Others, 57

Spencer was tired, but that was just because he hadn’t slept last night.

Isaac hadn’t come home from the king’s funeral, and at first it had been fine, because Spencer and Skip had just assumed that he’d gotten distracted fucking someone, which Isaac often did. But something had felt wrong to Spencer even at the time, and by midnight when Vinnie knocked on their door to ask if they’d heard from him, it had been obvious something was wrong.

He was fine now, he and Oliver and Yancy were all fine now. Eventually Jacob had shown up and told everyone that Isaac had been kidnapped by a gang called the Rock Boys—how Jacob had known that was a mystery, but Spencer had learned to just accept that Jacob knew things, and they’d put together a cool rescue mission and Spencer hadn’t helped that much, but he’d gone with them and now they were back at the gates of the academy and everything was fine, but Spencer was exhausted and it wasn’t even suppertime.

“We have to go and deal with all these guys we arrested,” Leo was saying. He was the only knight who’d come back with them since all the others had taken the Rock Boys to prison. There was something about the city guard not being able to do it so the knights had to, but Spencer wasn’t totally sure what that was about except that Samantha’s uncle was the guard captain and she’d told Spencer once that the city guard were corrupt, so he guessed it made sense. “But I’ll come see you tomorrow?”

Others, 56

Dream Fox woke up with his dad’s cock in his ass, and he smiled as he pressed back against him. He had a sleep boner, which he didn’t touch, just laying there, letting the sleep leave his brain while his dad made him feel nice.

He did wonder how long Dad had been going before Dream Fox had woken up. It felt pretty early, but Dad normally left pretty pretty early, and he was taking his time. He usually went pretty fast but this morning he was fucking Dream Fox slowly, like he was breakable.

It was a bit boring, actually, but Dad had never really understood what Dream Fox needed.

Others, 55

Donny was crying, but that was fixable. “Hey,” Jacob said, kneeling in front of him. “It’s okay.”

“No!” Donny insisted, face in his hands. “No!”

Jacob nodded, picking Donny up even as he fought. “It’s time for bed.”

“No bed! Don’t want bed!”

Donny was a very smart boy and was normally very erudite for a child, and he thought about big important things most of the time, but he was three years old at the end of the day, no matter how often he told Jacob that he was actually seven, an insistence somewhat in contrast with Donny making Jacob count the days until his fourth birthday every day.

Others, 54

The tall man came in with a long pole, which meant he didn’t plan to take Otho out of his cage today. Otho watched him move slowly through the room, swinging his legs back and forth rhythmically as the tall man put food in the cage his five brothers were in.

His five remaining brothers.

Others, 53

Grey Rain couldn’t get Sky Heart’s antlers right.

Antlers were really hard to carve on a fetish and Sky Heart had really big ones that were thick and curved and had a lot of prongs and Grey Rain kept getting them wrong and that was probably why the stupid fetish wasn’t working.

He tossed the useless carving on the floor and resisted the urge to cut its stupid antlers off. Sky Heart might not like that even if they weren’t going to visit the fetish. Dammit.

A hand on his shoulder made Grey Rain look over, and Snowball was there, looking worried. “Are you okay?”

Others, 52

“Sorry to make you wait,” Helena said as she stepped into the sitting room. Gloria had been waiting for quite a while.

“It’s fine,” said Gloria. She was used to waiting. She’d been waiting her whole life. It wasn’t so bad, having only her own thoughts as company. “I presume the king needed something.”

Helena nodded, but didn’t say what it was. That didn’t matter. Dominic had gone to see Franz to warn him of the assassination plot earlier, so no doubt Franz had immediately summoned Helena to confirm it. Gloria wouldn’t bother asking if Helena had, because the answer was irrelevant and Helena wouldn’t answer either way. “He did, but I’m here now. I understand you wanted to speak about your parents.”

Gloria blinked. Fucking Helena. “I wanted to speak about the Empire.”

“Yes, I read your letter. We can talk about them too.”

Warm Up

Hey! I think they jerked my race time off so it might be a while before I’m up if you want to go out and get lunch or something!

Robby felt bad lying to Edwin, but it was necessary. He sent the text, then he copied it and sent it to Erik too. It was the last swim meet of the year and Robby’s parents couldn’t take him, but Robby had really wanted to go because it was a really big meet and it was one of the provincial qualifiers, so Edwin had sucked Owen off and taken him, which was awesome of him. He’d said he’d be happy to take Robby to any of his meets that his parents couldn’t make, which was even more awesome of him.

Robby had invited Erik because Erik had been getting so much less shitty and he thought this might be a safe place for him to talk to Edwin and see if they could work things out at least a little.

But the problem was now they were both here, and they were going to see Robby.

Others, 50

It was a good day to get married.

It had been a long enough betrothal, though Gabrielle knew that was stupid. Lots of people were betrothed for years and years, the fact that hers had only lasted a year and a half wasn’t such a big deal, even if she had wanted it to be shorter. She’d always liked Remin too, so the first was a good day for their future anniversary to be on.

But none of that was as important as the fact that Gabrielle was happy to be getting married. Not finally getting married or getting it over with or anything like that. It was her wedding day and she was happy.

Others, 49

Devin always cried at weddings.

It was unsightly for him to do so today, because he was supposed to be running security at Gabrielle’s wedding and he could hardly keep an eye out for assassins with water obscuring his vision. But he had anyway, because Princess Gabrielle was important to him, and not just because she was going to be the queen someday.

Though he was her bodyguard, Devin also thought Gabrielle was his friend, and she’d said as much to him several times. It was not a privilege he took lightly, though at the same time, he fully understood that were she to realize he thought their friendship was a privilege, she would disapprove.