We walk toward the dormitory tower, Indel’s arms wrapped around her now-wet dress, shivering in the chill. I feel a jolt of pity for the Princess, with her horrible father, and I find myself wishing I had a jacket to put around her shoulders. I settle for a heavy arm over her instead. She smiles and shuffles close as we move.
“I know you do not share my feelings,” she says. “I’m not blind. I know you’re only here because of the dress.” I find myself feeling absurdly guilty. What else can she expect, when she blackmails me? When she… well. She’s not looking at me, though, and her silhouette is so elegant in the moonlight; and I feel terrible pity for her, somehow. “It’s alright,” she continues, “I forgive you.” Gods but she is annoying. My guilt eases some.
We pass through the ornate door and into the grand hall. She keeps talking. “Your heart will soften, given time. Everybody loves me; they can’t help it. It will all be easier once we’re married.”
I don’t move my arm from her shoulders. “I can’t marry you, Indel.”
We turn into the dormitory tower, and Indel summons the chariot with a clap. It flies up nauseatingly quick. “Don’t you understand yet, Hattie? I get whatever I want.”
“Not from me,” I say, firm. “I’ll just wait out here while you change.”
She snaps her fingers.
The dress, which a moment ago was hugging my figure and, apparently, insulating me against the cold, disappears. The air is frigid and I can’t help but let out a little squeal as I cover myself. Any good will Indel has accrued drains away.
“If you don’t want anyone to see, you better get inside,” she says. I hate to admit defeat, but I don’t have any choice. I shoot her a hateful look as I stumble inside in my bra and panties, and she laughs. Her rooms — private, apparently, and larger than all of our rooms combined — are circular, with a huge canopied bed in the centre and a plush living area divided by a privacy screen.
“You were just so ravishing in your gown, I had to see more. And besides, we need to match for the afterparty. I’ve had another dress made for you,” she says.
So she knew her dress would be ruined! She planned for it!
“Your family won’t be suspicious? Another set of matching dresses, ready for us?”
She shrugs. “I don’t intend to return to the banquet. We can go to the woods directly.”
Damn. At least I won’t be subjected to any more family drama.
“What about my underwear?” I ask suspiciously, “It’s not going to disappear?”
She gives me a wry, swannish smile, all in her eyes. “It won’t disappear when I snap my fingers,” she says.
I bristle, back still to her so she can’t see my face burning. Her room is mostly pink, with lush velvet curtains and a huge ornate fireplace, a sitting area as well as a full dining room and library. Jealousy joins the broil of emotions in my chest.
In nothing but her black lingerie, she circles me, slowly, like a carnivore. I can’t control my heartbeat, or the heat that rushes through my centre. It doesn’t mean anything. Show a girl a semi-naked, attractive (okay, very attractive, but still) body, she’s gonna have a reaction.
It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve decided to beg Mae to be my girlfriend (if she’ll even talk to me again after this whole debacle). I can’t let her leave the Academy and lose my chance forever. But there’s no way I’m going to be able to look Mae in the eyes if I lose myself and fuck Indel again, no matter how much I suddenly want to.
When Indel is before me, I force myself to meet her eyes. Time to negotiate.
“Okay, fine. I’ll wear your dress. Where is it?”
“First,” she says, “ravish me again! I have been able to think of nothing else all night.”
I swallow, push back the rush of nerves in my stomach. “I thought you said you understood. That I don’t feel the same way.”
“I said I knew you don’t love me yet,” she says. “This is entirely physical; I can hear your heart beating, Hattie. I know you want me. Or are you just frightened?”
I don’t answer, just try to keep my eyes on my feet and not on her. The thought of the intense, magically-heightened pleasure of our last encounter presses at the edges of my mind, and I desperately push it away.
She falls against me, planting kisses along my collarbone and up my throat. My heart jumps and then gallops, entirely out of my control now. Traitor!
Her hands reach around, tug on the straps of my bra.
“Take this off, love. I’m desperate to see you; it’s all I can think of! You have claimed my heart and my body, now use them.”
I calculate my options, finding myself growing weaker beneath her persistence. Her finger dances along the outside of my panties and I shiver, unable to stop myself from moving against the touch.
Her paralysis knocked me out in a second flat last time, so my only chance now is to surprise her. I grab her throat, hoping to temporarily disable her so that I can get hold of her hands, bind them behind her back.
She’s too quick. Her hand flies out, lightning fast, just as I grab her throat ready to pound her against the wall — and a blinding orb of white light appears before me. It’s not enough, though, my hands are still around her delicate neck, and I-
“Unhand me, love.”
I let go. It happens without any input from me.
“Thank you. You’ll have plenty of time to hurt me for this shortly. For now, though, your Princess gave you an order. Take the bra off.”
The bra comes off. Again, it happens entirely on it’s own, as if I’m just a passenger in my own body. The whole time, I can’t tear my eyes from the brilliant white orb. It’s like it’s painting over my mind, making it blank and white and monotonous. In my periphery, her eyes sparkle.
“And the panties,” she says.
There’s nothing I can do to stop it, they’re discarded to the floor. It’s as natural as breathing, as falling after you’ve jumped from a building. She places an avian hand on my head.
“Kneel,” she says. Down I go, of course, and she sits across from me, kneeling as well. She rests her head on my chest and sighs. “There is another. Tell me now, and tell me true — why her? What is it this human has that I do not?”
Even now, for some reason, my instinct is to editorialise and spare her feelings. But the orb pulls everything from me. “She’s kind. Cheerful. You can be happy, intensely so, but I’ve never really seen you be cheerful like Mae is. I’m pretty sure she likes me back, but we let each other choose that — we don’t force it… even if part of me enjoyed it when you took the choice from me, back in the cave.” Godsdamnit the orb’s pulling everything, even the stuff I wasn’t ready to admit to myself. “You’re gorgeous and sexy but, and this is just personal preference, I prefer fat to muscle, and Mae’s fat sits in all the right places.”
Needlepoint talons dig into my naked back. “I’m an Alterationist!” she cries, “my body can be whatever you want it to be!” Indel pushes off me, holding a supine hand across her forehead. “I just don’t understand, my love. My sweet, sweet Hattie. My darling. You knew who I was, back in the Temple, and you knew who this… Mae was. And there, there you used me anyway. You claimed me. Conquered me. I belong to you now.” She falls to the floor, head on my legs, neck bundled so her body can be as close to me as possible. “Do you think this is just some mistake? Do you think you’re some storybook savage who can think only of raping women after your victory? Are you not a Seer? How can you not see! It is Destiny. It coils tight around us — it’s that thrumming in your chest, even now, sending your heart aflutter. I cannot bear its mad pounding, the ceaseless drumbeat across my mind; so if you would not surrender to it, my love, I beg you: teach me your strength!”
She’s right.Heavy chains on your heart. Harpoon in her soul. Three more, distant, far off, but somehow the rope gets slacker the farther you go. Two though, two in this room — not including you.
My body’s trying to carry out her command, but finds it has no way. I don’t know how I can stand it, not kissing her. But I chose Mae, and I still do. It’s my last chance before she’s gone, gone forever. She’s right — she’ll get a good life. No shortage of respect or gold for healers. More than can be said for me, if I flunk out with my abilities in their current state.
“Come on, you promised,” whines Nym, appearing from nowhere with her cheeks entirely red and her hands thrust straight down — where her delicate fingers make delicate movements too fast to follow.
Indel stands, stalks over to Nym with a sad smile. “I know what I agreed to — to banish her from my chambers and take you into my bed instead… but look at her!” She grabs Nym’s chin and forces her to stare at me, naked on the floor. “How can you not say I was too hasty? I agreed to too harsh a punishment? I would do anything to keep her, truth be told. I should not show such weakness before her — she will stab me with it — but look! Such beauty!”
At least being frozen on the floor gives me time to finally recognise the spell — a charm. That she’s constantly casting it rather than just applying one means it must be high-level, near-total domination that takes serious skill to maintain — a new trick. And even with the false memories to back the illusion, Indel’s blowing right through it. The thought I could be that motivating is… hard to categorise.
“She’s gorgeous,” Nym says, “but-but-but-P-P-Princess.” Indel cradles Nym’s head against her lingeried chest and Nym immediately loses concentration, hands going slack.
“There, there” the Princess coos. “I am loathe to break a promise. We can find another way, surely? Perhaps if we both devote our attentions to her, she will choose to stay with us?”
Nym starts stammering something, but before she can get it out Indel surges magic through the back of her head. She falls to the ground.
“Had you kept your charm up, you might have deluded me,” Indel sneers. “But the moment it lifted I knew I would never agree to send Hattie away. Now go there, on your hands and knees.”
Nym crawls towards me in her fine burgundy gown, the silk trailing behind her. She stops horizontal in front of me, and Indel sits on her back. “Really, did she think I hadn’t seen her in her blue tie before? To try and steal me from you through such underhanded means… Shameful.”
The Princess closes her eyes and breathes. Nym’s complicated things. If she weren’t here… maybe… if only to silence this dreadful knot of destiny in my stomach. But Nym would run off and whine to Mae the moment it happened. Maybe if I could know what she’s thinking.
I focus, try to see what I know is there, to tap into what I did at the Temple. The signal finally catches.
She defeated me so easily… She’s so amazing… But I’ll get through to her one day.
Okay well she’s no help.
“Dear, the banquet should be on the, say, seventh course by now. The afterparty will come soon. Since you are running out of time, I offer you this deal:
“I will release you from my control and allow you to return to your Mae and see her from this Academy. Darling, I will even be so generous as to let you do whatever you will with her, indulge whatever passions burn within. I know you will come back, in time, as we spend the next five years together.
“But before you go, I demand, of your own free will, a single tender kiss from you. Tell me true, can you do that?”
If it gets me back to Mae… and really, what’s a kiss? I kissed Alyx, and Mae liked it. I doubt the Princess would be a dealbreaker. And she’s so soft. And this damn thread is tying us together.
I nod.
The orb fades, and only Nym remains under her control. I cant forward.
The moment I meet her beak, cymbals crash in my brain. It was too much. I’m too worked up. Her devotion… Shattering Nym’s illusion… Gods damn it, her body.
I surge forward and wrap my arms around her. In my haste I trip over Nym, and both me and the Princess go sprawling across the floor. I roll on top of her and pin her with kisses down her long neck.
“My love!” she screams. “My love! Yes!” I nip at her flesh and she moans, talons flexing against my back, drawing blood — it only spurs me onward, groping her, grinding my hips, it’s not enough, need to be inside her again.
There’s a soft patter and a creak before Indel calls “wait.” I see Nym frozen at the door, but even though I know I need to stop I can’t, I just keep squeezing the Princess’s ass. “Illusionist,” Indel says, “come here. Your-” moan “your friend would be m-most upset if you left.”
Nym glances between the door and us. She shuts it, shuffling over with her head down. “After all,” the Princess says, “we did promise you could join us. But only if you can keep a secret.”
Nym tries to speak, but nothing comes out of her mouth. She settles for nodding up and down about a dozen times.
“Good girl,” Indel says. Nym slips from the dress with elven speed, and her underwear just as fast, leaving her short but surprisingly plump frame exposed. I reach out and grab her, because she’s there, pulling her to the ground with us. We’re both kissing down Indel’s neck, the Princess writhing in pure bliss.
I know Nym’s not meant to be here, but- No. No, she is meant to be here. That destiny — she’s part of it too. Mae must-
Nym breaks my concentration with a savage bite to the shoulder, and I seize her throat by reflex. A boozy smile covers her face. Indel whickers and drags my attention back to her by kissing down my chest, across my belly, then lower, lower. I release Nym and moan.
The elf stares at me, and I remember how we discussed what we’d do; I remember committing to leave the Princess to her alone. But why would I ever have agreed to that when I could have them both, here, in my hands? When we’re all tied together? But still, still, I want Mae, or I do until the Princess’s tongue sends my body into overdrive and I pull Nym hard against me, turning her judgemental stare into big doe eyes.
And then the room fills with red.
“Attention students,” comes Tailina’s voice. “Return to your rooms and remain there. We will announce when the danger has passed.”
Danger?
“Mae,” I shout, on my feet, frenzy forgotten — I know in my heart she’s in danger, and she needs me.
“I’ll stay here and protect the Princess,” Nym says, saluting.
“No!” Indel cries. “I must stand by my love’s side as she fights! To me!” She claps her hands and the huge double-window flies open, Castellan standing in the frame a moment later. With a click of Indel’s fingers my dress reappears — if only there were time to get back in my underwear. Nym’s left behind as the pegasus flies from the window, Indel and I mounted on its back.