***Cadiz***
The days after that night all felt the same. Raizel acted like nothing happened, short words, same stiff posture, eyes that never looked at me. The fortress kept going like always. Soldiers training, servants carrying stuff, stewards counting things. But everything sounded empty to me, like there was this huge gap between us that made all the noise echo weird.
I kept telling myself to forget it. That night was just rut stuff, biology, nothing more. Just like he said. But I couldn't stop remembering. Every time my body hurt, every time I smelled pine and steel, it all came back.
The truth was simple - I didn't belong here. Not with him, not in his bed, not even sitting at his table.
That's why one morning I walked to the working parts of the keep. The places where people actually did stuff, where life was about ledgers and keys, not fighting.
The kitchens were huge and warm, full of chopping and stirring and bread baking. Servants moved fast, talking quietly. When they saw me, they stopped. Bowed, mumbled hello, looked away quickly. Same as always.
"I thought maybe I could help," I said. The words sounded stupid.
The head steward was a thin guy with a sour face. He went stiff. "Help, my lord?"
I tried to smile. "Not with cooking. The ledgers maybe. Inventories. My family ran estates. I want to be useful."
It sounded hollow even to me. The steward looked torn between saying no and being rude. Finally he nodded and gave me a stack of papers, bowing like he was cutting something.
That's how it started, me trying to find something to do.
The first few days sucked. The accounts were boring, just rows of numbers tracking grain, wool, medicine, firewood. I spent hours bent over books, checking numbers, noting differences.
Nobody talked to me at first. Servants walked by with their heads down, like I was a weird furniture that had wandered in. But slowly I started seeing how everything connected. How not having enough salt made it hard to preserve meat. How losing one supplier messed up the whole keep.
I thought about Cassius then. My brother was always good at this stuff, the real heir who could turn numbers into orders. I remembered watching him in Father's study, how he'd lean over maps and point out supply lines, which villages owed grain, which merchants to keep and which to dump.
He was made for it.
I was just in the background, always listening, never talking. Father never asked what I thought. Why would he? Cassius talked with authority. When I tried to say something, the words got tangled and died in my mouth.
Here, with Ravenshollow's books in front of me, I thought maybe I could prove I wasn't totally useless.
I should have known better.
Three days in, I noticed something wrong with the firewood numbers. They didn't match what I'd seen in the yard that morning. With winter getting worse in the mountains, running out of wood could be bad.
When I brought it up at dinner, the silence afterward was brutal.
"The firewood count is off," I said carefully, trying to keep my voice steady even though my hands wanted to shake. "If nobody's checked the northern sheds, there might be some rotting in there. The beams looked weak. That might explain why we're missing wood."
The officers shifted in their seats, all looking at Raizel. He sat at the head table like a statue.
Finally, he put his cup down real slow. "The stewards handle that stuff." His voice cut across the room. "You don't need to worry about it."
I opened my mouth to argue, but the look in his pale eyes shut me up. The table went back to quiet talking, leaving me to swallow my embarrassment along with dinner.
After that, I didn't try talking at meals anymore. But I kept working on the books anyway. Going through records, tracking shortages, even suggesting fixes to the steward who sometimes used my ideas without admitting it.
It wasn't much, but it was something. A tiny bit of being useful.
Until everything changed.
I was in the western storerooms checking salt when I heard humming in the walls. At first I thought it was wind, but the deeper I went, the louder it got.
In the back corner was this device I'd never seen, brass and iron covered with blue glowing marks. It looked ancient, older than the keep, with gears that ground like they were tired.
And it was dying.
The humming stuttered, the blue light flickered. Then it coughed and almost went dark.
I froze. I didn't know anything about magic - omegas can't use magic anyway. But something in me tightened when I saw it failing. Without thinking, I stepped up and put my hand on the brass.
Heat pulsed under my palm, not burning but alive, beating like a heart that was off rhythm. I caught my breath.
"Easy," I whispered, feeling stupid, like I was talking to a scared dog. My fingers touched one of the flickering runes, and something inside me responded. Not thinking, just... pulling, nudging, the tiniest bit of will.
The rune flared bright.
The humming got steady.
One by one, all the lights got brighter until the whole thing glowed evenly again. The shaking smoothed out, strong and sure now.
I yanked my hand back, heart hammering.
Had I just...?
Footsteps behind me.
I spun around. Raizel stood in the doorway, those pale eyes locked on me. The blue light made his face look cold and sharp.
I expected him to be mad. To yell at me, ask what the hell I was doing.
Instead he just stood there, looking from me to the device. His jaw twitched once.
Then he turned and walked away without saying anything.
I stared after him, chest tight, questions clawing at my throat. What was that thing? How did I fix it? And why did he just leave without a word?
His silence hurt worse than yelling would have.
Because it meant he saw what happened.
And didn't care enough to even ask about it.
But this time felt different. Something had woken up inside me, something that felt like power. Whatever I did to that device, it listened to me. The magic bent when I touched it.
For the first time since getting to Ravenshollow, I'd done something that mattered. Not bookkeeping or counting stuff, but something real like a skill I didn't know I had.
I walked back through the halls thinking hard. Servants still bowed and looked away, but now I wondered what else they weren't telling me. What other magic things were hidden in this place? What other secrets were in these walls?
And if I could fix magic stuff just by touching it, what else could I do?
Back in my room, I sat by the fire staring at the flames. For twenty years, everyone told me I was broken, useless, a failed omega with no scent and no value. But maybe I was looking for the wrong things.
Maybe my power wasn't what anyone expected.