Page 95 of Shadowlands Omega

Zelie screams. My body takes flight. One of the men shouts and the other is eerily silent. I feel energy pulsing through my arms, but they’re shaking and the breath is knocked clean out of me as I hit the packed earth. Our horse cart. My head. The explosion. I glance around, disoriented.

“No, wait! Please!” a male voice says. I look up to see the splintered remains of the cart and the horses struggling to free themselves from flaming debris. The Fate lords above the two men who are further down the road, closer to her than Zelie and I are. Zelie is trying to get to her feet, struggling. I don’t have time to move at all before another wave of fire pummels the men, attempting to engulf them.

I don’t have to move at all, but I can feel…not an energy, so much, but a desire, awill — my will —beating through the fire, pressing it back with such ferocity, it causes the Fate to stumble. Her red fire disappears.

“Run!” I tell the men.

They don’t hesitate, but head straight for their horses. The father cuts the animals free and grabs the first horse by the reins. He vaults onto its back in a surprisingly agile movement for someone his size and looks back to his son. “Come on, Desi!”

But Desi is rooted, his hand on his horse’s back, looking at Zelie and me. “Come on!” he roars, his white cheeks splotchy with pink, his brown hair tousled in the wind that I created.

“Go, Zelie!” I shout and another breath of violent wind pulses from me, pushing Zelie in the boy’s direction.

She launches herself towards Desmond and a blast of fire chases her that I beat back, pushing up onto my knees. The flaming bits of horse cart are hot, but I suspect that isn’t the reason for the sweat pebbling on my hairline and the back of my neck.

Zelie sways, unsure on her feet. She trips over a piece of burning wood and goes down hard among the embers. I’d have called her name if I could find my voice, but as it is, all of my concentration goes into keeping her from being burned alive right in front of me.

Another wave of fire.

Another burst of air that redirects it.

Another clash of vibrant red and orange flame against the wind that I create only this time, the flames just die. I manage to will the air to swallow them up.

Zelie makes it to Desmond, who grabs her and tosses her up onto the horse before climbing up himself. He looks at me but I shake my head and he takes no more direction than that before charging after his father, who takes off after him down the rocky hill covered in dark grey grasses and rich green mosses. It’ll be a hard ride to Orias Village from here across the wilds, but they’ll make it. They’ll make it to the keep.

I can hear Zelie shouting, screaming, likely wanting to go back for me, but I know that I’m not getting out of this now. This woman, this Fate, this doppelganger of mine, came here for me. She’s looking at me now, her hands down at her sides, a considerate expression strung between her mismatched eyes.

“So you’re my counter,” she says, and I’m shocked by the sound of her voice. Ancestors help us all, she soundsexactlylike me. She smiles and laughs wickedly, her skirts swishing through the flames, dousing them, as she takes a few steps towards me over flaming chunks of wood. The acrid scent of smoke fills my lungs, but I inhale it without feeling faint from it. It feels as familiar as she.

“You seem so surprised. Did your sweet Lord Yaron not think to warn you about me? He must have known who you were the first time he saw you.”

Stunned, I don’t need to answer. She can read everything I don’t want her to in my expression alone.

She laughs louder, her hand on her belly. It’s flatter than mine. A lifetime spent enjoying food clearly treated me well. Much better than whatever hate she was up to. “Oh my. He doesn’t trust or respect you at all, does he? He must know already what we all do, all of us that matter, anyway.” She pauses, as if giving me time to answer. I don’t have anything to say. “You are no match for me, my sweet little Fallen Fire Omega. Can you even produce flames on your own, or do you require a catalyst?” She waits again and then shakes her head, her smile falling. “You don’t even know, do you? Have you even been given a chance to explore your powers at all?”

I find her sentences funny, strung together in an order I don’t understand. She speaks to me as if power is all that there is. I worry now for her, that power is somethingshedoes not understand.

“He uses you,” she snarls, expression becoming vicious as I continue not to respond. “Controlling you like a puppet.”

What?

“Oh, don’t even attempt to convince me otherwise. Alphas are all the same. He probably orders you to repress your powers, fearing the damage you could wreak if you were truly untamed, truly unleashed. This is why you wield fire like a frightened little girl. Like a frightened little Beta. Or do you even wield it at all? Do you only use your gifts over air?” She waits for me to answer like I’d have one, but even if I did — which I don’t — I wouldn’t know where to start. She’s gotten me so, so, so wrong. And Yaron?

I can’t help the small twitch of my lips, begging a smirk as she speaks of domination from the Berserker beast who wants only to be dominated byme.

The Fate stills, the corners of her lips twisting downward, her brow knitting together so that her thin black eyebrows bunch together over her nose. “You mock me?”

“No. No, not at all.” I have to clear my throat. It’s full of hesitation and fear, the sensation like choking on wet cotton balls. But I also feel strangely…sorry for her. My lips quirk up where hers went down and I say as loudly as I must, “I think Yaron would actually like me a lot better if I were more like you.”

She frowns and swishes her skirts, coming even closer. We’re only ten feet apart. It feels like so little. It feels like I’m staring into a dark mirror where I can see how my life might have looked if I’d been born without the love of a family…or a Berserker who would and does andlovesto drop to his knees at my feet. It is hard not to pity her. She must have had a hard, long and miserable life, one full of fire and the scent of burning things, instead of the rich smell of Orias rice and charred chicken wings…

She must see something on my face because she stills. Fire flicks up her fingertips to her wrists, but carefully avoids her sleeves. “The fact that you care what he thinks of you disgusts me. You know the beasts cannot be trusted.”

This woman looks just like me, more like me than any of my true sisters. I just didn’t…couldn’t have fathomed that the Fire Fate would be my twin in likeness, and my opposite in everything else. Her heart is made from something that mine isn’t. Her heart is barbed wire wrapped around pulsing hate. Mine is just a heart. Nothing different from any other heart, soft and squishy and happy to simply beat.

“What do you intend for him?” I muster the courage to ask.

“What we intend to do to all Berserkers. Use them to rewrite the world. Betas on the bottom, Omegas on top and Alphas erased.”

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