A double-crack alternate universe in which Leo gets an army and then takes over the northwest.

The position was not exactly comfortable; Luke was kneeling on the stone floor of Cya’s house, and she was standing behind him, between his wings, where he couldn’t quite see her, where he couldn’t quite move his wings properly. Luke wasn’t sure he could move if he wanted to, and some part of him wasn’t sure he wanted to. He had to see this through, he insisted to himself. He had to do this properly, if he was going to keep sending his students to this.

Cya’s fingers settled on Luke’s collarbone; she leaned over him until he could feel her pressing against the back of his head. “Hold still a moment,” she murmured.

The order seemed to shoot straight down his spine. He made an involuntary noise as he tried to shift and couldn’t, tried to flap and most definitely couldn’t. He thought he heard her chuckle, but then she was doing a Working and he was too focused on that to think about what a laugh meant in this context.

It was an Eperu Working, earth, stone… silver? She was holding something against one of his collarbones, he realized, something cold and hard, like a stone or a pebble.

The Greek was complex, and she threw in Latin and at least two languages he didn’t recognize, but Luke was good with Eperu – it was his best Word, after Kwxe, fire, force, and he could follow most of it. She was transmuting, shaping, controlling. She was changing the pebble…

…into the collar, he realized, with a stab of panic. She was really going to collar him. The metal was already sliding around his neck. She was going to show him off, like… Like…

His mind flickered back to her first year, to Leo’s collar (after collar, after collar), to Yoshi’s first year, to Kept he had seen standing by Cya’s side over the years. She was wrapping the metal around his throat, of course she would. He snorted quietly to himself. He was being ridiculous. He’d agreed to twelve years. He agreed to be Kept. Of course it was going to come with a collar, not a necklace like some…

He snorted again. Like a cy’Luca Keeper might do.

“Funny, is it?” She’d leaned over; her voice was right against his ear. If he’d been able to move, Luke might have jumped. She was screwing with his situational awareness. This whole thing was screwing with his head.

“It’s just…” he cleared his throat. “It’s just… uh. You’re not a cy’Luca.”

She chuckled. He wasn’t sure that was a good sign or not. “No. Never have been.” She patted his shoulder. “There. You can move. You can stand up, if you want.” Her fingers slid over the back of his neck, tugging the new collar against this throat. “Maybe go check the collar out in the mirror.”

Luke shifted, but she was still holding the collar. “I think… I think that can wait.” Maybe if he was clever, it could wait twelve years.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1199847.html. You can comment here or there.