“You seem distracted,” she says.
“I was thinking about Vila.” Since my vision outside the Headmistress’s office at least part of my brain has been thinking about Vila 24/7. It’s hard, to experience these moments rather than just see them. Whenever I think about the lioness bound up by vines, no control of her body, I cross my legs.
“Yeah, what’s going on with that? Do you think she’s really in Alyx’s room?”
Oh she’s in there. It’s only now I remember Mae didn’t see Alyx leading Vila away with Nym and I, and must be a little confused. “I know she’s in there because these stupid powers keep showing me things I shouldn’t see.” Unlike Mae, I’m still drunk.
“You ever see me?”
“Once.” My face burns hotter than her dragon’s breath.
“What’d you see?”
“Can I turn around yet?”
“Haha, sure.”
I start to turn from the window, but halfway through a crash rockets through my knee, shattering bone to useless splinters and sending me to the floor. My knee hits the carpet and I scream.
“Not so loud, silly.” Mae stands above me in a plain white gown — little more than a long sheet of fabric with holes cut for the arms and head. Because she’s Mae, and gorgeous, this smock manages to be perfectly figure hugging. Her mace, flesh-tearing flanges glittering in the moonlight, swoops down for another blow. I get my hand up just in time to catch the handle and twist the mace from her hands. She shakes her head. “Hattie, it’s real sexy that you know how to fight — but you need to be a good punching bag. How did you think Restoration study worked?”
You know, I was so swept up in the thought of me and Mae alone together that I got stuck on after the practicing. “I-” I begin, but she silences me with a wave of magic that turns screaming pain into throbbing pain, the ecstasy of which makes me forget my answer and her question both.
“Now Hattie, please be a good girl and give back the mace.”
Everything’s attenuated such that this beautiful woman’s attention is enough to make the pain pleasant. It came from her, after all. I’m helping her. I’d do anything for her — and I trust her completely. She’ll fix everything she breaks.
I hold the mace up like an offering on an altar. Mae plucks it from my hands with an easy smile. “Good girl.”
There’s more force behind her swings than I’d have ever expected. Once she’s shattered my other kneecap and sprawled me out on the floor with a blow to the shoulder, she digs one of flanges into my side, twists it about like she’s digging for gold. Over my hiss, she says, “need to give you a wide range of injuries. And, while we’re here… Did you fuck the Princess?”
So many things to explain, there. So many things I’d like to say. But every time I try to put together my explanations (my excuses…), she strips away another chunk of flesh with the stinging flange. In the end all I can say is “yes,” quiet and ashamed.
“Awwwh, Hattie! I wanted to be your first!”
“I’m not-”
“Your Academy first, silly. I mean, I had my ass pressed against you like five minutes after we met. I’ve just been waiting for you. And you went running out ahead of me?” By the feel of it — the feel of searing pain like a demon’s biting down — she’s pushing the mace in with her foot, with all her weight. “You could’ve at least let me watch.”
And I do. The memory flows out of me and through her mace — mana moves frictionless along conjured metal. It’s nothing conscious; I just want to please her. I want to give her what she wants. And so the two of us experience it together, in an instant. Indel paralysing me; me, blood running hot, seizing Indel in Oracle’s den; and I feel Mae’s joy rushing back down the link, making me so desperate to give her more that she drags the night’s earlier entanglement with Nym and Indel.
“My Gods,” she cries, “you fucked her so much.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s alright. Just make sure I’m there, next time.”
I nod, but even that shoots pain through my shoulder.
“Really, Hattie, it’s a shame. Now everything’s just so complicated, what with Alyx sniffing around. It’s hardly fair for your competition if I fuck you now — as much as I would’ve liked to.” The mace snaps my elbow, leaving me with one good arm. It’s enough.
With a shove I twist onto my back and grab a bundle of the smock, pulling her into a kiss. Pleasure dances across my brain, an even stronger painkiller than her magic, and suddenly I’m sinking into a warm bath. She tries to pull back but I refuse to let go; she wrenches away but the smock stays in my hands, now torn to useless fabric. The last threads fall off so Mae’s left naked and brilliant. Her tits are so perfect and distracting that I don’t see the mace until the steel’s biting my stomach, turning me into a forge billows, all my air deserting me.
“Is that any way to make it up to me?”
“Vila-”
“Yeah, but I never wanted to be Alyx’s first. I hold you to a higher standard.”
“Unfair-”
“Maybe. But I’m from a merchant family, did you know that? Poppy taught me how to barter — I have something you want, and I know you’re willing to pay any price. So you’ll pay the price I set.” She leans down and whispers in my ear, mace weighing down my last unshattered arm to keep me from trying anything. “If it helps, I’m hoping you win. You’re just so cute.”
Merchant family? “Your- hair-”
“We’ve both done a lot of growing since then — I didn’t recognise you either. Not at first.”
How long has she known? Ten years ago, I watched a brown-haired Mae from afar, hiding the whole day she was in the village. Burning with embarrassment whenever her eyes found me, giggling like an idiot at each gentle smile. And then before I could work up the courage to talk to her she was gone, on to the next town.
“Destiny,” I choke, understanding Indel more than ever.
“Destiny,” she affirms, before clonking me over the head.
I wake up covered in purpling bruises and contusions, in patched over scars and aching joints. Mae, my angel, has so kindly rewarded me by staying stark naked. Next to me, she grins. “Figured I’d give you a little break before we get back to it.”
“Back to it? You can’t be serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious. I wanna try my hand at a fatigue-healing spell, so we’ll need to go all night.”
This is as blatantly provocative as it gets. I roll onto my side and pull her into me, hand on her ass. She giggles. “There are other ways to pass the time,” I tell her, kissing at her neck.
“Alyx got handsy, too, on the way back from the party. I guess it’s only fair.”
I roll on top of her and pin her wrists above her head. “I’m so fucking tired of hearing about Alyx.” My free hand circles her. Her moans are all the reward I need.
“Oh?” she says, between gasps. “You’d hate to know how hot she looked standing over you, then.”
My grip tightens. I’ve seen what excites her — I know there’s only more coming. So I nip it in the bud with my tongue in her mouth.
The kiss holds for a few seconds before she’s wriggled out of it. Just don’t have the hands to pleasure her (and I have to pleasure her, it’s the only thing I want) and control her at the same time. If only I could summon vines…
“When she slapped you… I was ready to fuck her right there.”
A growl escapes me, a hint of frustration that she seizes on. She bites my ear so I can’t escape and mumbles around it, “you’d be stuck watching her take me.”
“I won that fight.”
“As I’ll be sure to remind her.”
I pick up speed, seeing the only way to stop the taunts for good. She releases my ear and buries her head against my chest, panting and shaking. “Hattie,” she moans.
“No, go on,” I whisper, “you can tease me some more.”
“I-” and I bite down on her shoulder before she can get anything else out. She spasms, shakes, screams — and then comes back down, wrapping her arms around my back and panting.
“It’s my turn.” Everything I hoped for comes true when she nods, then vanishes as the heaviness of sedation seizes me.
“Almost tricked me again,” she sings. “But you’ll have to win the competition first.” I try grope her, but my heavy, clumsy hand just sort of brushes against her ass. “Mmm, actually, tell you what — do whatever you want with me.”
I slide off her like melting wax, roll onto my back in a puddle of limp muscle. “Nngh.” My fingers tangle her hair, but I don’t have the strength to shift her. She just stays there, smiling.
“I’m waiting for you to claim me, Hattie. What’d Indel say? Ravage? Ravish?”
“Both.”
“Well? I thought you liked me. Not as much as the Princess, I guess.”
I grunt, low and frustrated, useless hand tugging on her wrist like an ant against a mountain.
“If you pulled me down between your thighs I’d set my head down like I’m praying. Do you not want that?”
This woman will be the death of you, that’s clear.
Gods she’s adorable, Mae thinks, which doesn’t make this boiling, building need any easier to shoulder but does make me smile as I lay sedated and stupid before her.
“Well, that’s a shame. Here I was hoping to be yours.” She brings her hand around and drives her letter opener through my chest — the blade must be inches from my heart. When the blade retracts blood spills from me like wine from a shattered tun, cutting contrast with my blue skin. Mae licks her thumb and then runs it along the gash, which seals in its wake. “Back to studying!”
It’s agony to say goodbye, to walk out of that room without fucking her properly. I’ve spent every moment since I met her thinking, in some part of the brain, about Mae, about how sweet it’ll be to have her, to make her mine. But that’ll have to wait.
Even worse, Wineskin blocks the door to my room. I try to move past and he swipes, sets his eyes down the hallway towards the common room.
“I’m not in the mood,” I say, but he just grumbles bearishly.
Forced to concede, I drag myself into the common room where Alyx waits in a simple robe of woven vines with a deep cut that ends in a sharp point just above her bellybutton. I wear my afterparty dress, mended by Mae’s magic.
She sips wine from an unpolished wooden goblet and nods as I enter. “Over here, Hattie.” Alyx gestures to the seat across from her at the little sitting area by our huge window. Wineskin didn’t follow, so I have to play along.
“She’s got us in a bind, doesn’t she?” she says as I take my seat. “It’s been, what, three days? And yet, you love her. Right?”
Pale moonlight twinkles against the window, bathing her in a gentle blue that, when I’m this worked up and unsatisfied, I’m forced to admit is flattering. Maybe it’s just easier to trust a pretty girl — maybe that’s why I nod, facing the floor.
“Don’t be embarrassed. I’ve fallen in love faster than that, and suspect I will again. In other circumstances I would cheer for you and that would be that.”
“But this is different?”
“Sharp eye, Hattie; sharp eye. Yes, as much as I wish this was just another in a long line of purely physical entanglements, sadly your friend Alyx is in love. For all the same reasons as you, I would think: the light in her eyes-”
“The warmth of her laughter-”
“Her reflexive, easy kindness-”
“Her fierce, unshakeable resolve-”
“Oh, of course, who else could have tamed a dragon? Only one as a smart as her-”
“As smart and tender.”
“And tender,” Alyx agrees, offering me a cup I wave away.
“She’s that rare type of woman where everyone can tell she’s destined for greatness, but she’s so godsdamn nice that you don’t shrink away from it, don’t get intimidated. If anything it just draws you in further.” Having now dredged up all the sadness of leaving things unfinished, I decide to take the wine after all.
“All that — and a simply unbelievable body.”
I glare at her, but she just shrugs. “Admit it or not, we’re all thinking it,” she says. “I mean, come on: her ass. Ridiculous.”
It’d be too crass to agree, but she’s got my number, so instead my glare softens to a smile and I shake my head. Alyx is my designated rival until the Gauntlet’s done, but before that she was my friend.
“So, anyway,” she says, “we’re both in love and she knows it. And, Gods bless her, she knows what she wants. That’s the other thing that makes her so fucking sexy. She knows what she wants.”
“And what she wants is to watch us — and no more.”
“Until there’s a winner.”
“Until there’s a winner.”
She downs her cup and pours another. In anticipation I chug mine — sweet and fruity and strong — and hold it out for her to refill.
“So here’s my thinking, Hattie Hare. We have, I think, a way to cut her legs from under her and put the power back in our hands, such that instead of setting us against each other and fucking the winner, Mae dances to the drum we beat. Maybe. It might work, but then she’s stubborn and beautiful, so it might not, but I think it’s better for us than the competition, which is guaranteed at least one loser — maybe two if someone else swoops in while we’re busy.”
“The preamble won’t help you; I’ll decide based on your plan and your plan alone.”
“I can respect that.” Alyx nods like a monk in a monastery, contemplating tapestries. “Here’s my thinking, Hattie Hare: let me take you on a date.”
“What?”
“I’d be the top so, you know, I’ll organise the whole thing and take you somewhere nice and classy. A-”
“You would not be-”
“Hattie, I’d be the top.”
“That’s not even what-”
“Okay, fine, I’d be the top and the dom, so there’s no argument — it falls to me to take you somewhere. I’ve been working on a simroom setting you might like, or we could go Rambling.”
“Rambling?” I ask, objections (all hundred of them) momentarily forgotten.
“Yeah, it’s like, Deer shit, you know? Just sort of walking around. No destination, no expectation. It’s kind of the ideal first date because once you’ve been walking long enough your brain empties out all the bullshit — I was out Rambling when I realised all I wanted was to be a girl, for instance.”
Indeed it does sound fun, and I’ll have to remember to do it with Mae. “How does me and you going Rambling get us out of this?”
“Well, you know… I figure we’re both madly attracted to each other and if Mae weren’t here we’d probably be in my room right now-”
“With Vila?”
“She likes to watch, just like our dear friend Mae. But you’re distracting me. We go on a date, it’s likely not our last.”
If I’m not going to date Mae, I’d rather Indel. She’s a Princess, after all. But moments after my mind forms the thought Alyx gives me that easy, confident grin I’ve seen her give just about every other woman here, and despite it all I tingle a bit, admiring the soft curve of her chin. Might just be the memory — you shouldn’t have mentioned Vila.
She continues. “Then we can go to Mae and say, hey, listen, Halyx is a thing now,” (I’m about to interrupt because that’s like all of her name and a fraction of mine, but I can’t think of anything better and am forced to let it pass), “and we can either both give you the best night of your life, or we can go off and fuck each other without you watching.”
“What if she calls our bluff?”
“Bluff? Bluff? Hattie, come on — you’re one of the hottest women here. Gods, I saw you and the first thing I thought was ‘fuck me, how hungry are Orcish babies?’ Like, yeah, I’d be happiest dating you and Mae both — you know, we make our own little world together, so it’s not even that I’m dating you and Mae so much as we’re all dating each other; we become something greater than the sum of our parts — but if Mae doesn’t want to be part of that, I’d be content knowing it’s her loss. Because I’d be dating the Academy’s hottest girl.”
I rub my eyes a bit, down another nervous swallow of wine. This idea of hers is absurd — I mean, how do you even date two people at once? How does marriage work? How does anything work? And before now I knew she was attracted — her eyes made that clear — but the depth of those feelings had escaped me. Reckoning with them all at once is like drowning.
You got too focused on Mae, didn’t you?
“It’s certainly a bold idea,” I manage at last.
“Eh, not really. You know Kothel?”
“Home of murderous radicals?” The Empire fought three vicious wars with the Kothelli Republic, each ending in its destruction and the installation of a new royal family. But no sooner had the Empire withdrawn for other, more important frontiers than the Kothelli rose up and slaughtered the royals — at the moment there’s peace, for now, but only because the Empire’s busy elsewhere.
“The radicals have the right idea, but let’s not get mired in politics. You know they do this sort of thing all the time over there? Their President has three wives, their Vice-President five husbands.” Five men seems like five too many, but there might be something to three wives.
No, what are you thinking! The Kothelli are needle-teethed, scaled freaks with murder eyes and throat tearing claws. You can’t live like them, not here, not in the heart of the Empire.
My hand rests on the table. Alyx entwines it with her own and squeezes softly. “The point is we both want Mae — but I want you, too, Hattie. You’re a wonderful, gorgeous woman and we could both make each other very happy, just as soon as I teach you your place.”
There’s warmth in her fur, in her smile, in her eyes. I lean forward, under the moonlight, and kiss her. She relaxes into it like she’s been expecting it her whole life; my stomach twists, but it doesn’t backflip, not like with Mae.
(Though the baser part of me, the one Mae worked up into a frenzy and then left at the cliff edge, can’t stop reminding me of the bliss when she entered me, trying to make me forget it was Vila’s bliss.)
I break the kiss and sigh. “Alyx, you’re hot — but you’re not her. I want her, and I want only her.”
She sighs as well. “That’s a shame, Hattie. We could’ve been girlfriends; now we’ll be rivals. You’ve got one last chance to reconsider, in light of this — which I really want to impress upon you —
“I don’t lose.”
I took the beating of my life for her.
That’s devotion.
“We’ll see, Alyx.”
I leave her there.
And see her again the next morning, limping down the hallway covered in fresh cuts and bruises.