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Tecna chafes at her freedom, relative to her friends, but it is a boon she cannot afford to spurn.
She’s of Zenith. She’s logical. She’s smart. She’s too emotionally inept to do anything but agree to what her professors and Headmistress tell her.
All her kin are.
Faragonda assigns Alfea’s Zenith fairies to guard what Tecna and her friends say and do digitally. It might’ve worked, if they were not so loyal to Zenith and Mother. They still put on a show; it’s good practice, fighting with code and text and electricity amongst others as skilled as she. One of her seniors’ affinity is languages, and Tecna relishes her challenges in particular.
She is assumed to be as compliant as they; she’s not monitored when she wanders Alfea’s halls. Not watched as she maps every fucking inch of the school thrice over.
It’s tedious work, but on her fourth pass she starts to notice patterns in Alfea’s magical signatures. On her fifth, she finally parses out why.
Alfea has no living guardian. Likely, the Company could not convince any magical beings to be complicit in its crimes, and would be too prejudiced to look to the darker creatures that might’ve offered. Thus there is no one to obfuscate the magical signatures of Alfea’s hidden rooms, or to randomize their shuffling.
It’s all rather anti-climactic.
On her sixth pass, Tecna starts taking notes on security.
X
Stella starts hosting afternoon tea. It takes two-and-a-half tantrums and Griselda’s intervention before the Alfea kitchens agree to send up daily tea and appropriate finger foods, but she’s a motherfucking Princess and she knows how to play that card.
Her Solarian fairies are sharp-eyed and sharper-tongued when they visit, discrete flowers woven into their braids in the new fashion and bedazzled slits cut into their skirts. Their talks are long and tense and exhausting, but Stella has and always will put Solaria first and her people know that; they believe her.
It’s good practice, for when Stella calls her father or hosts AMAs on her social media. That she is planting seeds is rather obvious for those well-versed in etiquette and performance. It’s all she can do for Solaria, to prepare them for what is to come.
And - sure, it’s her generation, the young folk who pick up on it. Solaria’s future has been warned and sees the coming storm; her father and his allies ignore her frivolity and Mother knows enough to be wary but will not accept anything but the truth from Stella’s own lips.
But she’s sacrificed enough for the old guard, for the past.
“I’m so glad you could make it, darling!” Stella greets with a brilliant smile as she rises.
Diaspro flicks one perfectly formed curl over her shoulder and sniffs.
“I understand your experience is rather limited, but Eraklyon royalty does have proper manners.” She says coolly, and sits when one of Stella’s younger girls makes room for her.
It’s time for the new guard to rise.
X
“I really don’t think you understand my position, Musa.”
Dad’s always been expressive in tone. It’s what makes him so damn invaluable at his job.
It’s also why Musa has no real relationship with him, and never will again.
He’s already written her off. She thinks he wrote her off the first time she demanded his attention after Mom’s funeral. And he’s never really revised his opinion since.
It hurts more than she’d been expecting.
She stares at her father’s tired, irritated face. He’s worn, and graying, and his face is lined.
If he had to make a decision right now, he would side with the Magix Counsel. He would side against her. Less conflict that way.
“Times like this, I’m real glad Mom’s not around to see what you’ve become.” She says hoarsely, and ends the call before his stricken expression can turn into rage.
It’s painful to sit around in the suite all the time, especially because Tecna’s had her entire goddamn planet at her back from the start, and because Stella’s organizing coupes over tea every afternoon, and because Musa is and always has been an outsider and only her actual fucking planet, the literal soul that gave her magic, cares about her.
She doesn’t even like her people. She’ll defend them, of course - because they are Harmonix - but she bears no love for them.
Her family is a coven. A collection of witches and fairies and idiots with swords, two Earth parents who send care packages with CDs of their favorite Earth artists to her and a machine with a soul. Stella has Solaria, and Tecna has Zenith, and Flora has Linphea, and Musa just has what little she can fit into the palm of her hand.
She lays back on her bed with a huff and a stinging in her eyes. She wonders if Harmonix had a Nymph. If Harmonix’ people had turned their back on them, like they already had on her.
Something soft hits her on the stomach. She startles up to find Tecna standing over her, eyebrow quirked.
“What?”
“You’re angsting again. I need some assistance breaking into a hidden room.”
“I don’t know any relevant spells.”
“Lucy prepared us a list, but I suspect simply picking the lock will work.”
Musa blinks. Equal parts surprise and tentative joy, that her mundane skills honed after a lifetime of sneaking around has finally borne fruit.
“You’re serious?”
Tecna’s smile is tight, and does not reach her eyes.
“We are facing an enemy great in power and influence, not intelligence.”
“…What does it say about them, that they thought none of us would know how to pick a lock?”
“I have no issue with being underestimated.”
Musa supposes she can’t really argue with that. She heaves herself up, and follows Tecna out into the main room of the suite. Stella waves cheerfully from the middle of her court, trading barbed opinions with a tall red-head while the rest of the girls looked on in impressed awe. None of them look over as Tecna fits a device around Musa’s throat, or as Musa rolls her shoulders and activates it with a brief burst of magic.
Walking without being able to see her feet is a whole goddamn ordeal, but Musa’s not allowed out of the suite except for - escorted - trips to class, so.
Griselda, their apparent permanent guard, looks bored to death at her post down the hall. She very pointedly ignores Tecna.
And sneaking out is enough to keep her mind off of - well, her angsting.
At least here, she’s wanted. She can be of use.
X
“We haven’t heard from you in a while, sweetheart.”
Mother sounds - cautious. Flora takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. Father’s eyes are sharp and dark over Mother’s shoulder. He doesn’t speak.
“I am not safe here.” She finally says. Mother’s fingers spasm on her mug; her Father’s entire body goes still.
“Are you coming home?”
“I know Tecna’s been writing home for advice.”
Her parents do not know the full extent of what is going on. Miele probably has a clearer picture; Flora’s not sure that her younger sister would have shared that with their parents. Miele is private like that.
And Flora trusts in Tecna and her seniors’ abilities to keep their communications secure, but it feels too much like tempting fate to be anything but vague while within Alfea’s walls.
There’s a spark, in her fingertips. She’s got one hand wrapped around the device projecting her parents’, another wound tightly through Mirta’s leaves and curlicue vines.
Calm down! It’ll be fine.
“What can you tell us, my dear?” Her father’s voice is low and soft, soothing in a way that brings tears to Flora’s eyes. She blinks them away rapidly.
“I joined a coven. Or. Helped make one, I suppose. I’m sure you saw the…execution. I know they made a spectacle of it.”
Mother’s hand flies up to cover her mouth before she can really stop herself; Flora almost smiles at the immediate irritation in her mother’s eyes. She’s always hated losing control of herself.
“They were yours?”
“Are. We know they’re not dead.”
“You’re waiting.” Father murmurs approvingly. Flora nods slowly. He has always valued patience.
“Well. I’ll reach out to Tecna’s family, love. See if we can arrange something.”
“Please be…sure.” Flora speaks a touch too fast, a touch too desperately, but -
She hasn’t spoken to her parents nearly as much as she should, and she feels horrible about it. They love her, and they would support her to the ends of the universe.
But to speak to them is to keep from them the truth of what the Council has done, who the Council has killed, and that is a sin.
And to tell them is to wage war.
There is no coming back from that.
“We’re always sure, my dear.” Father says gently.
See! I like them.
“Will you tell Miele for me?” She asks, and her voice wavers unsteadily. Trembles. Mother reaches out and presses two fingers to the screen; after a beat, Flora does the same.
“Of course, love.”
“Be safe.”
“No mercy, darling.”
X
Bloom crosses one leg over the other and leans back in her chair. She is growing to detest Faragonda’s office with the kind of loathing she usually reserves for Mitzi.
She’d loudly announced the Trix’ innocence before the whole school during and after the sentencing. The execution. It hadn’t done a damned thing for the administration, but quite a few of the older students - more than she’d expected - had stopped and stared with a considering glint to their eyes.
The extra bonus is - it keeps Faragonda too concerned over her temper tantrum to remember about all that training she’d been so eager to start. Bloom’s able to fake her way through classes, or just point-blank refuse to attend, but she’s not sure she can keep up the pretense under Faragonda’s sharp eye.
She’d spent most of her life not feeling her magic for what it was, not recognizing the heat burning beneath her skin as anything special. Its absence is striking, would, she suspects, be devastating if it was gone in any other way than consensually given, but -
She thinks she’s getting better at sensing the magic in the world around her, without her own power there to mask it. She’s able to be much more detailed and specific with witch magic, those rare occasions she considers herself safe enough to practice it.
“I’m sorry for keeping you waiting, dear.” Faragonda says with a warm smile, as she bustles past Bloom and settles across the desk from her. There are teacups floating after her, and they settle with delicate little clinks on the desk’s surface at a wave of her hand. Bloom won’t touch hers, hasn’t any of the other times Faragonda pulls her in to her office to chat. Faragonda still brings them anyway.
The meetings aren’t entirely useless, as much as Bloom hates them.
Gives Tecna time to stalk Alfea’s halls unsupervised, after all.
So - Bloom recites the long list of tips Stella’s been giving her mentally, and smiles tightly, uncomfortable and just angry enough to still be believable.
“It’s no problem.”