ELODIE’S POV
The Omega quarters were never quiet. There was always something to scrub, something to carry, something to prepare for someone else. The air smelled of soap, damp stone, and smoke drifting down from the kitchens. Voices overlapped constantly—orders, complaints, the scrape of buckets across the floor. I had only been there a few days, but it already felt like a lifetime.
My hands burned from the lye water as I wrung out a cloth and dropped it back into the bucket at my feet. The stone hallway stretched ahead of me, already drying in dull streaks where I had cleaned. I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t used to this. I wasn’t build for this. Every movement felt wrong, clumsy, unfamiliar. My back ached from bending, and my arms trembled from work I had never done before. Once, I had
