subqtaneoussmut

[subqtaneoussmut]

Wistful, Chapter 2

I was rubbing my thighs together, staring dreamily with hooded eyes through the sun-pierced window of the train. I exhaled shakily as another delightful ripple of pleasure moved through me.

The window snapped into the darkness of a tunnel, and in the mirror-like glass I saw the man sitting across from me glance up, then back down to his laptop. I’d forgotten about him, immersed in my luscious memory. Mortified, I stopped the tiny, rhythmic squeezes and buried my attention in my phone screen, heart racing.

I wondered if he suspected me of—my mind searched for words for what I had been doing and I slunk deeper down in the comfy train seat, face hot. If he looked up now, and saw my face this scarlet, he would have to wonder. I looked out the window again, and tried to plunge my brain into the fresh glinting water of the river. Don’t think about anything sexy, don’t think about anything sexy. Crows. Trees.

Flora had another rehearsal, after rehearsal. Yara and May had evening classes. Technically so did Natalie, but she was definitely skipping it, because she and Faith were standing on the stoop of our building. Natalie was getting her keys out, Faith was rustling through her bag, I was standing nervously a step below them both.

They had been waiting for me outside of my last class, one falling in on either side of me. In the crush of the subway, I’d stayed obediently close, anticipation growing inside of me, my breath quick and shallow.

The scene in the bathroom had been replaying itself in my head all day, making concentration impossible. Every step I took with my two friends felt like a step closer to something that made my knees weak and shaky with desire and nerves.

Nat got the door open and led us both up the familiar seven flights of stairs to her apartment. I knew her mom wouldn’t be home from work for hours. We went in and just as we always did, hung our bags in the coat closet and went straight to Natalie’s room.

Natalie sat on her bed, smirking at me. Faith turned and stood, looking at me with narrowed, appraising eyes. I stood with my back to the door and waited for them to tell me what to do, my pulse racing, my breath coming in little pants.

“Maddy,” Natalie said, and my attention fastened onto her like I was thirst and she was water. “Tell us, right now. What do you want?”

“I—What?” I said, a little stupidly.

“Tell us what you want to happen here.”

My mind was a hot muddle. I opened my mouth, then closed it. What did I want? My body was a hurricane of sensation, of thrumming nerve endings. There were vortexes of anticipation storming under my skin. I was crackling with forbidden hopes and suppressed longings. I felt like I had been led to the edge of a precipice that I had no words for, then had a pop-quiz sprung on me. I was seized with sudden doubt. What if what I thought was happening wasn’t actually happening?

“I—I want you t-to—” I stammered, then trailed off, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

“She’s so cute when she’s flustered,” said Faith to Natalie, not taking her eyes off me, with a little smirk.

I flushed red for the umpteenth time that day.

“Maybe,” responded Natalie, “she can’t tell us what she wants because it’s too much for her empty, pretty, little head.”

A warm shiver rippled from my ears to my toes, and I let out a shallow breath that was almost a pant. How could something so demeaning feel so good? Why was I like this?

There was an unmistakable glint in her eye as she saw the effect her words had on me. “Is that what it is, Maddy?”

What had she even asked me? I managed a plaintive nod.

“Here’s what I think you want, Maddy,” said Natalie, saying each word carefully. My heart was thudding almost painfully hard in my ribs. “I think you want to come over here.”

I took a stumbling step towards the bed before Natalie held up her hand.

“Not like that.” Natalie’s green eyes glittered. “I think you want to do it on your knees, don’t you Maddy?”

I sank down immediately, so quickly that Faith and Natalie laughed at my eagerness. My face burned.

“Well, then?” Natalie said archly.

I closed my eyes, my breath coming in rapid, little gasps. Then I began to crawl.

The train raced through another tunnel of abrupt darkness, before flying again into the sunlight. I squirmed in my seat. Even without checking, I could tell that the gusset of my panties was soaked through.

I crawled towards the bed on my hands and knees, my body spreading with soft, luscious, feathery waves of heat, my mind melting. It only took a few movements to cross the small bedroom, but felt like it took forever.

Natalie watched me from the bed. Faith looked down at me from where she leaned against the dresser. I felt the almost physical heat of their gazes on my body. I came to a stop, on my knees, directly in front of Natalie’s crossed legs. My eyes were lowered. It took a long time to raise them to the level of hers.

She looked at me hungrily. “Strip.”

I was in no state to tease. I almost tangled myself in my own hair in my eagerness to shuck my tank top and bra. I hooked my thumbs in the waistband of my skirt and, rising, I dropped it and my panties at the same time.

Natalie patted her thigh. “Come up here and put that cute ass over my lap.”

As soon as I stepped closer, she seized me by the hair, close to my head. Immediately, I went weak in the knees, like a puppet with its strings cut. She easily drew me towards her and maneuvered me by the head to lay down lengthwise across her lap, so that my face was in the duvet cover.

I was trembling with excitement as she handled me, hyper-aware of the power dynamic created by my nakedness, in contrast to my two fully clothed friends. The tightness of her grip had the reverse effect on my body—I melted, became endlessly pliable.

Natalie didn’t let go of my hair, but she did let me turn my head so that only half my face was muffled by the bed. I sighed as she traced her nails lightly down one of my butt cheeks and up the other, then squeaked as she spanked each one a few times, playfully.

All I could see in my whole field of vision was the duvet cover, and Faith, who had approached and knelt down by the edge of the bed, close to my face. She caught and held my gaze just as Natalie’s spanking hand crept between my legs. Faith looked me over quite smugly as Natalie stroked my pussy lips. I mewled, then blushed furiously.

“She’s soaking my lap,” Natalie remarked to Faith, and my face heated even more.

Tightening the fist in my hair, Natalie yanked my head back and sank her finger into me. I quaked and moaned, then whined as it withdrew. Faith and Natalie giggled at me.

“Look, she can’t even help herself.”

I gasped as Natalie’s finger dipped back into me and curled in a ‘come hither’ motion. My eyelids fluttered heavily as waves of mind-blanketing pleasure rolled through me. Faith was leaning in, her hungry eyes searching my face.

All my thoughts seemed to be suspended in thick, warm honey. Natalie’s finger withdrew again and I arched my back and tried to follow it with my hips. I trembled, my ass lifted off her lap and extended as far as I could. I felt her fingers just barely teasing my lower lips and whined again.

Natalie adjusted her grip in my hair. “Use your words, Maddy. Ask for what you want.”

Like a mouse hypnotized by a cat, I watched the tip of Faith’s tongue swirl out and wet her lips.

“Y-your, ah,” I panted, “finger, ple-mm!”

Faith leaned down and her mouth captured mine. I closed my eyes and moaned as her tongue slid into me and swirled around. My eyes flew open again as Natalie’s finger dipped into me again, and I shuddered.

As Faith plundered my mouth and I twitched on Natalie’s fingers, I sank further and further into a deep, blissfully submissive undertow. The moans and whimpers they were coaxing out of me had turned my face a permanent shade of dark red.

One of Faith’s hands was teasing my ear lobe and the other was grasping my chin. She started to pull her mouth away and I watched, gasping, as she smirked at me and wiped her lips.

“It’s so fun to play with you, Maddy. Are you enjoying yourself?”

I nodded breathlessly.

“Good girl.”

I shivered with pleasure.

Faith reached back, grabbed a handful of my ass and squeezed. She watched my mouth make a silent O. Natalie was back to tracing my labia with the barest tips of her fingers.

“You like that, huh?” Faith let go and smacked the same cheek.

I arched, blushing.

“Answer me, slut. You like it when I play with this, don’t you? ” Faith spanked my other cheek, harder.

“Yes,” I gasped. All the hot blood in my face was making it so hard to think, to talk. “I—ah!”

She began to alternate, back and forth, swatting each pert globe and watching it jiggle. “You have suuuch an ass, Maddy.”

I squeaked and shook. A hot glow was building back there. My cunt was beginning to pulse along with the aching heat in my bottom.

Each of Natalie’s little teasing swipes on my labia felt ten times more sensitive. I squirmed on her lap, my feet kicking a little with each spank, my hips pulsing as I tried to hump my pussy just a little more against Natalie’s fingers.

Faith stopped spanking me and sat back on her haunches, eyes glittering as she watched my hips jerk and slip over Natalie’s thighs.

“Look at her, she’s desperate to come.”

“Yeah, I can’t believe how much she’s dripping. I should have laid a towel down under her. Can you grab that one hanging on the door?”

I knew my face was bright, bright red as I listened to them talking about me like this. My eyes were glazed and heavy-lidded with arousal.

“Oh, and can you grab the things from my desk? Thanks.” Natalie jerked my head and murmured, “Eyes closed, slut.”

I shut them obediently, my breath coming fast and shallow. There were some sounds, then—

“Okay Maddy, take a deep breath and relax.” Natalie released her grip on my hair.

I felt something small and hard and plastic at the entrance of my pussy—a bullet vibrator. I was so wet that it slid into me easily.

Faith stroked my head gently and I leaned into her caresses. “That’s a good girl,” she whispered breathily into my ear. She leaned back a bit and I blinked my eyes open to see her grin at me and hold something up. What was it? I tried fuzzily to focus. A small, plastic...remote control. She clicked it and—

I squeaked and jumped a little as it sprang to life inside me. Then I felt Natalie gathering my hair away from my neck. I moaned as I felt a cool strap circle my throat and snug tight. It was a collar. I melted. The buckle snapped.

I whimpered and pulsed my hips as the vibrations kicked up another notch. Then Natalie was gathering my wrists behind my back. I felt her cuff one, then the other. I watched with glazed eyes as Faith reached for the front of my collar. She jerked the metal ring on the front, and my breath caught as she snapped a leash on it.

Faith walked out of my field of vision and then they were both pulling me up, off Natalie’s lap. I knelt on the bed, my wrists cuffed behind me, my thighs sheening with my juices, red-faced and panting. Natalie got up and, looking at me smugly, wiped the tops of her thighs with a towel before laying it down on the bed.

Then Faith came back and sat down at the head of the bed, facing me, wearing only a crop-top. She spread her legs to reveal her delicately spreading flower, covered in dew-speckled, dark curls. I licked my lips involuntarily. Just as I realized she was still holding the end of the leash that was attached to my collar, she pulled, and I squeaked as I slowly toppled onto my face.

Natalie and Faith both laughed. My mouth was watering. I wanted to taste Faith’s pussy but there was no way I could reach. Natalie took mercy and helped me wriggle the short distance forward, and propped a few small pillows under my shoulders and neck so I was more comfortable.

The vibrator inside me had begun purring to a new rhythm. I was grinding my hips into the bed, seeking any little bit of friction I could get. I looked pleadingly at Faith for permission.

She smirked. “See something you want, Maddy?”

“Yes, please,” I panted. “I want to lick you, please.”

“Lick me then, slut.” She yanked the leash and I delved in eagerly. I sucked and licked and lapped, trying desperately to drink her juices. I felt like a thirst-crazed, pussy-worshipping fanatic.

“Woah there, girl, slow down.” I obeyed, blushing. “Don’t tire yourself out too quickly.”

The vibrator hummed inside me and I continued to soak the towel.

Natalie positioned herself alongside me and began teasing me again, all over my body. For a few minutes she would reach under me to twist and toy with one of my nipples, and then she would be spanking me, and then she would be stroking my head as I licked and drank Faith’s nectar.

I lost track of time. The vibrator kept me at a long, slow simmer. Faith’s sharp inhales and moans were music to my ears. I was glad she had slowed me down, because my tongue stamina was clearly not infinite. I began using my stronger neck muscles to move the flat of my tongue around.

Finally, Faith stopped me. She looked up at Natalie. “Do you want a turn?”

Natalie pinched my nipple and I gasped. “Yes, but I want to ride her face.”

[subqtaneoussmut]

Wistful, Chapter One

The sun glinted and dazzled off the river through the train window, and I blinked and took a break from looking at the green river valley sliding past. I had been lucky to find a seat in a mostly quiet cabin, with only a few people wandering through.

I glanced at my reflection in the window from the corner of my eye and a giddy tingly wave shot from the bottoms of my feet up my spine. I shivered as it reached the back of my neck and swirled to fill my whole body. This is gender euphoria, I marveled for the millionth time. This is what it feels like.

The reflection showed a dark-haired girl, wearing a black lace choker but dressed—somewhat incongruously—in a blazer, over a clingy graphic tee shirt. The soundtrack was wistful pixie dreamgirl Indy. My hands went up to my headphones, and I gave my best cute swoon, fluttering my eyelids so I could watch myself do it.

“Excuse me Miss?”

Blushing at being caught in the middle of making a kissy face at my own reflection, I peeked up through my bangs at the tall stranger. Fashionable tweed, salt and pepper hair, expressive eyes.

“Do you mind if I sit across from you?”

I opened my mouth, closed it again and then made a sort of permissive shrug. The man put down his shoulderbag and took out a book. I turned to watch both our reflections in the window. The quieter I was, the less people seemed to clock me as trans, so I usually let my friends do the talking.

At the thought of the swarm of friends I was leaving behind in the city, my insides tightened. I missed them already. Sitting together on the library steps in the sun, listening to music together on the floor of my girlfriend’s room, going to the museum as a giggling pack in the winter. And, most of all, going to our dance classes together.

I knew I had lucked out. I’d been the only trans girl in the modern dance program at my school, and I knew I wouldn’t have found the courage to get on hormones that early and come out there without the unconditional inclusion and support I’d gotten from my friends in the program. And then, after high school, we’d all applied and gotten in to the same college dance program. It had been a dream come true, even though I’d deferred a semester to get bottom surgery. I squirmed in my seat and flushed a bit, remembering how all my girlfriends crowded into the bathroom on my first day as a new dance student and clamored for me to show them my new pussy.

I was blushing beet red, leaning on the bathroom sink, facing the mirror. I had picked a pleated short skirt that showed off my legs and I was beginning to regret how accessible it made my coochie.

“Maddy,” my friend Flora pleaded from over my shoulder, “you clearly don’t understand how thirsty—I mean happy we are for you...to show us! We’re literally dyingggg over here.”

There was a chorus of agreement from the others.

“Maddy,” she repeated, “I haven’t looked forward so much to anything else in weeeeks. Maddy. Maddy. Maddy.”

“What?” I muttered, my face hot. Flora had a flair for the dramatic. Big theater queen vibes. She could always get anything she wanted from me, eventually.

“Are you really going to leave us, lost and wandering, in this thick, thick pussyfog?”

“I-I don’t know, what if someone comes in?” I protested weakly.

“What if someone comes in! You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, girl! Rooftops exist for a--”

“Flora!” I sputtered.

“Okay, just kidding. My bestie Quinn is watching the door from out in the hall. We’ve got you fully covered, don’t we girls?”

Cue: another storm of pleading and encouragement.

I turned to face them all and opened my mouth and—hesitated.

“Listen girls,” Natalie pushed her way to the front of the pack. “I think I know exactly what kind of push little Madeline needs here.”

Her eyes glinted with a light that usually meant trouble. I swallowed. Natalie and I had grown up in the same apartment building, and gone to the same dance classes since before either of us could remember (we had pictures). She was my oldest friend, and had always been my staunchest ally when it came to being included. She had always gone to bat hard for me when it came to my pronouns, interrupting and insisting (even with teachers) whenever people misgendered me, especially in the early, painfully awkward stages of my transition.

She also delighted in teasing me, bossing me around, finding ways to make me blush, and reminding me in ten thousand little ways that she was taller, stronger and smarter. The whole time I’d known her, for example, she was always finding excuses to jump on me and pin me to the ground. The truth was, I secretly loved it. It had been the first ever way I’d found to manage my dysphoria, my first enticing taste of gender affirmation. Or maybe my first hint that I was lesbian? Whatever it was, I’d always been a willing participant in the dynamic. It was our schtick, our thing and we both clearly enjoyed it—which was a source of endless hilarity to our friends. When they teased me for it, Natalie would smirk and my cheeks would heat and somehow it never went much farther than that.

Until it did.

Reflexively I tried to take a step back into the edge of the sink, but Natalie only folded her arms and cocked her head, looking at me.

“Maddy,” she said matter-of-factly, “I know this is your first day of college, and we’ve all been here a semester already, and you’re probably feeling overwhelmed right now, so I’m going to make this easy for you. Either leave all these girls disappointed and trying to peek up your skirt for the rest of the week…”

There were a few groans, some laughter and few catcalls. She paused for dramatic effect, a superior little smile playing over her lips.

“...Or give me your panties, right now.”

My eyes widened at the bald command and my pulse begin to race. My body was already reacting to being ordered, even as I briefly considered just leaving. Why was she making this into a thing? She’d been visiting me throughout my recovery, and I knew she had already seen me naked countless times. But that universe, the universe in which I walked decisively past Natalie, through the group, and out the swinging door was a rapidly shrinking bubble in the rearview mirror.

Natalie watched me give an involuntary shiver. I could tell she already knew she had won, she was just enjoying watching me give in.

The room was still. Nobody moved, nobody breathed as every eye watched me reach down and hook my thumbs into my panties, slide smoothly them down my legs and step carefully out of them. I looked up to see Natalie holding out her hand expectantly. Her eyes locked with mine. My head raced. My hand balled my panties into a fist.

This didn’t seem necessary, did it? What was the point of giving her my underwear? Was this one of her games to remind everyone that she had me wrapped around her finger? Or did she just want to embarrass me, pure and simple? I almost opened my mouth to say something, but the lick of cool air against my lower lips brought home to me just how turned on I was, and I just licked my lips nervously. The pulse of heat between my legs made the decision for me.

“Maddy.” Natalie raised her eyebrows and made a come-hither motion.

I took a deep breath and felt my face get even hotter. My hand trembled a bit as I held out the scrunched-up lacy white panties I had just taken off…because she told me to, I thought, and shivered again.

She made a show of pocketing them, with a wicked smile at me. I squirmed. At this point we both knew I would do anything she told me to do. If she wanted to tease me by withholding my fricking underwear on my first day of college, she would, and I knew that she would never back down in front of a crowd if I tried to change her mind.

“Goood girl,” she smirked, and my heart fluttered at the gender affirmation, while simultaneously the heat between my legs flared at being treated this way in front of everyone. I drew a shaky breath. Natalie knew every one of my buttons and how to push them in just the right combination. If I hadn’t trusted her so completely, and had such deep history with these friends, I probably would be freaked out by all this, but I just felt excited and breathless.

“What a cute little skirt.” Natalie arched an eyebrow. “Lift it.”

Her seaglass-green eyes danced with mischief and challenge. I stared into them, entranced. My hands moved slowly, automatically to the edge of my skirt. As I lifted it, there was a chorus of cheers and gasps and oohs. I wanted to pull my gaze away from hers, but I couldn’t. I stood there, blushing hotter and redder than I’d ever thought possible, looking ridiculous as I held the front of my skirt up above my waist and showed everyone my bare mound and light, curly fuzz. Natalie finally released my gaze and looked herself. I closed my eyes and tilted my head slightly back, praying my arousal wasn’t visible to everyone.

“Now, now Maddy,” I heard Natalie say slowly, and my eyes shot open. “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s not what we’ve been waiting patiently here for twenty minutes to see.”

My breath caught.

“Lift your leg on that sink, and show us your cunt.”

Oh.

Oh. My pussy clenched with arousal at the thought, even as my mind buckled at the humiliation.

I knew I was wet. If I did this, my lower lips were going to spread open and everyone would see my glistening arousal. Did Natalie know that? She had to. I’d been so, so happy that I could produce pussy juice after surgery that I hadn’t been able to shut up about it. It came out of my urethra, not my actual vaginal canal, but why split hairs? When I was horny, I gushed more than most cis girls, and that was just awesome.

As she held my gaze with hers, Natalie turned her head and began whispering something in May’s ear. I was hesitating too much already. If I had just done what she’d said at the beginning, I could have done it laughingly, coquettishly, teasingly. But now there was no way to pass this off as a joke anymore. If I did this, it would be fully seen as what it was: a drenched, exhibitionist slut getting off on being ordered around.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I reached one hand back towards the edge of the sink. Flushing brightly, I raised my courage and glanced up at the faces around me. All my friends were watching, wide-eyed, with bated breath. I saw Flora’s excitement, Yara’s raised eyebrows, Faith’s entranced hunger, and Natalie’s wolfish smile. Despite the heat in my face, looking around brought a new surge of courage. I shrugged, rolled my eyes, and raised my leg, bent at the knees to place my foot on the sink beside me, to a long collective “Ooooooo” as everyone released the breath they’d been holding. Flora burst out clapping. Yara gave a laconic, impressed nod.

I desperately wanted to look down, to see if my pussy actually looked the way it felt. But my mind and my skin were racing with hot tingles and I felt strangely reluctant to move. I swallowed loudly. Everyone crowded closer and crouched down to inspect my new pussy, making many little sounds of appreciation. Then:

“This, is a porn-star pussy,” declared Yara.

“Oh my god, you’re right! That’s exactly what it is!”

“Totally.”

“The surgeon was a cis guy, right?”

Yara looked up at me, “I mean, Maddy, don’t get me wrong. I’m so jealous. This is the most symmetrical, neat, little cunt I’ve ever seen.” She winked at me and I squirmed a little, cheeks burning.

“Maddy, honey, she’s beautiful,” Flora chimed in.

Hardly daring to relax, I watched Natalie’s gaze flick from my pussy to my face and back. Oh god, was she going to—

“Hmm, Maddy, you seem a little...hot down here.”

My heart was beating so hard. Natalie stood up and leaned in close to my ear. I could feel her breath on my skin. Her next words were soft enough that I hoped, momentarily, that nobody else heard them.

“Is it possible that, perhaps, you like being told what to do?”

My leg was up on the edge of the sink, my pussy split wide open in front of everyone’s eyes. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, in response, but my mind blanked and I merely made an audible panting sound. Natalie giggled at me, and I felt my pussy spasm in response.

“Wow,” gasped Flora, “her pussy just pulsed. Damn, that was hot.”

“Do it again, Natalie!”

My face was burning hotter than I thought was possible.

“Well?” Natalie said archly, “Answer me, you little slut.”

I closed my eyes and mewed, my cunt clenching again as her words ripped through my core.

There was a low whistle and some more gasps from between my legs. I was so turned on. I tried to remind myself that if—and that was a big ‘if’—I wanted to stop this, all I had to do was lower my leg and my skirt.

Instead, I nodded. I could feel Natalie’s smug superiority radiating off her like warmth.

“Say it.”

My knees weakened. “Yes, yes I like it,” I panted. “I like being told what to do.”

Faith leaned on the sink and stared hungrily at me, like a cat. “You guys,” she whispered, “This is so fucking hot. What should we do with her?”

Flora stood up and grinned at me. “I wanna put a collar on her, and walk her around on a leash. She’d look so cute on a leash. How would you look on a leash, Maddy?”

My heart thudded faster. “Cute,” I breathed.

Flora licked her lips and winked at me. “Good girl.”

Yara stood as well and shrugged, glancing at her watch. “Well, it’ll have to wait. We’ve all got rehearsal.”

Natalie nodded for me to drop my leg and my skirt.

“C-can I have my panties back now?” I mumbled.

She smirked, and turned to a mirror next to me, making a show of checking her hair.

My eyes widened. “Oh, no, please, Natalie, you can’t. Please, no, don’t make me go to class without panties. Natalie, please, this skirt is so short, please.”

The others had started to gather themselves to leave, but I could feel them pausing to watch. Natalie glanced at me, a familiar smile playing on her lips. I exhaled in relief. This was old, familiar ground, finally. She loved holding things over me, making me beg, and everyone here knew I secretly loved it too. She held out my balled-up panties, and I took them, grabbing her arm for support as I stood on one leg, then the other to slide them back up my legs. The other girls were in high bantering form.

“So is it an open secret that the doctors are just giving girls whatever pussy they saw on pornhub last night?”

“Oh my gawd, that just says so much about men.”

“Mine’s like a second-wave feminist’s face, like just a bowl cut with a big mole on her lip or something.”

“Same, tbh.”

“Weird flex, but okay.”

“All. Cunts. Are. Beautiful!”

“ACAB!”

“Wow.”

“Wow. You did that.”

“Good job.”

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter 29

A bell, tolling dully.

I woke abruptly and sat bolt upright. The gray light of dawn. The bell had fallen silent. How many times had it pealed? I looked up at the tiny slit window above me, trying to gauge the hour. Was I late to—

No, no. I slumped in relief. A memory flooded back of Jaques, scheduling me for a later shift today. But there had been something—

I stiffened again. Mila! She’d been expecting me to visit yesterday, and I hadn’t. Instead, I had stumbled back to my sleeping cell after visiting Aralia last night, feeling weak-kneed and wrung-out, and sunk into a dark, dreamless sea of sleep.

I scrambled out of bed and slipped into a clean set of clothes. The amount of laundry I had accumulated in only two days would have been intimidating for a poor student, but if there were an unexpected perk to having no clothes of my own, only staff uniforms, free laundry was it.

My face heated, thinking of the mess I’d made in my underwear last night.

Aralia’s raised eyebrows, the astonished delight in her eyes at the sloppy sound my pussy made as I’d peeled myself off her. The wet patch on her trouser leg.

I shuddered a little, melting all over again as I remembered how she’d looked over my red-faced mortification with a satisfied smirk.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, my breast welling with giddy relief and elation. I had found entirely unexpected allies, here. I had faced Aralia Cordivar and she’d promised me protection, and then seduced me.

Not that I was complaining. I shook my head, still unable to believe that any of this was really happening. And Mila and Roxa…oh, right. I needed to get going.

I lurched out into the basement corridor and headed for the third floor, taking the long way around Jaques’ office so as to avoid the bustle of shift change. It was still so early that the hallways were completely empty and I was able to make it to Mila’s door without seeing a soul.

Roxa opened at my tapping. My eyes widened and I felt blood rushing to my face at her advanced state of undress, even as she reached out, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me inside.

“Good morning,” she winked into my wide-eyed blush, before turning and muttering something under her breath at the door that made a ward flash. “I was just warming up.”

“Hi Ellie! Come over here, sit down. Do you want tea?” Mila jumped up from the couch to start the kettle.

“Yes, thank you!” A smile slipped out of me like a bubble. “Hi.”

I sat, nervously smoothing my dress over my knees. Roxa went into a low stretching lunge and I tried not to stare.

“I’m glad you came!” Mila chirped, balancing a mug of steaming tea on the armrest for Roxa, handing me another, and sitting down with a third one for herself.

We both sipped and idly watched Roxa limber up, as lithe and nonchalant as a big cat.

“How have your last couple days been?” Mila asked.

“I’ve been working hard,” I said honestly, showing her a few blisters and raw spots on my hands. “But everyone has been really sweet to me so far.” I couldn’t help my lips from curving happily as I said it.

“I’m going sprinting,” Roxa announced, shrugging into some more modest garb. “See you in a bit, my sweet little dumplings.” A wink and a grin.

Mila rolled her eyes and waved, as the door closed.

I coughed to cover my flush. Being called a sweet little dumpling by anyone at all was something I was still woefully unprepared for. “How about you?”

Mila sighed and I watched the serious little frown line between her eyebrows furrow. “Troubled. We’ve made a very powerful enemy here, one I think we should warn you about.” She hesitated. “Her name is Penelope Caul, and she’s the House Prefect here. Have you heard of her?”

I blanched and nodded. Even before Jaques’ warning, I’d known of the Stormcroft Prefect. Mila watched me carefully.

“What have you heard?”

I sucked a deep breath. “She’s very popular. I’ve heard the way the other boys—um.” I stumbled and tripped over my slip, instantly regretting it. My face heated rapidly, my gaze dropped to my lap. Shame battered down the doors of my heart and flooded in, caustic and burning. I silently winced, cursing myself, and tried to recover. “I mean, I’ve heard the way boys talk about her.”

Mila must have noticed my slip, how could she not? It had been so thoughtless, so clumsily automatic, so stupid of me. Of course she would discount me as a girl, now.I had just discounted myself. Self-loathing boiled in my stomach.

Mila’s slim hand slipped around mine and squeezed. “Ellie,” she said patiently. “You’re very obviously not a boy. Just so you know.”

I glanced up, eyes and heart widening with stunned gratitude. “Really?”

She nodded firmly. “Listen, to be perfectly honest, I honed in on you the minute I first saw you, in the courtyard outside the dining hall.”

I stared at her, slack-jawed. “You remember that?”

Mila snorted. “Of course I remember that! You were such a shy little hatchling, then.” Her smile glowed in the soft light. “Seeing you now, in this form, fills me up with so much joy and wonder I could sing.” She shook her head appreciatively. “What you’ve done is so brilliant, and so brave. In my city of Opali, there are many, many tea girls—those you call kuffa here—and all of them would be so proud of you.”

“Me?” I squeaked, blushing. “But I-I don’t know what I’mdoing?”

And what’s more, I wanted to blurt, I was so...broken. So complicit and so….infiltrated by the doctrines of social hygiene—for so, so, so long I’d hidden and suppressed myself just the way they’d intended, and I couldn’t bear the toxic shame and self-loathing they still held me hostage with.

Mila waved away my concern. “And yet,” she grinned. “You did do it! Look at you!” She laughed in astonished delight, as if I’d played a trick on the world and gotten away with it.

I felt doubly flustered. This girl that I’d had a massive crush on for so many months was telling me such sweet things and she’d just told me about others who were like me, and yet not like me—kuffa that had never been poisoned by social hygiene, never had the sanitary doctrine of Man and Woman stuffed down their throats. She’d said they would be proud of me—for what, I couldn’t imagine. Still, a small, secret glow lit up in my breast.

“Mila, please, tell me about the tea girls,” I begged. I was about to say more when Mila looked at me with such sudden, naked regret on her face that I hesitated.

“I-I wish I could tell you more, Ellie.” She paused, and bit her lip. Her liquid dark eyes ached. “Perhaps you can meet them yourself, one day.”

“Go to Opali, you mean?” I felt immediately enchanted by the idea. “Yes! I mean, that would be...wonderful!”

She smiled at me, a little sadly. “I would love to bring you there, and share my home with you. You would be so welcome to stay with me.”

My heart soared. “And I wouldn’t have to hide, there?” I tried to imagine such a place.

“Stealth was—” Mila hesitated fractionally. “To an Opali tea girl, it would be unimaginable. Not to be witnessed by all of your people, as you choose to become yourself…?” She shook her head. “It must have been so hard for you, here, forced to be only what they wanted you to be. As if you were a block of wood for the carving, with no need to blossom.”

I made a small, stunned noise, from a throat so tight it ached. Having that acknowledged was stirring an intense surge of grief, building pressure right at my vocal cords, trying to get out. But I had just cried and snotted all over Mila’s shirt the day before and I flinched at the idea of putting even more onto her—I desperately didn’t want to drive her away.

Mila saw my face. “Oh, shit, Ellie. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring all that up for you.”

“No, it’s true.” I took a deep breath and shook my head. “I think I...might have left them behind. Everyone, I mean.” My voice trembled like an over-tightened wire and I almost couldn’t get the words out. “From my, um, life.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as an exquisite wave of alarmed loneliness soaked deep into me. “I cut them away,” I said miserably, almost choking.

“Ellie,” Mila said gently, “come here.”

I let her pull me in, and didn’t resist as she guided my head into her lap. The hot tears came then. I felt her stroking my hair gently as I shook.

“You must remember that you are blameless,” Mila murmured. “The fault lies squarely upon the whole apparatus of social hygiene.” She hesitated, then added, “Mourn what that has cost you, rage at what they have done to you, but never compromise your own becoming.”

My body clenched harder and harder, my heart wringing itself like a sponge, my mind washing up on the shores of a vast grief. Inside, though, I was loosening—and in the intimate presence of another girl’s witness, for what felt like the first time in my life. I felt so open to her, so vulnerable.

A leap of sudden clarity raced through me, a random wisp of thought about alchemical unbinding—the encounter of something fixed or stuck or rigid with a mysterious matrix of possibility, a field of transformation that could be sought out and coaxed into tipping over, until thing-ness was turned into else-ness.

The sense it made rang inside me like a clear bell chime.

The calcified constellation of pain, knotted memory and contorted armor inside of me softened infinitesimally, becoming just a bit more pliable, opening—

“You are not alone anymore, okay?” Mila brushed her fingers softly through my hair.

I stared up at her through red-rimmed eyes, shivering, her words imprinting on my raw nerves as if they were being etched there by an powerful solvent, instead of sound and air.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” she added, and the waters surged up in me again, so that I squeezed my eyes shut to keep even more tears from spilling out.

Who the fuck was this girl? How was she able to see inside me this way? Usually being perceived at all by another person made me stiffen inside and subconsciously writhe away, but this? This was like drinking pure validation and acknowledgment from a source that my unthinking bones felt to be safe.

It was so tempting to let it in, to believe her, but my shame gathered an instant counterattack—she didn’t understand how bad I actually was—how hopelessly poisoned. She couldn’t hear the awful, terrible thoughts that whispered in my head. No, this support she was offering wasn’t for me—couldn’t be for me. I knew I didn’t deserve it.

I pulled myself back up and swiped the tears away with the backs of my hands, sniffling. “Thank you. But—the tea girls wouldn’t be proud of me, Mila. They couldn’t be—the junk I’ve absorbed, growing up here—it’s in me, in a way that isn’t safe to be around. I would just bring it with me.”

She watched me, dark eyes steadily tracking my face.

I swallowed. How could I make her understand? “My roommate, he was treating me the worst ways that boys treat girls, on purpose, because he—he could tell I wanted that. I actually liked being treated like that by him—I couldn’t stop wanting it. I still can’t.” I flushed and looked down at my lap. “I think there might be something really broken and wrong inside me.”

Mila slipped an arm around me, and I exhaled, a-tremble with relief that she still wanted to touch me.

“I know exactly what you mean when you say you’re afraid there’s something wrong inside you,” she whispered seriously. Her eyes pulsed with a soft power that drew my attention like a lodestone. “But I promise you that having a desire for sex, even wanting to be a very particular way during sex, is not something that can be wrong with you.”

I drew a breath to protest, but she shushed me with soft finger on my lips. “Girl, no. Listen to me. Sex can be a way to take the fangs and claws away from something that hurts, a way to turn something that wastoo much or that was far too lonely into something exciting, instead. It’s an important way to survive, and heal. It’s a kind of agency we have, not a shameful thing at all.”

We. She’d said we and that implicit extension of belonging calmed my thrashing loneliness more than anything else. I exhaled a long, loosening breath and tentatively nodded at her. My mind was a-swirl with meanings that were all rich and strange and new, but I had no idea how to make any of it sensible.

Mila’s face softened as she watched me visibly struggle to process everything. “Don’t try too hard to wrap your pretty little head around it all at once,” she said, winking.

I twitched and grinned shyly back at her as a little jolt of pleasure forked through me. “Okay,” I breathed, sinking back into the cushions.

Mila lifted her arm and went back to softly stroking my hair, for which I was almost overcome by helpless gratitude.

I hung onto her warm eye contact as if it were a life raft, and just rode the waves of feeling. With each smooth petting sensation, there was another tiny shift of energy in my heart, as if another fragment was returning, reattaching, clicking into place. You make perfect sense to me, whispered the vernal pools of her eyes, and I sighed again, exhaling in relief, as her gentle, rhythmic touches slowly pieced me back together into an internal coherence.

When Roxa came panting back, we were sunk in a kind of languid cuddle together, with Mila’s legs laid across my lap, and her hand tracing lazy pattern in my hair. Roxa smirked at us as she began to stretch, and I smiled squishily back.

“So, this is maybe the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said, going into a long lunge with her hands on her hips.

“Thanks, we’ve been practicing,” I answered cheekily, surprising myself.

“Ha! And she talks back, too. So. Not just a pretty face, hm?”

I floundered for a witty retort, but—

“Let’s not make that big of an assumption, just yet,” smirked Mila, raising an eyebrow at me.

I blinked, a smile breaking onto my face. She was teasing me, and I found that I absolutely loved it.

Roxa switched up her lunge and winked at me. “I was afraid that I’d ruined my chances with you by coming off as too intimidating.”

I flushed in pleasure at the suggestion that Roxa wanted a chance at anything with me, tried to push down my rabid imagination about what that would look like, and attempted to summon something halfway coherent to respond with, all at the same time.

“Doesn’t seem that way at all, does it?” observed Mila dryly.

“So tell me this, was I too rough with you, the first time we met?” Roxa’s eyes glittered. “Or not rough enough?” That fox grin.

I was flooded with the memory of Roxa grabbing my neck, over the stockroom counter, and felt myself go beet-red. “No, you were fine, it was fine!” I said, too quickly. “I mean, um—”

“Oh, so just the right amount of rough?” asked Roxa innocently. “I hit that sweet spot for you?”

A flutter of heat in my pelvis. My eyes widened as I realized I hadn’t taken the hepatic this morning. “I—um, y-yes...” I stammered, and trailed off, blushing under Roxa’s lingering stare.

Mila looked back and forth between us, one side of her mouth crooked in a half-smile.

“If you want, we can try that part where I grab you by the throat again,” offered Roxa, looking gleeful at this new opportunity to tease. “I’ve been practicing more lately,” she said, eyeing Mila meaningfully.

Mila stuck her tongue out at Roxa, and turned to me. “She’s an unrepentant brag. You just have to give as good as you get with her.”

Roxa arched an eyebrow at Mila, a slight hint of danger contained therein.

“Buut what if I like it so much that I just go limp and unconscious all over again?” I offered, smiling shyly at Roxa. I wasn’t at all used to this level of openness around sex, but I’d grown up with an older sister who was a born prankster, and I was starting to relax into the teasing banter.

Roxa burst out laughing. Mila looked interested.

“Um, cute,” chortled Roxa. “That was me, though? I knocked you out. With sorcery. Remember?”

“Ellie,” said Mila slowly, “Did you just make a joke?”

I shrugged happily. “Yes?”

Their delighted giggles bubbled over and I lowered my eyes, cheeks glowing and a smile of pleasure growing on my face, listening to my new friends laugh and laugh.

[subqtaneoussmut]

Wistful, Chapter One

[Content Warning: This is just literally sapphic trans smut, and that is all. The next six chapters and counting can be read here on my Patreon. ]

Synopsis:

Madeline is daydreaming on her way to join a summer dance residency. When she gets to the dorm she will be living in with a dozen other modern dance students from other colleges, whatever will they do to her?

Chapter One

The sun glinted and dazzled off the river through the train window, and I blinked and took a break from looking at the green river valley sliding past. I had been lucky to find a seat in a mostly quiet cabin, with only a few people wandering through.

I glanced at my reflection in the window from the corner of my eye and a giddy tingly wave shot from the bottoms of my feet up my spine. I shivered as it reached the back of my neck and swirled to fill my whole body. This is gender euphoria, I marveled for the millionth time. This is what it feels like.

The reflection showed a dark-haired girl, wearing a black lace choker but dressed—somewhat incongruously—in a blazer, over a clingy graphic tee shirt. The soundtrack was wistful pixie dreamgirl Indy. My hands went up to my headphones, and I gave my best cute swoon, fluttering my eyelids so I could watch myself do it.

“Excuse me Miss?”

Blushing at being caught in the middle of making a kissy face at my own reflection, I peeked up through my bangs at the tall stranger. Fashionable tweed, salt and pepper hair, expressive eyes.

“Do you mind if I sit across from you?”

I opened my mouth, closed it again and then made a sort of permissive shrug. The man put down his shoulderbag and took out a book. I turned to watch both our reflections in the window. The quieter I was, the less people seemed to clock me as trans, so I usually let my friends do the talking.

At the thought of the swarm of friends I was leaving behind in the city, my insides tightened. I missed them already. Sitting together on the library steps in the sun, listening to music together on the floor of my girlfriend’s room, going to the museum as a giggling pack in the winter. And, most of all, going to our dance classes together.

I knew I had lucked out. I’d been the only trans girl in the modern dance program at my school, and I knew I wouldn’t have found the courage to get on hormones that early and come out there without the unconditional inclusion and support I’d gotten from my friends in the program. And then, after high school, we’d all applied and gotten in to the same college dance program. It had been a dream come true, even though I’d deferred a semester to get bottom surgery. I squirmed in my seat and flushed a bit, remembering how all my girlfriends crowded into the bathroom on my first day as a new dance student and clamored for me to show them my new pussy.

I was blushing beet red, leaning on the bathroom sink, facing the mirror. I had picked a pleated short skirt that showed off my legs and I was beginning to regret how accessible it made my coochie.

“Maddy,” my friend Flora pleaded from over my shoulder, “you clearly don’t understand how thirsty—I mean happy we are for you...to show us! We’re literally dyingggg over here.”

There was a chorus of agreement from the others.

“Maddy,” she repeated, “I haven’t looked forward so much to anything else in weeeeks. Maddy. Maddy. Maddy.”

“What?” I muttered, my face hot. Flora had a flair for the dramatic. Big theater queen vibes. She could always get anything she wanted from me, eventually.

“Are you really going to leave us, lost and wandering, in this thick, thick pussyfog?”

“I-I don’t know, what if someone comes in?” I protested weakly.

“What if someone comes in! You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, girl! Rooftops exist for a--”

“Flora!” I sputtered.

“Okay, just kidding. My bestie Quinn is watching the door from out in the hall. We’ve got you fully covered, don’t we girls?”

Cue: another storm of pleading and encouragement.

I turned to face them all and opened my mouth and—hesitated.

“Listen girls,” Natalie pushed her way to the front of the pack. “I think I know exactly what kind of push little Madeline needs here.”

Her eyes glinted with a light that usually meant trouble. I swallowed. Natalie and I had grown up in the same apartment building, and gone to the same dance classes since before either of us could remember (we had pictures). She was my oldest friend, and had always been my staunchest ally when it came to being included. She had always gone to bat hard for me when it came to my pronouns, interrupting and insisting (even with teachers) whenever people misgendered me, especially in the early, painfully awkward stages of my transition.

She also delighted in teasing me, bossing me around, finding ways to make me blush, and reminding me in ten thousand little ways that she was taller, stronger and smarter. The whole time I’d known her, for example, she was always finding excuses to jump on me and pin me to the ground. The truth was, I secretly loved it. It had been the first ever way I’d found to manage my dysphoria, my first enticing taste of gender affirmation. Or maybe my first hint that I was lesbian? Whatever it was, I’d always been a willing participant in the dynamic. It was our schtick, our thing and we both clearly enjoyed it—which was a source of endless hilarity to our friends. When they teased me for it, Natalie would smirk and my cheeks would heat and somehow it never went much farther than that.

Until it did.

Reflexively I tried to take a step back into the edge of the sink, but Natalie only folded her arms and cocked her head, looking at me.

“Maddy,” she said matter-of-factly, “I know this is your first day of college, and we’ve all been here a semester already, and you’re probably feeling overwhelmed right now, so I’m going to make this easy for you. Either leave all these girls disappointed and trying to peek up your skirt for the rest of the week…”

There were a few groans, some laughter and few catcalls. She paused for dramatic effect, a superior little smile playing over her lips.

“...Or give me your panties, right now.”

My eyes widened at the bald command and my pulse begin to race. My body was already reacting to being ordered, even as I briefly considered just leaving. Why was she making this into a thing? She’d been visiting me throughout my recovery, and I knew she had already seen me naked countless times. But that universe, the universe in which I walked decisively past Natalie, through the group, and out the swinging door was a rapidly shrinking bubble in the rearview mirror.

Natalie watched me give an involuntary shiver. I could tell she already knew she had won, she was just enjoying watching me give in.

The room was still. Nobody moved, nobody breathed as every eye watched me reach down and hook my thumbs into my panties, slide smoothly them down my legs and step carefully out of them. I looked up to see Natalie holding out her hand expectantly. Her eyes locked with mine. My head raced. My hand balled my panties into a fist.

This didn’t seem necessary, did it? What was the point of giving her my underwear? Was this one of her games to remind everyone that she had me wrapped around her finger? Or did she just want to embarrass me, pure and simple? I almost opened my mouth to say something, but the lick of cool air against my lower lips brought home to me just how turned on I was, and I just licked my lips nervously. The pulse of heat between my legs made the decision for me.

“Maddy.” Natalie raised her eyebrows and made a come-hither motion.

I took a deep breath and felt my face get even hotter. My hand trembled a bit as I held out the scrunched-up lacy white panties I had just taken off…because she told me to, I thought, and shivered again.

She made a show of pocketing them, with a wicked smile at me. I squirmed. At this point we both knew I would do anything she told me to do. If she wanted to tease me by withholding my fricking underwear on my first day of college, she would, and I knew that she would never back down in front of a crowd if I tried to change her mind.

“Goood girl,” she smirked, and my heart fluttered at the gender affirmation, while simultaneously the heat between my legs flared at being treated this way in front of everyone. I drew a shaky breath. Natalie knew every one of my buttons and how to push them in just the right combination. If I hadn’t trusted her so completely, and had such deep history with these friends, I probably would be freaked out by all this, but I just felt excited and breathless.

“What a cute little skirt.” Natalie arched an eyebrow. “Lift it.”

Her seaglass-green eyes danced with mischief and challenge. I stared into them, entranced. My hands moved slowly, automatically to the edge of my skirt. As I lifted it, there was a chorus of cheers and gasps and oohs. I wanted to pull my gaze away from hers, but I couldn’t. I stood there, blushing hotter and redder than I’d ever thought possible, looking ridiculous as I held the front of my skirt up above my waist and showed everyone my bare mound and light, curly fuzz. Natalie finally released my gaze and looked herself. I closed my eyes and tilted my head slightly back, praying my arousal wasn’t visible to everyone.

“Now, now Maddy,” I heard Natalie say slowly, and my eyes shot open. “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s not what we’ve been waiting patiently here for twenty minutes to see.”

My breath caught.

“Lift your leg on that sink, and show us your cunt.”

Oh.

Oh. My pussy clenched with arousal at the thought, even as my mind buckled at the humiliation.

I knew I was wet. If I did this, my lower lips were going to spread open and everyone would see my glistening arousal. Did Natalie know that? She had to. I’d been so, so happy that I could produce pussy juice after surgery that I hadn’t been able to shut up about it. It came out of my urethra, not my actual vaginal canal, but why split hairs? When I was horny, I gushed more than most cis girls, and that was just awesome.

As she held my gaze with hers, Natalie turned her head and began whispering something in May’s ear. I was hesitating too much already. If I had just done what she’d said at the beginning, I could have done it laughingly, coquettishly, teasingly. But now there was no way to pass this off as a joke anymore. If I did this, it would be fully seen as what it was: a drenched, exhibitionist slut getting off on being ordered around.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I reached one hand back towards the edge of the sink. Flushing brightly, I raised my courage and glanced up at the faces around me. All my friends were watching, wide-eyed, with bated breath. I saw Flora’s excitement, Yara’s raised eyebrows, Faith’s entranced hunger, and Natalie’s wolfish smile. Despite the heat in my face, looking around brought a new surge of courage. I shrugged, rolled my eyes, and raised my leg, bent at the knees to place my foot on the sink beside me, to a long collective “Ooooooo” as everyone released the breath they’d been holding. Flora burst out clapping. Yara gave a laconic, impressed nod.

I desperately wanted to look down, to see if my pussy actually looked the way it felt. But my mind and my skin were racing with hot tingles and I felt strangely reluctant to move. I swallowed loudly. Everyone crowded closer and crouched down to inspect my new pussy, making many little sounds of appreciation. Then:

“This, is a porn-star pussy,” declared Yara.

“Oh my god, you’re right! That’s exactly what it is!”

“Totally.”

“The surgeon was a cis guy, right?”

Yara looked up at me, “I mean, Maddy, don’t get me wrong. I’m so jealous. This is the most symmetrical, neat, little cunt I’ve ever seen.” She winked at me and I squirmed a little, cheeks burning.

“Maddy, honey, she’s beautiful,” Flora chimed in.

Hardly daring to relax, I watched Natalie’s gaze flick from my pussy to my face and back. Oh god, was she going to—

“Hmm, Maddy, you seem a little...hot down here.”

My heart was beating so hard. Natalie stood up and leaned in close to my ear. I could feel her breath on my skin. Her next words were soft enough that I hoped, momentarily, that nobody else heard them.

“Is it possible that, perhaps, you like being told what to do?”

My leg was up on the edge of the sink, my pussy split wide open in front of everyone’s eyes. I opened my mouth to say something, anything, in response, but my mind blanked and I merely made an audible panting sound. Natalie giggled at me, and I felt my pussy spasm in response.

“Wow,” gasped Flora, “her pussy just pulsed. Damn, that was hot.”

“Do it again, Natalie!”

My face was burning hotter than I thought was possible.

“Well?” Natalie said archly, “Answer me, you little slut.”

I closed my eyes and mewed, my cunt clenching again as her words ripped through my core.

There was a low whistle and some more gasps from between my legs. I was so turned on. I tried to remind myself that if—and that was a big ‘if’—I wanted to stop this, all I had to do was lower my leg and my skirt.

Instead, I nodded. I could feel Natalie’s smug superiority radiating off her like warmth.

“Say it.”

My knees weakened. “Yes, yes I like it,” I panted. “I like being told what to do.”

Faith leaned on the sink and stared hungrily at me, like a cat. “You guys,” she whispered, “This is so fucking hot. What should we do with her?”

Flora stood up and grinned at me. “I wanna put a collar on her, and walk her around on a leash. She’d look so cute on a leash. How would you look on a leash, Maddy?”

My heart thudded faster. “Cute,” I breathed.

Flora licked her lips and winked at me. “Good girl.”

Yara stood as well and shrugged, glancing at her watch. “Well, it’ll have to wait. We’ve all got rehearsal.”

Natalie nodded for me to drop my leg and my skirt.

“C-can I have my panties back now?” I mumbled.

She smirked, and turned to a mirror next to me, making a show of checking her hair.

My eyes widened. “Oh, no, please, Natalie, you can’t. Please, no, don’t make me go to class without panties. Natalie, please, this skirt is so short, please.”

The others had started to gather themselves to leave, but I could feel them pausing to watch. Natalie glanced at me, a familiar smile playing on her lips. I exhaled in relief. This was old, familiar ground, finally. She loved holding things over me, making me beg, and everyone here knew I secretly loved it too. She held out my balled-up panties, and I took them, grabbing her arm for support as I stood on one leg, then the other to slide them back up my legs. The other girls were in high bantering form.

“So is it an open secret that the doctors are just giving girls whatever pussy they saw on pornhub last night?”

“Oh my gawd, that just says so much about men.”

“Mine’s like a second-wave feminist’s face, like just a bowl cut with a big mole on her lip or something.”

“Same, tbh.”

“Weird flex, but okay.”

“All. Cunts. Are. Beautiful!”

“ACAB!”

“Wow.”

“Wow. You did that.”

“Good job.”

[subqtaneoussmut]

links to my chapters

You may use this post to navigate betwixt chapters.

I also have a Patreon, which allows you to read several chapters ahead and also allows access to an entirely new smut story:

Wistful, the first chapter of which may be found Here, for freeee.

Wistful Chapter 2

The Tea Girl's Gambit

Synopsis

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Bonus Smut Chapter Teaser

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter 28

I groaned as I flopped down on the thin mattress that took up most of the floor of my sleeping cell. The rough-spun sheets were a bit scratchy on my soft, sensitive skin, but at least they were clean. I’d just emerged from a long, hot, end-of-shift shower and all I wanted right now was to squirm around naked between fresh sheets for a while.

My hands ached from the last handful of hours I had spent scrubbing old grease traps with a stiff wire brush. Jaque had been apologetic about assigning me the task, but ultimately the dirtiest jobs went to the most junior staff. She’d made sure I had stout gloves that covered my skin to the elbows, and helped me secure a handkerchief around my nose and mouth that was soaked in alchemical filtrates, but the fumes from the harsh cleaning chemicals had still left me feeling a bit woozy.

I dozed for a bit, thinking dreamily of the amazing plumpness of Jaques’ cheeks. I still had my supply of doses, though I hadn’t taken any since leaving Oakridge House. What if I—

I startled like a deer as I realized the coin hanging on a thin cord around my neck was getting hot.

Oh. Right.

Aralia was summoning me. I shakily let out the breath I’d been holding.

What did she want from me? A shiver of anticipation ran through me. A task? An assignment? Or—did she just want to toy with me some more?

I bit my bottom lip, pulse quickening. Would she do more than just tease me this time? Hope mounted inside me before I could rein it in.

No, I mentally reproached myself, speculating this way was foolish. She probably just wanted to check up on me, reaffirm her hold over me, and remind me of our respective positions. My priority had to be keeping her happy with me, and not giving her any reason to jettison me along with the risk I carried. I had to brace myself for this meeting, not melt into a puddle.

I peeked over at my stack of folded uniforms, and flopped back down on the bed, groaning. Despite the wonder that was my new wardrobe—not only in terms of gender euphoria, but also quality, cleanliness and quantity—dressing myself was still a faltering process. I’d had no luck with the bra this morning and after struggling interminably with it in the bad lighting, I’d just decided to go without. Reluctantly, I levered myself out of bed and began, shivering, to don a fresh set of clothes.

The walk was blessedly uneventful. I entered the alchemy building through the underground service passageways and in my maid’s uniform nobody gave me a second glance. What made my cover so brilliant, I was realizing, was that the comings and goings of staff were already invisible and largely unmonitored, by design. I climbed a narrow, switchback ramp tucked away inside the walls of the building and popped out in the corridor outside Aralia’s office without passing a single student.

I paused outside her door to straighten my smock. As foolish as it felt to wonder how I looked, I couldn’t help it. I rolled my eyes at myself. Why on earth did I care so much?

Because I want her to want me...

My cheeks warmed as I reached up to rap quietly on the door. After a few seconds, it swung open and and I drew my breath as Aralia’s gaze captured me.

Was there a spark of genuine pleasure in those gold-ringed eyes? Her presence, her scent, washing over me. I swallowed.

She smiled. “Ah good,” was all she said. Then she brought her hand up and goosebumps sprang up all over my neck and scalp as her fingers slid through my hair.

Ohhhh.

I gave a little involuntary gasp and my eyelids fluttered. Was she petting me? No, she was just lightly dragging the tips of her fingers…

It felt amazing.

“Hi, Ellie,” she said softly.

I inhaled and opened my mouth to respond, and then she clenched her hand into a fist in my hair, hard.

“Ughnnn,” I moaned brokenly, eyes rolling back. My pussy tightened, my knees felt watery. I wobbled like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Thought so,” she smirked, eyes dancing.

My moan trailed up into a whine as she yanked me forward into her office and pushed the door closed. She shook me a little and I swayed in place, gasping.

“Good girl,” she said lightly, and I melted even more into her grip, prompting a chuckle.

She began to lead me to her desk and I stumbled after her, delicious licks of lightning coursing between my thighs.

Aralia twisted her grip, easily turning my head, and pulled me slowly down over her desk until one of my cheeks was pressed into the cool wooden surface.

She grinned at me from above and I moaned shamelessly back, red-faced and breathing hard. My pussy was a slick, pulsing mess and my mind was a white-hot explosion. I was shaking and twitching freely.

“Hushhh,” she soothed, stroking my face with the back of her hand.

I whimpered back, blushing furiously.

She released her grip on my hair abruptly. “Still having the same problem, I see.” She rounded the desk and sank into her chair.

I stared dazedly at her from my face-smushed position. “Wha-what?”

She grinned at me. “Such a little slut.”

I gaped indignantly at her, then haltingly pushed myself upright. It was beginning to dawn on me that she wasn’t about to finish what she started. She had just been…checking??

“That was—y-you can’t just—” I protested, stuttering. I had no idea what I was trying to say beyond how unfair this was. I desperately wished she would have kept going, at the very least. I stopped myself before that came out of my mouth and stammered to a halt, blushing furiously.

Aralia cocked an eyebrow. “Oh?”

My face burned. I stared back into her challenging gaze, tongue-tied, unable to look away.

“Are you trying to say you don’t want me to treat you like my little slut?”

My eyes widened.

“Or,” continued Aralia in a soft, dangerous tone, “are you trying to say that you don’t want me to stop?”

My face was a raging inferno. “I-I, um—”

“Because,” she interrupted smoothly “I think I already know which it is.”

She watched me slyly as my lips parted and I began to pant. “Don’t I, Ellie?”

My clit pulsed. “Y-yes.”

“Tell me.”

I stared into her hungry, playful golden gaze and swallowed hard. “Don’t stop,” I choked.

She gave me a superior little smirk. “Say please.”

“Pleease,” I whispered, my face crimson.

“Come here.”

My heart leapt. I rounded the desk slowly, feeling like I was being reeled in by the draw of her magnetic gaze. She swiveled in her chair to face me, and I stopped in front of her, my breathing ragged and fast.

“On your knees.”

I sank to kneeling, my pussy spasming needily, hardly daring to think about what was happening.

“Come closer.”

I looked up at her in confusion. Her legs were right in front of me, but she wasn’t spreading them. If I came any closer, I would be straddling her shin.

She beckoned me forward again, explaining nothing.

I flushed as I scooched obediently closer, my thighs now on either side of her boot. My chin was directly over her knee, my crotch so close to pressing into her shin. I looked up at her pleadingly, my cunt boiling.

She looked smugly down at me. The pink tip of her tongue barely peeked out and swiped her lips. “Open your mouth.”

I obeyed and she reached out and caught the tip of my chin with one hand. Then she slid her thumb into my mouth, and I moaned loudly and shamelessly as she pressed it down into the soft wetness of my tongue.

She grinned at me as I shook and whimpered, my eyes fixed rapturously on hers.

“Do you feel like my little slut yet, Ellie?”

“Yethhh” I moaned, my cheeks radiating heat.

“Is this enough, or do you want more?”

Hot humiliation battered at me. I wanted this so, so badly. I knew I would do anything.

“More, pleath,” I heard myself mumble in a strangled voice.

She smiled delightedly down at me. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

I looked at her beseechingly. “Please, I need—c-can I just—”

She raised a playful eyebrow at me. “Tell me what you want, Ellie.”

My face burned like a torch. “Can—can I please come?” My mind was melting of delicious degradation.

“Mm, that sounds very fun to watch.” Aralia lifted her leg between my thighs, pressing lightly into my hot, pulsing crotch. “Go right ahead.”

I whined eagerly and thrust my hips, grinding myself against her. I was so, so wet.

“That’s a good girl,” she murmured, holding my gaze. “Good asking.”

I shuddered and moaned at the praise, hot blood pounding in my face. My toes were curled in helpless pleasure at the debasement. She could see all of me, every shameful part of me, and yet—she was praising me. It felt miraculously, wondrously good, and unutterably erotic.

She tilted my chin up, her thumb still in my mouth. “Show me what a good girl you are, hm?”

I squeezed her shin tightly between my thighs and pulsed my trembling hips, again and again and again. She stroked my hair as I humped her leg, scarlet-faced. She watched me hungrily and I clung to the heat of desire in her eyes.

“That’s right, moan for me,” she whispered throatily. “I love all the cute sounds you make when you can’t help yourself.”

I began to lap her thumb, making little whimpering noises in the back of my throat. Letting her softened golden gaze penetrate deep into my eyes while she used me this way was so incredibly hot. It felt so good to be seen in this way by her—like being held in a way I’d never been held before.

“This is where you belong, isn’t it Ellie? On your knees, letting me use your mouth while you get off by rubbing your hot, wet cunt on my leg?”

I whined back at her and the urging of my hips against her leg became harder, faster, shorter.

She grinned at me. “That’s it. Good girl. Go ahead.”

I tensed, trembling, and began to convulse, breathing raggedly.

“There you go. Come for me. You adorable thing.” She stroked my head and ran gentle fingers through my hair as I shook and squirmed and drenched her leg.

Finally my breathing slowed, and I limply turned my head and rested my cheek on the top of her thigh.

She was still slowly petting me. “Gorgeous,” she murmured. “Such a sweet, cute girl.”

I blinked dazedly, feeling exposed and vulnerable. I desperately wanted her to keep stroking me and whispering a soft stream of gentle praise.

“What a pretty little thing you are,” she soothed, obligingly.

I hugged her leg and held on tightly as another wave of shudders swept through me.

“Good girl. You’re adorable, do you know that?”

“Thank you,” I whispered, half into her trousers. “Thank you, thank you.”

“I love how eager to please you are.” I heard the smile in her voice. “It’s kind of irresistibly cute.”

I squirmed in pleasure at the praise. “Really?”

“Yes. I’ve been thinking about you a lot, actually,” Aralia admitted.

She’d been thinking about me? I looked up at her with a shy smile, biting my bottom lip.

Her golden-ringed eyes sparked back at me. She stroked my cheek with the backs of her fingers. “For fuck’s sake, you can’t turn it off, can you?”

I blinked. “What?”

She shook her head, groaning with frustration. “Never mind your pretty little head, you slut.”

I shivered with pleasure and pressed myself harder into her leg.

“Wow,” she breathed “just look at how you respond to that. Oh, that reminds me.” Still stroking my head with her other hand, she pulled out a drawer and rummaged in it. “Here.”

She presented a small vial about half full of clear liquid. “This is an alchemical hepatic I made for you. Unscrew the cap and sniff in the fumes every morning and every night for a few days. It should help with your, ah—” Aralia winked at me. “Problem.”

I blushed and hesitantly took it. She’d made it for me? Herself? My head spun. I had just come completely undone—and come as hard as I ever had—wrapped around this young woman’s leg, while she’d looked on. She’d held my gaze steadily as I’d completely debased myself, while lavishing me with a heady, continuous stream of praise and condescension.

Her fingers ran through my hair again. I squirmed on her leg, feeling exquisitely vulnerable and yet contained, like hot, dark honey poured into a cup. A rush of gratitude almost overwhelmed me.

“Thank you.” I looked back up at her. “For, um, everything. Hiding me.” I swallowed. “I still can’t believe—that you did that, for me.”

She was giving me a concerned look. That was a good sign, right? Please, please be safe. Please.

I took a deep breath, struggling to find less desperate words for what I was trying to say. “If you…hadn’t, I think someone else might have—have gotten, um—” I shuddered, remembering Creswell’s flinty eyes narrowing.

“I-I think you might have saved my, um, life,” I muttered, flushing. “And I just hope you still want to…keep me?”

Aralia hesitated, seeming to choose her words carefully. “I’m not going to throw you away like jetsam, Ellie. Or leave you hung out to dry. Not in this place. You’re not alone any more, okay?”

She cupped my cheek and my eyelids fluttered as she circled her fingertips lightly around my earlobe.

I stared into this older girl’s warm, intensely clear, golden-brown eyes, unable to remember how I’d ever thought her coldly predatory. Had she always been there, behind the hawk’s mask?

I sighed as my lungs relaxed, my chest filling with rippling, sweet relief. She wanted me. She’d called me good. She wasn’t going to throw me away.

“Okay,” I breathed. “Thank you.”

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter 27

Aralia Cordivar stared broodingly out her enormous office window, onto a pale moonlit sea of rain-slicked slate and chimney brick. Memory was always ready to intrude, always trying to pour through her fingers. Usually she kept it stubbornly at bay, but tonight, for whatever reason, she was inclined to allow herself the sparkle of starlight, the heaving breath of the ocean.

~ ~ ~

It’s almost sunset in the southern reach of the Whistling Sea, and the whole western sky is a riot of blood orange and pink. There is a fine, stiff breeze that bellies out the canvas of the sails and makes them thrum.

The Damselfly blows through a spray of seawater and crashes down into the valley of another rolling swell. Aralia is newly thirteen, a gawky teenager. She stands on the quarterdeck, her sea legs rolling with her ship’s movements, and thinks she will never stop feeling tiny, in comparison to the ocean. Nothing else reminds her of this as much as the swelling waves—they’re just so big!

There is a shout from the girl up in the rigging, on lookout. She has seen something with her long-glass—three sails on the horizon. Aralia feels the pall of tension that drops like a curtain on the handful of crew that are moving about on deck. Everyone knows Imperiat frigates run in squadrons of three. Not one can resist turning to look, though they must know the sails will not yet be visible to the naked eye.

In front of her, Aralia sees the grim looks her aunts exchange. Her aunts Venti and Jacynth and Moa are the captains and navigators of the Damselfly, but they are also more than that. They are the heads of the families that crew the ship. They are Aralia’s teachers in more than several subjects. And they are the most wanted people in the known world, with the price on their heads increasing astronomically with every passing year. But, again, that is not all they are.

Right now, they look like three middle-aged Jyllish women with shadows under their eyes. Aralia, her heart beating faster now, glances at her friend, Kalista, standing beside her. Her aunties have been as rock solid as mountains for as long as she has been alive, and she feels shaken by the gravity in their faces, so she looks to Kalista, because Kalista will know what to do in a world that has come so unfixed and started to unravel.

Kalista is already sixteen, tall, graceful, and everything Aralia admires and wants to be. She is haliati, which means she has chosen to be a woman—has poured over it, considered it, unearthed it in a way that Aralia has not, a way that in truth Aralia has not had to—and the result is that now Aralia cannot dream of wanting to grow into any other kind of femininity but the one that she sees Kalista embodying.

Kalista has her weight shifted forward on her toes—she is listening to their aunties. Aralia copies her subtly.

“Well, that was fast,” sighs Jacynth.

Venti spits over the side. “We could lose them in the night.”

“Depends how many flares they’re willing to waste to find us.”

“Not worth the risk. If any of them are clipper-rigged, we’ll be boarded before dawn. We should tip again.”

“So soon? There is such a thing as too often,” warns Venti. “The risk compounds.”

“Tell that to my aching voice,” grumbles Jacynth. “I agree with Moa.”

Venti nodded slowly. “Kalista?”

The lean, dark, wolfish girl reaches forward and touches her elbow gently. Venti smiles back at her.

“Mea canat. Be a dear and fetch our lamien, will you? Tell them we need another one, but keep it calm, eh? Don’t let them stub their toes rushing up here.”

Kalista is off like an arrow, bare feet slapping the deck.

“Aralia, see to the drum and silver, please.”

Aralia feels inexhaustible as she drops down the ladder and careens around corners, down into the cramped, dim warren of the hold. Only by luck does she avoid a head-on collision with a small, fast, warm body running the other way.

“Aralia!” it gasps. “I was helping Esca with dinner. Is it them? Are they close?”

She reaches out and steadies him. “Careful, Pasha!” she breathes, though she was running just as reckless. Pasha is haliati, younger by two years, and for the last few months he has been excitedly telling everyone that he wants to be something like a boy, searching and sifting through the words and symbols of the several languages he knows, trying to share about what his desire feels like to him.

“There are three sails on the horizon. Venti wants our to help set up. Come on, help me with the drum.” She seizes his hand, pulls him in her wake.

Together they slip their way for’ard to a low-ceilinged cabin full of lockers and trunks. The timbers that form the walls are whorled with ridges and bumps that shed a faint, blueish-green glow. Aralia makes several quick hand motions in front of her face, and the glow brightens. In the center of the room is a broad, squat cylindrical shape, wrapped in oil-skin. The ship’s drum is easily as large as the Damselfly’s barnacle encrusted anchor, but whereas the anchor is heavy hammered iron, the drum is fiendishly light, a marvel of carefully braced wood and stretched hide.

Aralia and Pasha raise and maneuver the covered drum towards the cargo hatch, which is open, and lift it into the waiting hands of their crewmates, who raise it onto the weather deck. This done, Aralia and Pasha turn and make their way to the windowless heart of the ship.

The alchemy sanctum betrays the Damselfly’s true purpose, both because of just how much space it takes up, and what it contains. Officially, the ship is a glass merchant trader, and it is true enough that the crafting and grinding of lenses for the prized Jyllish telescopes and spectacles takes place down here. But it takes only a glance around to realize the obvious fact that the alembics, stills, and other strange instruments that line the space are not for glasswork.

Pasha hovers on the threshold, watching Aralia go straight to the back, where a large bubble of glass squats, wrapped and ringed with bands of pure beaten copper. Inside of it writhes a coiling argent fog. There is a spout at the bottom, from which she decants a stream of mercurial silver into a bottle. As she caps the bottle, she murmurs softly to it, and the liquid springs back into gaseous form. Slowly, Aralia spins, and proceeds back towards Pasha, as if walking with a stick of sweating dynamite, or perhaps an immensely rare butterfly, paper-thin wings still moist from the cocoon’s embrace.

Pasha follows her up to the main deck, where Kalista has just reappeared and is in the midst of ushering the elders Hallel and Synka, swathed in thick dark robes against the chill, towards the drum. The last rays of sun are dribbling vividly over the far edge of the world. The breeze is softening. The night is clear. A few drops of spray dapple the back of Aralia’s neck. The bottle in her hands pulses with an otherwordly starlight.

Kalista beckons Aralia and Pasha, and together they help their relatives creak down into cushioned seats, and position a brazier full of glowing charcoal between them. Moa and Venti are already there, sitting on the other side of the drum, eyes closed, breathing long slow breaths. Jacynth seats herself last.

A cry from the lookout. Aralia turns, and sees that the squadron of ships behind them have launched signal rockets. She has been studying Imperiat naval communication, and in the multi-hued bursts, she instantly decodes the demand to head into the wind, drop sails and prepare to be boarded. She mutters this into Pasha’s ear, with a derisive eye roll. The rest of the crew is gathering around, craning uneasily to look back in the direction of their wake.

The aunties are unruffled. Kalista walks around and places long drumsticks, the ends swathed in sealskin hide and sinew, into their hands. Aralia sees the first stars glimmer into view.

The drums begin—rolling waves of sound that overlay and underlie each other, complex polyphonic rhythms older than language. There is a collective sigh as the gathered crew begins to untense, lulled by the blossoming field of the drummers. Nobody speaks.

Aralia’s gaze seeks out Kalista’s with an easy familiarity. Between them, they have accumulated a lexicon of thick and silent meaning, and the dim and dying light does little to obstruct their communication. They circle towards each other and walk for’ard together, Aralia still holding the bottled pulse of burning silver, to the deep, wide bowl of knapped obsidian set into the deck near the bowsprit. Aralia uncorks the bottle, holds it almost tenderly for a moment, and pours out the contents.

Again a liquid, the silver splashes as it hits the obsidian stone, then billows into an argent mist that spreads and envelopes the entire bow. The ship slides deeper into the silver fog, until first rigging, then masts, then everything from bow to stern, is inside the shining cloud. Wordlessly, Aralia and Kalista’s hands find each other and share a squeeze.

The drums are thunderous now, a wash of vibrating vowels that bathes Aralia’s bones in reverberation. The stars overhead are pulsing to the beat that is everywhere at once. She turns her head and looks aft, just as the drummers throw back their heads and begin to sing. Their voices, imbued with burning silver, burst the membrane between the layers of the world.

There is a visceral tipping feeling, and then—as the hull crashes through one swell and charges up another—the whole ship slides into the spirit current and everything, from the slap of the waves to the groan of the rigging, is muffled quiet. The Damselfly has crossed into the unseen layers of the world, the place her aunties call the Tide.

Aralia’s hair, cropped short, does not float up, but it is ruffled and stirred by the invisible current. It’s as if she and Kalista are poised on the precipice of an interdimensional diving board, as the void rushes up to engulf them.

Aralia’s memories of the space between the stars are always glassy and loose, prone to slipping and rearranging. Each moment seems endless and also gone before she can quite understand what happened—a frustrating rarity for her. Moa has intimated to her that this is a side-effect of the quicksilver.

Each time, she swears to herself that this time she will remember the fractal geometric patterns that burn behind her eyelids. The chilly tug of the spirit water. The eery sounds that drift and wash up from the depths.

She always remembers when the ancestor spirits come, though, the deep and soundless beating of their wings, the whole ship bathed in their flaming silver glow. The singing of the drummers is endless and the silent response is also endless. The conversation is slow, ceremonial, graceful, urgent.

The endless depths around them sparkle with the light shed by the silent star beings that pace them, and the pitch-dark void beyond that ancient protection is also full of swarming shapes, only vaguely hinted at—some of which are larger than the ship itself.

Faintly, as if through a thick brainfog, Aralia knows those hungry presences are only kept at bay by the presence of their guides.

Their journey may have taken hours or only a few minutes, but at some point the pull of the Tide begins to recede, and the pressure darkening the inside of her intellect begins to lessen and lighten. The ship’s creaking emerges again in her ears. The stars are once again above her, instead of watching and protecting her from just beyond the hull.

The voices of the drummers, which have taken on an almost drone-like quality, slacken and gradually fall silent. The silver cloud around them begins to unknit, drift away and disperse in the much warmer night breeze, which has changed direction. The Damselfly drifts, sails flapping gently, in unknown waters.

~ ~ ~

There were two raps on the door, a pause, then another two.

Aralia rose and opened the door to admit Pasha, wearing the same unobtrusive uniform as after-hours cleaning staff and pushing a cart laden with various closed buckets and pails. Aralia bolted the door and they embraced tightly.

“Mea canar.”

“Mea canat.”

Aralia went to her desk and there was the soft, oiled clicking of tumblers. She drew out a briefcase, laid it on her desk, and popped it open. The padded interior was full of sealed glass vials, stacked and strapped into place. All the vials were a uniform cylindrical shape with a valve at the top, but some were multi-chambered, and contained various different combinations of vividly colored compounds.

Aralia and Pasha, working carefully and silently, transferred the vials into the buckets, nesting them securely between layers of cushioned padding. Then they refilled the briefcase with identical but empty glass vials.

When they were done, Aralia produced a bottle of expensive-looking, amber whiskey and poured a strong dollop into two tumblers, then pulled her chair around the desk. They both sat down heavily. Aralia raised her glass and Pasha clinked it.

“To our continued treason, sabotage, and theft” said Aralia dryly, in Jyllish, and drank.

Pasha snorted, and then tossed his off, too. “To finding Kalista, and the rest of our people.” There was a burr of tension in his voice.

Aralia cleared her throat and looked away. “Of course.”

“Have you found anything? In the restricted clearance files?”

Aralia shook her head heavily. “Nothing. I even started leaning on some of my assets to help with the research. I got so tired of hitting dead ends I took the risk.” She frowned. “And still found nothing.”

Pasha’s voice was gentle. “You’re the one who has told me over and over that we’re playing the long game, here, Aralia. Remember, this is how it felt right before we found Esca.”

“I know, I know.” She hesitated. “It’s just…Pasha, the Imperiat has Apomasaics, now. I gave it to them.” She grimaced. “It’s only a matter of time before they figure out the key hidden inside it, and are able to engineer their own mercury. And now with imminent war on the horizon, as well? You know what this could mean. For the whole goddamn Whistling Sea.” She looked down and winced. “Every day I think about what Kalista would say to me about the cost I paid for this, and every day I get a little more afraid she’ll never talk to me again when she finds out.”Aralia swallowed. “If she’s even still—” she caught herself, as Pasha made a little noise of protest.

Aralia closed her eyes. “I’m not giving up, Pasha. I promise.” She opened them again, took a deep breath. “But I can’t just—it’s not enough, what we’re doing. I want to start increasing the shipments.”

“Emilia will just love that,” said Pasha rolling his eyes. “You two are far more alike than either of you is willing to admit. You’re both part mule, for instance.”

Aralia shrugged that off. “Not just the grenades. The halia, too. I want to double the volume of what I’m currently synthesizing each month. Will you be able to keep up?”

Pasha looked at her askance. “Do you even know how many draft cart loads I am hiding right now? How many barrels I have to make disappear from riverboat lading bills? I’m up to my ears in forgery and graft and false paperwork.”

“You can do it, Pasha.” Then, at the look he shot her, she got serious. “You’re a genius with the numbers. Listen, if you’re having trouble, I’ll come cook the books with you. Like old times.”

He grumbled something under his breath.

“Also,” Aralia said carefully, “I need you to hide the paper trail of our latest stray. And soon.”

Pasha stared at her. “You want me to disappear her from the staff accounts? Aralia, that’s not the same as smuggling goods. People are much harder to hide.” His tone turned condescending. “They draw a salary, you see.”

Aralia ignored his sarcasm. “I need her safe, Pasha.” She hesitated. “I feel like she’s my responsibility somehow. She threw herself out into empty air, without a plan, because I showed her it was possible.” A wince. “And then, I gave her refuge. And I can’t withdraw that, now. I already told her I wasn’t going to let them have her, and Pasha, the look in her eyes—” Aralia looked beseechingly at him and shook her head. “I know this sounds so, so hypocritical of me, but I just can’t.”

Pasha groaned. “You’re serious? I knew this was a bad idea. You weakened your only leverage over her just so you could see the look in her eye? Don’t you fall apart on me, Aralia. Not now. I’m serious.”

Aralia rolled her eyes. “I’m not falling apart, you little twerp. I was worried that she would do something stupid if she had nothing and no one at all to depend on. Anyway, I think I know how I’ll gain that leverage back, it’s just…”

She hesitated, then muttered something under her breath.

Pasha gave her an exasperated look.

Aralia rubbed her face, then poured herself another whiskey. “Look, it’s just—she’s growing on me, all right?”

There was a pause as she tossed it back.

“Don’t make that face at me,” she snapped. “I’ll take care of it.”

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter 26

“Roxa?”

“Hm?”

“That thing we saw? In the River, before those boys walked in?”

“...Yes?”

“…It wasn’t a revenant, was it?”

a vivid splay of gigantic moth wings, fanning out from a white-hot core of brilliant intensity

“…I don’t know but…I don’t think so.”

Silence.

“That wasn’t the only one, either, there were more of them.”

Silence.

“Do you think we called them? Like, with our singing?”

vast spreading ripples, washing out and rushing towards her in total silence. an overlapping pattern of recognition, aching like a long-awaited greeting

“I don’t know, Clarissa. But I don’t think we should tell anyone else about whatever those things were, yet.”

“Right. Okay. I won’t. ”

Silence.

“Roxa?”

“Yes?”

“Can we….try it again? The harmonizing?”

“Yes.” A pause. “And soon.” A long sigh. “Clarissa?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

~ ~ ~

When she heard Roxa shuffle in, Mila was bent over her notebook, humming softly while she calculated the intricate factoring for a triple-bound mache—a protective amulet produced through alchemical metallurgy.

She looked up alertly. Roxa never shuffled.

Her friend sprawled onto the bed without taking off her boots. Her face looked drawn and paler than usual.

Mila closed her notebook. “Roxa? What happened?”

Roxa groaned. “Had a run in with a few bootlickers. I recognized one of them from...before.”

Mila jumped up, stomach lurching. “Tiny gods, Roxa! Are you okay?”

Roxa craned her head up slightly, smiling crookedly. “Don’t worry, Clarissa dealt with them all handily. That girl can sling spells, let me tell you.”

Mila knelt down and start unlacing Roxa’s boots. “Clarissa your practice partner? You’re not hurt are you, Roxa?”

“Mila, you don’t need to—” Roxa protested weakly, levering herself to upright.

Mila gently stiff-armed her back down. “I’m doing this, thank you very much. Now tell me what happened.”

Roxa flopped back. “Thank you,” she sighed. “I’m fine, I swear. Not a scratch on me.” Her mouth twisted. “Clarissa bound them, and then...well, I decided to make sure they wouldn’t be walking again anytime soon.”

Mila felt Roxa shudder slightly. Her deft hands stilled and she looked up at her friend for a long moment. “Good.”

Roxa screwed her face up. She was breathing shallowly, and only in her upper chest, Mila noticed. “It made me want to retch,” she admitted. “I still feel a little sick.”

Mila grabbed her strong, callused hand, lying limply on the coverlet, and squeezed it. She took a deep breath, feeling the warm relief lingering in her lungs that Roxa’s defense gave her, the light lifting of support. She leaned her forehead on her friend’s knee and tried to send some of that feeling into her, through touch.

Roxa squeezed her hand back. “I would do it again in an instant, though.” She paused. Her next words were whispered fiercely through a tightened throat. “I want to destroy their world, Mila. I want to destroy it.”

Mila’s heart was breaking open and flowing like a river of gratitude. She left Roxa’s boots and wiggled up onto the bed beside her friend. Roxa turned her head and Mila gazed into her shockingly clear, green eyes. She swallowed hard, brought Roxa’s hand up to her lips, and brushed her mouth gently over the scraped, raw knuckles.

“Thank you for having my back like this, Roxa,” Mila whispered. “I feel so safe with you.”

Roxa blinked and the tension flowed out of her body. Her inhales began to slow and deepen. For a long, unbroken stretch of time, they gazed into each others’ eyes and the rise and fall of their breathing slowly synchronized.

After a while, Roxa stretched mightily, like a big cat. “Oh Mila,” she yawned, “The spells you cast are far more powerful than mine.”

Mila’s cheeks warmed. “You are a silver tongued fox,” she said crisply. “And a rake.”

“Me?” Roxa chuckled. “Surely not.” She looked around. “Did you send my little rabbit away? I don’t see our eager new pet anywhere.”

Mila sat up, caught between amusement and reproach. “Roxa!”

Roxa threw her a loaded look, eyebrow cocked.

“Of course I think she’s cute!” Mila exploded, gesturing her exasperation.

Roxa smirks. “So cute.”

Mila bit her lip. “And…I may have…toyed with her a little before she left.”

Roxa laughed in astonishment. “And you have the gall to call me a rake? You degenerate corrupter of the youth! Who’s the silver-tongued fox now?”

Mila blushed. “She liked it so much, I couldn’t resist.”

“I’ll bet,” smirked Roxa knowingly. “Sounds more fun that what I was doing.”

“But you know we—I mean, I can’t—can’t do anything about it! Not until we can trust her.”

Roxa shrugged. “Keep on playing with her like this and I’m sure you’ll have her eating out of your hand in no time.”

Mila groaned. “That’s not trust, though!”

Roxa cocked her head. “Isn’t it?”

“Maybe? I don’t know,” Mila relented. “But—it’s not the only kind of trust I want with her. At least—it’s so intimate, Roxa! The way I’m connecting with her? It feels so good to me. Recognizing a girl like me—here of all places, after so long away from home—holding her, sharing my spirit with her, flirting...But I can’t—” She gestured inarticulately. “She doesn’t know about me, and I can’t tell her yet, so—what is like for her?” Mila’s mouth twisted bitterly. “She deserves to feel less lonely than she must be, but I can’t give that simple gift to her? Because of this horrible power game we are forced to play?”

Roxa nodded sympathetically. “So you think it’s worth the risk to tell her who you are?”

Mila sighed. “I don’t know. She was so vulnerable with us—how could she be lying? Honestly, I want to include her so, so badly that I don’t actually trust my own judgment. I look at her and I can’t help seeing myself as I could have been, but for a quirk or two of fate. If the past had flowed just a little different, I’d be in her shoes.” She looked at Roxa helplessly. “What do you think of her?”

Roxa sighed. “I think her story checks out so far, and we hold untold power over her.” She shrugged. “She comes across as very sweet and genuine. I think the question we should ask ourselves is: what would it take for us to trust her? Especially you, since yours is the life at stake.”

Mila looked out the window. Purple shadows of dusk were stretching into the long dark fingers of tree branches. “What would it take for us to trust that Ellie will keep her mouth shut under pressure, even if someone else who knows her secret threatens to turn her in unless she talks? Is there a way to find that out beforehand?” She grimaced. “I refuse to test her with use-thinking or try any instrumental mind games. Just to be clear.”

Roxa sighed. “Then I think you’ll have to decide whether or not to trust her with that information the same way you decided with me.” She paused, and smiled wickedly to herself. “Well, maybe not necessarily the same way.”

Mila rolled her eyes.

“The point is,” continued Roxa blithely, “if you two can grow that much trust and loyalty to each other, you’ll know how solid it is because you can feel it. And also by comparing her actions to her words,” she added hastily. “That most of all, actually.”

“Unless you’ve actually faced capture and death together, it’s hard to know how someone will react when the pressure is on,” said Mila softly.

“Wellll, it’s an axiom of spycraft all around the Whistling Sea that Ministry torturers break everyone eventually,” said Roxa hesitantly. “It’s just a matter of how long it takes. So if the situation has devolved far enough, it really doesn’t matter whether Ellie is trustworthy or not.”

“So even if we can decide to trust her, we have to make sure her cover is airtight, and keep it that way.” Mila sighed. “What else?”

Roxa started ticking points off on her fingers. “Vigilance about the flow of information she has access to, and how it could be used against us if she’s compromised. Keep an ear out for any rumors about her disappearance as a student, and thoroughly assess her risks. Watch for any red flags in her behavior or inconsistencies in her story.”

Mila flopped back on the bed and rubbed her face. “I hate this, Roxa,” she said miserably. “I want to just leave this nest of vipers, and go home, and take you both with me.”

“Well,” said Roxa hesitantly, “There’s more, actually.”

Mila looked at her.

“It’s my mother.” Roxa winced. “She’s ordered me back to the Duchy.”

Mila sat up. Her heart was plunging into steep free fall. Of course, a voice inside her whispered. This was always how it was going to go. Roxa is, first and foremost, the daughter of a Countess, remember? Long before she was your friend. Loneliness clawed at her lungs.

Mila was proud that her voice barely shook. “I see.” She felt fragile, like a glass bottle spiderwebbed with deep cracks, somehow still clinging together. “When will you be leaving?”

Watching her friend’s momentary tremble, Roxa’s green eyes flared. “No, listen, Mila. I won’t just leave you here, I promise. That’s not happening.” She shook her head stubbornly, knowing as she said the words that they were true. “I’ll disobey my mother long before it comes to that.”

Mila stared at her friend, rays of warmth beginning to melt the cold ice in her chest. “Roxa…”

“She’s worried that if the Imperiat goes to war against my home, I’ll be detained and inquisitioned if I stay here.” Roxa cleared her throat and looked out the window. “Which, I’m afraid is likely. The fact that she’s staying in Drago means she’s probably not planning to survive her own capture.”

Roxa swallowed hard and met Mila’s gaze. “But I am choosing my own path now, and I will decide how to best attack my enemies and defend what I love.”

Mila’s insides flooded with warm affection, listening to the raw courage in her friend’s voice. Her heart squeezed and tears prickled her eyes.

“Besides,” said Roxa fiercely. “The Moot is still months away. We have plenty of time to come up with a plan.”

Mila wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and smiled bravely at her friend. “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s make some plans.”

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter 25

Roxa savored the blanching looks on their faces when the waters closed over their heads and they realized that she and Clarissa were already anchored deep.

Roxa tried to cast first. She was still mid-breath when Clarissa thrust out her hand, and the double doors came slamming back to hit the three boys with the force of a raging gale. They were all sent flying a short distance, limbs akimbo like ragdolls, before sprawling limply to the floor.

Clarissa’s hands blurred, and gleaming black brambles erupted from the floor and snarled their bodies in coils and tangles that slowly cinched and tightened. One of them struggled weakly as he was stretched inexorably flat, and another groaned, before Roxa pumped a disconsciousness hex into each of them. Now lying spread-eagled and out cold, not one of their forms so much as twitched.

Trembling, Clarissa walked over to Regis and spat on him. “Watch me decline your society, pisspot.” To Roxa she said, “Let’s get out of here.” She turned to go.

“Wait,” said Roxa. Her rage was like a bar of cold iron inside her. She had replayed her crystalline memory of the ambush in the greencourt over and over, the realization of her tactical blunder burning within her.

She had not been thorough enough.

She slipped on a fist spur. This one was blunted, meant to pulverize instead of puncture.

One by one, she went to each of the bound bodies and, gritting her teeth, pounded her weighted fist into their knees. It was a gruesome task. Each catatonic boy began screaming as his kneecaps were shattered. Spellbound, they did not truly wake, but that didn’t stop their sobs and shrieks. She tried to shut her ears and focus on breathing through it.

She could feel tiny prickles and flecks of distant, hungry attention from the River, trying to find purchase, trying to cling to her, but her rage washed them all away, like a cold, sharp flood of clarity.

Clarissa stood watch in the doorway, looking nauseated. When it was done, Roxa joined her in the hallway, bitterly pale, lips pressed into a thin line.

Clarissa looked at her searchingly. Grimly, Roxa met her eyes. They walked quickly away.

Once they had crossed several courtyards, Clarissa slowed. She still looked queasy. “Roxa…” She held out her hand and looked a question.

Roxa sought her hand and squeezed it.

Clarissa swallowed. “Thank you.” And then. “Why did you...do that?”

Roxa took a deep breath and sighed. She found herself glancing up and to the northwest, though she knew her mountain was much too far away to see.

They were in a small stone courtyard that was empty but for a single gnarled hemlock tree. Its roots buckled the paving stones, its limbs stretched out over a dry fountain.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m—I see how it protects us!” Clarissa said in a rush. “It was really strong of you. But…” she winced, and fell silent.

Roxa didn’t feel strong. She felt grimly exhausted, furious, adrenaline-soured. Why had she done it? Her tactical reasons were sound, but spouting them off felt a little dishonest. It had been a practical act of protection, in defense of herself and Mila and Clarissa, too, and yet that was not all it had been.

“Revenge,” she said, low and fierce. She looked up and met Clarissa’s questioning gaze. “They’re vicious and brutal and—I’m afraid of them. But not nearly as afraid as I would be if I let them strike us without striking back.”

Clarissa frowned. “I’m with you on being afraid. And on striking back, obviously! But—they were unconscious, bound. I…” She trailed off, took a deep breath, started again, slower. “What you did—I just don’t want to let myself become like them, in order to fight them, you know?” She paused.

Roxa watched her steadily.

“Though…I was watching the revenants—they’re usually drawn like flies to that kind of predatory aggression. But they weren’t drawn to you? It was like, in that moment, your field shed them, or repelled them.”

Roxa nodded. “Those bootlickers want us to behave like passive victims, paralyzed with fear,” she pointed out. “They want to put us in a ditch and they want to feel powerful doing it. I bet their fields made the whole current up there smell like a feast.” She shrugged. “Do you really think I was in danger of becoming like them? I just refused to let them get away with it.”

Clarissa shook her head reluctantly. “No, it’s just that—how do we not lose ourselves, if we respond to their attacks by acting just as brutally, just as viciously? It just makes me sad, I think, the way they force us to match them, in order to have any hope of beating them.”

Roxa took another deep breath. She could feel a building pressure, words tumbling around inside her, clamoring to be let out. “What I did helped me overcome my own fear—helped me ward myself against my fear of them. I was just reminding myself that I’m not the victim they want me to be, and reminding them to be afraid, for once. I wanted to make them tremble, because now it’s their turn to learn what violence feels like!” Roxa’s eyes burned. “Maybe emasculating them that way was effective, but I didn’t do it as the means to an end, and I’m not interested in justifying it that way. My actions can stand on their own terms, as ends in themselves.” She snorted. “They tried to crush us, and I counterattacked—they didn’t force me to do anything, and it’s insulting to say I lowered myself to match them, especially when it comes to combat. The way they fight is nothing like the way I do.”

Clarissa was looking at her with an intensity she found distracting. Roxa shrugged at her self-consciously, her sudden roar of fiery expressiveness all used up. The question behind Clarissa’s original question had been unspoken, but Roxa could feel it in the space between them. No, I’m not a sociopath.I’m just not letting myself forget what those arrogant fucks want to doto me or those I love.

Clarissa had not pulled her hand away. She nodded seriously. “Everyone loves to quote the sages to say that vengeance only continues the cycle of violence, but…I think what you’re saying makes them sound toothless and tone deaf. And I will not be toothless.”

Green eyes met blue ones and more than gratitude passed between them. Both were silent for a long, unbroken moment.

Roxa looked apologetically at her. “That boy recognized me, though. From…another thing. You might be targeted for that now, too.”

“Oh, I’m used to getting attention aplenty,” said Clarissa bitterly. “I can handle a little more.”

Roxa cast her an admiring glance. “You’re pretty strong yourself. And you’re so fast. I wish I had half your speed.”

Clarissa shrugged. “I’ve had to be,” she said simply. “And my friends give me courage.” She frowned. “But what are they after you for? If that’s okay to ask.”

“It’s my prefect’s vendetta,” said Roxa darkly. “Penelope Caul. Those were just her bootlickers.”

“Her? Ugh, she’s the worst!” Clarissa spat. “How did you catch her ire?”

Roxa grimaced. “She’s trying to kill my best friend, to teach me a lesson.”

“By all the unquiet dead.” Clarissa shook her head in disgust. “She must know she can get away with a lot more these days. Even six months ago, I would have thought you were exaggerating, but...”

“I wasn’t paying enough attention to what’s been happening here.” Roxa looked away. “I goaded her without thinking.” She winced. “It’s actually really bad. She’s almost untouchable, here. And if she actually does manage to—” Roxa’s throat tightened, and she stopped.

There was a pause. Clarissa squeezed her hand.

Roxa swallowed. “I don’t know what to do, except maybe challenge her to a duel, and fake an accident?” She shook her head. “She’s so well-connected though. Even with my mother’s diplomatic privilege, I’m not sure I could survive the fallout.”

“You might be able to take her in single combat. She’s a very sharp sorcerer.” Clarissa’s eyes flashed. “Better, though, when a rabid dog has the scent of your blood, to lure it into a trap and dispatch it at your leisure, don’t you think?”

~ ~ ~

“Many blame queers for the decline of this society—we take pride in this. Some believe that we intend to shred-to-bits this civilization and its moral fabric—they couldn’t be more accurate. We’re often described as depraved, decadent, and revolting—but oh, they ain’t seen nothing yet.”

-a gang of criminal queers

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter 24

Roxa took the stairs two at a time. Even after hurrying across campus, she was uncomfortably late. The surprise encounter with Ellie had completely made her forget today’s plans to meet up with her sorcery practice buddy. Roxa didn’t think there would be any hard feelings, but she really hoped that Clarissa hadn’t felt stood up and left already.

She got to the uppermost landing, and turned down the corridor, breathing hard. The empty classroom they usually met up in was the perfect space for it, high above any interference from people on the ground, lots of daylight streaming in from a row of windows that ran the entire length of the room. Light was important, where they were going. Roxa shoved open the doors.

“Hi Clarissa,” she panted. “Sorry I’m late.”

The willowy, light-haired girl was sitting on a window sill, reading a book, absently kicking her boots. She looked up and waved, unfazed. Clarissa was Ursilian, and she looked quite fetching in the traditional long, black skirt and jacket, colorfully embroidered with geometric patterns. Sitting jauntily atop her wavy, sunlit hair was a black bowler hat.

“Oh, that’s all right,” she breezed. “I’m glad you made it! Come look at this, Roxa.” Clarissa beckoned excitedly.

Roxa mouth quirked up at the corners and she came over. She stole a glance at the spine. “Signa Rerum Carta,” she read. “What’s that?”

Clarissa’s eyes sparkled. “Well, that’s a good question. It’s a translation into Gemic from Gella, a much older root language. I found it in the Esoterics catalogue of the Avrora Remnant, but I think that was a misfile. It should have been in the Antiquity section of Arcanities.”

She looked at Roxa expectantly. Roxa snorted. “I’ll need a little more.”

“It might predate the Gellan Empire!” Clarissa burst out excitedly. “The translator says the original was half-burned, and attributes the work to Paracelus, but I’m not sure the timing for that makes sense, especially if it survived the Burning of Avrora.”

“Wait, you read Gemic?” Roxa looked at her curiously.

“Barely,” said Clarissa dismissively, “but my father has a pretty good dictionary that I’ve been using to cross-reference the glyphs I don’t know. He works as a clerk in the Archives. Anyway, look at this!”

Roxa stared at the page of indecipherable script. “Hmm.”

Clarissa stabbed the page. “Look, here, and here, and here. That one means ‘tides’ or ‘current’ or ‘deep’, this one means ‘stars’ or ‘spirit’ and this one means ‘to use’ or ‘to eat’!”

“You think it’s talking about—” Roxa murmured, intrigued.

“Yes,” said Clarissa impatiently. “And here is what’s really interesting, this section I’ve been puzzling out keeps alluding to something called the Nine and One Songs. And this verb keeps cropping up, chayim, which can mean to summon, to sing, or ‘to desire nothing’, depending on the context. I think?” She closed the book with a snap. “In every tense in which it’s used, it always occurs with a plural referent. Remember the sounds we hear, down there?”

Roxa shivered. The sounds were eery, there was no denying that. “Yes?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but Reserved Liminal Oscillation Theory has always felt a little shoddy to me, as an explanation for thanopelagic acoustics. It doesn’t do anything else, besides patch a little bit of the gaping hole in our understanding of the River.” Clarissa sounded exasperated. “No matter what our professors say.”

Roxa nodded slowly. “So? You suspect there’s more going on?”

Clarissa smiled conspiratorially. “Do you sing, Roxa?”

Roxa shrugged. “Back home. But it’s been a while. You?”

“It’s part of being Ursilian, we sing a lot.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s one thing that’s true about the stereotypes, at least. Anyway, over the last few days, I’ve been dabbling with vocals, down there, just by myself. It’s been...interesting. Even playing around with it, I’ve noticed slight differences in casting wards, in drawing, and in harnessing. Nothing dramatic.” Clarissa’s blue eyes glittered. “But what I can’t stop thinking about, Roxa, is harmonizing.”

Roxa snorted. Clarissa might be a wingnut, but it made her a more interesting practice partner, and Roxa always learned something valuable. Plus, she was an excellent sorcerer. Still…

“Okay. But what if we get down there, try out some harmonies, and it—I don’t know, like, draws some hunking huge revenant barreling up from the Ninth Abyss?”

“That’s what wards are for, silly!” Clarissa hopped off the sill and strode to the center of the room. She turned and winked. “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

Roxa followed, rolling her neck. When she’d first been learning sorcery, the plunge had been a hesitant, terrifying affair, but her mother had insisted on total sublimation of that fear, and had trained it out of her mercilessly, until Roxa could do it reflexively, in a split instant.

“Let’s start where we were last time, in the First.”

Roxa reached for the spirit current, felt herself herself skim, then catch, and in the blink of an eye, the phantom waters of the River rose over her head and she was in.

The empty classroom was unchanged, but now there were shimmers and blurs and streaks in the air around her, the faint chill and sluggish pull of the unseen current on her limbs. There was a faint pressure in her ears, and strange echoes and sounds drifted and washed over her perception, as if arriving from far away. Her hair began to lift and form a cloud around her head, as if she were underwater. She could feel colder, faster depths yawning beneath her, extending far beyond the limits of her perception.

She knew that, with a flexing of her will, she could drop forever into that vast, bottomless abyss. Even with the calluses that long experience had given her, she shivered, thinking of the unstirred things slowly adrift, hanging suspended in the deep dark below.

Clarissa was still right alongside her, but now Roxa could feel the field cast by her presence in the River, as well. A shiver in the current, a shadow that shed ripples, a pulsing cloud of lavender smoke she could see not with her eyes but with her thanopelagic perception.

Thanopelagics was the Harmine term for the study of what Imperiat sorcerers called thanopelagic current and everyone else just called the River.

Roxa felt the gentle, undulating brush of Clarissa’s field on hers, and could tell with her River sense that they were hovering at around the same depth.

Roxa swept her sorcerous perception around and could sense nothing else nearby. They were safe, for now. The First Layer had its tricks, but it was gentle, almost balmy, compared to the looming, lonesome deeps below. Another low, haunting echo washed over them. It could have been a cry, or a howl, or a drawn scream.

Clarissa held out her hands. “Wards?”

Roxa’s mother had taught her that everyone could learn to sense the River, but only sorcerers could shape its current into spells, using the lathe of their wills and, with tongue and gesture, direct its surging flow of spirit power into the tangible world.

Countess Sasha Monir paced the crenelated battlements of the turret top, the wind flow whipping her long red hair around her face. The handful of young trainees, Roxa among them, who’d demonstrated some sorcerous talent, stood braced against the buffeting air, chancing an occasional glance down at the valley floor, far below. The first lessons of sorcery were traditionally taught in high places. It was safer.

All sorcery incurred a cost, Countess Monir warned them. For a given sorcerer to channel the River’s spirit current into the visible spectrum as magic carried risks that escalated in proportion to how much power that sorcerer drew. Roxa’s mother had paused and twisted her mouth grimly, before explaining that sorcerers in the River attracted…attention. From below.

Sorcerers needed wards, explained the Countess, not just for countering the spellcraft of other sorcerers, but because the River had revenants.

This was articulated by the Thanopelagic Research department as Stagbrawn’s Law. Encounters with ‘hostile fields’ advanced exponentially and reciprocally along a curve delineated by a sorcerer’s generation of adverse entropy, or something mouthy like that.

Thanopelagic perception wasn’t sight, but Roxa got flashes of images, in her mind’s eye—as if, in the absence of any visual information, her brain were trying to fill in what it knew was there. All the revenants ‘looked’ different. They ranged from flocks of smallish orbs that all seemed to swivel and blink like countless eyes, to coiling loops and knots that never ceased slithering, to lean, jagged coursers the size of sharks, to sinuous, contorting hulks almost a mile long. They were finned and armored, toothed and winged, hollow and hungry. In the old stories they were called Eaters.

Harmine researchers had noted that lesser denizens of the River tended to gather with each other, while greater ones seemed to lurk alone, like drifting behemoths.

Roxa clasped Clarissa’s outstretched hands and met her sparkling blue gaze. Together they began to cast. Roxa poured her will clean and clear, as if from a jug with a fluted spout. There was a sizzle as the ancient patterns of liquid vowels and consonants left her mouth and met the current, setting her lips numbly abuzz.

A huge flare of golden, fractal lace blossomed around them both. Roxa felt Clarissa deftly pulse a little more current into it, and it began to slowly spin. This was what they had been practicing lately—cooperative warding. It was a delicate balancing act, but what it cost in trickyness was made up for in spades by its effectiveness. Roxa only had to devote a tenth or so of her will to maintaining the ward, as did Clarissa, with the rest of her concentration freed up to do as she pleased. Far more common was for a cadre of sorcerers to specialize into combat roles, with one or two warders guarding themselves and several brutes.

Clarissa gasped. “Our wards are getting so pretty!”

“And strong,” Roxa smiled at her. “This is far beyond what I can do by myself.”

“Shall we go deeper? I want to try harmonizing. Will you do it with me, Roxa? Please?”

Roxa nodded, her smile broadening. She couldn’t help it. Her eager-eyed practice partner was too cute.

Clarissa cocked her head, as if listening. “All right, follow me.”

They dropped together, their wards keeping pace. The tug of the current began to feel choppier, and Roxa knew they were crossing into the Second Layer. There were split currents here, and more eddies and sinkholes that could unbalance or trap the unwary sorcerer.

Clarissa expertly led the way to the edge of what, to Roxa, seemed like a vast, curving wall of accelerated current, spiraling downwards into the fathomless deep—a gyre.

Gyres were dangerous shortcuts, portals that could be used to navigate between multiple Layers in the blink of an eye. They could also be so strong and tricky that many sorcerers avoided them as a rule.

“I’ve been using this one a lot,” called Clarissa to Roxa, though they were standing right next to each other. This close to the gyre, there was a roaring that had nothing to do with their ears. “Lately it only goes down to Sixth, but I’ve been getting off at Fourth. Want to try?” Her eyes were aglow with excitement.

Roxa felt a matching bubble of exhilaration in her chest. She waggled her eyebrows. “Three, two—”

Together they surged forward, and Roxa whooped as the gyre caught them with a force that she felt in her lungs, and hurtled them down, and down, and down…

She felt the temperature drop as the pressure rose. After only a few seconds, she felt Clarissa tap her wrist rapidly, and Roxa narrowed her will and projected herself sideways. Clarissa did the same and with an enormous squeeze, they popped out the other side of the gyre’s wall together, and found themselves in the Fourth Layer, in the middle of a swarm of revenants.

Roxa glimpsed a shattering flurry of cold, white eyes, barbed whiskers, low slung jaws, needle-sharp teeth, and whipping tails. Then their wards sparked and burned golden, scattering the River denizens.

Clarissa laughed, a little wildly. “Whoops!”

Roxa shook her head, unable to repress a grin. She watched the cluster of revenants reform, a healthy distance away. Had they been waiting at this particular bend of the gyre, to catch an unwary sorcerer? Maybe they had noticed a pattern to Clarissa’s forays down here. She could feel their watchful, hungry attention, like icy prickles on her skin. Roxa beckoned Clarissa further away from the gyre’s roar.

Here, the waters of the River were deceptively calm, but that wouldn’t last long. The Fourth Layer had periodic, powerful undertows. If they didn’t want to get caught by a pummeling crush of current, and driven much too deep, sorcerers venturing this deep needed to anchor themselves with spellcraft.

“So,” Clarissa hummed, unfazed. “I was thinking we could try singing the anchor? I could start, and then you could try harmonizing with me.”

“Just be patient with me? It might take me a minute to find the harmony.”

“You got it, girl! Also, don’t worry if the singing part doesn’t work or do…anything,” Clarissa rolled her eyes. “I know how I sound. Anyway, here goes nothing.”

Roxa blinked as a high, clear voice erupted from her practice partner, burning like silver in the dull River gloaming. Clarissa looked at her after the first few syllables, and Roxa pointed down. There was no way she was going to be able to get that high. Clarissa had the good grace to blush a little, and her voice dropped a few octaves.

There we go, thought Roxa, and she raised her own voice to meet her friend. The wards around them glowed even brighter as their voices twined and spun, like two hawks circling in courting flight. Roxa winced internally as she fumbled the harmony a few times, but for the most part she was able to keep up. As they reached the end of the spell together, and their anchor began to burrow down like a giant taproot, Roxa noticed something odd.

Anchors served another function, besides fixing a sorcerer in place, in the River. They also fed that sorcerer more power than she would otherwise be able to pull from the current. In thanopelagic terms, the drawing-to-harnessing ratio of an anchored sorcerer was normally about twice as good, compared to an unanchored one of equivalent skill. Except that Roxa could immediately tell, as the echoes of their voices rippled and expanded out in all directions, that this anchor was doing significantly better than that.

She whistled, and glanced at Clarissa, who looked as if she were fairly vibrating with excitement.

“What. This. Is. So. Awesome!”

Roxa cocked her head. Her thanopelagic perception had just twinged. There was...something moving out there.

She narrowed her eyes, as if that would help her see further. Their harmony still hung softly mingling in the blur of the current.

Whatever it was, it was circling at the very edges of her senses. Weird. She didn’t think it was any kind of denizen she’d come across before.

It was coming closer, honing onto the lurking pack of revenants nearby. She felt Clarissa stiffen beside her, and then there was a sunburst shock of reverberation, a soundless blare of resonance.

The revenants were diving, fleeing, scattering. Roxa blinked, trying to get her dazed sorcerer’s senses to focus, to grasp what—

She glimpsed a vivid cloudburst of gigantic, beating moth wings, spreading out from a core that ached with silver-flaming intensity. Washing out from that core in ripples, and rushing towards her was a ringing, overlapping ache of recognition, almost a greeting. And around her in the River, there were other silver flares, popping up like distant stars, in fact it almost reminded her of the aching expanse of the night sky, there were so many—

There was a scuffle of boots in the corridor, along with a snatch of loud chatter, and then the double doors of the classroom were abruptly yanked open, swinging and banging. Roxa felt Clarissa quickly pulse another bump of power into the golden lattice of their wards, which flickered and went transparent, hidden from view.

Three boys strolled in and stopped just inside the doorway when they saw Clarissa and Roxa. There was no hiding the smell of sorcery, thought Roxa sourly. She scanned the River again, quickly, but it was dark and empty. There was no denizens about—whatever had come was gone.

“Well, well, look what we found,” brayed one boy loudly. “It’s the heretical Ursilian bitch that always abuses symbolic meanings in class. See, Thomilt? I told you someone else was using this space for practice.”

“So you did, Regis, so you did.” His friend sneered at Clarissa. “Revolting insect. This must be my lucky day.”

Roxa had already heard enough. She had one hand surreptitiously working behind her back, artfully channeling the River’s flow and coaxing it into the form of a spinning disk of molten darkness.

The pack of revenants had regrouped by the gyre—and there were more of them than before, swirling hungrily. Perhaps the intentional ripples of these boys’ fields was why they had first gathered here, in anticipation.

“Nobody will hear you, and nobody will come to help,” the second boy spat venomously. “The fates are kind, delivering you here to suffer my justice. You scum have guided the decline of our society’s moral fabric for too long.”

She noticed the third boy seemed pale. He was edging closer to the first two, looking directly at her and whispering urgently to his friends. Where had she seen that straw thatch of hair before?

“What?” blurted the first. “That’s the girl who beat the shit out of you and Linta?”

There was a split second pause, where they all stared at each other tensely, and then everyone dropped as deep as they could as fast as they could into the River.

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter Twenty Three

[[[CW: internalized transphobia/misogyny. I know everyone has probably been looking forward to this chapter for a while (at least I know I have) but as I am going over it in preparation for posting, I’m realizing that I wrote it kind of intense? Just be aware that there’s a chance it could be pretty activating, towards the end, and maybe set up some aftercare for yourself, even if it’s just a cup of tea or a pillow to hug. <3]]]

It was that noble who had grabbed me across the stockroom counter, and that dark-eyed girl from the courtyard.

I was immediately delirious with terror. They’d dowsed and recognized me. They knew I was kuffa. I was trapped in a dead-end—nowhere to flee. My cover was blown on my first day. Aralia wouldn’t help me—she would be too incredulous that I had been caught this quickly. There was no way she would be willing to forge another legend for me.

They were still conferring quietly with each other. Then the smaller, dark-eyed girl took a careful step towards me, palms turned up and open—was she going to grab me?

I dropped the mop with a clatter, and stepped back as she came forward, my hands trembling. The tall redhead kept scanning the far end of the corridor, as if keeping watch.

The dark-eyed girl was focused on me. “Listen, we just want to—”

I bolted past her. I was good at running away, good at wriggling away from seizing hands, good at not being caught. I juked away from the redhead, and I was almost—

“Roxa!” snapped the first girl, and then I smelled sorcery.

I had time to belatedly remember the last time this noble had used her art on me, before I was yanked backwards and upwards, and suspended an inch or two above the floor.

I squeaked as dark bands blossomed from the air around me. Quick as a whip, they wrapped themselves around my thighs and ankles, and looped themselves around my wrists, which were abruptly pulled behind me and cinched together. More of them quickly wound around the lower half of my face, muffling my mouth.

The noble finished muttering under her breath. As I made a reflexive attempt to wriggle and twist my way free, she flashed me the grin of a fox eating cake. “Gotcha. No more running from you, little rabbit.”

Her tone was...friendly? This didn’t make any sense. Then I realized that I wasn’t just suspended in the air—I seemed to be moving? The noble was drawing me back into the room the two girls had just left. I was floating where she directed me, unable to resist. I sagged limply as the helplessness of my situation became apparent. I was well and truly caught. There was nothing I could do. I heard the door close behind me and the voice of the first girl.

“Roxa! Is this completely necessary?”

In front of me, Roxa shrugged and grinned. “You wanted to talk to her. And for some reason I don’t think she hates it.”

The noble winked at me and my cheeks flamed. I mumbled a protest through my gag. It was true—a part of me couldn’t help but revel in this feeling of being helplessly suspended. It was actually quite delicious? I groaned. How had this complete stranger seen through me that easily? Besides, there was no reason to find anything about this situation hot. Why was I like this?

Roxa drew me to a comfy-looking couch and then tipped me onto it so I was sitting upright, though still completely bound. The other girl joined her so that they were both standing in front of me.

“Now then,” said Roxa matter of factly, “I’d like to ungag you, but you must promise to be well behaved and not raise a ruckus. We aren’t going to hurt you. Understood?”

I nodded slowly. Roxa crooked her finger and the bands of sorcery slid silkily away from my mouth. I sat and looked from one to the other with wide eyes, waiting.

The first girl sighed. “I’m sorry about that, but the corridor is too dangerous a place to talk plainly in. My name is Mila and this is Roxa. Now, then. What’s your—what would you like us to call you?”

“Um.” A melting of relief began to happen inside me. “Ellie.”

“Okay, Ellie.” Mila exchanged a glance with Roxa. “Firstly, understand this: neither of us would ever willingly turn you in or let harm come to you. In fact, we’d like to help you.”

“Help me?” I spluttered. “W-why should I trust you? Why are you even doing this?”

Roxa crossed her arms. “Sorry, Ellie, but you’re not in a position to get full and honest answers from us, just yet. We have the edge on you, and you don’t have anything on us. So we’ll be the ones asking questions, at least for right now.”

I was suddenly acutely aware of my wrists, bound behind me. I felt my face heat up.

“Ellie, we do need to know how you got here,” Mila sat next to me, quite close. I squirmed around to face her. “How you became a maid at Stormcroft, and whether anyone helped you, and whether you are beholden to them. We have...enemies, here, you see. We also need to know if you’ve kept silent about that business between you and Roxa at the stockroom.”

I made a snap decision before she had even finished speaking. I couldn’t hesitate. This was too close to how Aralia had caught me lying.

“I bought a maid’s commission,” I blurted. My face burned deep red. Something about saying that out loud had flooded me with instant shame. I looked at the floor miserably. Now that the words were out of my mouth, I felt like an imposter, like a child caught playing dress-up—but this was so much worse than when I had been caught trying on Kisma’s clothes, as a kid. “From the bursar. I said it was for my sister,” I muttered.

These older girls must think me a fake, a counterfeit, a sad and desperate joke. Wrenching loneliness clawed at my heart. They were both actual, real girls that belonged in this House whereas—what was I?

“I used your, um, money,” I winced. My insides felt like they were plummeting down, like they would drop forever without hitting bottom. “For the bribe.” I hesitated. “I was alone.”

There. I had lied, and also told the truth. I felt painfully exposed. All I wanted now was to disappear. My throat was tight and aching, my breathing shallow. My whole face felt fragile, like it might crumble at any moment. I couldn’t look at either of them. There was a brief silence. My heart kept sinking, in endless free fall.

“I-I’m sorry,” I added in my smallest voice, not even sure what I meant, but feeling more wretched than I could bear.

Mila squeezed my leg. “Ellie, listen, I—you’re not alone, not any more, okay?” Her voice had an odd inflection to it. “It took so much courage and brilliance and love to do what you did. I-I’m honestly so impressed.”

With a massive effort, I raised my gaze to meet hers, and trembled as the deep forest pools of her eyes caught my plunging descent. A sensation like warm, rippling honey spread inside me and melted the constriction in my ribcage. I drew a deep, full breath and sighed, clinging to her eye contact as if it were a lifeline.

Mila didn’t look away, for which I was ridiculously grateful. “Let her go, Roxa.”

The rest of my restraints slackened and fell away, just as I processed that ‘her’ meant me.

Mila’s simple acknowledgment of my femininity—even with all my desperate, shamefaced lunges towards girlhood laid bare before her—landed in my upper chest and reverberated and then I couldn’t see her anymore. My vision blurred and I felt tears sliding down my cheeks. It was like feeling a landslide happen inside of me—I couldn’t hold my face together, it caved open, and everything spilled out.

“Ellie—oh, can I hug you?”

I nodded shakily, and then her arms were around me. My face fit snugly into the hollow of her shoulder. I shuddered with sobs that went on and on, storming through me like waves of rain.

“The strength of your spirit is beautiful,” she murmured fiercely. “Never doubt what you did, do you hear me? You were just ensuring your own survival.”

The aching stuckness in my throat was melting like a chunk of ice in spring. I kept trying to apologize—for soaking her shirt, or for breaking down like this, or maybe some other reason—but Mila kept hushing me and I couldn’t hold any of it in anyways.

The grief that had welled up so ceaseless and overwhelming gradually slackened, and I was overtaken by trembling. With a soft, wordless noise, Mila drew back and I curled shyly into the cushions. She offered me a blanket, which I gratefully huddled into. I felt raw, and empty, wrung out.

I heard a kettle fussing, and looked over to see Roxa pouring mugs of tea. She passed one to Mila, who accepted it with a murmur of thanks, then came over and knelt down in front of me and did the same. I took it gingerly.

“T-thank you,” I whispered tremulously. Roxa intimidated me, in several ways. She was extremely attractive, for one. For another, the electric tingle of her grabbing my neck and snarling in my face, and the melty way I’d responded to it, loomed large in my memory.

Also, she had just seen me as rawly exposed as anyone had, ever. I found the combination of all these associations…confusing.

Mila sighed. “Ellie, I know you two have met before, but please let me introduce Roxa again. She’s really fierce and protective of her friends. She’s had my back all the way and I trust her with my life.”

As Mila spoke, I saw Roxa look at her with mingled awe and wonder and gratitude.

“Hi,” I said nervously.

Roxa’s mouth crooked. “Hi, Ellie. I’m sorry to have to ask this, especially right now, but does anyone else know you’re a girl?”

The same melting relief in my breast. I took a slightly deeper breath. Roxa, too, was signaling that she saw me as I was trying to be seen. Neither of these girls seemed to think I was a monstrous degenerate or a desperate, fake imposter.

But—this was again veering too close to when Aralia had seen right through me. I knew I probably couldn’t lie successfully. Perhaps holding back part of the truth was safer.

“Yes,” I said hesitantly. “Someone does. My old roommate in Oakridge.”

Roxa frowned. “Did he hold that over your head? To compel you?”

I blushed. “No, I mean—well—we were, um—I, not exactly,” I stammered.

Roxa’s mouth quirked up at the corners. “I see.”

“He was...fucking me,” I blurted, cheeks hot. “It wasn’t blackmail, I was—I wanted it, but I. Decided to—” I looked down at my steaming mug. “To hide myself. After that. Well,” I added hurriedly, “Not right away. It took a while to go through with. But I-I haven’t told anyone about the stockroom. I promise.” I looked back and forth between them, willing them to believe me.

Roxa and Mila looked at each other, but I missed what passed between them. They both turned back to me. Mila squeezed my leg and Roxa nodded. Did that…mean they believed me? I felt tentative relief, along with a twinge of guilt.

They hadn’t hurt me, they didn’t seem to be taking advantage of me, and they were being indisputably kind to me. Not to mention I held them both in no small amount of awe. Lying to them, even by omission, was already making me feel uneasy. But there had been no time to think about it…

A bell began to toll. I tensed. I’d completely forgotten about mopping.

“Well, I am late to a session with my very cute sorcery practice buddy,” Roxa said, standing.

I cast a look back at the door. “I’m supposed to be cleaning?”

“No,” Mila said firmly. “You will rest for at least the time it takes to drink a cup of tea.”

The insistence in her voice reached right into my sternum and plucked a chord that reverberated, warm and glowing. I sighed and sank back down obediently. How easily these two near strangers had elicited an easing response in my body, in just the past few minutes…

I felt like a cat leaning into a stroking hand. I felt…safe?

I yawned. Yes, I would just finish this tea, and then get back to mopping…

~ ~ ~

I took another sip of the tea, and blinked drowsily. This room was so cute and cozy…

Mila came around the couch and I glanced up guiltily. Had I overstayed my welcome?

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” I said shyly. “Thank you.”

“I’m just glad you’re safe, Ellie.” She sat down next to me, and hesitated. “Look, I don’t want to compel you, but I need your silence, and I need to know that you understand what that means.”

I nodded quickly. “I won’t mention you to anyone, or even let slip that we’ve met.”

Mila’s beautiful, dark eyes, watching me.

“Or Roxa,” I added hurriedly.

“It’s also very important that you aren’t seen coming and going from our room.”

My heart sank. I had been hoping that Mila would want me to visit again.

“For your own protection. Our enemies might target you if they think we have a connection.” Mila frowned. “I’ll have to tell you more about that soon, and we can assess risk and talk about silence more clearly then. But for now, keep this all entirely secret.”

“I will, I promise.” I looked down. “And I’ll stay away from this hallway.”

Mila snorted. “I said don’t be seen, not that I don’t want you to come back.”

A pleasant flash of heat shivered through me. She wanted me to come back? I looked up hopefully, and she raised her eyebrows. “If you want to. You seem to have tucked yourself away quite safely here, and being friends with us is risky. Maybe more risky than the protection we can offer is worth.”

“I want to be friends,” I blurted. “With you.” My cheeks heated.

Mila smiled. “Good. I want you come back tomorrow. Whenever you can spare at least an hour—and don’t worry about waking us, if it’s late. If we don’t hear from you, I’ll assume something has gone awry and I’ll have Roxa dowse you.”

“Okay,” I acquiesced, a little breathily. I was beginning to suspect that I liked being told what to do by pretty girls.

Mila’s eyes lingered on me. “Roxa was right about you, huh?”

I looked back at her, puzzled for a moment. What had Roxa said about me? My mind flashed back to when she’d first floated me in, all trussed up. For some reason I don’t think she hates it.My eyes widened and I blushed furiously, hyper-aware of the warmth pulsing between my thighs. I felt like a deer caught abruptly out in the open.

The corner of Mila’s mouth curved. “The other thing I want is a few of those black dresses and aprons and headscarves. And make sure at least one of them is tall enough for Roxa, got it?”

I nodded softly. There was a melty heat draped over all my thinking. Was she bossing me around a little? If so, it felt…way too good.

Mila reached out and patted me on the head a few times. I felt my pussy clench at her touch. “If you do well, I’ll give you some more orders to follow.”

I stared at her, open-mouthed, my face burning. She grinned back cheekily.

“’kay,” I choked. I twitched a little as heat lightning sheeted along my inner thighs.

“Do you like this, Ellie?” Mila said softly.

“Y-yess,” I whispered. If my face got any hotter, I was sure I would faint.

“Good, because I like it too.” Mila smirked and a tiny pant escaped me. “You’re so cute when you’re flustered.”

A warm glow was suffusing my insides. I stared into the dark pools of her eyes, my lips slightly parted, feeling entranced. This was sooo nice.

“In fact, I’m sure I could tease you all day and never get bored. You look so pretty with your face all red like this.”

A wave of lusty euphoria pulsed through me. Mila watched it happen—I could see her watch it unfurl through my eyes. It was the safest, hottest, most intimate thing I’d ever experienced. I shook involuntarily and Mila’s lips curved a little more.

“Say thank you,” she said softly.

I squeezed my legs together. “Thank you,” I choked.

Mila grinned. “Good girl.”

I exhaled tremulously, unable to look away from her open, clear, dark gaze. How did she know? It was like she could read me better than I could, as if she knew exactly what to say and how.

Mila winked at me and stood. “Well, I need to study and you’ve got to clean, so.” She stretched. “Take all the time you need to finish your tea, though. Come back tomorrow, all right?”

I nodded and hurriedly slurped my cold tea, trying to blink away the melty daze overlaying my mind. I thanked Mila again, blushing furiously, and then stumbled out into the corridor.

~ ~ ~

Curled on the cot in my little stone cell, I stared at the low ceiling, feeling well-fed and sleepy. Jaques had beckoned me into the crowded office at shift change, and charged me with filling bowls of stew from a cart and pouring cups of strong, sweet, milky tea for everyone as staff bustled around, chatting, laughing and clocking in and out. And though I’d been wide-eyed and sweaty-palmed at first, I had done it—I had passed again, and also cemented my reputation as the shy new girl.

Roz had tried to engage me in conversation but quickly found me too quiet for her tastes and lost interest. I’d finally relaxed when it was clear that the old-timers had started talking over my head. I was used to being invisible, to having attention slide off me.

I wrapped my arms around myself and squeezed. I had landed safely, and the ground beneath my feet even felt somewhat stable. Most importantly, I got to be a girl. Aralia had come through for me in a big way. Another buoyant rush of euphoria filled me. I was so lucky.

And I had met Mila, and Roxa…

A strange mix of emotions swirled inside me. There were...how many people, now, who held this power over me? It was getting more than slightly worrisome. Only a few weeks ago, I had been vulnerable to no one—not like this, at least.

Of course, a few weeks ago, I had also been far more alone.

I sighed happily, thinking of Mila’s warm, dark, clear gaze, locked on mine. It was admittedly hard to muster any wariness towards her. The unsolicited friendship she had offered me still glowed softly inside me, like a powerful charm.

And she had called me pretty. That was another glowing ember lodged inside me, one that I’d taken out over and over today to marvel at. I couldn’t stop thinking about the utterly delicious and euphoric way she had teased me.

I felt so bolstered by Mila, but a seed of guilt starting to grow in me for lying to her. Had it been a mistake for me to omit any mention of Aralia? What if Mila found out? Would she be disgusted with me? I bit my lip.

Should I have risked everything, and revealed Aralia’s hold over me? I suddenly thought of Aralia, making me swear to keep her involvement secret. I wondered what she might do to me, if I hadn’t and then she found out. I was suddenly relieved my lie about acting alone seemed to have passed scrutiny.

No, I had to remember the bones of the situation. Aralia, and now Mila and Roxa too, held all the cards. All of them could do whatever they wanted to me without repercussion. The only protection I had from them lay in the fact that they didn’t seem to know about each other. Yet.

If this apparently stable ground beneath me abruptly collapsed, I might still have some leverage—so long as I could turn to one secret ally if the other threatened to betray me.

At least for now, I had to keep them in the dark about each other. Even though Mila had been so unexpectedly kind, I still didn’t know almost anything about her. Wouldn’t it be hopelessly naive of me to trust her so quickly?

And yet, what reason would Roxa and Mila have for hiding their intention from me, if they meant to use me for their own ends? They didn’t need to be kind to me, not with how much power they held over me.

What would they do, if they knew Aralia had such a strong hold over me? I shivered. Even if they were grateful to me for being honest, surely they would distance themselves from me. I was too compromised to be worth the risk. And if I didn’t tell them and they found out later? Same result.

My heart sank. What could I do?

The idea of Mila’s friendship abruptly evaporating—I swallowed, my throat aching with alarmed aloneness. I desperately didn’t want to drive her away, but the tangle of promises I had started making in order to survive was already tightening into a trap.

I was already feeling caught up by contradictions. If two loyalties conflicted, how was I supposed to know which one to honor and which one to break? Would I simply choose whichever side seemed most likely to save my skin?

The mystery of Aralia was that all the power she held over me depended on her willingness to betray me, and she had gone out of her way to assure me that she wouldn’t. Her leverage over me was effectively null if she was unwilling to turn me in. Still, I was reluctant to defy her. If there was even a slight chance that she could protect me if I were discovered, I had to keep her as an ally. And I did feel genuinely grateful to her for helping me.

I chewed my lip. The kindness that Mila had shown me also felt precious, like something I wanted to defend and protect. But was I willing to throw away all that Aralia could do for me, just to keep my promise to Mila? That seemed a little dramatic—what did Mila even have to worry about, compared to me? It was just too soon to know anything...

I drifted asleep with the memory of her dark-warm gaze catching me, again and again.

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter Twenty Two

In my dream, I was a girl.

I wasn’t a floating consciousness, tethered to the vague assumption of a body. In fact, I wasn’t detached in any way.

I was my body, embedded, embodied. I swirled with thick, vivid vortexes of sensation, attraction, pleasure. The relieved realization that this was my waking body now, too, bubbled lightly in my torso.

Another girl pressed up against me, warm tingle of skin on skin. The euphoric flutter of being wanted in this way. Her leg pushed between my legs, and the emptiness in that juncture, the smooth, hot, firm fit of my crotch with her thigh, rocketed solidly right up into my brain as right. Her lips moved on my ear and—

I woke abruptly, blinking in the lamplight. There was a kettle whistling. Pasha was moving around in the kitchen.

My pussy pulsed with a pleasant aching. I pushed down the urge to touch myself, and struggled upright in the hammock. I glimpsed Pasha observing me impassively. I tried to swing my legs out but my toe caught and I tipped over, spilling to the floor with an undignified squeak of alarm.

Hot-faced, I struggled up. Pasha’s back was turned again—he was attending to something on the stove. The aroma of toasted grain wafted over.

“There are clothes for you by the hearth,” he called over his shoulder.

I felt a hitch of excitement. Finally, clothes that were for me! It took me a few minutes to sort the pieces into an outfit. There seemed to be stockings, underwear, a shift, headscarves, a plain, black dress and a crisply starched apron.

I thanked Pasha excitedly, and received a non-committal grunt for my trouble. My glow faded somewhat as I realized I was going to have to change right here in the middle of the room. I sighed. Good thing I’d gotten so much practice being naked in front of a handsome boy I didn’t know very well, lately.

I shucked my old clothes into a heap as quickly as possible and began the ungainly process of getting into unfamiliar clothes for the first time. Donning the stockings and panties went as well as could be hoped, but the catch for the bra stopped me in my tracks. I flailed and reached, hyper conscious of Pasha, spooning porridge and watching me struggle. Finally I heard him sigh and scrape his chair as he stood.

“Drop your arms.” I flushed in embarrassment and obeyed. He stopped right behind me.

“Turn towards the light, this way.” A tingle of goosebumps raced up my scalp as deft, warm fingers wrapped around my upper arms, rotating me. My pussy clenched and I submitted to his touch unthinkingly. He repositioned me with easy firmness and I found myself staring into an oval wall mirror that I hadn’t noticed before.

I watched, entranced, as the nearly naked girl in the reflection blushed and shivered. Behind her, Pasha frowned in concentration. Wonder rushed through me like a great wind, tugging at and buffeting my insides.

“I hate these things,” he muttered. “There. Done.”

He brusquely helped me don the shift and dress. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the mirror, as I watched my reflection peek back at me from inside of each new piece of clothing.

It was finally happening. I could scarcely believe it. The clothes were plain, and rough, but the way they held to my body felt good. And the way they made me look...

My brain stuttered, even as my heart soared like a great-winged bird spiraling on a thermal. I could feel deep connections forming below my conscious awareness, like submerged puzzle-pieces clicking into place.

I wanted to moon, wide-eyed, at myself forever, but Pasha was clearly impatient. He let me wolf down some porridge, before herding me outside into the chill, pre-dawn gloom.

Just as I had last night, I stumbled after him through narrow, cobbled streets that all looked the same, until I had lost all sense of direction. Finally, we crossed a bridge arching over dark, rushing waters. On the other side was a frosted meadow, with a wide path leading through it.

I followed Pasha into the woods, my breath blooming pale in the cold air. To the east, the sky was lightening. My head was bustling with curiosity and questions, but I bit them back. Pasha clearly didn’t want to talk to me.

Was it because he knew I was kuffa? But he seemed impatient with me, not disgusted. I wondered about his relationship to Aralia. Was she holding something over Pasha’s head as well? I tried to remember last night. Hadn’t she seemed to be the one in charge?

Looking ahead at his straight back, I felt a pang of loneliness—a strange counter weight to the lift and lightness bubbling in my breast. I really was alone here, now more than ever.

I felt like I’d stepped out onto a springy, sloping fir branch, only half-expecting it to bear my weight. And yet, it had? I could only hope that it would hold under the next step, and the next. I was walking between treetops, with a long way to fall, and no going back—even if I wanted to, where could I go?

I drew a deep lungful of the fresh, chill morning air. A clear certainty was blooming in me, edged with all the glittering sharpness of survival.

I had to keep going, keep following the dark, clear openings of light in my belly, keep taking what stumbled-on chances I could find.

I couldn’t count on Pasha, couldn’t really count on Aralia, despite all that I owed her. The bottom line was that she had me in a position of complete vulnerability. She could do whatever she wanted to me, and I had no recourse, no defense, no allies.

My immediate priority had to be keeping her happy, and not giving her any reason to rethink her decision to burden herself with the risk of hiding me. Beyond that, if I could survive long enough, maybe I could find some scrap of leverage or protection for myself.

The starkness of my position should have felt meager, and yet right now, breathing the damp, clean air of the woods, finally clad in clothes that made sense to me, I just felt tensely alive, wired with determination and buzzing with marvel.

I shook my head in amazement. I had finally done it—I had transformed.

I got to be a girl, now.

I was absurdly lucky to have even gotten this far, and yet it felt like nothing could assail the sheer, breathless wonder inside me—not the razor edge of danger, not my doubt and loneliness, not even the terror of getting caught. I felt an absurd urge to whistle.

The trees thinned, and I began to glimpse the soaring towers and graystone edifices of Harmine. We circled the edge of the massive sprawl, until we came to a newer-looking building, built of red brick, boasting four sprawling wings extending from a central hub.

Pasha led me to a basement door, below ground level. He pushed it open and released a warm blast of steam, smelling of laundry chemicals. We entered a rabbit’s warren of narrow corridors with doors leading off of them.

After some twists and turns, Pasha knocked on one of the doors, and I heard a strong, chipper voice call, “Hullo!”

He turned to me. “Wait here a moment.” The door closed behind him.

I looked curiously around. I could still smell laundry, and there was the telltale clunk and hiss of a boiler—too loud to eavesdrop. Down the corridor, a door banged open and a raucous voice spilled out, followed by two figures carrying hampers full of crumpled sheets.

“—and do you know what that little cunt said to me?”

They turned and began marching towards me. I flattened myself against the recessed door to give them room to pass.

“She said—and, listen, I know everyone’s always telling me, ‘Roz, you exaggerate’ and ‘Come now, Roz’ but no, this is what she actually said, I shit you not, she said ‘I thought you liked it that way.’”

The other person snorted. They were both dressed as I was, though I took note of the different way they wore their headscarves. I felt a tremor of trepidation as I saw how much they were each carrying.

They bustled right up alongside me before one of them looked twice at me.

“Hey! A new girl! What’s your name, lass?”

My heart gave a rousing thud. “Hi,” I said shyly. “I’m Ellie.”

“Ellie! That’s a sweet name,” said the raucous one. “I’m Roz.”

“Batisse,” said the other shortly, and shrugged her load up a little. “First day is always hard. Keep your head down and you’ll get through it.”

“Luck!” called Roz, over her shoulder.

Then they were gone. I sagged in relief, hope blossoming inside me. I had passed as a girl. I’d even said something, introduced myself. Maybe I really could do this.

The door I was pressed against abruptly opened inwards, and I staggered backwards, stepped on the hem of my dress, and sat down hard on the floor.

Pasha was looking down at me, mouth twisted in exasperation.

I blushed, and scrambled upright.

I was in a long, rectangular room. There was a small kitchen at one end, a desk and filing cabinets at the other, and a long table between them that boasted more scars and stains than any alchemy workstation in the labs.

Sitting at the table was a young, powerfully-built woman with a shaved head and the most beautiful, plump cheeks I’d ever seen. Her cheeks entranced me instantly. I wanted to have cheeks like that. She had a ledger open in front of her, with quill and ink and penknife beside it, but she was looking straight at me.

“Sit down, Ellie.”

I heard the door close, and looked around to find Pasha gone.

Oh.

I sat down in the nearest chairs, heart sinking, careful not to trip over my dress again. Who was this? What had Pasha told her about me? Was he coming back?

“I’m Jaques. You’ll be working here under my supervision. If you have any questions, or have any problems, or you get into some kind of situation you can’t handle, you can bring all that to me, got it?”

I nodded quickly.

There was an expectant pause, and I hurried to fill it. “Yes.”

Then uncertainly added, “Thank you.”

Jaques raised her eyebrows at me. “You’re a skittish little thing, aren’t you?”

I nodded nervously, and she laughed. It was a bright, unrestrained sound, with no mockery in it. It reminded me of Kisma, and I felt myself untense a little.

“Well, then. I’ll lay it out for you straight, since you’re one of Pasha’s, and he’s asked me to look out for you.”

My heart jumped a little. Pasha wanted me looked out for? And had spent a favor to make it happen?

“Our little warren down here might seem below the notice of Harmine’s power plays, but don’t be fooled. Every one of us owes something to someone else and may be looking for any chance to take on another master, or trade up to a more powerful one, or game both ends against the middle, or broker information for a freelance price. I’m proud to say we’re not as cutthroat as some other staff departments, and more loyal to each other than most, but it pays not to tempt anyone, as they say.”

She looked at me frankly. “Apparently your only assignment is to keep your head down and not cause any problems, not draw too much attention. I guess I’m even starting to believe that. So. If anyone—student, teacher or staff—comes asking for favors or offering coin, just stay tight-lipped and ignore them. I run a tight ship and I’ll see that nobody takes it amiss. If you can handle that much and you don’t get too ambitious or rent your mouth to the rumor mill, you’ll do fine here.”

I blinked. “Okay. And thank you, miss.”

“And she’s mannered, as well! The last warning is also the most important: stay away from the Stormcroft Prefect, Penelope Caul, and anything to do with her. Her web is very sticky and very dangerous and very hungry. Don’t let yourself get eaten. Understood?”

I swallowed. “Yes. I think so.”

“Right,” said Jaques, rising. “Come with me and we’ll set you up.”

I followed her out.

“Most of us live in town, but I’ve been told that’s not an option for you.” She stopped at an intersection and turned to face me. “Down that way, there are a dozen or so sleeping cells. Feel free to pick an empty one.”

We continued on. My head spun with all the rapid newness as I tried to absorb everything Jaques was saying.

“Down that way is the staff laundry supply, take whatever you need from there.” She stopped at the bottom of a stairwell. “I trust you can work a mop? Good. You’ll be doing the whole third floor for me today. There are broom closets on each floor, by the stairs. Come back down at shift break, come find me and we’ll get you fed and watered. Any questions for me? No? Right then,” she shooed me, turning back the way we’d come. “Off you go.”

I took a deep breath and began climbing the stairs.

~ ~ ~

I dipped the mop into the bucket, lifted it into the wringer, squeezed, and watched the mostly clear water sluice away. There had been barely any dirt on the floor to begin with.

Mopping normally didn’t bother me. It was simple enough, and I liked the clarity of it—there was no uncertainty with mopping, you always knew what you’d completed and what was still left to do. I liked that I was finally alone with my thoughts and safe. Was I safe?

I’d tensed when students began to wake up and leave their rooms, but they had all ignored me completely, and soon my shoulders had dropped their tight guard again. I had even tentatively tried humming to myself. After a dangerous, high-stakes whirlwind, I seemed to have landed fine.

I liked it here, I decided. It was much better than Oakridge House. There were fewer students, and all of them were girls. I knew it was foolish to let that comfort me—I had certainly glimpsed no lack of allegiance insignia on their bags and brooches, hats and cloaks—but I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t feel at least a little better.

At least here, I was presenting basically as myself—even counting the obscuring cover of my legend and much moreso than if I were still trapped in boy zoo, pretending to be the old me.

Now, if I could only convince my body to finally relax…

Gradually though, a different kind of tension began to stew and seep inside me.

I wondered what Alexi must think, now that I’d been gone almost a whole day. My mind slipped back to the last time I’d seen him, the way he’d pulled my head back and slipped his thumb into my mouth, the way he’d smirked as I moaned and lapped breathlessly.

I shook a little, as heat flashed through all my limbs. My hand, clenching his shirt as one of his arms circled my shoulders and the other moved between my legs, pumping two slick fingers in and out of me.

‘What, nothing to say for yourself?’ Alexi mocked, right into my face. ‘I asked you a question, Ellie.’

‘S-sorry,’ I whimpered, glazed and red-cheeked.

I was going to miss his cock, and his hips with their easy, liquid rhythm that could coax me into a dripping, convulsive frisson of mewling and whining.

I took a shuddering breath.

I wondered if, next time I saw Aralia, she would taunt me again. I squeezed the mop.

Would she do more to me? The thought of her hand on my throat, her thumb pressing down on my tongue—a soft, strangled moan escaped me. Why oh why was I craving to be treated this way?

In a flushed haze, I finished the rest of the floor for that wing, and walked to the far end of the next, little drops of moisture running down the inside of my thighs. With a longing look at the washroom door, I began mopping. I probably wasn’t supposed to use the student washrooms. But what if I just popped in quickly, and…took care of myself?

I hadn’t seen a student in almost a full bell. Just as I was deciding that it was probably all right, I heard a door open, further up the corridor, and footsteps.

I turned to look, and immediately stiffened. I felt the blood drain from my face.

It was that noble, the fox-faced one that had grabbed me across the stockroom counter, and behind her was—

The dark-eyed girl from the courtyard, the one I’d spent all term avoiding in Apomasaics.

Both of them. Together.

My heart spiked with terror. They were watching me, conferring quietly with each other. The tall one had a jar—

Oh, no.

The hair she’d taken from me. It had to be—

A dowser. There was no fooling a dowser.

They had certainly recognized me. They would know I was kuffa.

I was so fucked.

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Bonus Smut Chapter Teaser

So this is just a teaser ;p

check out my patreon for the full chapter! (https://www.patreon.com/chaoticarmcandy)

.........

I felt a tap on the shoulder and I startled and let out an undignified yelp. I already knew who I was going to see, as I turned, color rushing to my cheeks.

He was grinning insufferably at me.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything. Also, not my fault you make such cute noises.”

I blushed, this time with pleasure. I did really like it when Alexi called me cute. It was kind of a first for me, and it never failed to make me feel a little dreamy-eyed around him.

He looked around with annoying confidence. “Come on, follow me.”

We began walking downwards, on the Ramp. As it bored deeper into the earth, it gradually narrowed and steepened, and we saw fewer and fewer people. I glanced around at the shelves on the levels we passed and noticed that the books looked older and older.

My pulse continued to race. Where was Alexi leading me? Was he really going to fuck me here? The idea was kind of hot, I had to admit.

Finally Alexi led us away from the Ramp, deeper into a wing of shelves that juked back and forth as it tunneled horizontally. There were empty reading holes scattered along the way, but Alexi passed them by. Finally, the tunnel stopped at a dead end. There was one last reading hole—a couple steps leading down to a door that was currently propped open, a couch and a desk visible beyond it.

Alexi dropped his bookbag and flopped down on the couch with a sigh of relief. I followed suit, but attempted to climb right into his lap and stick my tongue down his throat. I was already so horny.

“Mmph! Ah, Ellie!” He fended me off.

“Sorry!” I squirmed, then tried again a moment later.

He slipped one hand up to my throat and I looked at him with wide eyes. I could still breath, but he had me firmly by the neck. He squeezed lightly and I melted like butter in his hands.

“You must think you can just do whatever you want, hmm?” He shook me by the throat a little. I shuddered, so turned on my eyes rolled. At this point, he knew all my weaknesses.

“S-sorry,” I gasped.

He released me. “You’re wearing too many clothes, Ellie.”

I shivered with lust. “But, what if someone—?”

“Then all they’ll see is a naked girl, being tied up,” he interrupted smoothly.

I almost choked. “Tied...up??”

He winked at me. “I thought you would like that.”

I reddened.

He grinned. “C’mon, I bet you’re soaking your underwear right now, just thinking about it.”

I groaned. I was unutterably turned on by the idea. I jumped up and began taking my clothes off as fast as I could.

......

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter Twenty One

My heart raced as I stumbled away from Aralia’s office door. So much had just happened, and there was no time to think about all of it, but there was also no way to stop thinking about it—

The way that, as she’d watched me overheat, her gold-ringed gaze lost its piercing edge, and became pensive, fascinated. The corner of her mouth quirking up. The way she’d leaned forward. A shiver of delicious heat went through me, remembering. She’d been toying with me—for fun. She’d said it herself. She had even seemed a little…stirred.

And I had been obviously, deliriously turned on by it. I blushed. When she’d taunted me about soaking the furniture—

I almost stumbled. I expect you to wipe that seat before you leave. Oh fates. Oh grief. With all the instructions she’d been giving me, I’d completely forgotten to check the seat.

I took a shaky breath. She’d been teasing me, right? She hadn’t expected me to actually—No, there was no way. I was shamefully wet, but not that wet. Not on the outside of my clothing. Right? I surreptitiously checked between my thighs—damp.

I sighed. Aralia knew so much about me and held so much over me already, did one more embarrassing exposure even matter?

...No need for blackmail when you’re such a pliable little slut…

I squirmed as my body responded with another hot pulse of arousal. Would Aralia hesitate to take advantage of me the way that Alexi had? Did I even want her to hesitate? The answer to that question made me blush harder.

But if Aralia was counting on keeping me pliable and obedient that way, she wouldn’t have offered me an alchemical hepatic, right?

Unless she didn’t think it mattered whether I took the hepatic, either way?

Now I understand better how easy you must have been for your roommate to fuck.

Another lightning twinge of arousal shocked me, from core to limbs.

I groaned. Clearly I needed to stop thinking about Aralia yanking my head back, and the way she’d taunted me, and the way she’d laughed at my mingled humiliation and lust. I’d made her not only smile, but laugh…

I pushed open a door and found myself in a courtyard I didn’t recognize. I crossed it anyway, impulsively. I was almost sure I knew where I was.

No, Aralia already had me on a short leash. She didn’t need another one. And that leash would hold—meaning that her incentive to protect my cover and retain my service would also hold—for as long as I was still useful to her.

And yet, she’d claimed that she would continue that protection even after I was compromised?

I promise that I will not let them have you.

What was I supposed to make of that? Even as fresh hope surged inside me, I fought it down. I wasn’t by any means an expert on blackmail, but I was pretty sure that making promises to someone whose life was in your hands wasn’t that common. Especially that kind of promise. There had to be something else going on.

I wanted so badly to believe her, but what possible use would I be to her, if my cover was blown? All she really needed from me, if I was caught, was silence.

I shivered. Was she just feeding me deliberate nonsense about keeping my mouth shut and playing a role to save her own skin? It was the only explanation that made sense, and yet Aralia had asked my name.

My throat flooded with a raw ache. She’d called me Ellie. Nobody had ever done that for me. Also, she didn’t even seem bothered by the idea of me being a girl? In fact, she had decided to actively help me be a girl.

Which meant, I was belatedly realizing, that she was going out of her way to take on a substantial risk herself. Nothing like mine, but still…

I couldn’t help but feel ridiculously grateful towards her.

But did any of this mean that, if I had exhausted my usefulness, she would actually intervene on my behalf?

If she did…

The thought made me feel fragile, riddled with cracks, like a piece of glassware that was barely clinging together. If I was caught, and if she did come through on her promise (her promise!) to shield me from inquisitioning, I knew all my defenses and wariness towards her would crumble to pieces. I would melt into a puddle at her feet. Was there anything more meaningful than that? Anything that would make me more limp with relief?

And if she didn’t?

The thought of undergoing Ministry interrogation chilled me with terror. I’d heard stories of inquisitionings, same as everyone. I knew everyone broke eventually. It was only a matter of how long it took. What the Ministry of Inquisition returned afterwards were the shells of people—jumpy, hollow-eyed beings that had spilled all their most secret thoughts and most desperate lies onto the tiled floor of the interrogation chamber. If they came back at all, they came back remolded—by a combination of drugs and sensory response conditioning—to crave or despise whatever the Ministry fancied them to.

And Apomasaics, in Ministry hands, promised an even more invasive technology of human control and revision.

I shuddered. I had been cornered before, by boys, in schoolyards and alleys. I knew how to deaden myself, how to send myself away from my body, how to go silent and unresponsive and immobile, until it was over. But how long could I stand up to actual torture by actual Inquisition officers, if it came to that?

I took another deep breath. This wasn’t the time to spin out in a panic. I needed to get to the bursar’s office, then meet Aralia in town, all before eighth bell began to ring.

~ ~ ~

When Aralia visited town, she never took the main road.

This time of night it was sure to be flocking with groups of students on their way to the pubs, not to mention the all-hours traffic of oxen and horses pulling carriages, bearing riders, and heaving laden wagons.

Instead she took the narrow, winding shortcut that led directly to the staff district—the low, quiet, dark part of town that housed the many worn hands and heads that kept Harmine’s students fed and its buildings clean and warm. She had the cobbled path to herself—it was already a bell into the night shift—and the full moon shone vivid orange through the bare tree branches crowding overhead.

Aralia walked slowly, savoring the sharp, still night air. She liked the dark, missed it like a childhood friend. She appreciated its unknowability, its inscrutability. The Yavanese were spoiled with alchemical light, addicted to it. They used light to manage, to regulate, to govern. They feared the dark, because it held possibilities they could not afford to allow.

Occasionally, there was the blurred voice of an owl. It was good weather for clear thinking, as her aunt Jacynth used to say, back when they had crossed latitudes like these together.

She had much on her mind that was more pressing to attend to, but the thought of the girl she’d just seen in her office kept rising to the top.

Aralia shook her head, again.

It seemed to be the only gesture that could do justice to the situation.

For one thing, she couldn’t believe Ellie’s naivete. Transitioning without the barest smudge of a plan. Doing it here, of all places. The girl’s courage was colossal, of course—poking the social hygienists in the eye like that, under their very noses. Aralia couldn’t help but feel a flash of admiration, even as she found herself continually astonished by the girl’s clumsiness. Her horniness, for example.

Aralia rolled her eyes, again.

How had Ellie managed to follow Aralia’s careful trail of breadcrumbs and completely reverse-engineer Apomasaics, while still completely missing the need to control for the propagation feedback loop of unbound principles? She wanted to grab the girl and shake her.

And that brought up the needy, broken moan Ellie had made when Aralia had yanked her head back…

And the squirming, red-faced state Aralia had reduced her to, with a few choice words…

Aralia shook her head, this time at herself. As taken aback as she was by Ellie’s utter lack of control, her own lack of discipline mortified her even more. Yes, it had been tempting to toy with the girl, and deliciously fun, but Ellie was an asset, she reminded herself. It was unwise to become too attached.

Even worse, Aralia had been letting her mask of control slip too much in front of the girl.

Aralia cursed grumpily. When had she ever let herself giggle in front of an asset before? It made her sound like a teenager, and it was dangerous, besides. She had spent years deliberately cultivating her rigid, ruthless reputation—her best protection, given that it operated preemptively.

Her reputation made those who would have otherwise crossed her or moved against her think twice about it, which meant that she was less often forced to ruin their lives. Which saved her valuable time and energy. It was an armor that had cost her too dearly to let an ill-considered slip ruin its effect.

Aralia couldn’t afford to show such vulnerability to her. The girl was Yavanese after all, even if she was kuffa. In this place, trust was completely off the table, with all but a chosen few. Control was safer.

She had learned at Hellebore that the only way to protect people who might’ve been used against her, was by pretending they didn’t matter. They had all been forced to learn.

And yet, she reasoned, her control over the girl was so total—was there truly any harm in relaxing her guard a little when they were alone? Aralia often went for days or longer without letting anyone see the tiniest shred of her emotional reactions and it had been enormously tempting to take a small break, especially with someone who was so utterly in her power. Maintaining a rigid blankness was so tiresome, especially when Ellie was so fun to tease, and responded so…vividly.

And she couldn’t help liking the girl. Ellie was so endearingly cute, it was almost impossible not to soften towards her, a little.

Truth be told, the girl’s floundering inconsistency and inability to lie convincingly bespoke some potential…reliability problems as an asset. Not that Ellie didn’t have potential, but Aralia had initially decided to recruit her less for her likely usefulness as an asset and more to protect her. For now, Aralia just wanted the girl well-hidden in plain sight.

Ellie had no idea just how horrible of a fate could be in store for her, if she was caught poaching the Imperiat’s vaunted prize of Apomasaics, but Aralia did, and while she’d done many things she wished she could forget, she still did not want that on her conscience.

But it was on her conscience.

You gave them Apomasaics, her doubt whispered to her. You gave them, not just any weapon, but that. The secret so many of your elders took to their graves rather than give up, you delivered gift-wrapped to their worst enemy. And with all the favor you generated, you have still not found what you sought—what you thought you were bargaining for. Was it worth it, knowing all they will do with what you gave them?

Aralia’s heart sank. Was hiding Ellie, and promising to protect her, just a salve for her wracking guilt, another way to numb herself to the compromises she was making? Was she trying to save one girl, because she couldn’t deal with the mounting ruin she was contributing to? Because she couldn’t bear feeling so implicated, couldn’t bear the price of her larger betrayal?

She groaned, and shoved that line of thinking away, for now.

Ahead was the growing whisper of the river. A little while on, the trees gave way to meadow, and she saw the colossally wide brightness of the moon climbing above her. Ahead, the dark bulk of a stone bridge. Mounting it, Aralia looked out over the spread of dark, low-slung rooftops. The streets immediately around her were narrow, dark and empty. In the distance, she heard a simmering revel, and saw the alchemically-generated glow of many lights.

The door she knocked at was non-descript, the same as every other door on the block. There were heavy footsteps, then the lock slid and it opened and she was blinking in the warm light that spilled out.

A stout, older woman stood there, beaming and reaching for her. “Come in, come in!”

They hugged and kissed each others cheeks. “Mea canar, I haven’t seen you in days! You have the tired eyes. Have you been sleeping in your office again? It’s not good for you to lock yourself away like that. Are you hungry?”

“Yes, thank you, auntie,” Aralia said automatically. It was considered very rude to refuse food in Jyllish homes. Besides, the peanut stew smelled delicious. Her mouth was watering. “Did you get my message?”

“Yes, yes,” said the woman, whose name was Esca. She bustled over with stew. They had both switched to speaking in Jyllish. “The new maid? She can sleep here. Pasha will take her over in the morning.”

Aralia accepted the bowl gratefully. “Thank you, auntie.”

They both sat down and Esca gestured impatiently. “Eat!”

Aralia obeyed. “She needs clothes, too,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food.

“Yes, yes, no need to fret. Pasha had the laundress ready some spares. They’re in that bundle by the hearth. Now, tell me, how is my stew?”

“It’s wonderful, auntie,” Aralia said honestly. “Just like I remember. How on earth did you get the raj peppers, all the way up here?”

Esca preened. “Leave an old woman her secrets, dear.”

Aralia smiled.

Esca leaned in, and her voice sobered. “Any luck?” she asked quietly.

Aralia shook her head, her gaze dropping. The gesture seemed to age her five years.

Esca reached for her other hand, and squeezed it. They were both silent.

“Well,” Esca sighed, “There’s new mail for you upstairs. Maybe there’s some news in there.”

A knock sounded, firm and clear.

Aralia stood and went to the door. The slender, smooth-faced boy she let in had a fine cloud of curly hair like golden wire and a brusque set to his jaw that melted away when he saw Aralia. They embraced each other tightly.

“Mea canat,” Aralia whispered.

“Mea canar.”

“Did you find her?”

He nodded reluctantly. “Where you said she’d be. And no one following her. She’s outside, waiting.”

“Thank you, Pasha.”

He grimaced slightly. “Are you sure this one is worth the risk, though? She’s clumsy and oblivious as a new-born foal. She’ll draw trouble like a lodestone.” He hesitated. “We can’t rescue everyone, lamien.”

Aralia knew her eyes wouldn’t disguise the doubt in them, not from Pasha. She looked down instead, silent.

“Remember how your elders taught you,” said Esca sharply, from the table. “To hold a line in your hands, when someone is drowning, and not to throw it…” She shook her head. “The whiff of such numbness draws ravenous ghosts from far and wide, and gives them the scent of your soul.” Esca shivered. “There are visible risks, but there are also unseen prices. Don’t run up the latter just to avoid the former.”

“We were taught all that was needed to prepare us for a different life than the one we got,” Pasha said levelly, not taking his eyes of Aralia. “And the ghosts are already all here.”

Esca looked back and forth between them, her eyes full of tended pain, and was silent.

Aralia was still staring at the floor.

Pasha sighed, and his mouth twisted. “We agreed to look out for one another other first, and survive long enough to find the others, above all.” A pause. He seemed to be reluctantly forcing out the words. “You know you might have to give her up, if it comes to that?”

Aralia met his gaze and nodded, looking more haggard and exhausted than ever.

The silence that stretched between them all ached with the emptiness of a long-dry well.

Esca slapped the table. “Well, don’t just leave her outside! Bring her in and feed her!” She turned to Aralia. “How well are we supposed to know you, anyway?”

Aralia grimaced.

“Oh come now,” Esca protested. “You just got here!”

“Sorry, auntie.” Aralia forced her voice to stay light. “It’s not safe to be close to me.”

Esca grumbled.

“I’ll visit with you upstairs,” Aralia relented. “It’ll go better if you wait for me there.”

“Well and good, thank you dear—oh, and don’t forget your stew,” she called over her shoulder as she mounted the stairs.

Aralia nodded at Pasha, who opened the door, and beckoned Ellie in. The girl came in hesitantly, wide eyes darting. She had the frozen, wind-burnt look of someone who was far out of their depth. Aralia shoved down a reflexive twinge of sympathy. When she spoke, her voice was carefully neutral.

~ ~ ~

“Got what you need from the bursar?”

I nodded quickly, looking back and forth between Aralia and the gorgeous, grim-faced boy. He’d sidled up to me on the street, where I’d been waiting for Aralia, said my secret name, and beckoned me to follow. He hadn’t said another word to me since. His eyes held armor.

“Well done, Ellie.” The two of them stared back at me, their tawny faces shut and locked.

I blinked. I’d never seen hair like his before. The lamplight made a gleaming halo of it.

“This is Pasha. Give him the commission paper. Tomorrow morning he’ll see you to where I’ve decided to place you.”

I fumbled out the sheet of heavy paper, signed and sealed, and handed it over. The force of Pasha’s gaze made mine skitter shyly away. The smell from the kitchen was heavenly. It was warm in here.

“There’s stew, if you’re hungry.” There was a faint teasing note in Aralia’s voice this time. “I trust you can serve yourself?”

I blushed and stammered my thanks. As I filled a bowl, the two of them began talking quietly. I sat down, trying to make myself as unobtrusive as possible. It was the most delicious food I’d ever tasted. I was so hungry, I almost choked on the first mouthful.

The room I was in was spare and neat—a round table, chairs, an iron stove, a few alchemical lamps. Richly-dyed curtains, wall-hangings and a small rug lent the space a reddish-orange hue. The wooden floors gleamed. I yawned hugely.

Aralia left the room without glancing at me, and I heard stairs creaking. Pasha was unrolling a hempen net of some kind on the floor. As he attached the ends to metal hooks set into the ceiling beams, I realized it was a hammock.

He turned to face me and gestured at it. “You can sleep here. Rouse before dawn.”

I nodded, and he dimmed the lamps, then followed Aralia upstairs. I stumbled over to the hammock. After tangling myself only once, I managed to find a comfortable position, and I remembered nothing more.

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter Twenty

“Anyone who trains has an advantage over someone who doesn’t,” said Roxa matter-of-factly, as Mila swivel-kicked the pad again. She raised it up, and Mila, panting hard, jabbed it twice with her fist, then came back to guard. She could barely keep her arms up anymore. Roxa was a merciless trainer.

“Good enough.” Roxa let the pad drop. “Drink some water and then we’ll do some grapples.”

Mila stumbled over to the water jug and caught her breath between swigs. They had been trading off with the pad, taking turns, but Roxa was only lightly winded. Mila passed her the water and wiped her mouth with the back of her sore hand.

“Can I really have an advantage over someone twice my size?” Mila panted.

Roxa shrugged. “I do.”

Mila gave her a look.

“You don’t have as much reach as I do,” Roxa admitted. “You’re quick, though, and instead of targeting their torso, you’ll be attacking what they put inside your range—their limbs, mostly. That’s why we’re focusing so much on your footwork, so you can dance around at the edge of their reach. I’m hoping that adding some fist spurs to your jab and your cross will let you slice their hands apart every time they try to strike you.”

Mila frowned. “Fist spurs?”

Roxa went to her coat and pulled out a pair of extremely short, triangular blades, ending in T-shaped handles. A series of thick rings formed a knuckle guard. Mila hefted one—not that heavy, considering her arms were still trembling—slid her fingers through the rings and closed her fist around the handle. She tried a few jabs with it.

Roxa nodded approvingly. “Let’s do some shadow-boxing with those, and we can catch up on grapples next time. That way you can start carrying the spurs.”

Mila stared at the spurs in her hands. Ever since the ambush in the greencourt, and the cold realization that, in the course of pursuing her grievance with Roxa, or just in making her cruel and stupid point, Penelope had never meant for Mila to survive, a grim sort of fury had been smoking and smoldering in her chest.

Rage. An old friend. Mila knew from childhood experience that the bitter alchemy of transforming rage from poison to medicine began with acknowledging it. Starting to train with Roxa had helped. It was a beginning, at least. Mila’s latest private projects in the alchemy labs, covertly synthesizing substances more lethal than sensory weapons, had continued the process.

Holding and feinting with the puncturing tips of these bladed weapons, though? It was beginning to feel more and more real that she might actually have to strike with the aim to kill. But what if the precipice of the moment came, and she couldn’t?

Mila thought of mother Pazo, as strong and unbreakable as sunlight. She remembered her mother’s warm hand in hers on the day they had taken a walk together, out of the city, to the burial mounds covered in wildflowers, raised over the honored dead who had fallen in the ancient uprising.

The sea breeze blowing hair into her mouth when she asked her mother some question. The musical lilt of tiny birds chirping, swooping and alighting on stems.

Pazo Finnochio’s eyes were full of dark fire, as she watched the shifting shapes the wind made in the grass, and Mila knew in a deep and wordless way that her mother was gazing through time.

“There exist, walking under the sun like you or me, entire hives of those who wish to turn other people into objects—have already done so, in their own minds. They think nothing of treating living bodies of flesh as if they were made of unfeeling clay.”

She paused. Mila could hear the subtle, tensing flex of emotion in her voice. The air itself resonated with a charge, a pressure. “I have never understood what attracts men to such bleakness of power.”

Pazo looked down at Mila and it came to Mila that her mother was someone who could walk through the longest desert and keep walking.

Pazo took a deep breath. “To stay passive in the face of those violators is to drink slow poison, and to offer it unquestioningly to those still unborn.”

She raised her chin to the rolling grasslands, humped with riotously green and living burial mounds as far as Mila could see. “Let me be stripped of a mother’s honor and reckoned by all my ancestors, if ever I teach you to make your peace with the bootheel.”

The many-voiced bells of the city down in the valley overlapped and mingled with her words, and Mila imagined all her mother’s mothers speaking together at once. A tiny, scarlet-winged bird fluttered to a stem almost within arms reach, and clung there, swaying.

Pazo often went walking among the mounds, usually alone.

Years later, in the days before Mila boarded her ship to Harmine, mother and daughter walked there again.

“Here,” Pazo’s eyes flashed with pride and concern. “You’ll need this.”

Mila took the cloth wrapped bundle. It was a bell, no larger than the size of her fist, with a smooth handle of dark wood. She traced with her finger the swirls that blossomed cloudy in the silver-white metal.

“How did you…?” She glanced up at her mother.

Pazo took in the sight of her daughter face’s with pleasure. “My old shipmate, Venzi, took it off a wealthy merchant last year. She said he didn’t know what it was and couldn’t enjoy it anymore anyway, and agreed that your need befits its purpose. It’s good Kallish bellmetal, and well-wrought.”

Mila’s heart was swelling. There was no greater claim of belonging, nor of trust. She swung the bell in a glittering arc, and they both listened to the fine shiver of the song wave breaking and reforming perfectly, like blazing sand, until it trailed away. The wind made ceaselessly moving shapes in the tall grass that covered the burial mounds around them. All the wildflowers had gone to seed.

“This way, you’ll take a little of our harmony with you,” Pazo observed. “It could save your life there. Don’t hesitate to use it, when the time comes.”

Mila nodded, blinking away tears. “I won’t hesitate.”

Pazo smiled. “I know.”

Mila was wearing her tiny frown. Roxa watched her quietly, until she looked up.

“Show me.” Mila took a deep breath. "How to use these."

~ ~ ~

“Roxa?” ventured Mila carefully.

“Mm?” Roxa passed her a steaming mug, which Mila took with both hands, then sat down with her own.

“Remember that, um, lab assistant you bribed?”

“Yup.” Roxa grinned over the rim of her mug. “The one whose eyes were just begging for it.”

The serious line of Mila’s mouth curved, and she rolled her eyes. “Yes, that one.”

Roxa waggled her eyebrows provocatively. “Want me to dowse her out?”

Mila twisted her mouth wryly. As usual, Roxa was several steps ahead. “I don’t know for sure that she’s a tea girl, you know, but…”

She took a deep breath. Mila hated the way her heart beat faster, the way her internal alarms clanged, the new fear that was pressed into any mention of tea girls. She hated the new reluctance her mouth had acquired, the way it desperately tried not to say those words aloud.

Feeding her hatred was a vast sense of loss. Before this year, she hadn’t even had to imagine living this way, going stealth, fearing to name herself. It crushed everything that had nourished her, all her precious memories of sisterhood, into an airless, soundless, lightless crate of contraband.

Mila knew, as a rassa child, what it was like to be cast alone into a bleak desert of shame. To anticipate in advance the way that others would turn away from her, because of who she was. But that unbearable burning sensation had never been connected to her gender before. She had never thought the Imperiat could make her feel ashamed of being a tea girl.

Before, when Mila named herself, named to the world the way she listened to her body’s wordless wanting, and laid claim to what it meant, there had been only affection curled into that naming. Only care and belonging.

They are taking that from me, she thought. Pressing it out of the world in every moment they keep me silent. She wanted to hiss and spit and bite. She wanted to weep brokenly.

Instead she took a deep breath. “…But yes, actually.”

After a pause: “But probably not for the reason you’re thinking.”

“All right.” Roxa, bless her heart, had let her playfulness drop. “If she sees me, she’s likely to run, though.”

Mila nodded. “We would need a plan. But…I want to throw her a lifeline, Roxa.”

Her friend frowned thoughtfully.

“It might well put me at risk,” Mila said simply, “but still. I must.”

“To offer her protection, support?” Roxa raised her eyebrows. “You know we can barely protect ourselves right now, yes?”

Mila nodded seriously. “I can’t let her just get caught, alone. I have to try, at least. Even if I fail and we both get hunted down.” She took a deep breath and her exhale was full of tiny tremors.

Warm green eyes sought and found her own, then Roxa reached for her hand and Mila clasped it gratefully. The taller girl squeezed for a long moment, her lips pressed together in a firm line, her jaw set.

“Okay. But until we can actually count on her to keep her mouth shut, we cannot shy away from blackmailing her. We need to hold something over her head that will compel her, in order to protect ourselves. Her most vulnerable secret, if we must. You in particular cannot afford not to do that.”

“I know,” said Mila reluctantly, “and I can’t just tell her that I’m a tea girl, too. At least right away.”

Roxa looked pained. “Mila…I think we need to assume that if we noticed her, then someone else has, too. There are many here who wouldn’t hesitate to hang her out to dry immediately, but I’m sure that most would see an opportunity and be tempted to hold her secret over her head for their own purposes. Even if she appears to be uncompromised, she may already be under someone else’s controlment.”

Roxa hesitated. “It may never be safe to make yourself vulnerable to her like that.”

Mila had set down her mug. She stared at her hands, resting on her thighs. “If we can offer her friendship, while keeping ourselves protected, we all may be able to find a way to unsnare each other from this vile, compulsive game of power and control.”

She looked up, and the dark gleam in her eyes jolted Roxa’s heart. “Just as you and I have.”

Roxa’s cheeks dusted pink. She leaned her head on one hand and gazed into Mila’s warm eyes, biting her lip unselfconsciously.

Mila arched an eyebrow. “What, no witty retort? Surely there’s a dirty joke in there somewhere.”

Roxa shook her head in apparent wonder. She still looked bashfully smitten.

Mila leaned forward, a satisfied little smile playing on her lips, planted her hands on either side of Roxa, and stroked her cheek against the side of her friend’s face.

Roxa sighed dreamily and nuzzled her right back. She inhaled sharply as Mila caught her bottom lip with a hungry mouth. Their tongues met and danced, slow and sweet.

After a while Mila leaned back, eyes fluttering open. Roxa stretched like a cat, grinning. They smiled lazily at each other, both savoring the honeyed magnetism unfurling and blossoming and rippling between them.

Mila sighed happily.

Roxa reached out and brushed her thumb along Mila’s nape. “Lucky me,” she murmured softly, watching her friend arch in response.

“Mmhmm,” agreed Mila, her eyes alight. “So. Haven’t we freed ourselves from the threat of each other? At least in the way this place seeks to entrap us all, and force us to seek advantage over one another. Admit that it is possible, Roxa!”

Roxa only sighed in admiration. “Keep speaking like this, and I will admit to anything.”

Mila rolled her eyes, her heart rising like a sun. “Just dowse her, you loon.”

Roxa jumped up and started going through her desk drawers. “It’s in here somewhere. I made it weeks ago,” she muttered. “Found it!” She hefted a jar and glanced at the long, dark hair inside. “Oh, um, Mila?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know her name?”

“Ah, well—no.” Mila’s cheeks colored. “I’ve been calling her Petrel in my head.”

Roxa glanced at her, amused. “Petrel?”

“A seabird.” She smiled fondly. She had so many memories of watching their uncountable flocks, wheeling and diving above the harbor. “Their young look like little balls of fluff.” Mila shrugged. “She reminds me of a hatchling.”

Roxa chortled. “Cute. All right, here we go.”

Casting the spell was the work of a moment. They both watched the string jerk as it came suddenly alive, and swivel to point at the wall.

Roxa frowned as it flickered and stabbed, trembling with an energy that boded proximity. “Well, this can’t be right…”

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter Nineteen

The next week or two passed in a blurred haze of stress, lust and embarrassment. Any hopes I’d had for sated lust and finally being able to concentrate on exams evaporated almost immediately. If anything, I was more horny, more of the time, than ever.

I distractedly botched an exam, then barely made it through a lab shift, fidgety and hot-cheeked, before rushing back to my room. Not finding Alexi there, I crawled into his bed and fell back on the use of my fingers.

I knew the way he would look at me when he found me, and if anything, it turned me on even more. That knowing smirk, as he threw back his covers and revealed me, hot-cheeked and heavy-lidded, with my hand busy between my legs.

The building tide, the euphoric, bubbling lift, the heady, skyrocketing flush, the crumpling release. The mingled thrill of sexual humiliation and gender validation—did these things normally go together?Why, oh why was I like this?

And yet, with his fist yanking my head back and his lips whispering hotly in my ear, I felt myself to be more of a girl than ever. It felt so good…

All I had to do was surrender more completely to what I desired—and shamelessly beg for it without limit—than seemed possible, and in return he would do and say such things to me—things that I could not seem to stop wanting. It was gloriously easy, and delicious. It was sweetly addictive. It was all I could think about—for the most part.

Some part of me knew that I wasn’t thinking clearly, or plainly, or much at all, outside of this thickly glazed lust. In the background of my mind, there was a pressure, a sense of something overlooked.

Sometimes I did remember Aralia’s offer, and the clarity of the internal leap that always accompanied the thought of getting to live openly as a girl. That leaping feeling was a sweet, clear note that cut through the noise and dissonance of my distracted lust. Other insights came through as well, as if they were using the same portal. Not all of them were as sweet or clear…

Despite the understanding between us that Alexi wasn’t going to betray me, I was aware that he wasn’t exactly good for me, either. He was clearly using me. He was always talking down to me. The fact that I was so hot for it that I was eating out of his hand was beside the point. Should be beside the point.

I was so helplessly hot for it, though?

And, cue: spinning, distracted lust thoughts…

…Anyways, yes, while Alexi had the obvious power over me of being able, at any time, to turn me in, that wasn’t actually the thing that worried me the most.

What was really beginning to scare me was this other sort of power he held over me, the sort that I gave him by melting at the least provocation into an obedient, pliable, wobbly-legged…

…Anyways.

Sometimes I wondered, darkly, how far could he push me? I really didn’t know. I was losing count of the number of times that I’d been so turned on, and so deeply submerged, that it felt like Alexi could get me to do anything he wanted. How far did I really trust him?

The things he said to me—while often very affectionate—were absolutely devoid of respect, and yet I lapped up every ounce of objectifying praise, shuddered in pleasure at every filthy, demeaning word. And this, too, disturbed me: why did humiliation feel like the most lavish affirmation of my most inner self—that I really, truly was a girl, on the inside—that I’d ever gotten?

The basis of that affirmation, I couldn’t help thinking, was built on shaky ground—didn’t it depend on the same propaganda of masculine supremacy that every day seemed more and more anathema to what I was doing with my body? There was almost nothing more degenerate than becoming a girl, after all, according to the social hygienists.

And yet, that was the same logic of feminine inferiority that Alexi was playing on when he, um…did the things that made me feel so much like a girl. If that logic was poisonous to me, weren’t my resulting euphoria and validation nonsense?

My undeniable craving to be reduced and humiliated didn’t make any sense to me. There was obviously something toxic buried hopelessly deep in me—something that was essentially at odds with my very survival and existence—except I couldn’t help melting into a grateful puddle whenever the person fucking me invoked it.

So, even if all kuffa weren’ttruly degenerate and wrong inside, as I’d been secretly daring to consider, was I still broken beyond repair?

What if the dark yet clear lantern beam of inner wanting that I’d followed this far wasn’t actually trustworthy? In fact, how could it be, if there was such poison and nonsense and contradiction mixed so seamlessly into my desire and my euphoria and my lust?

The social hygienists taught that kuffa were impure, unclean, unnatural. Their degeneracy—our degeneracy, I reminded myself heavily—was supposed to be contagious. I certainly felt all mixed up and compromised. Nobody in their right mind could accuse me of being pure. Or natural.

I remembered the hollow hills and narrow ravines around Stuhkrad, the crystal-studded cave I’d stumbled into with other town children, lined with figurines and statuettes. I remembered the revulsion in their faces and their voices, and the shame that had accumulated in my lungs—that still clung there like bitter leaden dust.

And yet, the forest natives had clearly thought differently of us. I had seen that cave and realized that something else had existed before the Imperiat—something that the social hygienists would never admit. If such a world had once been possible, wasn’t it likely that there were others?

There must be kuffa in other lands who had never heard of social hygiene, never had their insides coated in layers and layers of sharpened, deadening particles of contempt for their entire childhoods.

But what, I wondered gloomily, would they think of me? What even was I, besides fully polluted by the Imperiat, fully implicated, fully complicit? Would they, too, feel revolted by me? Would they consider me contagious because of my Imperiat-conditioned shame?

This line of thought was almost too heavy to hold. Mostly I flinched away from it, and fell back on the easiest strategy—that of not thinking. Ironically, I found myself grateful for the easy comfort and respite that sex offered me. For the next few fraught, distracted weeks, I was haunted by a vague shadow of anxiety.

On top of that, I was running reagents in the lab one day, a couple of weeks into the next term, and a spike of terror pierced me as I turned and saw who had just palmed a request form into my back.

It was one of Alexi’s friends—the mocking one, Creswell. I looked him full in the face and blanched, then quickly dropped my gaze and turned away, but too late. His eyes had widened slightly at me, before narrowing. My stomach began jumping and twisting with icy terror. As I made a bee-line for the exit, I felt his stare burning against my skin.

I hurried along the corridor to the stockroom, pulse bounding and hands trembling. Creswell had always seemed like the most dangerous one of those boys to me. His sudden attention, the idea of him noticing me—of noticing differences in me—filled me with caustic alarm. Aralia’s warning kept running through my head, growing more and more dire with each repetition. ‘Don’t come running to me with someone already on your heels, or I’ll be forced to let them have you.’

I dithered in the stockroom, trying to decide what to do. I had some notion of tracking down Phineas and calling in my favor—perhaps I could get him to deliver these reagents—but inside me a fearful urgency was building.

I wanted to go to Aralia. Tonight.

This choice had been waiting coiled inside me for weeks, I realized suddenly. As it sunk in, a fierce exultation began to run through my veins. This is happening. I would not look back.

I clocked out early, let myself out the back exit and took the long way back to my room. It was empty—Alexi was still in class, thank the fates. I cleared out my scanty wardrobe and stuffed it into my travelsack with most of my belongings, then packed my small, threadbare bookbag with only a few items—my remaining doses, my secret notebook, that noble’s heavy purse, the letters from home.

I hesitated, then scribbled a cryptic goodbye note that would hopefully confuse anyone attempting to seek me out, and left it on my pillow. I took a roundabout way back to the sprawling alchemy complex, pausing at an older classroom building that was only ever used for storage anymore to stash the larger travelsack in a room piled full of dusty ventilation hoods.

I was severely hoping that my vanishing would raise no eyebrows. A frightful number of students washed out each term. The pressure of exams alone made some of them crack and break down, go on benders, run away, or disappear into some other kind of crisis for days, weeks or even longer. The only loose end was Alexi, and whether he would let anything slip about me. I hoped he wouldn’t—he’d made such a fuss about knowing how to keep his mouth shut…

I craved what he had offered me, but…I needed this more.

Would he be stung by my wordless leave-taking? Stung enough that he’d be tempted to strike back at me? I hoped not. He was more the sort to shrug it off smiling than to curse me for abandoning him, but still I wondered…

I brooded all the way to Aralia’s office door. The hallway was empty, and I paused before knocking to squeeze my legs together. The stress of the day had cooled my lust temporarily, but it seemed to be boiling up again. Hadn’t I come just last night? I remembered Alexi fucking me…

I tried to take a deep breath, but only managed to engage my upper ribs. My pulse thrummed rapidly and I wiped my palms before knocking, but my face was hot before the door even clicked open.

Aralia’s golden gaze pinned me and, predictably, a wave of toe-curling heat washed through me. Her face was impassive as she registered me standing there, and checked that the hallway was clear. As she turned her attention back to me, though, and watched my face redden, I thought I saw the corner of her mouth quirk up.

She beckoned me inside and closed the door behind me. “Were you followed here? If you were, tell me now.”

“I—um, no,” I stammered, thoughts and tongue tangled by her sudden proximity and spicewood scent.

“Good. Sit.”

I perched nervously on the edge of the chair and watched her prowl around the desk and sit across from me.

“Does anyone else know that you are here, or that you have come to see me before?”

I shook my head.

“Good. Does anyone else know you’re a girl?”

The affirmation implicit in her words and their phrasing hit me right in my tight chest, and the constriction there melted before I even had time to consider the question. Even as my mind scrambled to choose whether or not to tell her the truth, my lungs relaxed and the full, deep breath gave me a moment to think. I made a snap decision.

I shook my head again.

Aralia narrowed her eyes at me. I stiffened as she stood, and rounded the desk. Then she was yanking my head back, her fist in my hair. I gasped up at her, my cunt pulsing.

“You’re a bad liar, Ellie,” she remarked. “Now, if I think you might be lying, why should I take the risk of providing you with a cover legend or go through the trouble of setting you up as an asset? In fact, why would I trust you to reliably operate or report back to me if you cannot truthfully answer a simple, basic question of import?”

She tightened her grip as she said the last word, and my pussy clenched.

“S-sorry! My—ah, my roommate,” I gasped, my head swimming with arousal. “W-we were having sex.”

Aralia’s hawk eyes narrowed. “Blackmail?”

“N-no—he could have, but, um—”

“He didn’t compel you at all? How did he start fucking you, then?”

My cheeks heated. “I, um, well, he—he just, ah…”

Aralia raised her eyebrows.

“…saw me naked a-and, um. It happened really fast?” The last words left me all in a rush. “He’s from Faso and said something about n—ah!—not snitching.”

“Faso? Hmm.” She stared out the wide window into the distance. Her grip slackened a bit. “Well. They are a proud and close-mouthed people, that is true.”

She shook herself a little, and looked back down at me, her golden gaze piercing, her grip tightening again. I inhaled sharply. “Anyone else?”

“No—ah, no.” I squirmed.

“Good. Well, your roommate may prove to be a complication, but not an insurmountable one. What is his name?”

“Alexi, um, Kincardine.” I saw her blink. “What will you—”

“You are not the one asking questions right now,” she interrupted.

She yanked my head back at little as she said it and I could not stifle an audible moan.

Oh, had I just—

Oh, no.

There was no way she hadn’t heard me.

I went scarlet red.

She stared down at me incredulously. “Are you...turned on?”

My cheeks blazed a few degrees hotter.

Aralia rolled her eyes.

She released her grip and I sagged in the chair, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me. She paced around to the other side of the desk, again, and sat. When I got up the courage to look at her again, I saw she was watching me with an expression of mild fascination.

“Ellie, give me your factoring notebook.” I hesitated and she sighed. “It’s not like you could compromise yourself more than you already have. I’m trying to figure out what you did to yourself.”

I reluctantly handed it over, wishing I’d stashed it as well. She flipped through it, and gave a low whistle.

“Well, well, haven’t you been a sloppy girl.”

Aralia looked up in time to watch me actually die from how hot my face was. She smirked at me and I shuddered and squeezed my thighs together.

“You have so many unbound principles whizzing around in your system right now it’s a wonder you aren’t soaking the furniture.” She narrowed her eyes, first at the chair I was sitting in and then at me. “Are you soaking my furniture right now?”

My mouth opened and closed speechlessly, like a fish. I couldn’t honestly say that I wasn’t. She watched me sweat and squirm, the blood pounding hotly in my face, a faint smile playing on her lips.

The smile looked…nice on her, I thought fuzzily. Wait, had I ever seen Aralia smile before? I didn’t think so. Was she…teasing me? Intentionally? My clit throbbed.

“Ellie, if you wish to enter into this arrangement with me, you’ll have to be able to answer simple yes or no questions.”

I gaped at her, my face burning.

“I suppose that’s a yes, then.” Aralia sighed. “I expect you to wipe that seat before you leave.”

My mind crumpled. I was so hot I felt dizzy, almost intoxicated.

She leaned forward and I got the distinct sense that she was enjoying herself. “Now I think I understand better how easy you must have been for your roommate to fuck. He had no need for blackmail when you’re such a pliable little slut.”

I stared deliriously back at her, my heavily hooded eyes glazed with arousal and humiliation. It seemed ludicrous that steam wasn’t rolling off me.

Aralia actually giggled at me. For a moment, even she seemed taken aback at herself.

“All right,” she made a calming gesture. “Simmer down. It’s rather entertaining to toy with you like this, but I mustn’t break you.”

Her eyes gleamed as she watched me squirm. I tried to focus on breathing.

“I will hold onto this, for now.” She waved my secret notebook. “Since it’s rather dangerous to have in your possession. And I’ll try to get you an alchemical hepatic to mop up some of those free principles floating around in you. Whether you keep taking the alterant that you synthesized, however, I will leave up to you. The body changes you induced should be stable by now. The hepatic will do more to reduce your inflated arousal if you don’t continue, obviously.” She smirked knowingly at me. “Your call.”

I blushed, again. “I—um, okay.”

She clicked something onto the desk and slid it across to me—a strange-looking coin. I reached for it, but she kept her finger on it. I looked up at her, to find her sharp, gold-ringed eyes searching me. All the playfulness was gone from them.

“You won’t be able to change your mind, after this. Your new identity will not be revocable. You will be my asset, and do as I say, until I decide to release you from my service. Is that understood?”

I hesitated for only a breath before nodding, as firmly as I could. “Yes.”

“Very well,” she said neutrally. “This coin will grow hot to the touch when I need to speak with you. Wear it under your clothes, against your skin.”

She left the coin on the table and brought out a purse. It clinked as she deposited it next to the coin.

“Now, listen carefully. Go to the bursar’s office and tell the clerk you wish to purchase a staff commission for your sister, as a maid here. There’s a standard ‘fee’ for such dealings. This will cover it. I’ll have the records altered afterwards, to obscure the trail and to place you where I want you. After that’s done, meet me at this address in town at ninth bell. Bring the commission.”

She scribbled something on a piece of paper and showed it to me. “Memorize it, and leave the paper here. Don’t be late.”

She leaned forward. “Ellie.”

I looked up from the paper, slightly dazed.

“If you are caught, here is what you must do. Tell them only of the bribe you used to obtain the position. Nothing else, and obviously nothing of my note and my involvement. Such bribery is commonplace and plausible. It will raise no eyebrows.”

I nodded hesitantly.

Aralia stared at me levelly. “Beyond that, keep your mouth shut. Do as I say and even in the event of your capture, I will still be able to exercise my considerable influence to keep you from being disappeared, experimented on, or otherwise disposed of.”

I flinched and she sighed, though not unkindly. “We need to talk about this now because we won’t be able to then. Believe me, they will see you as a dangerous object to be controlled, not as a student and not at all as a person.”

She paused for a moment, and her eyes were hard and fierce and distant.

“It will spin your head how fast they erase you from their conception of what constitutes a human being. You may be in a state of tremendous shock. They will threaten you with fates many times worse than death. Any hope they offer you will be a lie or a coercive attempt at manipulation.”

I swallowed, dry-mouthed, and she refocused on me.

“The most important thing you can do is stay silent and unresponsive, and let me play my role. To do this, I will have to pretend that I don’t know you and care not a whit about you, and you must play along. Silently. Is that understood?”

I nodded quickly.

“I cannot emphasize enough that every tiny cue you give them or word you say will only make it worse. They can and will use anything and everything against you.”

Her voice, though no less serious, softened almost imperceptibly.

“Try not to get caught, of course. But, in the event that it happens, I promise that I will not let them have you.”

My eyes were as wide as they had ever been. Had she really just said that? Promised that? My head was spinning. Could I possibly trust her?

She watched me carefully, and I clung to the eye contact. After a long moment, I realized she was waiting for a response.

Oh.

I flushed. “Yes, um, okay—I mean, I’ll do as you say.”

Her eyes twinkled and I self-consciously averted my gaze. Right. I’d forgotten the address already. I glanced at it one more time and hurriedly snatched the coin and purse.

As I reached the door, I looked back and saw that she was still considering me with a slightly curious or fascinated expression. I inhaled as I felt the almost-physical force of her golden-ringed gaze land right in my chest. Then the door was firmly between us and I was in the corridor, trembling with nerves.

[subqtaneoussmut]

The Tea Girl's Gambit, Chapter Eighteen

Mila was in her morning class, listening to a droning lecture on the synthesis of preemptive metallurgical antidotes for cases of aerosol poisoning, when the coin in her pocket began to rapidly warm. Her heartbeat picked up, and she kept her face impassive while she put away her notes and slipped out the back of the amphitheater.

This was it. The favor that Aralia had wrested out of her, come due. The shadow of a hawk hovering above her, ready to stoop.

Part of her was braced, hoping against hope that she could sidestep the inevitable trap. It was possible—had to be possible. Mila had an accomplice that Aralia knew nothing about, after all. Together, Roxa and she might be able to anticipate and out-maneuver her sharp and striking talons.

Another part of her, the part that felt deep in the quicksand, felt it brimming up to her bruised neck, wondered if it wasn’t wiser to accept the price of serving Aralia if it got Penelope off her back. She had gotten lucky so far, but somehow she’d still had the misfortune to catch the attention of not one, but two seasoned opponents with untouchable positions and seemingly endless resources. What were Mila’s chances, really? How long could she cling, before sinking under?

But could Aralia even protect her from Penelope? And what would her price be? What in all the mythological hells did Aralia even want? What was her game?

Mila groaned. This damn University was twisting her and molding her in exactly the ways she most feared. She could feel the Yavanese mental habit of use-thought seeping slowly into her way of thinking, turning her attention hard, suspicious, hierarchical. Sada had tried to prepare her for this, but she still felt irritable, resentful and slightly ashamed of herself for becoming so cynical, so jaded, so bitterly armored.

The instrumentalism of this mentality was explicitly taboo in Opali, after all. A person could become the target of unrelenting gossip and rumor if they demonstrated it too strongly. Mila was glad her friends from home could not see her, could not witness what she was becoming. The thought made her burn with self-conscious shame. But what choice did she have, in this place?

Perhaps use-thought had been necessary to adopt in order to survive here, but it was almost a force unto itself, with its own drives and purposes. It was self-perpetuating, self-repeating, iterative, and worst of all, she could literally feel it sapping her life-force.

Thank breath and bell for Roxa. Mila felt an unending tumble of gentle gratitude for Roxa’s steadfast, careful insistence on not extracting from or grasping at her in any way. Her friend’s warm green gaze was an invaluable anchor to a world that was not a chess board and a way of being together that was not adversarial, not manipulative, not ulterior.

But though Mila detested on principle the way use-thought operated, even the way it felt inside of her, she was not foolish enough to throw away armor before a duel. Fire was fought with fire, after all. Aralia herself had insisted on that, with a frankness that Mila found curious.

Was it possible that Aralia saw Mila as anything more than a piece to be moved across a board? She’d said something about mentorship, hadn’t she? A laughable word to use in the context, Mila thought bitterly. No, she promised herself, she would not let her guard down. Not with this one.

The coin was almost too hot now, her fist tightly clenched around it. She slid it back in her pocket and knocked on Aralia’s office door. After a long moment, it clicked open and there were those keen, golden eyes, searching her.

“Good,” said Aralia simply. She stood aside. “Come in. Sit if you wish.”

Mila entered and remained standing. The coin in her pocket began to cool. She wondered how the thermic link functioned. She’d certainly never heard of alchemy that could heat an object across distance, let alone switch off the effect based on proximity.

Aralia had dark circles under her eyes, Mila noticed. She even seemed somewhat distracted, as she rummaged in a cabinet and drew out a stack of files.

“Here.” Aralia planted the stack on the desk and gestured to it. “These are somewhat sensitive records, so I need you to exercise discretion and care with them. Take them with you, and search them for any and all mentions of these names.”

She reached into a drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper, with a list written on it.

“I need them back, in this condition exactly, in no more than a week.”

“That’s it?” Mila stared at her. “That’s the favor you need from me?”

Aralia snorted. She sank into her chair and stretched, arching like a cat. The motion tightened the fabric of her blouse across her breasts in a fascinating way.

Mila quickly moved her gaze back up, found Aralia smirking at her, and strove to fight down a blush.

The older girl across the desk from her, she reminded herself sternly, held the implicit power to revoke her screening exemption for Apomasaics and expose her to a gratingly intrusive administrative inquiry process—one that she very well might not be able to pass.

“I’ll decide when your debt is fulfilled, Mila.” She inclined her head slightly. “If you can find any of those names, however, I will look very favorably upon your effort.”

Aralia’s sharp gaze lost focus and drifted out over the rooftops, through the window. She suddenly looked older and more exhausted than Mila had ever seen her. Almost absently, she waved Mila towards the door.

“Search those files and bring them back to me. Within a week, remember. I’ll have another stack ready for you by then.”

~ ~ ~

Roxa leaned against a wall by the lecture hall door, reading a letter from her mother.

All their correspondences were obviously intercepted and surveilled, so Sasha Monir had written, as usual, in an encryption that could only be cracked if the reader had a special algorithmic key, a hashing function.

Which, Roxa did.

On the surface, the letter was a jumble of inane propositions, observations and claims. It had taken the last hour for Roxa to transcribe the dense message hidden inside. Now she stared hard at the page, chewing her bottom lip. Her mother hadn’t lost her penchant for driving straight and hard, right at the point.

I ask that you put aside your impetuousness, as I am putting aside my feelings as your mother, so that we can both focus clearly on the mutuality of our duties as sworn blades of the Duchy at this pivotal and dangerous time.

Roxa snorted, and shook her head. She already felt needled.

Drago is a screaming kettle, on the brink of boiling over, and every week the pressure grows. Yet another failed harvest and tax season has resulted in mass evictions across the Imperiat and brought more and more peasants streaming into the city, enraged and desperate for bread. Every night they riot and surge through the streets, raiding and looting before the loyalist militias muster to chase them back. The slums are full, and new encampments proliferate as fast as the Ministry troops expunge the old ones.

The Ministries have started doling out rations from the granaries only to those the districts they deem loyal, and there is rabid collaboration, with neighbors policing neighbors, all fanatically driven by the terror of starvation and beatings.

The Moot is not yet upon them, and the nobles and senators are already signing away their plenary powers and offering them to the loyalists on a silver platter. They all fear the rabble more than they fear the combined power of the Ministries and the Hierophancy. Their only care is for the profitability of their joint-stock concerns and if they must choose between unrestrained fascism and war on one hand and peasant revolt and insurrection on the other, they will all side with authority, and entrench against its dispersal.

The Ministries and the Navy Admirals know it, and have ceased to obey Parliamentary summons and policy. Their only loyalty is to the Hierophant, whose rallies grow daily. The presses all churn to produce lurid stories of ‘Ursilian agitators’ and ‘foreign degenerates’ plotting to sap the nation’s vital will and turn back the clock on Science, Hygienic Progress and the Evolution of Man. Blame for ‘the foreign rot’ has become so fashionable to bandy about that I can hardly go anywhere in public without the air growing thick with tension.

Meanwhile the loyalists are locked in their own power struggle. The Ministries of Inquisition and Social Hygiene are in what I believe is a tenuous alliance with each other, under the Arcane Hierophancy. None dare challenge their authority openly, for fear of being labeled traitor and targeted for cleansing. They effectively rule the entire Imperiat in everything but name and I fear war and invasion, come spring.

Their first strike may land upon our Duchy. We are small, and close. I’ve warned the Duchess to strengthen our defensive redoubts in the mountain passes, and advised her that my best use here is to stay in place and attempt to destabilize the loyalist alliance. You, however, must prepare to depart sooner—certainly before the Imperial Moot, unless I have gravely miscalculated and things move much faster than I anticipate.

Roxa’s stomach dropped.

I will not risk seeing you inquisitioned if you stay, diplomatic immunity or no. I would see you safely back at our familial keep when the storm breaks here, but duty compels me to assign you to the Star Tower, at Dropwater Pass. You will join Countess Vara’s staff of officers there. I have already sent your marching orders ahead.

If you have recruited more assets at Harmine, as you were assigned to, you must now prepare them to operate in your absence. Respond with a report on your progress within a fortnight.

Roxa gritted her teeth, and crumpled the page in her fist. She pulsed a wave of sorcery into it, and felt it dissolve and trickle onto the floor as fine, ashy dust.

Well. Her mother would certainly not be pleased with her report. Roxa hadn’t recruited so much as a dusty stable sweep in her time here.

On the contrary, she’d tried her best to forget her mother and her directives entirely, and just discover who she was, away from all her oaths and duties. She’d tried to give herself a chance to be something other than a finely honed weapon, a tool with a sole purpose. And if getting to just be a student at a school for magic counted as that, she’d fallen head over heels for it.

Or perhaps Roxa had just fallen head over heels for a certain pair of liquid dark, serious eyes? She felt a lopsided smile blossom on her face.

Either way, she’d been so focused on getting to just exist, without the constant pressure of being shaped to fit her mother’s mold, that she’d underestimated the larger threat, growing all around her.

Invasion. Not the insidious creep of economic exploitation and cultural colonization, but war. If her mother was right.

And though it was always unbearable for Roxa when Sasha Monir turned out to be right, wasn’t the Imperial war machine aimed at their home more important than either of them? No matter what complicated feelings Roxa had towards her mother, the Countess was clearly playing a game that put her life at grave risk.

Was Roxa going to obey her mother, then? She chewed her lip. No matter how nauseating she found this political spycraft, the thought of abandoning her mountain home on the eve of invasion felt worse. And if the Imperiat jackboots came marching into the vales and villages of the Duchy like columns of ants, building their garrisons and their prisons and their schools? Her temper flared hot and bright.

But if her mother was wrong, and the Duchy was passed over in favor of easier targets, would Roxa find herself guarding a cold battlement in the mountains while the cities and islands of the Whistling Sea were sacked? While her best friend’s home burned? Roxa felt abruptly heartsick. She knew she would never be able to forgive herself.

As much as it turned her stomach to think of abandoning her home, she could not bear the thought of abandoning Mila, either. How would they find each other again, in a world on fire?

A bell began to toll, and Roxa heard scraping and clatter from inside the lecture hall as class ended. She turned towards the door, then saw Mila approaching from down the corridor.

“Hmm. Why am I not surprised?” Roxa said, raising her eyebrows.

Mila rolled her eyes. “I know, I know. I wasn’t being careful enough. I was summoned, though.” She frowned at the little pile of ash by Roxa’s boot. “What’s that?”

Roxa turned and they began walking together. Behind them, students began spilling out into the corridor.

“More bad news from Drago,” said Roxa grimly. “Let’s talk somewhere else.”

~ ~ ~

Mila shuddered. “These are all juvenile prison records.” She had a sudden urge to drop the page she was reading and wipe her hands.

All Opali children grew up hearing tales of vast colonial labor camps built by the slaves of an ancient empire, and the uncontainable insurrection that had raged around the whole rim of the whole Whistling Sea, until all its walls were burned and broken.

The griots taught that Opali and the other Common Cities formed along the river mouths and safe harbors where the camps and prisons and forts once stood, as havens that welcomed all those who wished to keep slavers and overseers and turnkeys from entering into the world again.

Mila shook herself a little. She was sitting on the floor of their room, files spread and scattered around her. Roxa lounged on the couch like a tiger, her limbs draped in every direction, flipping through a stack of pages.

The redhead grunted. “Well, these ones are residential school records from Imperial colonies. So, essentially prisons.”

“Hm, strange. They’re not just lists of names, either. They’re cross-referenced with merit exam scores? And here are the final placement decisions from the exam proctors.”

“I didn’t know prisoners could sit the merit exam.” Roxa frowned. “How far back do these records go?”

Mila moved some papers around. “They vary, but here’s one from almost eight years ago.”

“Most of these are about that old, too.”

Mila looked up. “She’s searching for someone?”

Roxa nodded slowly. She was scanning the list of names. “A lot of these names are Jyllish, I think? But most of them seem like assimilated versions of Jyllish originals. Also, lots of repetitions with slight variations.”

“I wonder…” Mila’s eyes went far away for a moment.

Roxa was still flipping through her stack, shaking her head. “Nothing. Damn, this writing is small.” She squinted and yawned. “I can’t believe she’s just using you to search for the needle in this haystack. Why not give the job to some clerk? Or an office full of clerks? She runs the biggest, richest, most advanced research department in the world.”

Roxa realized her friend wasn’t listening. She paused for a moment to take in Mila’s firmed mouth, the tiny crease between her eyebrows as she stared seriously out the window.

Mila blinked and looked down at her lap. Then she glanced up, right into Roxa’s dreamy fox smile. She blushed. “hey.”

Roxa reached out and tucked a twist of dark hair behind Mila’s ear. “hey.”

Mila’s lips curved shyly, and she rested her cheek into Roxa’s lingering hand.

Roxa grinned and stroked softly. “Cutie.”

Mila’s eyes fluttered and she sighed, tension draining out of her body.

Roxa reached around the back of her friend’s neck and began to squeeze and massage the muscles that ran up either side of the spine. Mila groaned and slumped even more, melting like putty into Roxa’s strong grip.

Roxa grinned in delight. “Do you, perhaps, need a distraction, Mila?”

“Um,” gasped Mila. Her head lolled. “I—ah, yess.”

“Goood girl. Would you like me to put you through your paces?” Roxa murmured throatily. “Want me to make you sweat?”

“Yes,” Mila breathed.

Roxa tightened her fingers around Mila’s neck, eliciting a moan, and pulled her closer. “Would you like me to tell you what to do? Shove you around? Train you up sooo well?”

Mila peeked up at her friend from under her lashes. “Wait, are you—?”

With a mischievous wink at Mila, Roxa released her and vaulted off the couch in one liquid motion. She grabbed an overstuffed pad from under her bed and held it up, grinning.

Mila scrunched her face up and pouted at her friend. “That was sooo mean.”

Roxa was gleefully immune. She rapped the pad and poked her tongue out. “Come on, bitch. Time to work on your jab-cross-jab.”