“For the record, please identify yourself.”

“Amelie Grace…” My eyes flick to the side. Bailey’s hands are on an orb covered in ludicrously dense glyphic inscriptions, and it’s glowing faintly. She nods minutely at me, and I feel a surge of affection and acceptance and joy, as the orb loses a little bit of its red to shine a little more green, whatever the fuck that means. “... Adanna,” I finish softly, my eyes not leaving the orb. It glows brighter for a second, then gutters as I start to wonder where those emotions came from.

I mean, let’s be real, I hated this bitch a day ago. Didn’t I? I frown, and the orb goes absolutely black, Bailey hissing in pain as she drops it and catches it before it hits the floor.

“Eyes front, if you please, Font Adanna.”

My eyes snap back to the woman interrogating me. I wrestle down a flash of anger; she’s completely correct, formally so, to call me that. “Of course, Miss Kenth.”

That pisses her off more than anything else I could possibly have said, I think, because technically I’m being unimpeachably polite. She’s an unmarried woman and part of the laity, she doesn’t have an appointed office, and she’s not one of the few elected ranks. And while I have my suspicions about her actual rank in the Academy she’s not wearing any insignia, so I can technically get away with sassing a Grandmaster Magus older than my sundered family line by calling her ‘Miss’, and fuck her, anyway; she’s the one whose unavoidable scheduling changes got me pulled out of bed just as Bailey and I were warming up to round two.
“I am aware,” she’s saying coldly as I sort of half-pay attention to her, “that you believe yourself amusing, Font Adanna, and that you believe yourself immune to my displeasure. But if you continue to sabotage your owner’s channeling—”

“She’s not my—”

“—or to comport yourself in a disrespectful manner to me, I will ensure that the courtesy of your once-House’s grace is removed from you.”

That hits me like an ice bath. It hits me like Bailey’s fucking Snapfreeze cantrip did during our fight, and this time I don’t have the adrenaline running that lets me ignore it long enough to reverse-engineer it, which I guess in this metaphor is turning that statement somehow around on my auditor.

She probably could, too, and then without the immunity all of the… well, the murder and the arson would come crashing down on my head, which means Bailey’s head.

“As you say, Magus Kenth.” I manage to get the words out levelly, meeting her eyes without letting the rage show, somehow. Well, I was motivated, at least; I had no desire to die, not by her hands, not by the fangs of her dog, not by having my soul ripped out and discarded because the Ritual left me too whole to function as a channel for someone else’s use, and not by being burned alive on Bailey’s pyre after she’s been hanged for the crimes I committed saving the world.

“Your Ladyship will please resume,” Kenth says quietly, and I can feel the draw kick in again. It’s like a coldness and a heat at the same time, at the base of my spine; it leaves a faint tingle, and it feels good, and I wrench my mind away from trying to analyze it. That seems to work, because the flow stabilizes. “Font Adanna. Begin with your… Recitation of Self.”

I smirk a little at the look on her face, death threats notwithstanding. Guess she finally took a look at it. “Fuck all y’all,” I said by way of beginning. I hear a choked-off laugh from a couple feet away and a sort of backwash of delight, like a giggle in the back of my mind, and that at least I know exactly where it’s coming from, even if it’s the absolute fucking weirdest thing. “Fuck you in particular, Auditor, and also you, Bails, but not in the same way. You were a bitch to me for four and a half years, but I guess that’s fine, because you thought you were were hot as fuck and if I’m reciting this it turns out you were better than me.

“I mean, like, I get it. You practiced more than I did and harder than I did, because your family can afford Soulmend pills like they’re candy while I couldn’t even get a regen after Jorhas broke my knee. It’s cool. By which I mean it’s not, and fuck your family, and fuck mine for not being there for me. Though if you beat me by actually cheating, you’d better not have left enough of me to ever find out, because I’ll choke you out with my own fucking entrails.”

The draw is still there. I poke it to make sure; I’m kind of astonished by it, honestly. Nothing in the Compact says that she had to leave me a profane, vicious cunt of a girl, an absolute dickwad of a young woman, even if the righteous indignation at the injustice of having to play-act at being a commoner was still there in all of its pettiness. Nothing in the Compact says that she needs to leave me hating her for her perfect-ass face and her perfect-ass ass, and okay, it’s kind of fucked up that she made me gay for her, but by all rights she didn’t have to leave me able to think that it’s fucked up, much less that she’s fucked up for doing it, and honestly that makes it hot in so many ways.

“I struggle,” I say, sort of absently, distracted by my thoughts and not really present as a result. It’s memorized, anyway, and I capture the mood of it, let it fill my soul. I’m an uppity smart-ass, but I do my homework, and if I couldn’t maintain a manufactured emotional state in the face of distraction I wouldn’t have lasted even as long as I did in the ring; I’d have been down and out within seconds. “I challenge. That’s my Self, it’s who I am. I try to point myself at injustices, I try to only argue with people who are wrong, and that means I gotta be right in the first place, but what I am is I will tear down the Gods from their thrones if they sin against me or mine.”

There’s a ringing silence, and I can feel a hand on my shoulder, Bailey’s hand on my shoulder. It squeezes slightly, and I’m confused because the flow between us is a rushing torrent, and shouldn’t she have her hands on that stupid fucking orb, and I’m beyond embarrassed at what I just shouted, but then I realize it’s not a physical hand.
“Continue with your history, if you please.”

“I don’t please.” I know this one, and I know the glint in my examiner’s eye. “I opted out for a reason. Nobody has a right to unearth their graves. Even if the Court hadn’t acceded to considering it an internal matter, the secrets should stay dead.”

She doesn’t even blink. I mean, I guess she knew she was fishing, but I’d hoped for more of a reaction when I didn’t bite the hook. I still had the memories, after all. Bailey blinks, though; there’s disappointment there, but it’s a distant, curious one, mixed with relief. “Your record shows that you consider your core competencies to be mathematical insight, structured verse, ribald insults, reading, and … physical matters. Demonstrate each of these.”

I blink a sec, then shrug. A440 is… “I have never known the peace,” I start singing in harmonic minor, “found in these the eyes adored / hearts, not minds, from piers unmoored / journeys pleasant ne’er to cease.” I pause for a split second, wait fuck that was a slant-rhyme, shrug, then cast my mind around for a closer; I think for a sec about an Edged Third, then decide against it. “This then is the best I have for balm / Before she fucked me, I fucked her mom.”

There’s a sudden, yawning silence, and it’s not because I ended the piece in minor rather than switching to major for the last sequence, fuck the Neoclassicists, am I right. I hear a soft thud from over to the side as I maintain eye contact with the auditor, not bothering to control my smirk, and then Bailey’s arms are around me and my body is melting back into hers.

She’s laughing. Of course she’s laughing. Wait, why the hell is she laughing? I roll with it, snickering as I rest the back of my head on the top of hers, or try to; it’s an awkward-as-hell position ‘cause of how shortstack she is. There’s a soaring in my body and mind, and there’s a ting from in front of me, and that’s distracting enough for me to actually take note.

I look down; it’s the measurement ball, on the floor, now glowing a pale blue.

“Amelie, Amelie, Amelie.” Her laughter starts to wind down, but the connection is still there. It’s almost like a circulation; I can feel the lack of something to return and the lack of a direction to loop it in, but there’s definitely a steady stream of power flowing through my metaphysical veins into my… 

I can say it to myself when her arms are around me. My owner, who is still snickering at my dumb joke of a filk with its slant-rhyme and everything. My owner, whose nipples I can feel pressed into my back through my shirt, because I guess me back-talking her and singing about having fucked her mom as a way of demonstrating that I’m still witful turns her on, and that’s not really an I guess because when she’s touching me, when I’m relaxed like this in a relaxation-direction that I didn’t even realize existed, I feel her emotions flowing back into me as the power flows to her, not exactly supplanting what I’m feeling but trying to mix with it.

I still can’t believe how turned on by her I always was and didn’t—no, that’s not right. I was straight, I think to myself almost idly. That sense-memory is hers.

It takes me a moment to realize that the Magus examining us has slid a paper out of her jacket. “Demonstrate your… insight,” she says, like nothing unusual had happened, and for all I know I guess nothing had.

My eyes flicker over the page. The soaring feeling doesn’t get in the way of the reading, which is good, and it doesn’t stop the recall or the analytical bits of my mind from grinding away, which is also good, because I really don’t want to disappoint the Auditor. I’m fairly confident I don’t, at least; I was talking shit to her earlier because I was nervous and a little afraid. The determination and hunger for affirmation is probably from Bails—okay, in my head I can admit that it’s from both of us, and that shit’s not new either, even if it’s a different kind of affirmation now, but I always got spiky instead of diligent—and neither of us wants to disappoint the woman who can kill either of us with a thought.

“This is an encoding of the Peng-Cro Theorem,” I say after a few seconds of looking at it. “Only it’s not the condensed, formal version; it’s a proof-by-induction that hasn’t been fully diagonalized. I… with respect, Magus,” I say more slowly, glaring a little down at the paper, “the proofs for Multi-Dimensional Analysis are complex and I don’t recall all the notation. I’ve never validated this particular proof long-hand; we had to demonstrate basic proficiency, but for actual proofs, we used Prof Titree’s validation formation once we hit the matrix stage. There might be errors, and I don’t think I could find them without a symbology reference and a lot of paper, and more time than you want to spend waiting. And a pen,” I say with a sudden realization, reflexively trying to direct even the slightest mote of the power flowing through me into one of the Nineteen Cantrips. “I can’t… I’m not ever going to be able to… fuck! My handwriting is shit!”

“Hush.” Bailey’s voice is a murmur in my ear, and the panic that I didn’t even realize had flared up subsides into an almost blissful shiver, a shiver that feels almost natural but is absolutely a form of mind control, and obviously I love it, which I should probably hate. “We’ll need to practice, but it will be well. And I bet we can—”

“You pass your integrity and continuity checks.” Kenth’s voice is calm, cool, cutting across Bailey’s reassurance like a scalpel. I blink a couple of times, and joy fills me, joy that I can’t figure out whether it comes from inside me or not. “I assess your Bond, however, as a failure. My advice is to start anew with more compatible material.”

I open my mouth, or try to. There’s a hammer of magic, a degree of casual power use I’ve never experienced, not even when I threw my last flickers of magic into trying to resist the Ritual’s conquering of my mind and soul and it had shattered my volition and left me a mewling heap of pain until the ultimate, hated submission eased the jagged edges. I can’t move, can’t speak, can’t breathe; there’s, for a moment, a sharp pain in my chest, and then the sound of my heartbeat hits hard and I realize it’d stopped.

I’m on my knees, Bailey’s arms around my shoulders where she’d caught me when I started to topple. Her magic is wrapped around my heart, and another strand slams home into my chest, and suddenly I feel my diaphragm move as though a stranger were doing it.

My chest is rising and falling, but it’s doing so in time with Bailey’s breath. It’s her will moving my diaphragm. It’s her will leashing the beating of my heart to hers, and in this moment, in horror, I realize that the moment our bond falters or her will does, I’m dead.

Can’t even mouth off to her again like this, I think to myself in idle horror. Always wanted to die mouthing off.

“Magus Kenth, I believe I am within my rights to request an explanation of your judgment.” Bailey’s voice is flat and cold, and the hate in it warms me back up a little, and I feel the bond between us firming just a little bit more. Convenient, since the flutterings of panic were probably unproductive.

“You are indeed.”

There’s a smile on the Magus’s face, a thin and narrow one, and we both realize at the same time that she’s enjoying this, that this, holding me on the edge of death and holding my life over my head after making me prove that I’m still the same person, was the whole point of the setup.

“Magus Kenth. Kindly inform me as to… what aspect of my Bond is inadequate, that I may rectify the situation.”

“Mmmm.” There’s a long pause, and then a small shrug. “No, I think not. Best if you let her die. Since she won’t bend for you, and you won’t bend for her; and you haven’t seen fit to properly bind her to your purposes.” She’s talking purposefully slow, drawling. The spite of it, the sheer fucked up awfulness of it, is like something out of a shitty historical novel from before the Burning Years, back before the stars fell on the House Adamant and their mindslaved… animal… Familiars…

“Please.” There’s a soft thud, and I feel a pressure on my knees. It’s spillover from… it’s spillover, I realize, from Bailey kneeling, and that thought has my mind go blank even more than the softness of her voice, especially since I know what’s coming, and what the reply will be, because I guess unlike Bailey I’ve figured out who Kenth is and was. “Echoes of the Ritual remain. Please, Magus, I beg of you. Tell me what you require that I change in my Font.”

The Magus, my auditor, the woman who’s currently got a magical knife somewhere between to my throat and through my heart, says something in return. I can’t hear it; everything I am is half floating away, half clinging to Bailey. Bailey Netza Adanna, who had picked me out four and a half years ago on our first week of classes, who had I guess found me a suitable rival and had used me as motivation and challenge and opponent to propel herself to the top of the class, and I guess dragged me up with her when I hit my limit so that I’d keep being useful. Bailey Netza Adanna, who had literally murdered someone in cold blood and nobody knew why but everyone knew even if nobody could prove it, and holy shit, she did it, she must have done it, for me?

Huh. That… I want to say that changes things. I want to say it doesn’t change things; I want to say that the put-downs and savage duels and mocking remarks and sniping about my height and my makeup and my clothes and my flat—fuck. Those weren’t sniping. She thought I was trying, or wasn’t trying, and all at the worst times, and she was trying to help, iterating through ways of trying to help? 

No, she was… she was an absolute bitch.

She was, I remembered it.

She had…

… it slips through my grasp. Was there anything there? Sure, she’d been vicious at times, but I’d done the same right back, and also before. Were we… had we just never spoken honestly enough to be on the same page? Had she mistaken my defensive verbal and occasionally physical savagery for my love language? When she’d called me… when she’d given me all that shit, was it because she wanted to… toughen me up?

That… doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t entirely make sense, but when my mind goes down that path, all I can think about is the way she looked at me when we were dueling. Except I can’t remember her face, and I can’t remember her body language. All I can remember is how things went down, tactically; the ridiculous efficiency of her elemental manipulations and conjurations, the incredible deftness of her curses, the way she was always just barely a step ahead of my fists and my lances and whips, but that was enough, and little by little I slowed down and she somehow outlasted me as she outmaneuvered me. She could have closed in and gone for hand-to-hand, but I guess she knew that was a trap, so she just stayed at range and used my inability to dodge to weave my defeat out of the threads of our exchange.

What I can remember is the look… no, that’s not right, I can’t remember the look on her face when she won, but I remember that there was fear, and there was desire, and I know I fought on my knees even as the pressure made me scream in pain and almost got her in a chokehold while the Ritual’s power was busy shattering my soul, and I remember the way her will flooded into me once I was empty of anything but agony and the longing to be released from same, and the burning desire for human touch in the void.

I’d stepped more-or-less willingly into the Ritual Circle, inscribed on the innermost, most protected of the dueling grounds. I’d consented, more or less, to a challenge that would leave me helpless mind, body, and soul if I’d lost, protected only by social norms from whatever the victor might possibly want to do to me. But I’d wanted to win, to see my tormen—my rival—no, my rival and tormentor, I would not let the torment be forgotten even if every atom of me is full of joy at her attention, and I don’t know what I was thinking about but the feel of her reshaping my soul is the most horrifying bliss until it’s nothing but bliss.

I’m kneeling now, kneeling painlessly on the smooth, unpadded hardwood like it’s the most comfortable thing in the world, and Bailey is murmuring something into my ear, but I can’t hear her. I listen anyway, muscles going loose, will going loose. I might die here, but if I do, I’m dying on my knees with her arms around me, with her love wrapped around me like a comforting quilt.

I come back to myself slowly. Her hand cradles my face; she’s standing, I’m kneeling, and the angle of view is magnificent, and there’s a feedback loop between us, both of us aware of how hard I am, both of us aware of how wet that makes her, and it goes around from there.

The active, burning hot bond, the power exchange, drops. I’m breathing for myself, my heart is beating for myself, and I lift my head after a couple more shuddering sobs; I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

“Amelie.”

My head tilts up at the merest brush of her finger. “Ma’am,” I say softly.

“The Magus had… ideas for how to fix our… the issues she has with us, which I don’t approve of.” Her voice is just as soft as mine. Her lips are an inch away from mine, hands cupping my cheeks. “Do you trust my judgment, Ames—Amelie?”

“Bails,” I whisper, throat thick, “I… do you want to call me that, like, as a, as my nick—”

“Amy.” Her finger traces a line from the base of my ear down my jawline to my lips, and I feel my lips part without any conscious thought as she brushes them. “I can’t, I shouldn’t have—Amy.” She kisses me, and my attempts to analyze her hesitation drown in the softness of her lips and the taste of her subtle lipstick. “Amelie, how do you feel about the name you just proposed I use for you? I have used it for you in the past. Tell me true: how did it make you feel?”

“I hate it.” I manage to say it. She called me it, and I don’t want to hurt her, I don’t want to hurt my Magus, my lady, my owner, my beloved. I say it anyway, because I’ll always give her nothing but truth. “I hated every time you called me that, and I hated you for it, because I… I thought you were trying to hurt me, and you were succeeding.”

“Do you trust me, Amy?”

“Yeah.”

She kisses me again. Her lips taste of salt; I can only hope they’re happy tears, because why else would she be crying?

“Will you be mine, Amy? Follow me into battle and in peace, tend my flame, guard my body as I work wonders?”

“Bails, I…” I swallow. “Obviously, yeah. I’m yours. That’s why we’re here. Don’t… don’t be an idiot, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I need to know about your family. On the record, here, in front of the Magus. I need you to tell me, and tell her, who they were and why they died. Knowing that you… I know it’s important to you, but I need you to tell us anyway.

“Not for money or purpose, not for any reward or reasoned argument. Just… for me, Amy. For us.” Her hands are cupping my face, and my world has shrunk to only that which is cradled by her fingers. “For no other reason than that, just because I’m asking you to, will you spill the secrets you held for so long?”

“Oh.” I breathe the word, then inhale. “Oh.” And then, throwing caution, the greater good, and two decades of grudges onto the pyre of the fulfillment of my devotion, crying tears of joy to match hers, I do.