BLOOD OF THE FORGOTTEN

yra before t

ay to bare rock, and the wind finds every crack in the wall like it's looking for her on purpose. She

Keep is still asleep. Warriors in their warm

ow a person whole. Lyra used to imagine what that felt like, waking up warm

n lowest, really, because at least the other low ranks

and easy to forget, because the alternative is worse. Omegas who dra

lic, echoing down through the s

, hair yanked back into a knot at the base of her neck before it can fall into her face. She c

in from meals that come last and smallest. She doesn't linger on it. There's noth

ng and the air smells like burned porridge and wet stone. Cook ba

heavy last night. Eat quick, you're on

edge of the kitchen, the porridge thin and lukewarm, and she wa

h. A healer's apprentice hurries past with an armful of

much. She's had eighteen ye

her chest than usual, and she has to remind herself, again, that alone is safer than the alternative.

ne day there was a mother, and the next there wasn't, and nobody in t

for no reason at all. Her father believed it too, or maybe he just needed to believe it, because after

her mother went, and he never c

sting people just gives them one more way to hurt

e gets there, three other Omegas bent over tubs of

thing but the slosh of water and the ache building in her shoulders and the low murmur

her, not bothering to lower her voice much, because who's going to repeat an

to tell it to scare pups into behaving. A wolf whose blood wak

e's heard fragments of that prophecy her whole life, whispered in co

ole life being the thing nobody bothers looking at twice, and some small, stubborn part of her

She never says what she's actually t

finds her b

and the whole armful goes sprawling across the stone floor in front of three warriors and, worse, Ronan A

perly, already moving on. But one of the linens has lan

always

uld be grateful for the extra work instead of furious. She isn't grateful. She isn't furious either, not reall

ir that gets darker with every step. The door groans when she pushes it open, and dust rises in

ched in decades. The air smells like old paper and something colder underneath it, so

r a while it's almost peaceful. Nobody down here ignored her. Nobody is watch

on something that isn'

archment, torn clean across the middle, like someone ripped it in half a long time ago and only bothered hidi

p. Or par

s running beneath the stone she's standing on right now. One line is marked with a small symbol she doesn't recognize, a shap

ut something about it feels the way her mother's face used to feel in the fragments of memory she still ha

her sleeve before she can talk herself out of

nd hard, and it drags her some

burning, orange light licking up through the bla

, chasing something or someone she can't quite see. And there's a woman standing in the middle of the fi

staring back at her out of a woman she

's coming from her mouth so much as from the stones themselves, low and old and

y goes rigid with a fear she doesn't understand, sharp and ancient, like it belo

d powerful, curling awake in her stomach like it's been sleeping

ond her eyes don't feel like her own - there's a strange silver-white light bleeding into the edges of

and looks down at her own hands li

yet. But for the first time in as long as she

it is, she has the sudden, bone-deep certainty that once it's fully awake, noth

rk. And for reasons she can't explain, Lyra's whole body answers it, a pull

ing. She can fee