Chapter 2 – Billie
Two
BILLIE
The stone floor of my cell has become a map of my deteriorating sanity.
Five scratches for each day. Five groups of five. Twenty-five marks total. Or is it thirty? The perpetual darkness makes it impossible to tell when one day bleeds into the next.
My ceremonial gown, that midnight blue mockery of everything I thought I'd become, lies in tatters in the corner. I ripped it apart on day three. Or was it day four? The fabric made decent bandages for my knuckles after I spent hours pounding on the iron door.
The cell reeks of mold. They bring water twice a day and bread that tastes like it's made from sawdust. Just enough to keep me alive. Just enough to remind me I'm still breathing while they decide how to dispose of their inconvenient omega problem.
Footsteps echo in the corridor outside. My body tenses automatically, muscles coiling despite the weakness from minimal food. Someone's coming. The footsteps are measured and calm. Not the shuffling gait of the guard who brings my pitiful, moldy rations.
Hope flares in my chest before I can crush it.
Vera? Maybe she's finally come to—
The lock grinds open, and torchlight floods my cell. I squint against the sudden brightness, making out a familiar silhouette.
"Father?"
The word escapes before I can stop it, raw with a vulnerability I thought I'd buried years ago. Rowan Moreau steps into my cell, and for the first time in eight years, he looks directly at me.
"We don't have much time," he says urgently.
I push myself up from the floor, every joint protesting. "Are you here to kill me?"
An emotion flickers across his face, so out of place that it takes me a second to realize it might be sadness. It's gone in an instant. "The Shepherd has been persuaded that there's another use for you."
"What—"
"You must accept." His words come out in a rush, and I realize he's afraid. My father, who can tear supernatural beings apart with his bare hands, is afraid. "Whatever he proposes, you must—"
The door swings wider, and the Shepherd enters, his white robes pristine even in this putrid hellhole. My father steps back, deferring to the old man's authority like the good soldier he's always been.
"Wilhelmina." The Shepherd's voice fills the small space, that same commanding tone that forced my silence during the Unmasking. His resonance is supposedly proof the Saints meant him to lead us. Sometimes I wonder. "I trust your time here has given you opportunity for reflection."
Reflection. That's what he calls leaving me to rot in the dark while they figure out what to do with their defective weapon.
"I've come to a decision about your fate," he continues.
This is it. They're going to kill me. The thought should terrify me, but all I feel is rage. Not because I'm afraid to die. Death holds no terror for someone raised to deal it. I'm afraid because I'll never get my chance. Prince Corvinus will continue breathing while I rot in an unmarked grave.
"You're not going to be executed."
The words don't compute. I stare at him, waiting for the catch.
"In fact," he continues, a smile playing at his thin lips, "your resonance may prove to be the most useful we have seen yet."
Is he mocking me? The girl who was supposed to be their greatest hunter, reduced to... what? What possible use could an omega be to people who've spent centuries killing supernaturals?
"What are you going to do with me?"
His smile turns bitter, cruel. "What nature intended, my dear. I'm going to give you to the Fae."
The world tilts. My knees buckle, and I barely catch myself against the wall. No. No, that's the one fate worse than death. The one indignity I cannot—will not—endure. I would rather bite out my own tongue.
"Please." The word claws from my throat, raw and desperate. "Not that. Please, just kill me."
"Silence, child." My father's voice cracks like a whip. "Show some respect for the Shepherd."
But I catch the tremor in his words, see the way his hands clench at his sides. He's afraid for me. My father, who hasn't shown an ounce of emotion since my mother died, is actually afraid for what they're planning to do to me.
Surely he understands. He lost his wife to the Fae. He knows what those monsters are. What they're capable of. How can he stand there and agree to hand his own daughter over to them like a sacrificial lamb?
"Tell me, Wilhelmina," the Shepherd says, studying me with those sharp eyes, "do you know why omegas are so prized by the Fae?"
I force myself to answer, though every word tastes like poison. "They can bear children for the Fae. Most Fae women are infertile."
"That's part of it, yes. But not all." He steps closer, and I resist the urge to shrink back as he wraps a pale, leathery hand around one of the bars of my cell. "Omegas are the only creatures in existence with the power to bewitch the Fae as they bewitch all others."
I don't understand. The confusion must show on my face because he continues, patient as a teacher with a hopeless pupil.
"An omega could get past a Fae prince's guard. Perhaps," his eyes glitter with dark amusement, "right into his chambers."
The words churn my stomach. Bile rises, hot and bitter, up the back of my throat.
They want me to... Oh, fuck. They want me to whore myself out to Prince Corvinus. To use this cursed biology to get close enough to—
"You agreed to this?" I turn to my father, unable to keep the accusation from my voice. "Whoring out your own daughter to the Fae? To the very prince who killed your wife?"
His face contorts with something that might be grief. More likely, rage. "It's the only way for you to redeem yourself. To redeem our bloodline." He takes a shuddering breath. "Your mother always did what was required of her. If you truly want to honor her memory, you'll do the same."
The words are a knife between my ribs. Using my mother's memory to manipulate me into this nightmare. But underneath the rage, the coldness of resignation seeps in. They're serious. They're actually going to send me to him.
"How? I'm just one omega." The words stick in my throat, vile and bitter on my tongue. "Rare or not, surely the Prince of the Fae has access to all the omegas he could want."
The Shepherd's smile widens. "It would seem the fates have conspired to create quite a convenient confluence of events. Prince Corvinus has returned from the battlefield to continue his education, now that the war against the Unseelie Court is dying down. He'll be attending Valemyre University."
Valemyre?
The supernatural university where they train their elite and pamper their precious omegas like prized cattle?
Every human family that produces a girl must submit a sample of her blood at birth, to determine whether her blood bears the marker showing she's even capable of one day becoming an omega.
The candidates are stolen from their families at the age of fifteen and sequestered in special schools under the guise of protection until they come of age to be sent to Valemyre.
For the Fae, it's an education.
For the omegas, it's a canned hunt.
I'm told human families weep with joy at the realization that their daughters will live such pampered, "privileged" lives.
That's how deep the brainwashing goes. All they had to do was build walls and tell us they were gated communities for our protection.
To steal our children and convince us it was an honor.
"All we need to do is ensure you're discovered near the entrance to the city," the Shepherd continues.
"The rest is up to you. And perhaps the Saints, if this is indeed a matter of their intervention.
" He withdraws his hand and folds both of them together primly beneath the silk of his robes. "That remains to be seen."
I can read between the lines. Get close to the prince. Use whatever means necessary. Complete the mission my mother died attempting. The method might be different, the path more degrading than anything I could have imagined, but the end goal remains the same.
"What if they find out the truth? That I'm a hunter?"
"I'm counting on it." His smile turns predatory. "As far as the Fae know, you'll be a hunter who was cast out when her true nature was revealed. If I know the Fae, and if the rumors of the prince's particular appetites are true, he'll find the novelty irresistible."
I shudder, unable to suppress the physical reaction to what he's suggesting. The Shepherd turns to leave, his robes whispering against the filthy floor.
"Someone will be sent to prepare you," he says over his shoulder. "I suggest you use the time to make peace with your new role."
"Father—" I call out, desperate for... what? Comfort? Understanding? Some sign that the man who raised me gives a shit about what they're asking me to do?
He pauses at the door, looking back at me with eyes that hold eight years of unspoken grief. He shakes his head once, a minute gesture that says everything and nothing, and follows the Shepherd out.
The door slams shut, leaving me alone in the dark once more.
I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the cold stone, knees drawn to my chest. My mind races through everything that just happened, each word, each horrifying detail of their plan.
They're going to dress me up like a doll and throw me to the wolves. Literally. They're going to parade me in front of the creature who killed my mother and hope my cursed biology does what their weapons couldn't.
The irony isn't lost on me. I spent my whole life training to be a weapon, only to discover the deadliest thing about me is my fucking womb.
But as the initial shock fades, that coldness returns.
They're giving me exactly what I wanted. Access to Prince Corvinus. The method might make me want to claw my own skin off, but the opportunity is there.
I think of my mother, of her last mission, of how she must have felt walking into that palace knowing she might not walk out.
Did she hesitate? Did she consider turning back to steal another year or two with her husband and child?
Or did she boldly do what was required of her, as my father so eloquently put it?
The answer doesn't matter. What matters is that she failed, and now I have a chance to finish what she started.
I still have a prince to kill.