“A ley line isn’t quite the same as the Pillars or the rest of the Web,” Ariel explained to Isaac.
“Because the ley lines are alive,” Isaac said, nodding. “Right.”
Ariel blinked. Yancy put down his tea cup. “Huh?”
“Are you quite certain, lad?” Yancy asked.
Oh. Isaac had already fucked this lesson up, shit. “Yes?” he asked, looking between them. “No? Sorry. I just thought that was what you were going to say.”
“Cannot believe you made me go to the wedding,” Daniel grumbled, as he and Theodore filed into the First Church of the Blessed.
“Now, Daniel,” said Theodore, patting Daniel’s shoulder. “There is no need to be frustrated. The guards were only doing their jobs. They were trained to be thorough.”
“I’m not mad about the guards,” Daniel insisted. There had been people patting everyone down before they could come into the church.
Theodore made a vague noise, which made Daniel scowl. “Shut up.”
“I said nothing.”
Landon Archerloft was a noble boy who was a little younger than Isaac, and he was friendly and he knew how to use his dick on a boy, which may or may not have been because of his twin brother Bradley, whom he’d been swordfighting with when Isaac had come into the privy fifteen minutes ago.
Bradley was currently beside them fucking Nicholas’s ass while Landon fucked Isaac, so even though Isaac could have had both twins inside him, he was glad he hadn’t come to the privy alone. There was still plenty of time before the royal wedding started and there was no reason for anyone to have a boner during it when none of them would be allowed to get up and do anything about it.
Isaac had barely fucked anyone today, so it was hardly a surprise when he came a little early. Well, it wasn’t a surprise to him, anyway. Landon made a bit of a surprised sound and started fucking Isaac a little harder. Beside them, Bradley picked up speed inside Nicholas to match him. It was cute that they were so synchronized.
They held hands as they started to cum, which was also cute. The twins came a good amount and then pulled out, Bradley noticing that Nicholas hadn’t shot and reaching around. He came after one stroke.
Click for the full profile of a positively angelic apprentice!
Well, this sucked.
Ariel had examined the evidence, looked through all the spell circles and all the glyphs and every nook, cranny and other small thing in the tunnels under Three Hills, and she’d come to the conclusion that, without putting too technical a point on the issue, it sucked.
“And that, dear reader, is putting it mildly,” Ariel said, drawing a circle on the floor. It was made mostly from triangles and light. Summoning circles had gone out of fashion sometime around the last major dust-up at Har Megiddo, but angels had never been the most with the times. Some of them were still gloating that they’d been right about cell phones not sticking around as a thing.
“So now I’m thinking, maybe they’d have to treat us all better if we just sort of refused to work until they did,” Edwin was saying, as he and Owen explored the tunnels under the city.
Edwin seemed really fired up about this idea, and Owen could see how it could work. It would have benefited Twig a few months ago for sure. “I can see it,” he said. “How are you going to make sure they don’t like, try you for treason, though?”
“Right, that’s kind of the part I haven’t figured out,” Edwin admitted. “I guess the thing is, there have to be enough of us for that not to be feasible and there just aren’t that many squires.”
It had always struck Isaac as a bit unfortunate that the apprentices only had one dormitory, which meant that they didn’t get to have a whole boys-only building like the students did, but now that Isaac sometimes had sex with girls too, it didn’t seem like as much of a trial.
He hadn’t actually had sex with any girls since the party. But that was just because there’d been no reason to. He could. If he wanted to.
Anyway, the girl he was passing in the hallway wasn’t actually a girl. “Hi, Ariel.”
“It’s not like you not to know what to write,” Ariel said.
Isaac jumped in his chair. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Yeah, I’m stealthy,” she agreed. She’d put a dark streak in her hair, which looked nice. “Nobody pays attention to the girl in the mail room. You okay?”
Isaac nodded. “Yeah,” he said, smiling. “Your hair looks nice.”
“Thanks, that’s a great deflection from the question.”
The mail room was busy today, which Isaac should have expected but hadn’t. Everyone was done exams, but nobody had grades yet and part of him had figured that everyone would wait to write home until that had happened. But he supposed there had been angels the other day, which was pretty noteworthy.
It had taken him longer than usual to finish his letter, but once he did—telling his parents about the angels, and about James and Ron a little, but mostly lying and saying his exams had gone okay—Isaac sighed, standing. He sealed the letter and took it up to Ariel, running into Peter on the way. He blinked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you write a letter home,” he said.
Peter smiled, holding up the letter he’d written. “It’s not a habit I’m into. But my mom got named High Presbyter the other day, so I thought writing her some congratulations might be the polite thing to do.”
“That is nice,” Isaac told him. He hoped that Peter and his parents could reconcile, especially now that his parents were living in the capital too.
Peter nodded. “I also thought now would be a good time to tell her I had some boyfriends.”
“Well, it’s definitely magical,” Ariel said, looking at the sword.
“Thanks.” Edwin rolled his eyes. “I hadn’t figured that part out.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ariel hefted the sword, looking closer at it while Edwin watched with Erik. He’d arranged to meet Ariel with Erik today and get the lion sword looked at in preparation for their possibly being picked for Gavin’s retinue, which wasn’t going to happen.
Still, Edwin wanted to know if the sword was going to start sucking his blood in the night or something.
How Best to Use a Sword 