevenly chopped onion and okra and toss them in.

Yaron’s pot needs to be just right.

I fantasize about what it might be like to one day deliver the meal. It’s not my duty, but Audet’s, though I don’t know how she drew that lucky straw. She says it’s because she’s prettiest and puts on the best face for our Lord, but I don’t see what her being the prettiest has to do with food. One day, I’ll protest and take her place. One day, when I muster the courage.

I bite my lip and chuckle a little to myself. I don’t know when I’ll ever have courage enough for that. The ancestors only know how much I’d like to see him up close in person, to feed him, to unfasten his cloak, to command him to his knees…

I jerk upright, feeling overly warm all of a sudden, and tell Zelie to keep stirring. Outside, the chaos of the kitchens…continues. I grin at the wild, wide world around me. The castle lies south of here and I can just see the keep’s crest over the sprawling village. Short houses made of wood and stone line wide, winding streets, drawn in no particular order I can make sense of. If you walk far enough east, you’ll get to Undoline, the next closest village to Orias and where lots of our extended family live. To the north, you’ll get to the ports and the Sea of Zaoul — but only after crossing the clashing forests of Paradise Hole and the Heart Forest, first. And, if you’ve survived the crossing, then and only then will you finally arrive at the southern border of the North Island.

You’d arrive in Mirage City, first.

You’d come to Mirage City, first, and I frown. I’ve heard the rumors. Rumors of dead Alphas waking and walking, of the powerful Omegas known as the Fates and whispers of an impending war between them and the Berserkers of the existing cities — but then I snort. Omegas? Against Lord Yaron? Preposterous.

Yet…

The rumors suggest that the Fated Omegas and their dead army are strong enough to kill not just Berserkers, but everyone. The only ones strong enough to fight them are the Fallen Omegas, their counterparts, and so far, only one has been discovered. The Fallen Earth Omega who has extraordinary powers over plants and dirt, over water, too if the rumors are to be believed. It is said that her magic is helping restore the diseased and rotting woods of Paradise Hole where only death lives and where nothing new grows. The Fallen Earth Omega called Echo lives in Dark City. I can’t imagine I’ll ever get a chance to meet her, or even see her in person, but I’d like to. Maybe, if the attacks on the outer villagers — Alpha farmers and other rural-residing Alpha residents of the Shadowlands — continue, she’ll have to come help us.

I shudder. It’s an alarming thought, but I suppose not one that concerns me much. I’m a Beta, too old to ascend as anything else — not that I’d want to — poor as the dirt the Fallen Earth Omega has so much dominion over and, as Audet likes to remind me as often as she can, not pretty enough to tempt any Alpha. I smile, not bothered by that in the least. I love my family. I love my friends. I love my station and I love the kitchens. I love my life.

Things are pretty good.

“Kiandah? Kiandah! Kiand — oh, there you are!” Having wandered into the gardens now, I turn to the open back door to see Justine’s frazzled expression. Her freckled white skin is drawn in a grimace, lines pronounced around her eyes. “I can’t find anybody. Your mama and papa and Owenna and Zelie are all missing and we’re ready to take dinner up to the keep. Audet says if no one shows up in the next two minutes, she’s going to do it herself.”

“Do not let that woman leave alone with Lord Yaron’s meal! She will get us all fired if she tries to seduce him!” I’m already running around to the side of the low building as I shout over my shoulder. “Let me check the basement!”

“Hurry!”

I skid to a stop in front of the open cellar door. Sounds echo from below, Mama’s voice and Papa’s, too. I take the stairs down. They’re damp under my heels and I nearly slip as I get to the bottom and come face-to-face with a female I’m sure I’ve never seen before and who I know for a fact does not belong in this building.

“Who-who are you? You’re not from here.”

She snorts gruffly and one side of her mouth lifts. She’s a white woman with a mop of blonde hair shooting up in all directions. Her cheeks are so wind-chapped they look like they hurt. Instinct has me reaching for aloe to give to her, but the aloe plant is upstairs in the kitchens and none of that matters anyways because slung across the strips of her black patchwork clothing, she carries the biggest — the only — gun I’ve ever seen in my life.

The length of my whole arm, maybe longer, it’s all shiny and chrome. She drums her fingers across it and lifts an eyebrow condescendingly, her smile looking more threatening than it did a moment ago. I reach for the railing to the stairs, but I’m nowhere near it and fall into a stack of pots. They clang, the stack teeters, then it topples. I mentally curse and reach for the pots, but Mama’s voice fills my ears.

“Kiandah! What are you doing down here?” My mama’s dark brown eyes are filled with panic. She dusts off her apron and comes towards me and I get the sense that she’s trying to block the sight of the room behind her.

I gasp, “What…”

“No questions now, little Kandia,” she says, using my family’s pet name for me. It’s the word for okra in the language of our ancestors. Her voice is gentle, but her hand is harsh around my upper arm as she drags me away from the pots and away from the blonde woman and back up the stairs.

When I reach the soft soil of the gardens, slipping once more for good measure as I ascend that last stair in my soft leather slippers, my mama calls out to our ancestors in a curse. She never curses. “Who left the cellar door open? It must have been your father…”

“Papa’s down there?” I hadn’t seen him. I hadn’t seen anything past…

…the bodies.

White people, a middle-aged man and a young woman, maybe others, because there had been another couple tables shielded by my mother’s body. They were still wearing clothes though their faces were sunken in, cheeks hollow, eyes black. The young woman’s eyes…they’d been open and grey, clouded and lifeless. I’d stared into them, and lifelessly, they’d stared right back.

“Kandia, you’ll forget everything you saw down there, okay? That stuff’s just for us grownups, me and your father, Owenna and Zelie.”

I frown. “I’m thirty-four years old,” I say dumbly. “I’m of age in every possible way. So is Cyprus. Even Audet is twenty-six.”

My mother stutters, her mouth opening and closing several times until she finally settles on, “Just…be off with you! We’ll be up in a moment.” She hesitates, then turns back to me and brushes her hand over the kerchief tying down her wild curls — curls that I share. My Afro is my best feature and I’m proud of it. I get compliments every day I wear it loose, though when I’m in the kitchens, I keep it braided or twisted, which means I keep it back most days. “I love you, Kia.”

I smile, but it feels shaky. I glance down at the open cellar door and I don’t like the way my mama flinches towards it. “Love you, too, Mama. Whatever you’re doing down there…um…be careful.”

“Don’t you worry about that.”

But I do worry. I don’t move.

She doesn’t either. Her strong brown hands fist her apron. Covered in scars and scrapes from a lifetime of working hard for every penny. I have always admired her hands. Like my father’s, they aren’t the hands of someone who was given anything for free. As a result, my hands aren’t quite so scarred.

“I trust you, Mama,” I tell her, looking meaningfully into her eyes.

She lowers her gaze in a way I don’t like. I frown. “I…I want more for you than this humble life,” she says, and I don’t fully understand.

“I like our humble life.”

She shakes her head ever so slightly, then offers me a smile I’ve never seen her wear before. It’s a smile that speaks of uncertainty, which is bizarre coming from a strong Orias woman whose belief in the ancestors having her back means she’s only ever been sure. “I know you do, Kandia. Now go on, and tell no one of this.”

I do as I’m told, moving back to the kitchens as if caught in a dream. I don’t notice that I’ve passed the threshold until Justine’s voice snaps me back to the present. “So? Where are they?”

I blink and see Justine standing directly in front of me, the kitchens a strange chaos they normally aren’t because only those of us who cook are left while everyone responsible for deliveries is downstairs tending to dead bodies. Farro and Audet flank her, looking stressed.

I glance around and quickly make decisions because I’m the only one left who can. “Audet, you and Cyprus will make the delivery.”

“We can’t do it alone,” Audet squeals, her loose curls springing around her cheeks. She’s the pretty sister — whether it’s a title she’s earned or given herself, I’ve never been sure and never cared, really. Twelve years younger than I am, she’s always been the baby, doted upon and spoiled as rotten as a poor family of mostly girls can spoil one of its own. She believes one day on one of these deliveries Lord Yaron will see her and be so moved, he’ll take her for a wife instantly, even though the Shadow Lords wed only their city. They don’t take mates, no matter how young or how pretty.

The thought of her hassling Lord Yaron and embarrassing my entire family is the main reason I say what I do next because only my ancestors will truly know how little desire I have to be up close and personal with our Lord. I mean…I do…but I don’t…because I don’t want him to look at me like I know he will.

Like he doesn’t see me at all. A poor, not particularly attractive female Beta cook — how could he do anything but dismiss me? But for my family, I’ll have to put my pride aside.

I swallow hard, sweat already beading between my breasts, thoughts of dead bodies in basements already long forgotten. “I’ll…I’ll make the delivery with you and talk to Radmilla.” Hopefully Lord Yaron won’t even be present for any part of this exchange. “We’ll need Cyprus’s help unloading the wagon, though. Where is he? Because if Cyprus is busy, then Farro and Justine, you’ll have to come, too.”

“Farro is already loading the cart with Tor. But, umm…” Justine nods and looks down at her clothes. We’re all covered in dirty smocks and filthy aprons, except for Audet who’s wearing a dress without a smudge on it. “Okay?”

I pretend I’m not having the same internal panic at the thought of crossing Lord Yaron and say, “It’s fine. We won’t see any of the Crimson Riders or Lord Yaron himself. We’re just taking trays to Radmilla.”

“Out front!” Farro says, appearing around the side of the house. “Come on. The food is loaded! Cyprus is here!”

We follow him around the kitchens en masse to find Cyprus sitting on top of a horse cart laden with way too many things. Our fat horses are going to struggle under this weight. I’ll make sure to give them extra carrots and sugar cubes tonight, I think as I scramble up into the back of the wagon, leaving the place next to Cyprus for Audet. Then again, maybe too many sugar cubes is the problem.

The cart starts a slow, staggering climb away from the kitchens out to the road. Justine and Farro wave us off with stressed faces, like we’re green soldiers headed off to our first battle. Halfway up the hill, Cyprus says, “What’s going on?”

I’m so deep into my own thoughts and fears that I answer absently, “Ask Mama.”

“What? What would she know of this?”

“What?”

“Kia, are you even paying attention to me? I’m talking about the village. Orias is dead.”

The word makes me shiver as it tumbles from his lips, landing with a splat on the ground before the cart rolls over it. I glance up and down the Orias highway line and see that he’s right. People who were milling about only minutes ago are suddenly gone. The doors and windows of all the residences and shops are shut and shuttered. The lights inside are on, but the kerosine lanterns that run up and down the street hang unlit, even though the darkness is encroaching and nearly upon us now.

“We’re late,” I say.

Cyprus guffaws. “Late? How can you worry about being late at a time like this? Everyone is home, but they’re boarded up, like they’re expecting an attack.” He sits up straight and stares over his shoulder at me, his hazel eyes lancing into mine. I know what he’s saying without him having to speak. The undead. “Maybe we should return.”

“You think the undead would attack here?” I hiss.

“The undead? Don’t be daft. We probably just missed a notice. A red moon festival, maybe.” Audet makes a gruff, frustrated sound. “Mama and Papa never are in the know. We miss all the fun parties.”

“It’s not a party, Audie,” Cyprus says, sounding annoyed himself. My twin brother is never annoyed.

I point up at the thick clouds veiling the sky and say, “There is no red moon tonight, Audie.”

“You two are just trying to scare me…”

“We’re not…”

“Stop, both of you,” I say loudly. They hush instantly. I never raise my voice, but right now, over the sound of our fat horses breathing, I can just make out a distant rumble. “Do you hear that?”

I look up at Cyprus to see his head cocked at a funny angle. Then all at once, he gasps, “Run… Run!”

He launches himself off of the edge of the cart and Audet is slow to follow. I start, jerk, jump off the end of the wagon…only for my slipper to get tangled in a jagged piece of worn wood. I windmill my arms and flail wildly, but neither action saves me from hitting the packed dirt and cobblestone road. I groan, my chest blazes, I’m out of breath. But I don’t have time to categorize my injuries. Cyprus’s hand is on my upper arm and he’s yanking me onto my feet, and together we run back towards the kitchens.

“Cyprus, what the fuck are you on about?” Audet shouts, panting as she appears at his side. I didn’t realize until now that I’m being carried. My own legs are jelly, hardly helping Cyprus at all. “We’re going to be late with dinner and now poor Kandia is going to need to go to the doctor!” See? She does love me. I smile. She’s rare to show it. “You know she’s not a runner and about as elegant as a horse in high heels.” Whatever. It’s still love. I’m taking it.

“There are horses coming!” Cyprus shouts, sounding out of breath himself and he’s always been fit. We reach the kitchens in record time and Cyprus tosses me in the garden bed amid a pile of carrot tops so that he can alert everyone inside the main kitchens. I scrabble up to my feet and run around to the back of the kitchens, our home. I bang on the rough, wooden exteriors of the now locked cellar doors. “Mama! Papa! We’ve got trouble!”

The doors explode open and I canter back, losing my footing and falling ass first into the squash patch. The blonde woman and a whole host of Betas I don’t recognize emerge, all of them wearing the same dreary rags she is. All of them wearing guns. The blonde one who appears to be their leader swivels her weapon around then, and seeing me, drops her goggles from her forehead to cover her eyes.

“Lou,” she barks, then quickly rattles off a couple other names. Her eyes settle on mine. “What the fuck did you do?” She turns her gun on me and I raise my hands, voice caught in my throat as I prepare a weak defense. Because I don’t know what I did. I don’t have a fucking clue what’s happening.

My parents emerge from the cellar and my dad, seeing the female with her hand on the trigger, hisses, “Merlin, lower your weapon. She’s done nothing. She knows nothing.”

“Then why the fuck do I hear horses on the wind?” They’re louder now. I can hear them too, the clop of many hooves sounding like thunder on the breeze. Against the silence of the village, that sound is deafening.

Threatening.

A beat passes. I can see the female called Merlin debate whether or not to kill me. Several other Betas emerge around her and one of them says something in her ear in tones too low for me to catch. Finally, at his words, she calls out, “Juliette, Oscar, Angel — with me and Lou. Rendezvous point L. The rest of you head to Q with the cargo.”

Betas emerge from the cellar carrying dead bodies between them. The older male I saw before, the younger female, another female, two more males. One of the dead is a brown-skinned man that I do recognize from the Undoline markets. He was an Alpha who used to sell precious metals for jewelry smelting. What is he doing here? How did he die? I can’t see any indications of what would have killed him. There are bruises around his neck and violent autopsy stitching across his abdomen and chest, which appears in grim clarity every time the rough woven cloth wrapped around him flaps up. He’s not well wrapped. Not at all. Nothing about the wound or the bruises or the stitching or the way he’s wrapped suggest he’s been handled at all with care.

My lower lip trembles. I feel heat prick the backs of my eyes. Who did this to him? Why? And where are they taking him now? The Betas have turned towards the woods and are moving at speed, hauling the bodies between them. My father stands at Merlin’s arm. He doesn’t touch her, but he stands close. He speaks quietly, words directed to me though he never takes his eyes off of her.

“Come on now, Kandia. Let’s get to the church,” my father holds out his hand. I slowly, carefully reach for it.

“Merlin!” A voice shouts from the hill. They’re headed north, yes, but not towards the highway line. No, these Betas look like they want to reach Paradise Hole’s creepy, encroaching woods.

The woman in front of me rips her gun up away from me and I feel like a foot’s just been lifted from my chest. I gasp in a breath. She winks down at me. “You look familiar,” she says. “And I have a feeling we might be seeing each other again.” She turns and flees.

My father grabs me by the shoulder of my dress. “Come quickly now, Kia!” He wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, smearing blood there too, and glances around. “Where’s Audet?”

I just shake my head.

“Fuck.” He curses. I’ve never heard him curse. And suddenly he’s grabbing my arms, hauling me forward and we’re hurrying around the kitchens to the road out front.

There are suddenly so many of us running together, at least forty of us, everyone from the kitchens and many who don’t work in the kitchens full time or ever. Some are people I saw with my parents in that basement, their clothes dotted in blood and what looks like black ink, all of them Betas. Half of the sprinters are screaming and panicking, the other half of us don’t have any idea what’s going on. All I know is that if my father’s hand hadn’t been on my arm, I’d have been trampled. Not just by my own family, either, but by the horses whose hooves are eating up the ground between us. They’re gaining on us.

“Everyone, seek sanctuary in the church!” It’s my auntie Mae who shouts that. She’s up ahead with my mama, who’s somehow leading the pack, running despite her heft. She has a thick build that’s prized in the Shadowlands, sure, but especially in our village. It’s a build I don’t share, not that that helps me run any better.

I go flying as soon as we hit the church’s short steps, my feet snagging on themselves, maybe on the worn, wooden floorboards. I’m missing a slipper, I realize with dismay and distress. I have the urge to go back for it, but I can’t because I’m falling. The force of the fall propels me out of my papa’s grip. The legs of a dozen people crowd my vision as they veer around me. Owenna’s among the last to make it into the church at my back. She’s shouting my name, shouting at me to move, but I can’t even begin to obey her. Not when the entirety of my concentration has been subsumed by the vision that exists past her, on the highway line. At that vision, all other sounds become muted, distant thumps like the screams of a prisoner trapped behind thick glass, their fists banging for release.

He’s here…

Orias Village sits in the valley of a hill. The kitchens sit at its farthest edge, closest to the crossing of the highway lines and closest to Paradise Hole. But south, on the other side of the hill’s next crest is Shadow Keep. That is where Lord Yaron lives and administers justice. That is where he trains his Crimson Riders, the death dealers of the Shadowlands, the feared and the revered. I’ve seen them in passing many times, their dark, deep crimson cloaks flapping in the wind, and as a child I always held them in awe. But I’ve never seen them gathered en masse, out for blood and war.

And right now, they’re headed straight for us like an arrowhead, and at its tip, Lord Yaron. The Lord Yaron. His black cloak sails out from his back, the blade and handle of his axe visible because he grips it, pointing it at us with violence. I’ve never seen him battle ready before. I’d love to draw it. I will later. Because right now, he’s out for blood. Ours.

“He’s here,” I whisper.

“Kia, get up!” Hands are on me, no longer my father’s but my brother’s again. He drags me deeper into the church and the scent of rich cherrywood overwhelms me. I’ve smelled this church a few times before — in my childhood the scent’s familiarity always brought comfort but over the years, I started coming to church less and less. I didn’t expect my first visit in years to be under these circumstances.

Back at the door, my father and Tor lift the Shadowlands sigil from its flag post near the pulpit and slide it between the door handles. Standing on a raised pulpit in the apse, Owenna shouts orders to secure the windows. I don’t move, though. I can’t. I’m stuck in between two pews, looking up towards the rafters at the painted faces of the many Orias ancestors that we worship.

And then Justine screams and Farro shouts across the chaos, “They have oil! I can smell it!”

“They mean to burn us inside!” my mama screams. “Everybody out!”

Screams rise up and I look around at all these people, my boisterous and wonderful family, in a daze. Tor and my brother are trying to remove the barricade they just erected and throw the front doors open. An arrow, as thick as I’ve ever seen, greets them and I blink and have the most horrible thought that’s ever come to me. I pray that it hits Tor and not Cyprus. Anybody but my twin.

The arrow, as thick as a thumb, pierces Tor’s chest, right in the center. It drives deep, hitting him with force enough to throw him off of his feet. He canters back, the people between us unable to catch him. He stumbles directly into me. I open my arms, but I’m too weak to do anything but collapse uselessly underneath his weight.

Hands drag me out from underneath him. People are racing around, trying the other windows and exits, but for every door opened, another arrow greets the one to make the attempt. I can hear their screams. “Farro!” The shriek wrenches out of Justine. Only a few feet away from me, Zelie is trying to staunch the wound in the center of Tor’s chest, but I know already that Tor’s not going to make it.

“Kia, help me!” she shouts. Automatically, I roll onto my knees, crawling until I reach his body. I press my palms over Zelie’s to increase the pressure around the arrow’s thick shaft. We try to hold back the bleeding while Tor sputters up mouthfuls of blood. It slashes across his pale skin and his eyes roll back.

“Should we try to remove it?” someone says.

I shake my head, but it’s Zelie who vocalizes it. “No!” she shouts. I’m still shaking my head and staring into Tor’s lifeless blue eyes as huge gales of thick grey smoke bleed around the edges of the front door.

Everyone is crying. My heart is a battle axe in my chest, just like the one that he bore, cleaving away everything that matters. Everything that counts.

I picture his face, the little I saw of it, as he came up the road. Wreathed in darkness, just as his skin had been cloaked by it. I’d sensed more than seen his justice, his firm hand, his desire for retribution. I know it has something to do with my parents and my sisters and the Betas and the dead bodies in the cellar. I know it does.

I love my family more than life itself, but right now I can’t help but wonder why they did what they did? Why did they feel they had to? My mama said she wanted more for us. More. More more more. More will be what kills us. And I find a sentient rage simmering in my chest along with that all too potent grief, too. I was fine with less.

A window shatters and I look up in time to see the flash of glass sailing through the air, something alight sticking out of it. “Someone catch it!” a voice says. But no one catches it. It shatters against a row of empty pews near the altar and they blaze instantly.

The church was built to burn, its body nothing but a crucible. My body was built to burn. I am nothing but a crucible.

The heat is immediately sweltering. My eyes start to water. Several more of my people try for the broken windows and I see in cold clarity as Justine takes an arrow to the stomach. Justine. She’d been my friend for as long as I can remember. I went to all of her birthday parties. We snuck out once together and took our punishments together, too.

She went with me to the Heart Forest once — that was back before Paradise Hole had grown over that section of it. Just on the southernmost edge healing berries used to grow. We even managed to sell some of them in our village market before Owenna and Justine’s older brother, Victor, caught us. They sentenced us to take over the latrine duty in the castle. We’d had to do it for a week and, though they thought it was punishment, it had been one of the most memorable weeks of my life. It’d been my first time inside of the castle and I’d been cleaning a latrine on the first floor when I saw him for the very first time up close.

He’d been talking to one of his Crimson Riders in the long, breezy corridor. He hadn’t seen me, of that I’m sure. I’d been twelve. He’d been twenty. The energy cascading up and down the entire hall had shifted with his presence — it was what drew me out there in the first place. It’s the same energy I feel in the air now. Subtle vibrations. They’re terrifying, unwelcome. Unwelcome, but still magical.

Fire licks up the walls. Bodies fall over one another in desperation. Someone is screaming my sister’s name and I see that Owenna has thrown herself over my father, who is…he has an arrow sticking out of his back. What… How…

“Cyprus!” Zelie screams. The room fills with smoke. I can’t see. Everything stings — my eyelids, my nostrils, my lungs, with every inhale. I glance to my right to see Sandra and Nikolai shrieking as they hide beneath the pews. Engaged, their wedding is set for next month. They asked me to bake the cake. It’s not the first time I’ve baked a wedding cake, but I was honored.

A burning fills my chest. I release Tor and clutch at my apron with bloody hands. Bloody, like my father and mother’s aprons had been in the cellar. Zelie screams my name next. I try to look up and find her, but I can’t see… And then Cyprus’s voice chimes, “Move, Kia, move!”

But he’s too late. A huge weight slams into my back.

The fire. Something’s on fire. It’s on fire on top of me, pinning me to the ground and I can’t move. I open my eyes and see Cyprus crawling towards me on his belly, but I want to tell him to stop, it’s no use. I’m dying.

“Kiandah, no!” Cyprus roars and he’s suddenly up on his knees, touching at whatever’s got me pinned, moving it off of me. Lifting it like it weighs nothing.

“Cyprus,” I whisper, amazed. He’s almost got the beam completely off of me now, but before he can fully dislodge it, a massive, splintering sound shakes the foundation of the church. Cyprus says my name again and I look up at him over my shoulder as he burns both of his hands, just to help me. Save me. But I notice that his hands aren’t the same hands they’ve always been. They’re bigger. His chest swells. His eyes flare as they connect with mine. All at once, he emits a powerful scent marker, like he’s wearing cologne, and while it doesn’t appeal to me — he’s my brother — I still gasp as I watch him ascend.

“Cyprus,” I say again, shocked. It’s…not possible. No one ascends this old. No one in the Shadowlands has ever ascended over the age of twenty. Most ascend by the time they’re thirteen, if not younger. He shouldn’t be ascending. It’s a miracle from the ancestors. I want to laugh, because it’s terrible that he may be Gatamora’s greatest miracle and that he won’t survive to prove it, and I won’t survive to tell the tale. No one will.

“Cyprus…” I inhale and his eyes widen to orbs.

“Kia…” he starts to say, but his voice is taken over by a massive cracking sound. In the next moment, Cyprus is gone, his lower half fallen beneath flaming floorboards while his torso tries to crawl back over the floorboards that remain to get to me. But the fire is too hot, the flames too high. They burn right against the skin of my arm. They dance over my dress, eat at my hair, my eyelashes…but who gives a shit about any of that because Cyprus… I can feel in my bones that I’m losing him and I have to do something.

I open my mouth. Pain hits me again as the fire climbs inside of my mouth, but as I swallow it whole, it moves through me, changing…transforming…becoming something beautiful. My eyes roll back as a horrible, wonderful bliss chars my entire body.

Cyprus is moaning, still alive, but not for long. I exhale and inhale that desire to save, that belief that I can, and then…I feel warm. Fire comes to me, like a distant friend, like a lost lover, like the warm embrace of every charred and fallen ancestor.

Cyprus is pinned underneath a fallen rafter, just like I am, but he’s not on fire anymore. The fire seems to have dispersed to smoke around him and he coughs these terrible, hacking coughs as he breathes it in.

Cyprus, you ascended, you can’t die now, I would’ve shouted at him, had I the voice. My left cheek is pressed to the floor. I manage to move my arms, get my palms beneath me. I push, knowing that the beam that has me pinned is too heavy to move, but that’s okay, because I’m not trying to move it.

Fire flicks at my vision, brilliant and blue. I look past it, wondering how it’s possible that I can see through it. Maybe I’m already dead. But I can’t believe it. I don’t think death would hurt like this. Pain rattles all over me in too many places to process at once. Sweat slicks my skin and I close my eyes longer than the standard blink, and when I open them, I see everything through a filter of blue and what I see astonishes me.

The bright orange fire? The red flames licking at the walls? They’re creeping towards me. The fire is crawling, shimmying, dancing gleefully over the rafters and the thatch roof above it — what’s left of it — down the walls, over the pews towards me. The fire leaves black scorch marks everywhere it touches, but it avoids the people. It bypasses them, disappearing when their bodies lie across the journey it wishes to take and resuming right after or simply carving broad paths around their outlines.

It doesn’t even touch Tor even though he’s right in front of me. It doesn’t touch Cyprus even though he’s right beside me, but skips across the beam pinning him in the floor. The flames converge against me, becoming me, joining with the blue fire that coats my body like oil until the pews become blackened ash. The windows and walls are pocked with holes that look like mouths with shards of glass for teeth, but they are no longer burning. Now, the only thing burning is me.

I hear people coughing. I hear shrill shrieks. They may be in pain but they’re alive. Thank the ancestors. Thank me. Tears prick my eyes. I did it. I don’t…I don’t understand…

“Kiandah,” my brother whispers. I jerk and the blue fire recedes from my vision. It sits in my core, in my stomach, which is still pressed to the hard floor beneath me — a floor that didn’t disintegrate despite my entire body being engulfed in flame. I don’t unders… “You did it,” Cyprus says, his torso collapsed on the remaining floor. He meets my gaze with a smile that’s entirely inappropriate for the situation we’re in. “You ascended, Kia…you’re an Omega…”

I open my mouth to reply, but his smile falls abruptly. “Kia!” he roars, fingers scrabbling over floorboards to try to pull himself up and out and to me. He can’t. He’s pinned. I am, too. “Get away from my sister!” he shouts at something past me — someone past me.

The sound of wood planks snapping grips my vision as a sudden wonderful relief grips my chest. The beam at my back releases and I can suddenly take in full breaths. I gulp in air deeply, but most of what I get is smoke. It carries pain, but I’m not scared of pain. No, I’m scared of the fingers on my arm turning me over. They’re heavy and thick, even meatier than my newly ascended brother’s are. They’re also tipped in jagged shards, like claws. Because they are claws.

They roll me onto my back where I land heavily. I feel a cough rise up in my lungs that I suppress. It would be rude, after all, to cough in the face of the Shadow Lord, wouldn’t it?

“Omega,” he sneers and despite his disdain at the sight of me, I don’t feel an ounce of equal disdain to see him. Oh no. What I feel instead is far, far worse and hits me in the gut like a fist — lust.

“Yaron,” I say and abruptly stop. What have I done? Speaking to our Lord in such a way? With such familiarity?

His obvious displeasure has no effect on me. My lust only swells like a wave at the sight of his broad shoulders, body heavy with muscle that I should find threatening. His thick, black eyebrows draw down over his sharp nose as he watches my gaze peruse him, like I’m eyeing various spices at the Orias town market — spices imported from far away, that I know I could never afford.

His full, red lips twist bitterly at the corners. His white cheeks, dusted with a faint tan and stubble, hold color. Not like he’s embarrassed — though I’d pay good money to see him shy or embarrassed or coy, just once — but like I’ve done something to royally piss him off. His black hair hangs down towards me, streaked with grey at the temples.

“That is my Lord to you, murderer.” And then he crouches down on his haunches at my side and leans in very close, so close I can smell his haunting pheromones, so much sharper than that of an Alpha’s, than my brother’s new scent. It slaps me like I would slap him, if he’d let me. If we were lovers. But that’s a thought for the afterlife. He may be older than me by nearly a decade, but if I am a good girl in this lifetime, then when I join my ancestors on the Shallow Plains, I’ll spend the rest of eternity holding his chain in between my fingertips and training him to be my very good boy. The very best boy.

He wraps a massive, furry and clawed hand around my neck. “I should leave you here, Omega,” he sneers.

I nod. “Cyprus,” I mouth, more than speak. There’s something in my mouth that makes talking an impossible feat, but I still try. “Save him… Innocent…” My eyes flick to where he lies pinned but I don’t know if Lord Yaron sees it.

His meaty, furry fingers squeeze, crushing my windpipe. I lose the ability to breathe. “You may be an Omega, but that will not spare you or your family’s punishment. For your crimes, you are sentenced to life imprisonment and I will take great pleasure in inflicting every torture onto you and your kin that you inflicted onto those Alpha families.” His fingers hold me tighter. “You will suffer.” My core contracts. My lower lips feel swollen and pulse with maddening pressure like he’s spouting beautiful soliloquies, not threats of death. “You will rot.”

Pleasure slices through me like itty bitty shards of glass, but when he slides his hand from the front of my neck to my nape and lifts me off of the ground, pain finally manages to club its way through. A terrible pressure claws across my spine, likely from where the beam collapsed on me, but I don’t cry out.

Lord Yaron’s just confessed his plans to torture me, so I dont suppose my screams will sway him now, and if he gets off on them, I don’t want to give him that satisfaction. I stiffen my legs as I try to make sense of the upending and unending sensations of pleasure clashing with the cutting pain in my back, in my arms, in the back of my head, in my left ankle and in my lungs, which still feel charred, like there’s a heavy weight sitting on them. I focus on the brutal way his dark grey eyes slice into mine and his expression narrows, becoming increasingly severe.

He hates me. I just met Lord Yaron for the first time, and this is the impression I’ve given him. Hatred. Disgust. I cough blood all over his chest and clothing as he carries me out of the church and tosses me into a wagon where, despite his words, a Beta male with skin the same dark brown color as mine starts to administer to me with a care that borders on tenderness.

I don’t manage to pass out until the concerned doctor shows me a needle and inserts it into my throat. And I know that after the horrors and humiliation of today, the bliss of unconsciousness is likely the last mercy I’ll ever receive from the Shadow Lord.