Otter awoke with the dawn like a general preparing for battle. She used her Thread of Sanctuary to create a new outfit, something akin to a crisp officer’s uniform, all in white and gold. Crisp pants, a long, buttoned coat, and bck boots so shining that no amount of polish could home to emute.

  While her motives weren’t exactly pure, she wasn’t going to let this situation with Rua’s sisters boil over to the point of no return. It didn’t matter if the future had been foreseen and set in stone. It didn’t matter what the politics of it were, or if Kirhae was so dangerous that everyone seemed to shit themselves whenever her name was mentioned.

  Otter was going to fix this. She was going to make sure this didn’t end with Rua having to kill someone she loved.

  She pictured it in her head perfectly. She was going to march over to wherever Kirhae was based out of – Otter imagined a stark, grey castle – beat up an overbearing gate guard, push her way through people who only wanted to protect their mistress but were only just making matters worse for them, before confronting the woman herself. There, she would try to talk reason into her before things would devolve into a fight, where Otter would challenge her and emerge victorious.

  So of course, Rua woke up and ruined the whole thing immediately.

  She had an annoying way of waking up. No yawning, stretching, rubbing at eyes, or other signs of grogginess. Just instantly alert, immediately taking in her surroundings, as if her life depended on it and ninjas could be around any corner. Knowing the snippets Otter had gotten about Rua’s childhood, who knew what kind of abusing training had instilled that.

  “Where are you going?” Rua asked ftly, her every word den with an edge that promised imminent violence as if she weren’t half-covered by the sleeping form of Sunny, who was softly snoring.

  Otter was about to lie, realized she couldn’t, and instead slumped her shoulders in defeat. “Well, I was going to go see Kir by myself, but I’m guessing that’s off the table now.”

  “Indeed.”

  “To be fair, it was less about trying to protect you from danger and more trying to keep you from getting put into another shitty situation.”

  Rua’s expression softened a tad. “I appreciate that. But don’t go behind my back about these kinds of things.”

  Otter sat down on the bed beside her, and leaned in. “I just wanted to take care of you. Good girls deserve to be taken care of, don’t they?”

  Rua made a sound in her throat, somewhere in the back, long and unintelligible but filled with desire. Her eyes fogged over briefly, but then she visibly shook herself, and pushed at Otter’s shoulder.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “But you like it.”

  “I do, but not when we’re arguing.”

  “We’re arguing?”

  “You’re my penoa. It’s only natural that you have a dominant position over me.” Otter made a choking noise at hearing that, but Rua continued, “But we’re still equals. You just happen to direct things, within limits.”

  “Siyan retionship dynamics are weird.”

  Rua rolled her eyes. “They are perfectly natural.”

  “You’re going to need to instruct me on how they work, you know. I’m not a local.”

  “If I instruct you, that kind of misses the point of what I expect from you.”

  “Wait, you’re expecting things from me?”

  A frustrated noise, followed by, “Yes.”

  “Well, it sounds like you want me to be the domme, which is weird. I’m a switch, but usually sub – thanks a lot, Sami – so I’m not exactly used to being in charge. But ever since coming here… I’ve been having these urges. I like sex. I like it a lot, but my sex drive’s been through the roof. And I look at you, and I just want to pin you down and fuck you. And the thought you might not want to it like… shoved to the back of my mind. I just want to… well, it’s not pretty. It’s like, I think that your wants should be my wants.”

  Rua nodded as if that were the most natural thing in the world. “That sounds like a penoa to me.”

  “That’s kind of fucked up.”

  “It’s how we do things here in the Isnds. The rest of you are the ‘fucked up’ ones.”

  “Okay, but how far does it go? What if I want to just fuck a woman I see in the street? Do I just take her? Because we have a word for that where I come from, and it’s not a pretty one.”

  “Obviously not. You ask her first. And then you take her. And then after you navigate whether it was a one-time event or not.”

  “That’s it? If I see someone I want, I just say, ‘Hey, wanna fuck?’, and if she says yes, we just find some privacy and do the deed?”

  “Why would you need to find privacy?” Rua asked, genuinely confused.

  “Because sex is usually done in private?”

  “It is? Oh no, from the way you’ve spoken to me before, I didn’t think you were like the Mikovians or the Criobani. All your talk of your ‘polyamory’ and such, I thought you weren’t ashamed of sex.”

  Otter blinked. “Well, I mean, I’m not against exhibitionism, but it’s kind of frowned on where I come from. Because the public isn’t exactly consenting to the act, and–”

  “We’re in the Isnds. Siyans don’t care about public sex. We do it all the time.”

  Images of that began to float in Otter’s head. How hedonistic were these people? She was fairly liberal where that was concerned, but she wasn’t sure how comfortable she was with the idea of people fucking around her all the time.

  “Wait, but you were upset about Sunny watching us,” Otter accused.

  “Yes, because what we were doing was intimate, a meeting of a dyad. We have feelings…” Rua blushed intensely at that before continuing in a stammer, “... for one another. We weren’t just rutting. We were expressing ourselves and our bond. That was private.”

  “Oh my goodness, are you saying I could fuck a girl in public, and no one will bat an eye, but if I want to hold hands with you, to show that we’re close and I don’t want to let you go, people will tell us to get a room?”

  Otter wasn’t sure if it was possible for Rua to turn more red.

  “Do you mean that?”

  Otter caught Rua’s eyes with her own and held her gaze. “You’re always abusing our link. What do you think?”

  Hesitantly at first, Rua held out a hand. Otter caught the hand in her own, intertwining her fingers with Rua’s, forming a solid grip. For a moment, the only sound between them was the soft snores of Sunny and their breathing; Otter’s nice and steady, Rua’s boured, as if she’d just run a mile.

  “You’re mine, Rua Hyleah,” Otter said in a hushed voice. “I’m not letting you go anytime soon.”

  She moved closer, and Rua, absolutely vicious, dangerous Rua, who was some kind of assassin and warrior who’d survived a year in a death swamp and had spent her whole life being spat on by the people she swore to protect, looked like a terrified prey animal.

  Some ugly part of Otter, not as deep inside of her as she’d like, wanted Rua all the more for that. Wanted to pin her down and shower her with affection, not out of any desire to uplift Rua, but to dispy dominance over her, to show that only she could love her in a way that no one else could.

  So Otter tamped it down, and pulled Rua’s hand forward, and gave her knuckles a brief kiss.

  “I’m sorry for trying to go behind your back,” Otter said.

  “Right. Yes.” Rua blinked, as if only just remembering they’d been arguing a moment before. “Don’t do it again.”

  “And displease my good girl? Never.”

  Sunny made a snort, and stirred. Rua began to retreat, but Otter chased after her, giving her a quick peck on the lips, but nothing more.

  “Morning,” Sunny grumbled.

  ”Good morning,” Rua said. “Now get off me.”

  Sunny groaned, and clung on tighter.

  “Help,” Rua pleaded.

  “No can do, I have to do the very important task of checking my messages.”

  “Now? You never check your messages.”

  “Obvious snder, as I’m checking them now.”

  Otter pulled up her menu, and when Rua made more noises demanding rescue, she began to hum loudly to herself, slightly offkey, and definitely a tune from some 90s boy band that everyone hated.

  There was the usual assortment of messages that she promptly deleted without fully reading. People asking for help on how to form a Pact, asking for her to join a cn – apparently there were a couple of those formed now – and a couple of obnoxious attempts to slide into her DMs for purposes she definitely wasn’t interested in.

  There was a message from Sami, which Otter actually took the time to read, detailing how both she and Everett had successfully formed Pacts of their own. Sami was something called a Steelsinger, and Everett was a Sungrifter.

  No details on what their Pacts did, or how proficient they were. Otter was about to do the heinous thing of summoning up the energy to actually respond to their message when she saw a new entry in her inbox from Holt.

  It was tempting to just delete it without reading it, but the danger outweighed her desire for pettiness. Who knew what he wanted, and how it would inevitably endanger her life. Probably wanted to know how she added a second name to his pyerbase. Three pyers were perma-dead, but they were only down to 99 on the list. At the rate Otter was going, it’d take him years to weed everyone out of his game, if that was even his goal.

  She skimmed his message. It had exactly what she came to expect from him. A smug condescension, nguage that screamed ‘I have power over you and there’s nothing you can do about it,’ like the whole situation was a joke, and only he was clever enough to get it.

  But there were no overt threats she could see. It was a general message to the pyerbase, inviting everyone to a new event in just a few hours. No details on what the event was, but there was a general promise that it was entirely optional, there was only a very minimal risk of death, and there was a potential for rewards.

  No mention of what the rewards might be. Or what he wanted them to do for said rewards. Typical. No one ever told her anything.

  “We got an invite,” Otter said. “You should both check it out.”

  Rua made a clumsy gesture at the air as she pulled up her menu, and Sunny, her eyes still closed, mumbled, “Read it to me, mama.”

  Rua did no such thing, going over the contents herself silently, her eyes narrowing as she did. It occurred to Otter that the text was very much English, and Rua seemed to have no trouble reading it. But then, she also insisted she was speaking Siyan, when it very much sounded like she was speaking English.

  Maybe Holt was running some kind of transtion software? Or magic? Another puzzle, and not the kind Otter liked. She was the type of person to tear the stickers off a Rubik’s cube and solve it by just moving the colours around that way.

  “We go,” Rua said.

  “We do?”

  “We’re going somewhere?” Sunny grumbled, lifting her head.

  Rua poked her nose in a gesture very much like a boop, but a little too forceful and without announcing she had, in fact, booped. “Not you. You’re our secret weapon. The less Holt knows about you, the better.”

  “What’s going on?” Sunny asked, her eyes widening.

  “We got invited to an event,” Otter said. “Entirely optional, and he’s saying it’s not dangerous, but there’s a potential for rewards. I don’t think it’s worth it.”

  “It might not be, if that were the only thing we were going for,” Rua said. “But the more that man talks in my presence, the more I can tell when he lies. And what someone lies about tells a lot about them. We already know that the purpose of his game isn’t to actually kill the pyers. This isn’t just about some sadistic urge. Or, at least not one that small.”

  “And you think we can learn something, if we get him talking?”

  “Probably not, but it’s worth trying.”

  “Well, at least you’re being honest about our chances of getting anything useful out of him.”

  “That, and I want more banana chips. I’m almost out.”

  Otter facepalmed. “You want us to risk death and who knows what kind of torment just for the sake of more banana chips.”

  “Yes. We can get some of your… what were they called? Craisins. We can get some of those, too. You liked those.”

  “Not enough to want to be in Holt’s presence. I don’t want to be close enough to him that I can smell his body spray. Please don’t do that to me.”

  “Your Il-Su person might be there. We can talk to him, find out why he’s following Kir around. Maybe learn what she’s doing.”

  “I can just message him!”

  “You’ve compined – multiple times – that he’s even worse about checking and replying to his messages than you are. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you actually reply to a message unless it was one of those live call things.”

  “That’s not true, I totally sent that one guy who sent me an unsolicited dick pic one of my own.”

  “So, by your logic, Il-Su won’t respond to you unless you send him a ‘dick pic?’”

  Otter crossed her arms and pouted. She didn’t really have a face for pouting. Sami had told her that whenever she’d tried to weaponize it against her. Which just meant that she must have had a dangerously good pout.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to work on Rua either.

  “We’re going,” Rua said, as if it were decided.

  “Sunny, back me up here.”

  Sunny was already back to snoring, clutching a pillow in pce of Rua.

  “Traitor.”

  DorenWinslowe