The scentless Omega

Chapter 3

Lyra’s Pov

The castle is far less welcoming than I hoped.

The moment I enter the servants' quarters, a woman shoves a cleaning basket into my arms and points down a long corridor. She's built like a closed door — broad shoulders, flat mouth, a stare that has clearly broken better people than me.

"You're new, aren't you?"

I nod.

"Then listen carefully." She ticks each point off on her fingers like she's done this a thousand times. "Nobody here has time to hold your hand. Finish your work, stay out of the nobles' way, and don't touch anything that doesn't belong to you."

Before I can ask a single question, she's already walking away, her footsteps sharp on the stone.

I stare down at the basket. Inside: a cloth, a bottle of cleaning solution, a small brush, and a pair of gloves that look like they've been worn by six people before me.

Wonderful. I've barely arrived and I'm already everyone's favourite person.

I adjust the basket against my hip and follow the directions she gave me. I take three wrong turns. I walk past the same statue twice. A maid looks at me as though I've tracked mud across the floor, even though my boots are clean, and I smile at her — the polite, empty smile I perfected years ago — and keep walking.

Eventually I find the staircase leading to the royal residence.

Then I read the slip of paper pinned to my assignment and my stomach drops.

The king's bedchambers.

The king's.

Of all the rooms in this enormous castle, I get sent to the one belonging to the man whose coronation ended with me waking up in a healing ward. The man the healer said might be my—

I shake my head hard enough to rattle the thought loose.

I'm not thinking about that. I have work to do, and the sooner I finish it, the sooner I earn my wages.

The royal corridor is quieter than the lower floors. Sunlight spills through tall windows and pools on the polished stone, and portraits of former rulers watch me from gilded frames — dark-eyed men and women who all seem to be judging my apron. I keep my eyes down and my steps measured. Invisible. Efficient. That's the plan.

I've just reached the bend in the corridor when voices drift out of an open doorway.

"Did you hear what happened during the coronation?" one maid asks.

"Everyone heard," another answers. "The king had to interrupt the ceremony."

"I heard he was taken ill."

The second maid scoffs. "That man doesn't look like the sort who gets ill."

"Well, whatever happened, it was strange."

A pause. The kind of pause that means something else is coming.

Then one of them lowers her voice. "Did you know he killed his own mother, too?"

I stop walking.

My basket handle digs into my hip and I don't even feel it. My whole body has gone still, the way a rabbit goes still when it hears a branch snap.

His own mother.

My hands tighten on the basket. My jaw sets. Something cold settles into my chest and stays there.

I was already afraid of this man. Now I have a reason.

"He did?" the other maid asks, and her voice has gone small.

"That's what people say." The first maid's tone turns knowing, almost pleased. "He watched his father do terrible things, and now he's just like him."

My fingers tighten around the basket handle until the wicker creaks.

He killed his own mother?

I remember him standing beneath the golden decorations, cold and unreadable, not blinking while the whole city cheered. I remember the warnings I heard on the road — the way people's voices dropped when they said Penumbra, the way mothers pulled their children closer. I dismissed half of it as exaggeration.

Perhaps I shouldn't have.

A cold thought slides in behind the others. If the king discovers I'm an Omega from Lynx, what will he do? I already lied about my rank to get this job. My suppressors are failing. The healer warned me not to take more.

I can't afford to lose this position. I can't afford to be sent away.

My mother needs me.

Don't panic. Clean the room, collect your wages, get out.

I force myself to move. One step. Then another.

A sudden pressure gathers behind my eyes.

I stop and press a hand against the wall.

Not again.

My head begins to ring — faint at first, like distant bells, then louder and louder until it drowns out the corridor, the maids, everything.

I squeeze my eyes shut. "Not now," I whisper. "Please. Not now."

My chest tightens like a fist closing around my ribs.

I dig into my pocket for the small bottle of suppressors. My fingers are trembling so badly I nearly drop it. The bottle is light. Too light. I hold it up to the light and my stomach drops.

It's nearly empty.

I stare at it, and the healer's voice comes back to me clear as if they're standing beside me. Your body may be rejecting them.

"No," I mutter, and my thumb is already working the stopper. "I need these. I need—"

The pressure behind my eyes surges.

A sharp warmth spreads beneath my nose.

I touch my upper lip. When I pull my fingers away, a thin streak of red marks them.

My heart lurches into my throat.

I wipe it fast — sleeve, palm, sleeve again — and glance down the corridor. Both ends. Twice.

No one saw.

Good. My breath comes out shaky. I straighten my apron with hands that won't stop shaking. Good. Keep it that way.

I press the bottle back into my pocket without taking one. I can't. Not if it makes this worse. The healer said not to.

But if I don't take them, my scent comes back. And if my scent comes back, everyone in this castle will know exactly what I am.

My hand hovers over the pocket. Then it drops to my side.

I pick up the basket and keep walking toward the king's bedchambers, one careful step at a time, with blood drying on my sleeve and a question I can't answer sitting in my chest.

The ringing intensifies.

My vision blurs at the edges, and the polished floor seems to shift beneath my feet like the deck of a ship. I grip the bottle so tightly my fingers ache. The glass bites into my palm.

Get somewhere private. Sit down. Make it stop.

Then I hear it.

A voice.

Not from the rooms around me. Not from the servants somewhere beyond the corridor. It comes from inside my head, clear as a bell rung right against my ear.

He is here.

I freeze. My whole body goes cold from the scalp down.

What?

The voice comes again. Slower this time. Patient, almost gentle.

He is here.

I press both hands against my ears, and the basket thuds against my hip. It makes no difference. The voice isn't coming through my ears — it's coming from somewhere deeper, somewhere that has been quiet my whole life and is suddenly awake.

"Stop," I whisper. "Stop, stop—"

He is here.

My breath catches. My chest hitches around it.

I don't know whose voice this is. I don't know why it keeps saying the same three words, or why hearing them makes something deep inside me stir — not fear, exactly. Something worse. Something like recognition.

I know you, that feeling says. I've been waiting.

I don't want to know what's been waiting.

The pain spikes. White light behind my eyes. I try to take a step forward, and my knee buckles like a hinge coming loose.

The basket slips from my hand. A bottle strikes the floor and bursts — the sharp smell of cleaning solution floods the corridor — followed by the clatter of brushes and cloth scattering across the stone.

I reach for the wall, but my fingers scrape without catching. My nails drag down the panel. My shoulder hits the wood.

Someone is coming from the far end of the corridor. A dark figure, walking fast, a shape I can't make out through the blur.

"Help…" The word barely makes it past my lips. "Please—"

The figure moves closer. Boots on stone. A shadow stretching across the floor toward my hands.

Then there's a voice — low, sharp, and closer than I expected.

"Don't move."

My legs give way completely.

As I fall, one thought cuts through the noise and the pain and the ringing, clean as a blade:

Please. Not here. Not in front of him.

Then the world goes black.