It took me waking up the next morning to realize that the examiners had fucked me.

I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised about it. I mean, the whole Academy was brutally unfair and abusive, barely mitigated by the fact that Mages like Dawnstrider and her Font, Eclipse, were openly eager for an excuse to purge the place again, by the fact that Torch Everburning and his ever-screaming eight-fanged hyperspider Font are on the record as having a history of feeding noble souls to demons and then eating the demons, while being basically unkillable, teleporting weapons of exactly as much or as little destruction as they want to be.

Well, I guess for some people it might be mitigated by family members with a bent for vengeance ranging from subtle to baroque, but that isn’t exactly relevant to me.

Bailey, bless her, is fucking pissed when I go through the regs book with her, pissed enough to not bother asking where I got it. Median time to return to expected capacity for an uncontested ritual is twenty-four hours, so the book says you shouldn’t run the audit for thirty-six; for someone like me, who had to be shattered before I could be rebuilt as a conduit and devoted companion, the guidelines say eight days past a return to consciousness.

I got just under five hours, all because Kenth got herself assigned and then manufactured an exit.

There’s probably going to be some sort of inquest. I mean, I don’t think it’ll succeed, because they got my family secrets out of me by doing it, but at the same time, the papers they’ll find implicate some incredibly powerful Families of the Realm in the coordinated attempt to annihilate one of the mid-tier Noble Houses, so their success is still going to piss off a lot of people, and any non-Magus who decided to push it is probably eating dirt a year from now. Plus, there are a lot of reasons I didn’t fucking tell anyone, those papers are an indestructible matter-split bomb in so many ways, but nobody ever takes my word for that shit.

I mean, Bailey did. Only reason she pressured me was because they were gonna kill me, and yeah, I’d rather be alive and the Kingdom possibly headed towards a civil war because of a criminal conspiracy to purge—well, to purge my family, fucked up though they were. But… eh. Kenth forced her hand, which will save her from too much trouble and clear me from violating the terms of my parole. Besides, she beat me; she can deal with the fallout.

I tell her that when she’s doing her hair, adding that I’ll help by sitting on the sidelines and laughing at her, and she just calls me a spiky disaster, which I choose to interpret as her saying she loves me. I call her a prissy, stuck-up bitch who never saw a jackboot she didn’t want to kiss, but that’s good because I’d be dead if she weren’t so good at licking Kenth’s, and she slams me down onto the bed with all the pressure of a pinky finger and rides me, drowning my dick in the wetness that floods down her thighs, until my orgasm blows my brain apart; so I guess she knows how I say I love you too.

Point to me. And to her, I guess.

————————————————————————————————————————

“I don’t get it. You literally haven’t put any thought into it?”

“I mean, no.” I shrug, not that she can see me, since we’re lying side by side, digesting breakfast. She might be able to feel me do it, though, with how pressed into her I am, but my shoulders are at, like, head level on her, so maybe not. “I assumed if any fucker did beat my ass in the ring, they wouldn’t give a shit about my opinion,” I say into the silence. “And for that matter why would they leave me with an opinion other than whatever made them happiest?”

“That sounds like you have someone specific in mind, Amelie.”

There’s a teasing note in Bailey’s voice, but I answer the question anyway. “Denier, maybe, he was top spot in wrestling and if he got in for an uncontested grapple he could choke me out and make me pick between submitting or death, and I probably wouldn’t have picked death.” Denier had been fond of speculating as to how I would look with a proper build in just the absolute grossest way. There were reasons I mostly drilled to take him down; Bailey danced around my best efforts for minutes, until my magic guttered and my breath left me, but Denier would have gone down in four, maybe five exchanges at range, so I made sure if he’d come in for the clinch I was gonna be able to flash-boil his eyeballs and evacuate his blood through every pore simultaneously. “But… Tsanan, mostly.”

“Really? Tsanan?”

“Bitch please, he was my boyfriend for a year and a half.”

“Tsanan. Really.” There’s a shift in her body, like she’s belatedly processing what I said. “Your boyfriend? Are you—Amy, you had better not be spinning me deosil here.”

“Cross my legs, may I never be fucked again if I lie to you.” There’s a giddiness in me, like all of the weight that I used to bear is getting fired off, kinetic strikes targeted at the barriers of my once-dearly-held secrets. “He saved my ass at the beginning of third year, and when I thanked him for it, he started to make one of his dumb fucking jokes about it and then got a weird look in his eye and just said that I was worth all three of the, and I quote, overstuffed poppinjays, end quote, that jumped me.”

“Tsanan, being nice. I’ve heard it all, I’ve heard everything.”

“Yeah, it was kind of a shock. I told him I’d report him as a doppelganger unless he said something shitty to me, and he said I shouldn’t bother, because nobody is gonna listen to a nothing from nowhere like me, and he’d make me pay him back but there’s nothing I have that he wants.”

Bailey makes a tsch sound. I used to hate that sound. “Seven bless, that sounds more like him.”

“Anyway, so I said that I’ve seen how he looks at my ass, and whenever he wants to stop lying, he should pin me and see where it goes.” There’s a rustling in the grass, and I turn my head to smirk at Bailey’s absolutely astonished face. It’s a fucking excellent astonished face, hits all of the right notes, hair frames it perfectly. “What? I was never exactly shy, and he was there, and I guess less of a weasel than I thought.”

“What was his deal, then? He kept… Amelie, he acted like he hated you, a pattern of behavior I am sadly familiar with.” I lean forward to kiss the frown off her face, and she kisses me back, but, alas, only briefly before pulling away. “Amy, dear, no dodging the question with kissing, delightful though you are.”

I grin at the mock sternness in her voice, or maybe it’s not mock, whatever. “He did hate me, at least a little. I, uh. How much do you know about his culture of origin?”

Bailey settles back onto her back, and I do the same, wrapping an arm around her to shift her head onto, well, more or less my pecs. “Not a great deal, owing to their distance,” she admits thoughtfully. “Politically complicated, worshippers of the Seven with their primary being Takeen. Socially very regimented, but with a robust safety net and stringent limits on inheritability of titles or money.”

“More’n I knew.” I chuckle softly, enjoying the weight of her on my chest. “Yafni attitudes on gender are pretty, uh, well, you used regimented, that’s a good word for it.”

“You are not telling me what I think you are. You dated that man for a year and a half? And you called me a bitch?”

“No, no, it’s not like that. You, like, choose, right? They’ve got, like, five genders and the expectation is you pick one and you fucking rock that gender. So if you’re going to present as a woman, you go to a shaper, it’s not like they’re going to charge you and it takes a while but that’s because—” I cut myself off, realizing that I had no reason to defend the fuckers, and didn’t particularly want to. “Whatever. Anyway.

“So he’s attracted to two out of five genders, and he’s got all these expectations about what you present as and how you behave, and what do you fucking know, he’s attracted to me and I just tell those rules to all go fuck themselves, right? So he hates that, and he hates me for it, but also he wants to,” and I turn a little to grin at Bailey and catch her eye, “show up in my room in the middle of the night, beat the fight out of me, tie me up, force-feed me his cock until I start dry-heaving, and then fuck my brains out and leave me a bruised, bound, cum-covered mess on my own floor.”

“Mother of beasts, Amy.” Bailey rolls her eyes and groans, flopping over onto her other side dramatically. She rolls back over, trying to hide her smirk and mostly failing. She’s also trying to hide her arousal, and failing at that, too. “No wonder you were so … affected when I broke your shoulder.”

“What, did you think it was you I was turned on by, Bails?” I scoff as hard as I can, which honestly isn’t all that impressive of a scoff. Bailey’s the hottest thing this side of the titanic orb of incandescent plasma the planet orbits, with a chest and ass that each have their own gravitational pull on my eyes, and it’s only been three days but it’s already hard to remember that I didn’t feel that way beforehand.

She responds by stretching in a way that pulls her tits up and makes my breath catch, which, okay, fair.

“So a… defeat kink?”

“More like conquest.”

“A conquest kink.” She slides a hand under my shirt, tracing my waist and hip. I’m transfixed by her touch, transfixed by the look of her as she leans over me, face furrowed in concentration, and I call tell she can tell. “And I have conquered you, haven’t I. My Amelie.”

There’s a sudden haziness to my thoughts, something that it takes me a moment to recognize for no reason other than the haze itself. It’s the haze that the Ritual left in its wake. It’s enervation, it’s a thousand hands holding me down, it’s a whisper that hits with the weight of a sledgehammer and says submit in words that threaten to bypass all my defenses.

I fought the Ritual, when I lost to Bailey, and it shattered me, as it does to anyone who winds up making that mistake; it’s not that it’s a sledgehammer, it uses exactly the necessary amount of force, it’s just that apparently even zeroed out that’s not a small thing, when someone doesn’t want to kneel. But there’s no fighting the Echoes that the Ritual leaves behind; you can’t put up barriers against something already inside you.

“Yeah, guess you fuckin’ did,” I manage to croak out through a suddenly-dry mouth. She raises an eyebrow at me, lifting her fingers off from my skin, and I hurriedly add a quiet “ma’am”.

“Better.” She purrs the word. “So, my little conquest, what should I do with you?” She has a finger to my lips, which has involved her throwing a leg over my stomach. “And don’t say anything or whatever you want or,” and her voice goes some mix of wry and dry, “fuck it, Bails, just pick…”

“... and make me want it,” I finish for her, barely managing to keep my voice level and sardonic in the face of wanting to crush her body into mine and cry tears of joy out of the sheer happiness that she remembered what I’d said to her, that night when we were drunk and settling old grudges and making new ones. “Was I wrong? Did you not mindfuck me into compliance? Twice. Ma’am.” The thought floods me, rages in my groin, tingles all the way down to my toes even as I float, even as my muscles are liquid and yielding underneath her. “Three times, now.”

“You said I would probably turn out to be my grandmother reborn,” she growls at me. She’s pissed off at the memory, she’s pissed off at the me who was in the memory, and since I’d still stand by what I said then I guess she’s pissed off at me. It feels great. “You said that there was no point in submitting your partial solution to Einhart’s Failed Conjecture because I don’t value math enough to even…” She trails off for a bit, while I bite back laughter and wait for her to remember my exact words. “Ah, yes. That I don’t value math enough to understand how the memory of excellence could be its own torture. You compared me to my grandmother and you found me wanting, Amelie.”

“I also, like, wrote a rhyming couplet that cast you as Tethyanne—”

“—who is a child molester, in specifically the play that used that form of her name, yes. And when I suggested that you recant, you—”

“—apologized,” I finish for her, smirking hugely, never more in love than in this moment, because I did and she took it and proved me wrong more thoroughly than I’d ever imagined, “for the slant-rhyme I put in there specifically so that when you called me on it, I could apologize for that like it was the only thing objectionable. Fuck, that was good.”

There’s a moment there where Bailey is poised between at least three different emotional states. Eventually, the superposition collapses and she drops her head onto my chest, laughing softly as I burn with triumph and joy. “Fuck’s sake, Amy,” she manages to choke out, uncharacteristically vulgar, “this was supposed to be a hot body-of-our-dreams talk. Way to kill the mood.”

“There, there.” I grin at her as she manages to pull together a glower, somehow getting enough presence of mind and willpower to raise ah and, stroking her hair. It’s amazing hair, and the way her glower slowly turns into a smile is fucking brilliant. “It was only killed for you, mistress.”

“Seriously, Amy.”

I’m drowning in her smile, settling further into the haze, feeling like every muscle is shedding every pound-force of tension. “Bails. How did I ever think you weren’t hot as fuck?”

“You were straight, Amelie.” Her smile broadens a little. “But you told me to change that, if I won. You told me a lot of things… how many of them have you forgotten?”

“Dunno.” I grin at her. “Do you know, that makes it hotter?”

“You said it would.”

“That’s… honestly, pretty fucking on the ball, if I was drunk enough to not remember saying it.”

“Mmmm.”

I’m drifting a little more than I was before. If I remember right, and this far gone I’m not sure I do, that means she’s doing something with the Echo she’s activated. “So, uh. What now?”

“It’s a little awkward.” Her voice wraps around me like the world’s comfiest blanket, slithers up and down my spine like it’s substituting itself for electric impulses. “Our conversation that evening failed to account for some decisions affecting others.”

“You made me gay, or, like, you made me you-sexual, which is basically universal, ‘cause of demons or whatever. Can’t tempt me to betray humanity if there’s nothing I love more than you.” I’m not exactly guessing; it’s been the rationale for more millenia than I give a shit about. “But you still have a type, and you want a hot Familiar for the, like, sex toy part of the deal.”

“It’s more of a conquest, really, rather than a deal.”

That turns the warm fuzzy feelings going up and down my body into more of an inferno. “Yeah,” I whisper. “It is.”

“I do like, love, your strengths, Amelie. I will never try to erase you, or those. I swear it. You have nothing to fear from submitting to me on that score; you never did.”

“Bails. Ma’am.” I open my eyes. I hadn’t even realized they were closed. “I’m yours. I have been since the first reversal; I just needed you to break me anyway. It wasn’t about you.”

“Thaumic Lance reweaves into Chillbite easily if you have the artistry. You were always fast, and your technique was always perfect, but you were too predictable. And you… weren’t, it’s… I… Amy, do you… is this…”

I close my eyes at that, feeling her fingers at my waist, her hips coming up to brush against mine. “Bailey.” I whisper it into the air, putting everything I have into it. I manage the barest hint of sardonic edge, but that’s all I was aiming for, I tell myself, and I know it’s a lie, but it’s also true. “You could have done anything to me, and you left me whole.” You begged, I think to myself, but that’s not something to say in the open air. “Just, y’know.

“Don’t make them the size of my head, okay? Even if you can fix the back pain.”

She laughs, Seven bless every step that’s led me to here and to her, and I can feel her laughter through the motion of her fingers at my sides; and everything is going to be rather better than okay.