Page 97 of Run Little Omega

Frost spirals from my fingertips across the stone, crystallizing around the documents. The anger building inside me feels different from human rage—colder, more focused, manifesting physically through the Wild Magic now flowing through my veins.

"And this." I tap one particular order bearing his signature, dated just two Hunt cycles ago. "Authorization to divert the contaminated runoff toward border villages—toward Thornwick." I force the words past the vice grip in my throat. "You poisoned our water. You killed my mother with your death magic."

He flinches at that, the first crack in his careful composure. "It wasn't?—"

"Don't." Ice forms beneath my feet, spreading outward in jagged, broken patterns unlike the elegant spirals of our claiming bond. "Don't you dare tell me it wasn't intentional. Your signature stains every order."

The cillae across his skin dim visibly, as if the magic connecting us recoils from the truth laid bare between us.

"I won't deny my complicity." His voice drops to that dangerous register I remember from our first meeting at the Gathering Circle—the Winter Prince reasserting control. "But you need to understand what you're condemning."

"Enlighten me." Frost crackles around my clenched fists. "Explain how murdering infants and poisoning villages could possibly be justified."

He moves closer, avoiding the spreading ice with careful steps. "Court magic has been failing for generations. Each breeding cycle produces diminishing returns. The cullings were implemented to eliminate bloodlines showing instability or regression."

"They'rechildren." My voice shatters on the word. "Not bloodlines or breeding stock or court assets. Living, breathing children you buried alive for the crime of developing magic you couldn't control."

"Yes." The single word falls between us like a death sentence. "And I authorized it. For centuries, I signed those orders believing the court physicians who assured me the process was humane, necessary for our survival."

"Humane?" Rage surges through me, transforming the ice at my feet into deadly crystalline spears that advance toward him. "I saw the graves. I saw the death blooms feeding on their lingering magic. Do you have any idea what it feels like to die slowly, buried alive in your mother's cooling body?"

He doesn't retreat from the advancing ice, though it tears at his leather boots. "No. I don't." Those ice-blue eyes that once held me captive with their intensity meet mine without flinching. "I've never witnessed the cullings personally. I authorized the protocols but delegated the implementation to court physicians."

The casual admission of his detachment ignites something primal within me. "So that's your defense? You signed the death warrants but didn't watch the executions, so your hands remain clean?"

"My hands have never been clean." He spreads them before him, cillae pulsing weakly across his palms. "I'm seven centuries old, Briar. I've authorized executions, led hunt parties, made decisions that prioritized court survival over individual lives. I won't pretend innocence I don't possess."

"Then what? What possible explanation could justify centuries of infant murders?"

He's quiet for a long moment, the frost connecting us fluctuating with emotions he's struggling to contain. "There is no justification," he finally says. "Only context that you deserve to understand before you judge."

"I've seen enough to judge." The pendant the Survivor gave me burns cold against my chest. "But go ahead. Explain how you could sign death warrants for innocent children and still sleep at night."

A muscle ticks in his jaw, the only outward sign of his agitation. "The courts weren't always as you see them now. The seasonal divisions were meant to balance power, to prevent any single entity from controlling all magic flowing between realms."

"I know this already." Ice crackles around us as my impatience grows. "The Survivor showed me the wall carvings."

"What the carvings don't show is the decay." His voice drops lower, an undercurrent of genuine pain rippling beneath the controlled surface. "With each generation, our connection to Wild Magic diminished. The courts implemented breeding programs to preserve what remained, culling those whose magic manifested unpredictably."

"And that justified murder?"

"Nothing justifies it." Frost falls from his hair as he runs a hand through it—a surprisingly human gesture from the Winter Prince. "But after centuries of seeing court magic fade, of watching bloodlines weaken despite our best efforts, the cullings became accepted protocol. Not questioned, not examined. Necessary evil for a greater good."

"What greater good could possibly come from poisoning villages with your magical waste?"

Here, finally, his composure shatters. "That was never the intention. The contamination of human water supplies was an unforeseen consequence that..." He hesitates. "That once discovered, was permitted to continue rather than invest resources in proper containment."

The cold truth of his admission hits harder than any lie could have. Not an accident, then, but a deliberate calculation—the lives in border villages deemed acceptable collateral damage.

"My mother died in agony because of your 'unforeseen consequence.'" Ice spears grow around my feet, responding to the rage coursing through me. "Willow wastes away even now because the Winter Court couldn't be bothered to dispose of its victims properly."

"Yes." He doesn't try to soften the admission. "And I was complicit in that decision, as in all court policies regarding the Hunt and its aftermath."

The cillae connecting us pulse with shared pain—his regret and my rage creating discordant rhythms across our skin. Through our bond, I sense emotions he isn't expressing aloud: centuries of isolation, decisions made from cold logic rather than compassion, duty calcified into unquestioning obedience.

And beneath it all, a newer sensation—shame. Not just at being caught, but genuine shame at what I've forced him to confront in himself.

"When did you stop seeing us as people?" I ask, the question emerging softer than intended. "When did omegas become breeding vessels to you, their children mere components to be harvested?"

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