“Despite the fact that it’s your life’s mission to know shit.” Martia frowns. “Wait. Don’t the Great Houses usually put out fancy notices?”

He nods. “But not this time. The Larsens are keeping news of this mating locked tight. I might never have learned about it if it hadn’t been for two Larsen servants getting high on snail venom with one of my informants.”

“If she’s Kuznetsov’s daughter, she’s a commoner,” Bastian points out. “Maybe they’re embarrassed of her status.”

Ivar shakes his head. “Her mother was a lady. A Beta from House Kellen.”

“Right,” Martia says. “I remember hearing that her marriage to Kuznetsov was a scandal, because she was supposed to marry someone from House Durand. She died a long time ago, right?”

Ivar nods again. “She died nearly twenty years ago, leaving her mate alone to take care of their infant daughter. Who, unlike her Beta parents, went on to present as an Omega.”

Martia laughs once, bitter. “There you have it. If Lennart Larsen, a Beta, is about to mate Kuznetsov’s girl, who is an Omega… they’re not going to want the people to know.” The scorn in her tone is not because of bigotry but simple pragmatism: given the relative rarity of Omegas, losing one to a Beta is going to piss off every unmated Alpha, even more so if the Omega is of noble descent. Not to mention that, for the Great Houses, anything outside the written path—Alphas with Omegas, Betas with other Betas—is rarely considered acceptable.

“Okay,” I say. “The Larsens are becoming better, less judgmental people. I’m still not buying them a fucking mating gift.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Ivar tells me. “The girl is an Omega, but she’s a cold one.”

A deep silence falls. Because cold Omegas are seen as a tragedy. They usually exhibit all the physical characteristics of Omegas, but never manage to fully present as one. The parts are there, but they malfunctioned, I once heard someone cruelly put it.

Personally, I’ve always thought it was bullshit, the way cold Omegas are pitied by everyone in society. I’m certain that their condition doesn’t stop them from living fulfilling lives. But to the nobles, who often see Omegas as breeding machines, they are nothing but aberrations. Which is why I say, “There’s no fucking way Lord Larsen is letting his son mate her.”

“Not if Lennart were his successor,” Ivar concurs. “But Lennart is the youngest, and a Beta. This is a love match. He and the girl grew up together. Same age. Best friends. To Lennart’s credit, he’s not as idle as he could be. He works as a healer, and so does his future mate.”

Whatever sympathy I felt for the Omega vanishes as I remember her actions following her father’s death. “Good for them. Clearly, the girl and the Larsen brat deserve each other. Can we please circle back to me cutting off the heads of the entire House…?” I slowly drift off.

Because Bastien, my usually dour, humorless seneschal, is laughing. And laughing. And laughing. It’s a strange, unsettling sight, especially in a room painted with blood.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I ask flatly.

“Oh, nothing. I just realized where Ivar is going.”

Martia and I exchange a confused glance. Cleary, we’re not keeping up with the Omegas and their scheming.

“Will you please enlighten us, too?” she asks, as annoyed as I feel.

“There is a law. An archaic, rarely invoked law. One that dates a while back, but it doesn’t matter,” Ivar says. “You’re not going to like it, Gabriel.” A pause. “But you’ll say yes anyway.”

My eyebrow lifts. “And why’s that?”

He leans forward with a grin. His incisors gleam, predatory. “Because this is how we get rid of Lord Larsen once and for all.”

Chapter 2

THE HEALER Sofia

It’s hard to believe Earth wasn’t always like this. And yet, unless the few writings that survived the Great Catastrophes are full of lies, this is the worst possible time to live on this planet.

As a human, that is. Fish are having a fantastic time.

It is said that once upon a time, thousands of years ago, the tides could be predicted with precision, even several years in advance. That even in the most extreme conditions, the water would not rise higher than fifty feet. That dwellings—villages, towns, cities—were constructed in places that would never be submerged, and dry soil could be taken for granted. A constant presence. Solid ground.

Now everything is rootless, slippery, ever-shifting.

My mother died when I was still too young to make memories of her, but she enjoyed history. She left behind several holos tucked neatly in a metal box with the House Kellen crest embossed on it. In the vids, I saw more kinds of plants than my imagination could ever conjure, many of which died because they couldn’t tolerate the salt water. Not just mangroves and seagrasses, glassworts and salt marshes. Not forests made exclusively of kelp, or stone walls coated in slick, slimy algae and latching barnacles.

Centuries ago, the trees would stand high and proudly reach for the sky. They didn’t need to twist and gnarl toward the ground to avoid being swept away by the next current. And the rhythm of their lives—the rhythm of everyone’s lives—used to be measured not by the tides but by the light of the sun.

I know that technically hasn’t changed. I’m well-read, and my father was a man of science: I know the sun appears in the east every morning and sets in the west every evening, that a day is made of twenty-four hours, and that calendars and watches and artificial illumination work hard to keep its time. Still, I’ve always found the idea of a day meaningless. After all, light travels poorly through water, and it rarely reaches us in any significant way when we’re submerged. It’s the tides that always dictate my sleep, my work, my moods. The Highs mean being stuck inside with recycled, over-filtered, dry air in too-close quarters. The Lows are precious adventures, the scent of salt air, the unique combination of cool breeze and sun against my skin.

The Lows are a good time, but they never last long.

In the past century, engineers have tried to use ancient technologies to prolong them: dams. Submarines. All kinds of watercrafts. But after the melting of the glaciers and the increased cyclones, after the pillaging of the seabed and the shift of the tectonic plates that joined the earth, the ocean is not what it once was. The currents are too strong and unpredictable, and the only hope of survival when they rise is to retreat within the stronghold and pray that the All-father won’t let the water-tight sealing system fail.

According to the histories, humanity once tried to understand and change the world by which it was surrounded. It looked with curiosity at its place in the universe, pondered ways to better itself as a species, sought to travel and explore new worlds.

Now it would be great if we just survived till the next Low.

“Everything okay, Healer Kuznetsov?” Ulf asks, pulling me out of my reverie. “You’ve been staring out the windows and preparing those bandages for a while.”

“Yes. Yes, sorry.” With an apologetic smile, I make myself focus on his weathered face. “I’ll have you patched up in no time.”

Ulf is a soldier who has been in the engineering corps for a long time, but I’ve never treated him before. I’ve been seeing him more often since General Agard announced the start of efforts to ensure that the stronghold be safe at all times and able to humanely accommodate people at all social strata. Ulf, like most engineers, is enjoying this new mandate and finally getting credit for his hard work. I don’t blame him one bit—in fact, I know that if Dad were still here, they’d celebrate together. Probably get injured together, too.

Hence my presence here.

A few feet away from us, his fellow soldiers are resealing one of the portholes after finding early signs of stress fractures. Not quite a code red, but a situation urgent enough to warrant the dispatch of an early dedicated team here to the north wing.