follows immediately after the last one, here: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1200388.html

Cya – his owner – his… she directed Luke upstairs, making cracks about Mike at his back. Luke held his wings as still as he could — the stairwell wasn’t that wide — as she teased him about Mike.

“I’m not…” He pressed his wings a little tighter to his back as he reached the top of the stairwell. “I didn’t…”

“You didn’t sign up to be Kept at all, so of course I don’t think you engineered this to get in my bed. That doesn’t mean you might not end up there.” She chuckled, and once again Luke struggled to keep his wings under control. “To the left, first door on your left. I think you’re going to find being Kept very educational, and I think that it might even be good for you.”

This time, he flapped. “You knew that already. The oaths. The twelve years.” The first door on his left opened into a spartan bedroom: giant bed, three wooden chests, two deep-silled windows with thick curtains. “You’ve already helped me out.”

“The situation helped you out. I’m talking about the actual Keeping.”

Luke turned slowly so he could look at her. She was serious, he thought, although he had a hard time getting a good read on her. “You think… being under the collar… will be good for me?”

“It often is. One, it narrows the scope of concerns. Two, it gives you a different set of feedbacks. Three, of course, it’s educational. And four, you can find yourself trying on different roles.” She gave him a somewhat sad-seeming smile. “I’ve done this a few times. I have some experience making sure I’m not the only one who gets something out of it.”

Luke narrowed his eyes at her. “And what, exactly, do you get out of it?”

He wasn’t expecting her to laugh; he certainly wasn’t expecting the delighted sound she made. “Do you really have to ask? Oh, you do, don’t you?” She giggled quietly. “I get a man in my bed, Hunting Hawk, and someone to help with the chores, help raise my children when I have them in the house, someone to help me run this city… this nation.”

“But… Leo?”

“You might have noticed I stopped taking Kept a few years ago.”

Luke glanced away. “Yes.” And now he didn’t know how to feel at all. Something like guilt was gnawing at him, which was ridiculous. She had maneuvered him into this Keeping. She had maneuvered all of them into this – might have even manipulated Leo into the godhead he was currently enjoying. So why did he feel like he was messing up one of her plans?

He stretched his wings cautiously. There was enough room in here for them; there was enough room in her bed for him to lay with his wings spread and leave room for her.

Somehow, he imagined she’d planned that, even if it hadn’t been his wings she’d been thinking of. She had to have Kept someone with wings before him…. right?

She sat down cross-legged at the head of her bed. “Lay down – take your time, get comfy – and put your head in my lap.”

Luke was moving before he really considered where he was going, and, despite her “take your time” order, was as comfortable as he was going to be in just a couple moments. His head was pillowed on her calf. It felt… intimate.

He shifted, spreading his wings out as much as he could. Part of him wanted to protest that he shouldn’t be in a bed with a student, but the rest of him shut that down as the stupidity it was. “What do you want me to do?”

It was a sign of how badly off-kilter she had him that he was just grateful his voice didn’t squeak.

Rearranging Pieces

“Close your eyes,” she ordered, and Luke closed his eyes. “Now, this is not an order, but try to relax, let your body sink into the bed. We’re safe here. Nobody’s going to attack us. Nobody is in trouble. You can let go for a few minutes.”

His shoulders tensed; he didn’t want to believe her. That was fine. Cya kept going. “Picture a place in your mind, a peaceful place. A clearing in the forest, with the sun filtering down through the pine trees. The air is crisp, but not uncomfortable. Just out of sight, you can hear a stream trickling.” She kept going, her voice mellow, the tone working as much good as the words, until his shoulders relaxed and the pinch in his forehead smoothed.

She didn’t normally need relaxation techniques when she was reading someone’s mind, but she didn’t normally have targets who were quite this tense, either.

When his breathing evened out, she slipped the Working in between phrases, fluffy clouds and meandering paths. She saw the scene in his mind, a place it looked like he’d been before. She saw him sitting on a big boulder, his wings spread, his face up to the sun and his eyes closed.

She had never seen him this peaceful. She murmured a Working to remember this, so that she could bring him back here again.

But she had work to do. First, she wanted to find the places Regine had touched. She didn’t doubt they were there; if she were Regine, and had an alarming habit of seeing people as pieces on a board, it was what she would do: ensure loyalty with oaths, and then enforce it with mind control.

Luke’s thoughts were a mess. He kept looping back to oaths he had made and been freed from: I’ll keep you safe. I’ll follow the school’s rules. He had an unfortunate habit, it seemed, of impetuous oaths… now where had she see that before? He kept poking at things she could not see — the way he’d feel guilty over something she said, or the way the orders made him feel like a puppet. The Bond was making him second-guess his thoughts and his feelings, and the thought kept popping up: should he look at this with a Working? Was that okay?

She left the chaos alone. He was going to have to adjust to being Kept eventually, and it would go better for him in the long run if he did that without her interference.

Not for the first or even the millionth time, Cya wished she could see emotions. But she wasn’t going to loop Leo in to help her with this, and Luke probably wasn’t ready to do the Working on himself for her.

Now she had to go deeper. His conscious mind showed her the way — paths he was avoiding, things he would consider and then forget before he thought too hard about them, things that seemed to hurt him when he thought about them.

His sons. She did not want to interfere if she didn’t have to with his children, so she brushed over that area of his memories gently. There were orders there from Regine, reminders of his oaths — and there was something twisted under lock and key.

She had seen Regine’s work on minds. The woman had a certain arrogance about her work. Cya brushed over that area and moved on to other parts of Luke’s memories for the moment.

The areas of locked-off memories were everywhere — anything having to do with the students, anything having to do with the Collapse, anything having to do with Mike, with Luke’s descendants, with a student he’d once looked at with affection.

Regine had been tying his brain up in knots for decades. Cya indulged in a little mental cursing and then went to work.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1201555.html. You can comment here or there.

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

Black Knight and White Queen from the 9th and White Knight from the 10th and
Red Queen from the 11th,
and Domination,
Captured Knight,
Captured Knight continued,
Chessboard,and several pieces by inventrix – /directly/ after Chessboard.

“It’s been happening for a while.” Cya ate slowly and made herself keep her eyes on Luke. She wasn’t going to justify herself to him, to Addergoole, so she shrugged a bit instead. “You’re not the only one to notice, but so far it’s been in the family.”

“You have a plan?”

She smiled. All these years, and he hadn’t really been paying attention. “I had a couple good ones, ’till you challenged him and got him all wound up. Now… my plan is to assign you to keep an eye on him while I consider the rest of my options.”

She had back-up plans, of course. She had back-ups for her back-ups. But if he hadn’t figured that out about her yet, he’d have to learn it the hard time.

His wings twitched. “You want me to keep an eye on him. Worship — being worshiped — it’s forbidden.”

“The interesting thing, though.” Cya set down her fork and leaned forward, making sure she had his attention. “It’s not against the Law.”

“The Council….”

“The Council has decided we’re too much effort to slap down, for the moment.” That had been a hard battle. Cya had no belief she could take down the strongest, stodgiest of the Shenera Endraae in a fair fight, but if it came down to it, she had absolutely no intention of fighting fair.

She noticed Luke was giving her a Look. “We take care of ourselves. Boom. Cloverleaf. We always have.”

She’d said something similar to him, early her second year of school. I can take care of myself. Boom can take care of itself.

She wondered if he remembered that. All he was showing right now — tight wings, tight expression — was worry. “This is serious.”

“Of course it is. I have an empire, Leo has an army, Addergoole wants to kill us, and the Council will probably come knocking pretty soon. It can’t really be anything but serious. But we’ll work it out.”

If anything, he tightened up. “Addergoole doesn’t…”

“I think I asked you not to lie to me.”

“Well…” his wings twitched. “Regine doesn’t want to kill you. Mike…” his voice caught. “Mike mostly wants to play in your playground.”

“And you?”

“Damnit!” His wings unfolded with a snap, and just as quickly folded back up as his expression twisted in sudden guilt. “I’ve been trying to keep you kids alive for decades now! But you won’t keep your heads down!”

She found she was giggling. “Welcome to my world, Hunting Hawk. I’ve been keeping Boom alive for decades. And we never, ever, stay down.”

—

Luke ate the rest of his dinner in silence. She thought he might be irritated at her. His wings were folded tight, his head was down, and he was stabbing his food.

She wasn’t going to apologize. He was going to have to get used to Boom being Boom, or this was going to be a very long decade-plus. He was going to have to get used to the fact that they laughed at danger, not because they didn’t take it seriously, but because they did.

“Dishes can wait,’ she said, when he was done and wasn’t actually looking for the sink. “Come on. We’re going upstairs.”

His wings tightened further. “Why?”

“Because it’s the only place we can both get comfortable while I go digging in your mind.” She smiled brightly at him, like she was flirting or something.

He responded with exactly the glower she’d imagined he would. “You don’t have to do that.”

“That’s my call.” She didn’t think the calm, matter-of-fact voice would slap him down the way it might a 20-year-old, but it did suffice to startle him, if the wing-quiver was any indication. “Come on. Upstairs.” She tilted her head in the proper direction and waited until the implied order got him moving. “Come o, Luke,” she teased, now that he was starting to think, “some people would be thrilled at the chance to get in my bed.”

“Some people aren’t your senior by centuries,” he muttered.

If he was going to feed her straight lines like this all the time, she was going to get lazy. “Oh, I don’t know,” she retorted to his back. “I’m pretty sure Mike’s a bit older than that.”

At this rate, she wasn’t even going to have to work to see what he was like really, really agitated.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1200388.html. You can comment here or there.

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

Black Knight and White Queen from the 9th and White Knight from the 10th and
Red Queen from the 11th,
and Domination and
Captured Knight and Captured Knight continued, and several pieces by inventrix, most notably this one, which comes directly before the story below.

When her teleporter brought Luke to her door that evening, Cya thought he looked a little bit like he’d been punched in the stomach.

She’d been expecting something of the sort, so she was pleased not to be wrong in her impressions. “Come on in,” she encouraged him, because she was pretty sure he’d not remembered the threshold portions of being Kept — he had none, anymore; anyone could walk into any place that was his unless she claimed it as hers; in return, her threshold was open to him. “Let’s get some food in you and some first impressions out of you.”

Cya liked cooking. She hadn’t liked it when she’d started, but somewhere along the line she’d gotten very good at making virtues out of necessities. For Luke, whose Mara body (with is enviable healing factor) was still working overtime fixing the rest of the damage Leo had done to him, she’d made a heavy stew and a crusty loaf of bread.

He sat in the low-backed chair she kept around for winged guests and stared at the food as if he couldn’t imagine eating. That was normal enough, although she hadn’t expected it from him. Cya sat down on the other side of the table and started eating her own.

That got him moving. After a few bites, when the flavors started getting through his haze, he looked up at her. “This is good.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t bother with teasing him; he was hardly there enough to notice she was doing it, yet. “How did the army tour go?”

He snorted, mostly to himself. “Army.'”

Cya smirked, because he wasn’t looking at her, and because he hadn’t really internalized being Kept yet. She didn’t know if he would — and she wasn’t sure, yet, how much she’d force the process. “You’re not impressed?” She found it unlikely that was the case. Leo and his army had taken over the Northwest. They were disciplined, relatively clean, and efficient.

He made eye contact with her and seemed to be considering what he was going to say.

That was a habit she wanted to nip in the bud, especially with a Kept two centuries older than she was. “Tell me.”

He made an entirely-unconscious-sounding noise at the order. “It’s not an army, it’s a cult. A well-armed, well-disciplined armed force… and a cult.”

Unlike a younger Kept, he didn’t slap his hand over his mouth. But he did take a bite of his bread as if he wanted to tear something else with his teeth.

“It is,” Cya agreed, and did not laugh at him. “It’s been growing for a while. You should see him when he does a public speech.”

“And he knows it.”

“Yeah.” She stabbed her stew with her fork. “Yeah. He does.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1200350.html. You can comment here or there.

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.

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

After:
Black Knight and White Queen from the 9th and White Knight from the 10th and
Red Queen from the 11th, which read first, because Au.
Title from – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domination_(chess)

She watched the gears turn in his mind. She wondered how much self-control he actually applied to his wings, and how much of that was failing because they hadn’t fully healed his wings.

It hadn’t been her kindest decision, but she wanted him off-balance, because she was about to knock his feet out from under him. Cya didn’t believe in fighting fair when she had a chance to build an advantage.

Right now, his wings were twitching, the tips of them moving as he considered folding them closer to his back and considered opening them. She thought it might be distracting him.

“Twelve.” His voice was harsh, but he was smirking, albeit tiredly. “But I want terms.”

“My Mentor raised me well.” She passed though the meal slot a single piece of paper. There weren’t many items on it; she had the upper hand, after all.

He raised his eyebrows at her. “There’s already a clause about not attacking Addergoole.”

“I’m not stupid. You wouldn’t sign away your freedom if you thought you were putting Regine and VanderLinden at risk. Besides, while it would be a lie to say I have no quarrel with Addergoole… my grandkids are there. I have no desire to have a battle with Addergoole.”

Yet.

He read the paper twice. “I should ask for a lawyer,” he muttered.

“I could call for a cy’Law, if you want. We have a few.”

She was laughing at him, and he knew it. Strangely, he smirked back at her.

“Wouldn’t help. All right. Twelve years, under these terms. Then what?”

“You do what you want with your life, having promised not to attack me, Leo, Boom, or Cloverleaf.” The answers were easy. She was on familiar ground, here.

“You sound like you think I’ll want to?” He was tired, and his words were slurring. But he kept trying.

She sighed at him in exasperation that was more affectionate than she meant it to be. “I sound like the woman who has plans to make plans. I cover my bases, sa’Hunting Hawk.”

“Sa? Still?”

“You deserve it, even when I’m furious with you.”

“Because I beat up Leo.”

“Because you escalated a situation before I was prepared to properly deal with it. And because you beat Leo into a pulp.”

“He wouldn’t stay down.” His wings spread, and he hardly winced. They weren’t unfolding all the way, though. She’d have to make sure that was treated before it healed wrong.

She quirked her eyebrows at him. “Stay down, sa’Hunting Hawk. Twelve years.”

He took a breath, sighed, and bowed his head. “From now until this day twelve years from now, I Belong to you, … sa’Red Doomsday. You will shall become mine, and what I have shall come from you.”

It had been easier than she feared. “From this day and for twelve years, you Belong to me, Luca Hunting-Hawk. My Name shall encompass you and my will and hand protect you. You are mine.”

He took a breath. “Yours.”

She stood up and moved to the door, unlocking it. “Come here. Get out of there before it scrambles your brains.”

It took him a moment to move, startled, perhaps, by her tone, or maybe just exhausted. He had been dazed and out of it since Regine had released him; that would take some digging. While he moved, she rattled off her standard orders: no attacking her, no attempting to run away, no trying to use magic or coercion to free himself… “If you attack Leo again in anything other than a sparring situation, I am going to make you regret the day you were born and every choice that lead to your presence here before me. Do you understand?”

He didn’t flinch, but she could see in his eyes that she’d startled him. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Come on. You need some fresh air, you need a change of clothes, and you need a Healer.” She walked briskly to the stairs, knowing he would follow her. “I’m going to give you a couple days to recover, and then I’m sending you to Leo, to be his aide.”

She heard his footstep falter behind her. She didn’t slow or turn around. “His…” his voice was even more hoarse now. “You really are pissed at me, aren’t you?”

“If you think I’m pissed at you, Luca, you might imagine how angry I am at Leo.” She softened her voice, just a little. “But this isn’t a punishment, not for either of you. I think he could use your expertise. And, if he turns out not to want it… I have a school full of children who need combat training.”

Now, she turned, and touched Luke’s cheek. “I’m going to keep you busy, very busy, for the next twelve years.” She smiled gently at him. “I think you’ll like it.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1198768.html. You can comment here or there.

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

After:
Black Knight and White Queen from the 9th and White Knight from yesterday, which read first, because Au.

“Ten years.”

She was sitting on the other side of a glass window that Luke couldn’t break — not that he’d tried all that hard. They were speaking through a telephone. The resemblance to a pre-war prison did not escape Luke.

“That’s a long time,” he stalled. It wasn’t, really. Not to creatures as old as they were. “You can’t send me to attack Addergoole.”

“I can,” she countered, “without your assent, without you agreeing to a collar. Regine has some pretty nice blocks on your mind — but I’m better than she is.”

The ache in his wings reminded him why he wasn’t flapping temperamentally. He pulled them close to his body. He should have been healed already. This place was getting to him. “You’re arrogant.”

“I know how good we are. I know how much we practice our skills. Ten years — and I will choose not to send you to attack your friends.”

Luke forced himself to keep his wings still. “I let you put me in here.”

“You didn’t make us fight to put you in here,” she agreed. Or didn’t agree. It was hard to tell with the damn cy’Drakes. “I won’t send you to fight Addergoole. I’m a bitch, but I’m not a monster. Ten years.” She ticked it off on her fingers. “You get four years to teach — under my collar, but under your own aegis and with no orders about your teaching — at Addergoole, but most of the summer and half of your weekends are mine.”

“That will make Mentoring hard.” At this point, he thought he might be arguing just so he didn’t give in. He thought about Leo. He thought about breaking Leo’s ribs and telling him “just stay down, damnit.”

He wasn’t ready to stay down.

“You can bring them with you. It might do both Doomsday and Addergoole kids good to mingle.”

“You mean that? Bring my students to weekends you said were yours?” He couldn’t help but sneer the words.

She smirked at him. “I’m not about to have a romance with you, Luke. And I’m not sure how sex would work out, but I suppose we’ll figure that out later. In case you hadn’t noticed, I already have a romance.”

“You already have Leo, you mean.”

There was a pause. She leveled a look at him. In a less vulnerable position, Luke might have found it interesting. Cya was cold. She was steady, she was emotionless.

Not this time.

“He is the love of my life,” she said, her voice calm but her expression anything but. Her eyes were half-lidded, one hand flat on the table and the other white-knuckling the phone. “And now would be an unwise time to suggest otherwise.”

Luke thought the expression on her face was familiar, but he could not place where he had seen it. What he could tell was that she was entirely sincere. He held up his hands in surrender. “You have Leo,” he agreed carefully. “I don’t expect to get in the way of that.” Truth be told, he had no idea what to expect.

“So bring your students here on the weekends, if you want. Cloverleaf is safe. The Kept ones will probably appreciate the break. If they don’t, then you know they either have a really good Keeper or you have to really look into their Keeping.”

Luke found himself startled at her stark assessment. She twisted her lips in something like a tired smile at his expression.

“We had a few get past us. Bad Keepers, sneaky bad Keepers.”

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Luke thought back through the years. “The feeling when you were looking and missed it anyway?”

“It’s horrible.” She sat quietly for a minute. “I try to be a good Keeper. It will be weird, because it’s you, but I’ll do my best.”

“Ten years…” Luke considered. “You were very angry.”

“You and I both know it had to be long enough to make Regine think it was worth as much as her not attacking me.”

Luke considered that. He thought about the oaths he’d been freed from and raised his eyebrows at her. “You planned this.”

“I did not plan on you beating Leo nearly to death.” The fierceness was back. “That fucked up every single thing I had in place for dealing with this, ah, army. And everything that goes along with the army.”

“Everything that–?”

“That’ll wait until you’re under my collar and my orders. You fucked up my plans considerably. But… of course I had back-up plans.” She smiled crookedly. “Even Addergoole should have figured that out by now.”

“You always have back-up plans.” He nodded slowly. “You didn’t plan on me attacking Leo. But you had a plan if I did. And…” he spoke slowly now. It almost didn’t seem real. “Your plan included getting me out of my promises to Regine.”

“Ten years sounds like a long enough break to decide if you want to go back, doesn’t it?” Her smile was sharp. “Maybe we ought to call it eleven.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1198369.html. You can comment here or there.

After This Story and this story from yesterday, which read first, because Au.

“Just do it.” Luke knew his voice was shaking, but he held out hope that Regine wouldn’t notice. “Regine. Mike’s right. She has the cards here.”

“Luca, I am not going to leave you to be Kept by this, this… woman.”

“I don’t see why not.” He found himself chuckling a little bit. Regine would not understand. Hopefully, Mike would, and he’d be able to explain it. If not, well, Regine could hold a grudge for a very long time. He’d have plenty of time (he hoped) to explain himself later. “Look, Regine, we’ve been letting her Keep Addergoole graduates – and by that I mean not stopping her, let’s be honest – for decades now. What’s wrong with letting me see what my students went through?”

“You are not a student.” Regine was livid. This was not going to help matters; Cya could see that sort of opening and she wouldn’t hesitate to take it.

“No. But neither are they when she Keeps them. Look, Regine. Take the offer.” He stretched his wings carefully, feeling the place where things were still healing. “She’s got you — us — in a tight place, and it’s not going to get any easier by you huffing and puffing.”

“I am not ‘huffing and puffing.'”

“…Much,” Mike muttered.

Luke snorted. “Regine, I know you.” He was tired. His brain was clouded. He tried to make his voice gentle anyway. “I know what you do. Take the offer. I’ll get back to you when I can.” He snorted again. “We live forever, ‘Gene, and you’ve got my kid there with you. You’ll be fine for a couple decades.”

Cya cleared her throat. He could hear the difference between her a-hem and Regine’s. “You have four years to find a replacement for him, Director Avonmorea. Whatever deal I make with him, it will give him the time to teach for the next four school years. That should let him clear his current roster of cy’ree.”

Luke stared at the phone as if he could see her expression through it. What was she doing? Why was she doing it? “That’s very generous.”

“Leo is very fond of you. That buys you a lot of leeway.”

His wings twitched in frustration. He knew why she irritated Regine so much. But he wasn’t in a position, at the moment, to indulge himself.

You put yourself in this position, he reminded himself. He cleared his throat and looked at the phone again. “Thank you.”

“Luca, you can’t mean to…”

“Luke, come on, we need you…”

Luke sat down hard on the divan. “‘Gene. Mike. I’m not going that far away. And you’ll be fine without me, and so will the school. It’s been a long time.” He was so tired, and he didn’t think it was just the injuries and the hawthorn. “You have lots of students of mine who could take my place for a little while.”

There was a moment where nobody spoke. Luke imagined Regine attempting to stare Cya down. He imagined the way she’d looked when she’d come up to them, Leo laying bleeding out on the ground. He remembered that look. It was more frightening now than it had been her first year of school.

Regine cleared her throat. “Very well. Luca Hunting-Hawk, I release you from all oaths you have sworn to me. I release you from your oaths to the school. I release you from your promise to the crew. You are free of your ties to me, Hunting-Hawk.”

Mike’s voice came in the rushing of Luke’s ears. “Luke… I release you from your promises to me. You are free of me, Luke, Hunting-Hawk.”

He did not so much lay down as he fell over. There was weight lifted from his mind he hadn’t known was there. He gasped, and again, but the pressure behind his eyes was too much.

Unconsciousness took him.

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