Archive of Our Own ^beta

The morning after her third memory dream, Tally wakes up to trills of birdsong outside her dormitory window—blue robins, her favorite—and the realization that she definitely has, like, a thing for General Alder.

It’s not a huge surprise, honestly. Every girl with sapphic tendencies in her matrifocal community developed a crush on General Alder at some point, including those with some anti-military leanings. Tally wasn’t even the biggest Alder groupie in her age group; that honor was given to Britt Matthews, who rewatched military documentaries like some girls rewatched clips of One Direction concerts on YouTube. Like Tally, for instance. (Goddess, she missed the days when proving Louis Tomlinson had witch ancestry was the biggest mystery she needed to solve.)

So, yeah. Of course. Literally, of course. She’s beautiful, with that jawline, a voice that caresses, an iron will that ensured life and dignity for generations of witches. She’s General Sarah Alder. You can buy action figures of her at CVS, for fuck’s sake. Just last year, Tally might have confidently said “Fuck” during a drunken round of Fuck, Handfast, Kill—or “Kill,” if you asked her last month, stone-cold sober. You can only hate someone like Tally hated Alder if you believed in their sexy, sexy war speeches with every breath you took.

This is the logic of Tally’s situation, stable as the military posture everyone learns in Basic. Unfortunately, biddy magic seems to sidestep the notion of logic at every turn, and General Alder smiles sometimes in Tally’s dreams. She never realized how little General Alder changes her expression in present-day Fort Salem until she carefully examined every arch of a brow and quirk of a lip in that fetid jungle. She’s also sleeveless all the time. And kind of sweaty.

In this last dream, however, there was no battle. Instead, General Alder shared a flask of whiskey with that mystery woman. Her hair caught orange firelight and stuck to her neck, thrown back in deep laughter that deepened the lines by her eyes and mouth. It somehow took every extra century off her shoulders. Her super muscular shoulders. As a biddy, Tally would have known why she laughed, deep down in all the delicate nerve endings reacting without thought.

General Alder was right about the grief, but that word doesn’t feel big enough. Tally still wants to know. She wants to know because General Alder tells her, head tilted forward for a secret, eyes smiling in her direction.

“No more secrets,” Tally murmurs, a reflex. Her head pounds with the weight of that grief and way more homosexuality than she expected for a Tuesday morning. She rubs her eyes until she sees kaleidoscopes. “Oh no.”

“Tal?” Abigail says, rough with sleep. Sheets rustle across the room and the light flicks on. “You okay?”

(Come to my tent later, the mystery soldier had said to Alder. Maybe without the squad, huh?

Alder had taken a long pull of whiskey, allowed her lips to stay rimmed around the bottle as she swallowed. They do give me an stamina boost. When I need—)

“Tally!”

“Yep!” Tally shoots out of bed so fast, she barely finds her feet. “All good, ma—Abs. Abigail.”

Abigail reaches out her hands, palms turned inward. Tally nods her permission and Abi holds the sides of Tally’s face, turns her head to look for any weird marks or bruises. The lines between her brows relax when she evidently finds nothing. “Another Alder dream? Please tell me you finally moved on from the worms.”

“Centipedes,” Tally murmurs. She thinks of the General laughing again. Her outstretched arm, relaxed. The way Alder’s eyes begged Tally to understand in the Tarim caves, jaw clenched tight. “Something like that, yeah.”

Before everything happened, Tally loved catching a glimpse of the General. She had a long, elaborate fantasy of Alder stopping her for a commendation. Anacostia says you’ve improved your wind strike faster than any cadet we’ve seen, well done. This never happened because the General doesn’t really do compliments like that—her mind is so full all the time, running in a million directions, holding onto centuries of difficult memories—but Tally didn’t know any better, back when the General was more history than a real woman who smelled like sandalwood.

Get a grip, Tally tells herself, when she sees Alder and the Biddies walk across the field between War College and the dorms. In her direction. She senses them too, like blood rushing in her ears after standing too quickly, hearing an AC unit hum in the walls back home after everyone fell asleep. Tally bookmarks her page carefully (not that she managed to absorb much of Pride and Prejudice today) and stands at attention. She tries not to notice how the late morning sun turns Alder’s eyes a robin’s egg blue.

“Private Craven,” Alder says. Her face is carefully neutral; Tally knows she checks the mirror to set it before every meeting. She feels an inquisitive tug on her brain and, oh right. Connections tend to go both ways. Don’t think, Tally. It shouldn’t be that hard with Alder looking like the very picture of—Goddess, no thoughts. Brain empty. Go go go!

“Hello, General Alder,” she says. It takes every muscle in her body working together to not smile like a goopy idiot. “Do you need something from me, ma’am?”

Alder’s lips either do a weird twitch or Tally has a really vivid imagination. Her back stays ramrod straight and her hands stay clasped behind it. “Your unit said I’d find you here. I’d apologize for intruding on your free hour, Private, but I have an urgent matter to discuss.”

Holy shit. She was looking for Tally at the dorms. Biddies and stamina, her traitorous mind supplies, searching their faces for any indications of Alder’s thoughts. The group stands at similar attention, entirely focused on Tally but still so very neutral. Yet Tally knows they’re talking and thinking and emoting a mile a minute. She loves having her privacy back, but now her yearning spreads wide, turns heavy. Her brain wants to reach out for that connection again but it doesn’t know how, anymore.

“Private Craven?”

“Yes, ma’am. Of course, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

This time, Alder’s lips definitely quirk upward, expression softening at the edges. Tally’s breath stutters when she realizes that a month ago, she wouldn’t have noticed the difference at all. “Just one ma’am suffices, Craven.”

“Of course, ma—oh, you know.”

Alder’s face stays the same, but the Biddies hiss out a laugh. The Tally of last month would kill the Tally of today, probably. “So what did you need, General?”

“Walk with me.”

I’d follow you anywhere, Tally longs to reply. That sentence was wrapped around her tightly, like a snake trying to hug. What people didn’t know, though, was that snakes were often warm from sunbathing. Or a fresh meal. Come to my tent later, General. Tally swallows. “If this involves a demerit, I must emphasize that Bellweather Unit hasn’t done anything warranting—“

“I wish to discuss your tutoring sessions with Penelope. I hope she will demonstrate her new skills for this year’s recruits.”

“Oh,” Tally says. She clutches the book in her hands a little tighter and wills her heart to just, like, pipe the fuck down. “Sure. Um, lead the way.”

General Alder tilts her head to a path on the left, shadowed by trees. They’re all full to the bursting; green summer leaves still cover the center branches while autumn spikes the dead ends in oranges and reds. It’s kinda romantic.

No!

Tally nods furiously to scrub the thought from her brain and waits for Alder to walk first, so she can keep pace behind her. It takes several seconds and more than one impatient sigh for Tally to realize she was meant to walk beside Alder. Which, duh. Of course. That’s how people not bonded by life force usually walk together.

Still, it’s weird. Especially once the biddies fall into step behind them, always three feet away.

They don’t speak as they make their way across the field to the path’s threshold. Underneath that first canopy, the temperature chills. Tally can hear birdsong again and focuses on those lovely trills with all her strength. It’s very, very important that she avoids looking at the General’s formidable side profile.

Alder slows down until they come to a natural stop. She drifts into Tally’s space, like she plans to bump their shoulders together. She catches Tally’s eye with no effort at all; the muscles in her face seem relaxed, her expression oddly serene. “I have no doubt your unit is in top form, Private.” One eyebrow lifts. “After all, you’re like to see what’s amiss before anyone else.”

Holy shit, that was a joke? Tally knows Alder has a sense of humor, but it largely exists in her internal monologue, only. Inappropriate quips and intelligible strings of words in other languages. When Alder isn’t stern and scary, she’s usually painfully earnest when talking to another person. The concept is bewildering enough that Tally can’t even decipher the joke, much less laugh.

(Has she ever heard General Alder laugh outside of a dream?)

“Haha,” Tally says, like some sort of robot in a civilian movie. She looks at a squirrel bouncing up a spruce tree, hoping the majesty of nature will reset her bearings. “Yeah, when the biddies hiss at someone, I still want to join. Especially with some of the idiotic bullshit people say when you’re just doing your...” Tally feels a spike of warning, too sharp to be her own. She looks back at Alder and finds her stone-faced.

“I apologize, Ma’am, that was…not my place anymore.”

Alder presses a warm hand on her shoulder and takes a step closer, focusing all 344 years of sheer knowledge and intensity solely on her. For a moment, Tally can only feel the jungle’s cloying heat and remember how nice Alder’s arms looked. “If the connection is still too strong, I can ask Izadora to help. You can’t afford to be distracted right now.”

“I’m okay,” Tally says. She tries to think about poisonous centipedes, instead of pressing Alder against a tree and kissing her with tongue. She forces herself to look deeply into General Alder’s eyes, like everything is fine. No secrets to have or to hold. “It would feel more disorienting if the connection disappeared too suddenly, I think.”

Alder searches her face for something, tongue pressing behind her front teeth. Tally feels the echo of the movement, reels from the sheer worry wrapping tendrils around her lungs. The biddies are actually feeling the press of her tongue in their own mouths, might even copy the movement to alleviate their own worry, stop it from reverberating back. This is what no one sees or understands; Alder worries and worries until the glass smooths under the pressure, then breaks into a million jagged pieces.

Tally lets out a hitched breath and Alder’s eyebrows pitch down. Her own worry definitely just carried across the bond. Alder looks for the evidence in her face, and Tally looks back as determinably as possible. Steady on, Craven.

“Alright,” Alder says, her voice the quiet rumble of faraway thunder. “Let us discuss your pupil.”

Tally doesn’t fight a smile. She’s proud of Penelope and, well, being the teacher instead of the student boosts her confidence like nothing else. She hopes Alder can tell–hopes she’ll like Tally’s confidence when she’s not calling out her war crimes in the Tarim. She restarts their walk, thrilled for the chance to regain her bearings. “Penelope has a lot of potential, but I think she fears her own power. Her dad is…well, I know you know, General. He wishes she never sang that day in the church.

(I know you know. The phrase bounces around Tally’s head like an overexcited puppy. I know you know, General. I know you.)

Alder hums, thinking. “There was a time when all witches lived in that fear. It curtailed our power for centuries in the old world and the new, until…” She swallows, deep in thought again. Tally watches her sinewy throat and tries to have super appropriate thoughts.

“Until you signed the Salem Accords?”

“No,” Alder says, firmly. She looks at Tally with a ferocity that could level cities. Her eyes are a dark, dark blue now, the sky of a gathering storm. “Until I saw them hang my sister and realized they would hate us no matter how small we made ourselves.”

The biddies hiss. Tally feels their rage in her teeth and muscles and balls up her fists to stop the impulse from taking over. Underneath that rage, though, is—oh. It’s nameless, but it’s heavier than anything else Tally ever felt before. “I’m really sorry you had to see that,” she says before she can stop herself.

Alder doesn’t chastise her language this time. For one, brief moment, she just looks really sad. If she were anyone else–literally anyone else–Tally would hug her. She would promise that everything was going to be alright; she’d fix it. She’d make it right with her own voice, her own hands, until the world was right again.

But, like. It’s General Alder. That would be insane.

Even if she really wants to hug her.

The connection will fade, Tally reminds herself. She watches Alder’s profile as she gives more orders regarding Penelope’s tutoring, tries to focus on those orders, fails epically. It’ll be much better when it fades, says the logical part of her brain, which she also ignores in favor of watching how Alder’s eyes catch streaks of sunlight through the branches. Horrifically, it’s not too different from the time she tuned out math lessons to watch a Harry Styles interview.

As they emerge back onto the field, Tally decides she needs to say something, anything. She stops and takes a deep breath. “General Alder?”

“Yes, Private?”

Alder wears her neutral expression again–the one for television appearances and marches. Tally tries to match it, to the best of her abilities, to balance the inappropriate things her mouth is about to unleash. “I, well…just…”

Goddess, she was just about to remind Alder to eat lunch. She laughs, throwing her head back to look at the branches and steady herself. When she looks back, Alder seems fondly amused, warming Tally up from her neck to her toes. Still, she can’t bring herself to ask the question. She shouldn’t even know how often Alder skips lunch. “Are you…excited for Yule next month?”

There. A monstrously safe question. Ugh.

Or maybe not, because that fond amusement drains immediately from Alder’s face. She goes tense and taut around the shoulders–which no one would know unless they shared her brain, once–and her current biddies show much, much more; Greta and Bethany clench their jaws while Devon glares and Alyson just looks pained, like she’s taken a scourge to the gut.

Without warning–or, really, the biddies were the warning–Alder’s worry falls away from the bond, hard. The loss hits Tally’s stomach like that drop tower ride at the Sacramento County Fair and it takes all her energy to maintain eye contact.

“I always look forward to celebrating the new year, Private,” Alder says, clipped. She glances at Alyson until her pained expression vanishes, like it never existed at all. “It’s long past time I take my leave. You should enjoy the rest of your free hour before the next bell.”

“Of course, ma–General Alder.”

Alder turns on a heel with a sharp nod, then stops abruptly, angling her head back towards Tally. Her voice turns gentle, almost soft, while her back remains rigid. “Remember not to hold back during training, Craven. The Camarilla certainly won’t.”

Tally wants…well, she wants the forest to stop spinning. She wants to ask so many questions, all inappropriate. They’re on the tip of her tongue, just like the hiss. Using every ounce of military-born strength, Tally can only clasp her hands behind her back and make her voice just the right amount of perky. “They won’t know what’ll hit them, Ma’am.”

The biddies look at one another with enigmatic little smiles. Alder just looks forward and presses onward, not saying another word.

Two weeks pass before Tally has another dream.

It’s a really old one, too; Tally half-expects the images to come in sepia tones, like photographs of Alder’s platoons in the seventeen hundreds. She’s watching a coven of young witches dance around a Yule fire–she knows it’s Yule without knowing, like she knew the centipede attacks took place in Liberia–and Tally’s confused until a very young Sarah cuts into view, hair flowing behind her with the wind, laughing and laughing and laughing. The only lines on her face are from laughing. She could be any soldier celebrating Yule with her sisters.

When Tally wakes up, she can’t inhale a full breath. Goddess, they were all dead. She knows this too, without having to know. It’s a different kind of knowing than everyone else Alder outlived; they were her sisters and they were murdered, not long after the very Yule Tally just watched. Their laughs sound like screaming now; they echo in her mind and weigh chest until she has to clamp hands over her mouth and whimper out sobs. She really, really doesn’t want to alert Raelle and Abigail this time. This isn’t a memory she’s comfortable sharing. She wants to give it back. A real biddy would know where to put it.

No wonder she isn’t excited for fucking Yule. Goddess, Tally feels stupid.

Sarah, slow down! I’m going to empty my stomach!

The night is long. A smirk she’s never seen before. I want to show them we’re ready for anything.

Tally watches the sun rise. She doesn’t need to look deeply into the bond to know that Alder is watching, too.

Another week passes with only one other dream—a slightly older Sarah training cadets in scourging—but Tally is, nevertheless, going kind of insane. She has a feeling their connection is a chicken-and-the-egg situation now; the more Tally thinks about General Alder, the stronger it becomes. But it’s impossible to not think about her, when Tally always knows where she is and what she’s doing, even if she’s not thinking about Alder at all. Which, to be fair, is also not very often now. Chicken and the fucking egg.

Before she decided to forgo dispensation, Tally told her mom about all her crushes. There was Lisa, four years older with the beautiful green eyes and the sweet-sounding voice that could grow new plants with just one seed. There were the many, many boys they encountered on field trips; Tally’s friends also suffered her exaltations about Justin’s red curls or Brian’s bobbing Adam's apple. Telling her mom about a crush on General Alder would be the final straw for their bruised relationship, though. She also didn’t put it past her mom to call the General herself and warn her to stay away from Tally, or something equally fucking mortifying.

Abigail is also out. Tally knows she still grieves Charvel acutely, even if she won’t admit anything to her or Raelle, and General Bellweather bugs her every day about either fixing her middling test scores or choosing a partner to handfast who’s not Adil. She doesn’t need Tally’s overly complicated girl problems. Besides, Abigail has known the General since birth, just like all her post-Jem ancestors. This will be weird for her.

For a few days, Tally considers telling Glory; even though she was a Kinsey 1 and still fears anything military-related, she wasn’t entirely immune to Alder’s imposing figure and broad shoulders. She admitted as much during Truth or Dare with Britt Matthews and the others, the summer they were fourteen and discovering girl talk. But, no. Not Glory. She wouldn’t understand, even if General Alder were a super hot guy, and especially since she wasn’t there for the whole Biddy thing. Tally doesn’t have the patience to explain steps one through one hundred. She needs—

—not General Alder, obviously. That would be absurd. She almost disrupts their Mothertongue class with a yelp at the very concept of taking general romance woes to Alder, much less her very, very inappropriate feelings for the woman. (The woman. She who signed the Goddess-damned Salem Accords.) Especially when she kind of owes her an apology for the Yule question, and can’t even apologize without explaining everything.

Nope. Nope! It has to be—

“You good, Tal?” Raelle’s braids flash yellow on her right. She twirls a pen in her fingers and gives Tally the same worried look Abigail (and Alder) sported that very first morning she realized everything. “You’ve been spacey all day. I mean, even Glory managed to land a punch during hand-to-hand. No offense to Glory.”

“Yep, all good!” Tally whisper-shouts back.

“Private Craven, anything you want to share with the class?” calls Grafton in Mothertongue. He pauses writing new conjugations on the board to wait for her reply.

“Uh,” Tally stammers. Wow, she definitely should know how to answer that question. “No, I don’t like…uh…meat?”

Their classmates laugh, some good-naturedly and others mockingly. Usually, Tally would glare them into awkward silence–she’s gotten pretty good at glaring since basic–but today, she’s just exhausted. (And embarrassed. If only they knew why she’s so unprepared for class.) Abigail would usually pick up the slack, but she looks just as distracted today, mouth downturned and gazing out the window. Seated on Tally’s right-hand side, Raelle picks up the slack instead. She gives their mocking classmates her most withering, judgment-laced stare and the laughter promptly dies in their gulping throats.

“Very close,” Grafton says, turning around with an encouraging nod. That form of ‘Like’ is indeed personal preferences, while that form of ‘want’ is typically used to express non-sexual desire. There are multiple words and phrases for the sexual type, of course.” He gets a few laborious chuckles. “Meat’ is very phonetically similar to the present-tense conjugation for ‘share.” It’s a common mistake to make. Next time, make sure to use a glottal possessive. Nevertheless! Great work, Private. You’ve been practicing.”

“Definitely.” Tally gives a thumbs up. “Practice makes…” Fuck, seriously? She gives a pleading look to Raelle, who mouths the word as subtly as she can. “Perfect.”

“Perfect!” says Grafton. “Now, let’s discuss the subjunctive…”

As he crosses to the front of the classroom, Tally lets out a breath. Next to her, Raelle looks at her with a worried, downturned brow. Abigail is still looking at the window. Looking between her sisters, Tally comes to a decision. She just hopes Abigail won’t hate her, when she inevitably finds out that Tally told Raelle a big secret first. Especially since she hates being coddled when she’s clearly, definitely, totally fine.

Just like someone else Tally knows.

She pokes Raelle’s wrist and real-whispers this time. Thankfully, both Abigail and Grafton remain none the wiser. “Hey. Can we talk after class?”

Raelle looks panicked. “Is it something I…?“

“No, no.” Tally smiles and hopes it’s reassuring. Somewhere across campus, General Alder is speaking to General Bellweather in clipped, dark tones. Her mood is agitated and, of course, worried. Two long strands of glossy hair escape her braid and when Abigail’s mom turns around to leave, Alder replaces them with graceful precision. Tally bites her lip so, once again, she doesn’t press on the bond deep enough for Alder or the biddies to notice. “Not about you, I promise. I wish it was, to be honest.”

Raelle goes back to furrowing her brow. She nods. Throughout the rest of class, she keeps throwing small, confused glances Tally’s way. If Raelle flunks their next pop quiz, it’ll be her fault—and M’s wrath to endure.

They can’t talk in the dorms, though. Abigail could walk in at any moment, or M and the other members of Sekhmet, or—Goddess fucking forbid—the General herself, wanting more tutoring updates. Not really able to muster higher problem-solving skills, Tally winds up leading Raelle down the same path she took with Alder earlier. It’s even darker in the late afternoon; orange lights slants through the gaps in the trees, throwing everything around them into deep, deep shadow. It’s quieter, too. All Tally hears is a stream rushing nearby. She’d need to See closely to hear anything else.

They eventually enter a small clearing, still canopied with trees. There’s a big rock in the center, though, that Tally assumes is a popular make-out spot. The many hearts and initials crudely sung onto the rock’s surface seem to confirm that assumption. As Raelle shifts into a comfortable sitting position, Tally imagines the General across from her instead; would she be straight-backed or would she lean over with elbows on her knees, relaxing in the presence of—

“So, are you seeing something worse in Alder’s dreams now?”

Tally physically wills the image away until only Raelle is left; pulling a leaf crossing over their head. when the leaf breaks away with a snap, the branch bounces back up with a crunchy rustle. Tally crosses her legs and stares up at the darkening sky. “Kind of,” she admits. “I mean, I’ve seen a lot of war horror—but also…other things. Happier memories, I guess.” Her neck prickles in warning, her own and not. “That became not so happy after the Camarilla...happened.”

“Like what?”

Tally looks down and watches Raelle turn over the leaf in her fingers, like she plays with her mom’s war charm before lights out. She almost dives into a specific memory, but refrains at the last minute. She knows, without a doubt, how private and precious these memories are. She feels physically ill at the thought of them becoming gossip fodder, and is certain the thought comes from her, and not the General herself. Alder would just be furious.

“Her coven, sometimes her family. It’s not like she sits in a dark room staring at the wall when there’s no war to lead.” Tally knows she sounds defensive and can’t bring herself to care.

“I know.” Raelle holds up her leaf and turns her head, frowning. “Huh. Maybe I don’t, actually. It’s weird to like…think of the General like that.”

Tally turns her whole body to face Raelle. Her shoulders relax when she realizes that Raelle is contemplative, rather than suspicious. “Like she’s a person,” she says quietly. “Just a person, if an extraordinary one.”

“Yeah,” Raelle says. She rubs the back of her neck and gives Tally a look that’s one-part wary and two-parts sheepish. “Didn’t want to say so, in case you went praying mantis on my ass.”

Tally rolls her eyes. “Praying mantises only do that when they’re copulating.”

“Damn, Tal.” Raelle whistles. She twirls the leaf like a mini baton. “Didn’t know you were kinky. Then again, you are from San Francisco.”

“Not all of NorCal is San Francisco. Sacramento is literally four hours away from San Francisco.” Raelle laughs at her faux frustration that’s actually covering for Tally’s alarmingly real frustration, and Tally can only reach behind her for a leaf of her own. She windstrikes it at Raelle, who uses an inaudible Seed to slice the leaf in half, right before it hits her forehead. Voice tapering off, Raelle grabs another leaf, eyebrow raised in a challenge.

For the next two minutes, it’s an all out leaf war on the Fort Salem make-out stone. Battle is somehow exactly what Tally needs, no matter how stupid and small and an ill-advised use for the Work, as the General might say. In Tally’s relaxed state, Alder’s image simply walks through her thoughts and memories like she’s supposed to be there. She conjures a particularly ridiculous image of the General during last year’s Pride Festival in San Francisco, when Tally was allowed to go with friends and younger chaperones.

She imagines Alder in casual clothes: a sweater and slacks, hair down, allowing Tally to lead her through the festivities by the hand, allowing Tally to paint a little rainbow on her cheek. She’s not even sure how she knows Alder likes women, but she knows, just like—

A leaf hits her nose. She sneezes four times, flipping Raelle the bird when she laughs in triumph. Her sister taps her head with one finger. “Rule one of combat. Never let the General’s worm-infested nightmare memories distract you from your opponent.”

“They were centipedes.” Tally bats away Raelle’s hand, then changes her mind at the last second, holding it and staring dumbly down at the fate lines on her palm. She takes a deep breath, and wonders how this whole thing is scarier than facing the Camarilla without most of her life force. “What do you think of her, by the way? General Alder.”

Raelle blinks at her, both brows raised. “Like…do I still think she’s a power-hungry evil bitch out for blood?”

“Not that, exactly—well, sure. I guess it’s actually a relevant question.”

“…To?”

Tally stares at Raelle, stomach clenching, unsure of everything, especially where to start. Maybe they can just play leaf war until it’s time for bed. “Do you still think she’s a power-hungry evil bitch out for blood?”

Raelle sighs. She drops Tally’s hand and lies down on the rock, legs dangling over. She presses her hands against her stomach. “I don’t think being evil is like…her actual goal when she does shady shit. But she still does the shady shit, you know? I just can’t trust her.” She turns her head, eyes apologetically wide and mouth set firm. “Sorry. I know it’s different for you.”

Tally swallows. She wraps her arms around herself and thinks of her first night as a Biddy, when she saw Alder’s head drop in her hands, felt all that exhaustion spread through all of them in waves. It nearly knocked her off her feet. Don’t let Craven take it all, she had murmured to Alyson, one of the oldest biddies. We need her strength. Alyson had rubbed Alder’s shoulder, making Tally unfathomably jealous for the first time in her life. Not even seeing Gerit marry another girl inspired the same bright, blazing green envy.

“I get it,” she finally says. “I mean, without the Biddyfication, I probably wouldn’t trust her either. I certainly wasn’t fond of her before.”

“Wasn’t fond?” Raelle nudges her, laughing. “Dude. Before Tarim happened, Abs and I were worried you’d literally scourge her in an alley, given half the chance.”

“No,” Tally murmurs. She feels her cheeks heat up and turns away quickly, cursing the Craven tendency to blush like a tomato. “No,” she repeats, more clearly. She feels the silly urge to cry. “I never actually hated her. I don’t think I could. It was like—I felt—I pretty much worshiped her before I said the oath, you know? She saved our entire world, and keeps saving us still, tirelessly. Then she just—she let all those people die.”

“Yeah. I definitely get how betrayal goes down,” Raelle says quickly, gaze darting up at the sky again. She kicks a leg out and runs a hand through her hair, cheeks going a little red, too. “In a different context, obviously.”

Tally offers what she hopes is a gentle, sympathetic smile, free of her everlasting ire for Scylla Ramshorn. “I mean, it’s not the same type of situation, but you could describe—“

“Wait.” Raelle looks right at her, startled into some kind of new thought. Tally has a feeling she knows exactly what it is, even though she’d never been able to hear Raelle’s mind. She squirms and Raelle stares, brows knitting and unknitting, until her mouth goes slack as death and she roughly hauls herself onto her knees. “No fucking way, Tal.”

“What?” Goddess, it’s like her cheeks are shooting sparks. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Um, only the same horny eyes you were giving Gerit during Beltane.”

“My eyes are not horny. They’re…passionate. But not because of—“

“Wait, pause.” Raelle sits back on her haunches, concerned. “General Alder is a woman. Shit, did I miss your coming out arc while Izadora experimented on me?”

Tally wants to deny it with every facet of her soul, especially since Alder could be listening to every word. Somehow, however, she really knows the General isn’t listening or watching. “Oh. I’m bisexual. Super bisexual. I guess it just never came up? I mean, girls are like, really great, but there were a lot of them in a matrifocal community, so—”

“—Boys became the hot commodity, got it.” She nods quickly, reaches down to squeeze Tally’s hand. “We’re absolutely comparing notes later. But dude. General Alder. Speak.”

Tally releases a long breath. Raelle is like a dog with a bone when she sets her mind on something; they all are. It’s what makes them such good teammates and it’s the cause of all their arguments. Only way out of this one is in a body bag, with a flag folded neatly on the top. At least a death duel wouldn’t be mortifying, as she’d be dead. “Yeah, so. Okay. I mean, you’ve seen her.”

Raelle scrunches up her face. “Not my type. Too standoffish and war criminal-y.”

“Right.” Tally sighs. “Look, I know she’s done a lot of awful things. Believe me, I know. I think it’s the biddy thing? I sort of hope it’s the biddy thing.” She takes a deep, achy breath. “I also really don’t. It’s…complicated?”

“That would imply all of Alder’s biddies want to fuck her,” Raelle says, grimacing. “Wow. Thank you for that thought, Tally.”

“None of them are sexually attracted to her,” Tally confirms to a still-grimacing Raelle. “I wasn’t either when I was still a biddy. You’re too close. It’d be like one uncomfortable step away from masturbation, or—”

“Nope! Subject change.” Raelle shakes her head a little violently. “You said I wasn’t. So you do want to sleep with General Alder, right now.”

“Not right now, right now.”

“Right. To clarify: if General Alder appeared right now and asked for a quickie in a super sexy voice, you’d say no?”

Tally is definitely going full tomato now. She huffs, ignoring the vision of Alder in her long, flowing dress from last Beltane, pressing Tally onto the rock and running her tongue over the pulse point on her neck— “Well,” she squeaks. “I mean…it’s not like it would ever happen like that!”

Her sister looks smug now, like Tally imagines a sister she grew up with would look. “So you’ve thought about how it might happen?”

Tally flops onto her back and covers her eyes with both hands. “I swear to the Goddess, Raelle, I’m going to windstrike you back to the Cession.”

Raelle laughs, cackles really, just like the witch villains in those silly civilian stories. All is silent for a while, as Tally tries to exist in a world where this secret isn’t a secret any longer. She knows Raelle will keep it safe. She wishes it didn’t have to be a secret, mortifying enough to giggle over. Tally knows a crush on the General is ridiculous—and basically a right of passage for so many army witches—but she also knows it’s not like that at all. Crush isn’t even the right word anymore, and she doesn’t know the right one.

“Tally?” Raelle gently removes one hand away from Tally’s face. “Hey, I’m sorry for making fun. We don’t actually have to talk about it.” She squeezes Tally’s hand. “Promise.”

“No, I want to.” Tally sits up and forces herself to look dignified. “Need to, actually. Like I’m going to start a hurricane if I don’t talk about her, and I don’t think Fort Salem can deal with a rogue hurricane right now.”

“It’d be one way to get Alder’s attention.” Raelle looks at her curiously. Her next words are careful, and a little gentler. “Do you want to do that?”

At first, Tally is prepared to say no way, you are literally insane for suggesting that, but the more she realizes these feelings might always stay in her chest, the more morose she becomes. Tally always told her crushes how she felt eventually; all that love and care needed a place to go before it went necrotic, sitting heavily enough in her chest that breathing became kind of an issue. “I want to care about her. Have the right to care about her? I don’t know if that makes sense.”

Raelle frowns. “I mean, that was your whole job, right? Makes sense that you still want to while your brain is still weird.”

“I don’t want to be a biddy again, though. Like, I really don’t.” Tally can’t suppress a shudder; there was so much about being a biddy that sucked, but all that attention, the giving and the receiving, never did. She was so careful with Tally during those long forty-eight hours she grieved her sisters, almost reverent. With just a glance, she made Tally feel strong enough to hold up the entire sky, and Tally knew just when to offer the same strength back. “But if Sarah like…opened the door to our psychic bond one day and asked me to jump in her skin, I wouldn’t say no.”

There’s silence again. Raelle’s face is blank and Tally tries to calm her pulse with a breathing exercise from Fixer classes–ten seconds in, ten seconds out, focus on your veins, how they connect to each synapse, up through the brain and down into the lungs–but it just seems louder and faster when she’s done.

“First name basis,” Raelle finally says. “That’s pretty gay.”

Tally doesn’t have the energy to joke, so she just leans her forehead on Raelle’s shoulder and tries to feel regular again.

The next week passes like a kidney stone: slow, painful, and annoying. Their training ramps up every day; increase reps from 100 to 150 in weight training, windstrike 15 metal sheets in a row, then 30 and 50 and upwards and onwards. By the time Tally makes it to her bunk, she’s too exhausted to contemplate simple emotions like Hangry or Bitchy, much less the tangled mess of General Alder. (Raelle and Abigail have no trouble with Bitchy, but their jabs are half-hearted and too concerned about the other’s well-being to be real).

Beyond the two times she observed a Knowing class, Tally doesn’t see the General at all—or have any new memory dreams, much less new information about the mystery witch or Sarah’s fallen coven. She can sense Alder’s movements when she focuses hard enough, though, and even pick up an emotion here or there when she tunes her brain to the right frequency. (Or if Alder emotes strongly enough. That only happens once, after a meeting with President Wade; Tally almost reached out across the bond, but got the sense she didn’t want to be disturbed by anyone, much less an ex-biddy cadet.)

Ironically, Raelle knowing her big secret saves the week from total misery. When General Alder makes an impassioned speech, Raelle waggles her eyebrows. When Tally listens to Death By a Thousand Cuts on repeat, Raelle texts her a screenshot of her Spotify feed and “U good?” Tally also feels like some much needed Sapphic Girl Talk is helping Raelle with her lingering Scylla issues. Even though gushing still isn’t her thing, some sparkle returned to her eyes when they talked Wonder Woman comics for an hour.

She does need to tell Abi, probably. She may not specialize in Knowing like Tally, but she can pick up intrigue from just one glance and there’s been a lot of whispered giggling flowing down from Tally’s top bunk. At first, Abigail was an amused kind of annoyed, tossing quips like Glad you’re getting the Gerit scoop instead of me. Now, she’s shooting them confused, hurt glances. If they weren’t so fucking tired, Tally expects there would be a confrontation by now.

By the time Tally reaches Mothertongue class at the end of each day, she’s dead on her feet, achy in whatever body part decides to rebel. On Friday, that body part is finally her brain, completely spent from Fixing class–her worst subject, even though Izadora swears she’s one of the best. Unfortunately, this renders all Fixing exercises for headaches moot. Every time she tries a new technique, her head pounds harder and the room spins hangover-style. Tally can’t afford to have a migraine, though. She needs enough energy to practice the advanced Knowing exercises Anacostia gave her.

It’s also important to rest, Private, she hears herself murmur in a deeper voice. Wait. That voice is definitely coming from herself, but it sounds nothing like the inner voice that never, ever shuts up; Tally would know, obviously. And why would she refer to herself as her title, in third-person nonetheless?

She takes a deep, highly unnecessary breath and cracks open the door to the bond. Ever since she told Raelle everything, she can only picture the bond as a door, separating one mind from the other more neatly than is actually true.

…General? Is that you?

Hello, Craven. This time, her voice comes through loud and clear, like she’s speaking over an intercom. Tally’s heart swells in pure euphoria. Are you well? I am sensing some… some acute distress today.

Oh fuck. My apologies, General! I know you’re—busy. It's just a headache. I’ll pipe down on my end of the—bond.

Alder finishes signing a document before responding again. It’s full of redacted sentences, complete with the words “Confidential” printed across the top. Tally can hear the scratch of pen on paper, the chair creaking when Alder stands up to stretch. It’s no trouble. Have you tried a breathing exercise?

Tally cringes. Trying. Failing, obviously.

Hmm. Alder begins to pace the room, lips pursed in thought. Seeing double with the classroom and Alder’s office now compounds her headache, but Tally will fight ten Camarilla agents by herself before admitting that. Can I try a more advanced technique? I promise to be gentle.

Tally knows she’s blushing again. She squirms in her chair. Hopefully Alder can’t sense the source of her distress. That’d be mortification she’d never recover from, probably. Yes, of course. I’ll try anything.

At first, Tally feels the General physically walk away from the bond; her heart lurches until she realizes the door is still wide, wide open. Seconds later, a warm breeze brushes against her neck, smelling sweet and honeyed—sandalwood. When airy fingertips press against her temples, she knows exactly who’s standing behind her, uh, metaphysically.

Comfortable?

Yes.

Okay. I’d say close your eyes, but you are still in class, Private. The last few words carry a note of amusement. Tally’s lips quirk up, unable to stay neutral. Count to ten. In Mothertongue, please.

Cool. Will do.

Slowly, slowly, Tally’s head cools, like she’s swimming through a clear lake in short, careful strokes. The pounding recedes to tiny cymbal clashes, then the low ding of a triangle, then nothing at all. When Tally’s breath turns even, the ghostly fingertips disappear. Her temple still tingles from the impression.

Tally beams. Alder smiles contentedly too, stops pacing and leans against the desk. Better?

Much better. Thank you, General.

Of course. Ask Izadora to teach you that method. I’ve no doubt you can learn it.

Will absolutely do. There’s no response, but the door stays open. She takes a cautious step inside with just one foot, feels that same cool energy emanating from Alder’s side, sparks of curiosity coursing through indecipherable thoughts. (Curiosity about Tally, she realizes with an embarrassing rush of pleasure.) But underneath all that, there’s an edge too—lingering stress from Alder’s last meeting perhaps, and something more vast and intense. An underwater sea not charted on any known map.

Tally’s reaching before she thinks. Could I…return the favor in some way? Raelle taught me this—

All at once, the door swings shut. The office vanishes from her mind’s eye, leaving her to swim alone in the dark. Inside her mind, she’s twisting and turning, reaching for anything solid; outside, she sways in pace, stomach lurching, until the classroom comes back into full focus. Nothing has changed, except the time. The sun now illuminates the board with all the verb conjugations, throwing Grafton in shadow. Beside her, Raelle is staring at her in abject concern.

I’m fine, Tally mouths, but Raelle’s expression doesn’t change at all. Her hands shake; she sticks them underneath the desk and runs her fingertips along the wood grain. She focuses again on the General’s office, on the polished mahogany of her own desk. She’s not really seeing the desk anymore, though, just picturing it in her imagination. As a result, the picture is fuzzy, lacking form and detail. Alder is rendered into a portrait. The one Tally grew up revering.

Ma’am? she whispers, throat closing up.

No response, nothing. Just a lot of dark.

“Okay!” Grafton claps, startling Tally back into class. “Your assignment has been sent to your medals. Go, get gone. Remember to breathe when practicing. As I say, half of Mothertongue is just…?”

“Instinct,” the class drones. Both Bells and Raelle roll their eyes, likely for exact opposite reasons.

“Perfect, blood of my coven. Class dismissed.”

The bell tolls and chatter increases tenfold. Tally manages a vaguely normal smile when Abigail and Adil check in about their dinner plans, nodding or humming at all the right places. Raelle stays a concerned grouch, but that’s not gonna set off Abigail like a moody Tally would. Abi always teases Raelle about early frown lines and crow's feet.

As Abigail and Adil head out, Tally sways in place. She closes her eyes and wills her hands to stay still. Birdsong is suddenly too loud, the afternoon sun way too bright. She considers reaching out again, but a door slamming in her face would just bring the headache back. And make her cry, pathetically.

“Tally!”

“Uh huh?”

Raelle waves a hand in front of her face. “I’ve been calling your name for like, thirty seconds, dude.”

“Ah. Oh.” She rubs the back of her neck. “Reporting for duty.”

Raelle places a hand on her arm and carefully examines Tally from head to toe, like she’s trying to find more mysterious lacerations. “It’s the Alder thing, again, right? The nightmares?”

“Kind of. It’s not…not the nightmares.”

“I really think we should go back to the infirmary.” Raelle catches her eyes and holds her arm a little tighter. “I know it’s complicated with her, but this isn’t good, Tal.”

“I’m not going back there,” Tally snaps. She pulls her arm out of Rhaelle’s grasp and crosses her arms. “Honestly, I just really need rest, I think. And to stop thinking about…” Sarah. She was going to say Sarah again, like she has any right to. Her throat tightens, tears pricking her eyes before she can stop them.

Raelle’s expression softens. “Love sucks, don’t it.”

“Yeah.” Tally starts. “Not that I’m…you know.”

“Sure.” Raelle leans back against the desk, one boot in front of the other. She raises an eyebrow. “Wanna get pizza in Salem? Unless you’d rather just stay in tonight.”

Tally could drop onto the cold wooden floors and sleep for the next millennia, but that’ll just make her back too sore for training. It also won’t turn the nothingness in her brain back into something. Only pizza can do that, maybe. And cheap vodka. She uses her Knowing to see another class shuffling up the stairs, each conversation overlapping the next. The sounds soon echo loudly enough for Raelle to hear them, too. “Nah, let’s go. I could go for like, ten Pineapple Pleasure Specials right now.”

Raelle protests strongly all the way to the bus stop, but even she has to admit Tally’s girl problems win the day.

The next week also passes with equal parts tedium and exhaustion, except it’s approximately a million times worse. Because Tally’s bond with Alder is totally, entirely silent; the door closed and locked and probably barricaded. There’s a constant hollow feeling at the back of her mind now and an all-too vivid nothingness. Her sleep is better with no psychic injuries and confusing, heartrending memories, sure, but Tally was used to the bond’s white noise effect and its sudden loss totally throws off her entire training regime.

Not to mention her class scores.

No matter which seed she sings to restore her inner balance, every move Tally tries becomes unacceptably sloppy. Her windstrikes barely dent the metal, her Fixes nearly take out Gregorio’s right eye, and even her Knowing suffers consequences. During one class, it takes four extra seconds to find a bright red flag behind a simple brick wall, a task she mastered during the first lecture back in August. Alder and the biddies are observing that class for some reason, too, all stone-faced and silent, not reacting to anything Tally does–bad or good.

When Alder does break the silence to offer Glory some helpful advice, Tally is overcome by such bone-deep fury that she briefly develops a severe astigmatism. She can pretend it’s the same fury she felt towards Alder before the Tarim, but she’s never been a good liar. (She can also pretend it’s fury at all, and not another word that starts with J and ends with Y). Ridiculous, since Glory hates the attention from Alder; she looks ready to jump out of her uniform and hitchhike back to Sacramento. She pushes hard during the last ten minutes of class and breaks her record for an entire half second.

Which Alder doesn’t acknowledge. At all.

Before she and the biddies take their leave, Alder does offer Tally a sedate nod. She wants to call her out, say something ill-advised and downright sassy, but her stupid heart palpitates and she gives her a thumbs up instead. A fucking thumbs up. When the last biddy–Maria–shuts the door behind them, it feels a bit like she drained Tally’s life force all over again.

Alder doesn’t come to her last Knowing class of the week. This is probably a good thing, but Tally is mopey and moody the entire time, and can’t scry the stupid red flag at all. She almost skips Fixing and Mothertongue in the afternoon, but the potential guilt stomps all over any fears of humiliation or headaches. Unfortunately, this means Tally’s kind of excited when she does get another headache during Mothertongue. She veers dangerously close to the door, carefully hovers fingertips above it. She hears faint footsteps on carpeted floors, sees the outline of a familiar jawline.

Nothing else, though.

Tally knows she’ll make her headache worse if she keeps trying (or uses her Knowing, something that feels wildly invasive), so she tries Alder’s technique out herself for the first time, glad she remembers Izadora’s step-by-step instructions. No familiar inner voice compliments or augments her efforts, however, so her stupid heart just continues to palpitate.

When the last afternoon bell rings across the courtyard, the Bellweather Unit can only run back to the dorms and flop onto Abi’s bed in joyous relief, reduced to sweaty heaving and silly bickering. That is, until Abigail pokes Tally’s right dimple and says, “Okay, I confronted Gerit last night about your homewrecking and I know you guys are officially over. Who the hell are you sleeping with now? Only good sex can make you that disoriented.”

“Um. No one? Thank you for doing recon on my love life, though!” Tally says with zero bite and so much embarrassment. She’s glad she’s already red all over from the combat training.

Raelle smiles a little devilishly at her over Abigail’s shoulder. “Yeah, Tal. It’s obvious you’re dreaming about a new special someone.”

Tally mentally shouts FUCK OFF so loudly in Raelle’s direction she’s surprised there’s no reaction from Alder, wherever she is now, regardless of the door. Possibly the library where she keeps her private collection, with all the rare grimoire first editions; Tally still vaguely remembers her daily schedule from the biddy days. Huh. If Tally can track down that one Bulgarian spellbook she was looking for on SpellBay, then maybe–

“Okay, now I need to know who can flip on your horny switch that quickly.”

Abi gives Tally her most charming smile; Raelle stifles the most knowing laugh. Tally thinks about spilling everything again for a moment, but Abi looks so happy and relaxed right now and she wants the week to end on a high note, at least. Tally makes a promise to herself that she’ll tell Abi everything one day soon. She takes a deep halting breath. “Well…you see…”

“Yeah?” Abigail pokes her on the arm. “Spill, Craven. Coy looks weird on you.”

Tally beckons her with a crooked finger. Abigail shoots Raelle a confused look before leaning in close–only for Tally to reach behind her for a pillow and smash it right in her face, civilian style. Abigail shrieks in mock indignation. “Oh, you’re so dead! Rae, get her left side!”

Laughing, Raelle grabs her own pillow and dives onto Abigail’s bed.

It’s all war (the fun kind) until M sticks their head in the door. They eye the situation dubiously, then announce a required assembly that evening, called by General Alder herself.

Fear immediately sucks all the air from the room and any desire for fun with it. After M clicks the door shut (with a quip about cleaning up all the goose feathers from the floor,) both her sisters drop the pillows onto the nearest surface. Abi is still breathing heavily when she looks at Tally and says, “Has Alder told you anything?”

“Definitely not.” Tally searches the room for her abandoned uniform jacket so she doesn’t have to look at anyone. “Psychic witch bond or not, I’m still just a cadet.” Wow, that hurts to say out loud.

Raelle pulls off her sweaty shirt from the back, then offers Tally a sympathetic smile. “It couldn’t hurt to try. You’re like…her favorite cadet.”

Telling Raelle the truth was the biggest mistake of her entire life, actually. Tally sighs loudly, wishing she knew how to explain the full, overly complicated truth without sounding kinda insane. Or getting another headache. “Alder doesn’t do favorites. We’re all of the blood, equal worth, yada yada yada.”

“Please,” Abi says, elongating the word just to annoy her. She rescues her own jacket, which had fallen halfway underneath her single bed, and shakes it out in Tally’s direction. “She observes Raelle’s mushroom training because it’s literally new canon, but why the hell would she visit Knowing classes except to check on her favorite ex-biddy? Knowing is hardly her specialty.”

That was a wildly good point, but Tally can’t imagine Alder would take time out of her insanely busy schedule to watch first years stumble through simple scrying exercises just to see Tally. (Well, the other first years. Verger gives Tally advanced exercises to practice and has her tutor the others when she finishes them early. She nearly always does.) “I mean, she’s had plenty of time to get good at everything. Anyway, she’s probably just checking on our progress, like during Basic. We’re still the brass’ favorite students.”

“Experiments,” chirps Raelle.

Abigail just frowns at her intensely, shoulders all tensed up. “Well, then, Alder would have observed my storm-raising classes, too. And she didn’t. So.”

Tally looks away again, too shocked by that information to handle whatever jealousy Abigail is having about this. “Huh. Weird.”

Raelle stares at her pointedly, but Tally ignores her. She still can’t find her stupid jacket and the bond’s absence yawns wider than ever, a certifiable black hole in her frontal lobe now. She suddenly remembers Knowing class on Monday, when she waved at Alder—who didn’t wave back, duh—and Glory stared at her like Tally turned into a banshee.

Goddess. She hates this so, so much.

Luckily, the bell rings before any more speculating and teasing can happen. And hey, they forgot to worry about the Camarilla! That’s something. Right. Okay. Tally’s got this.

She doesn’t got this.

There’s no Camarilla to fight about, after all. After a round of gloomy stomping dies down, General Alder surveys the entire assembly hall with a distinct twinkle in her eye—the one she usually reserves for the fosterlings—and announces exciting news: this year, Fort Salem will be hosting Winter Solstice celebrations for the entire North Atlantic community. If Alder shows any distress at the news, she’s hidden it away entirely. Likely the biddies are sharing the memory’s heavy, heavy weight between them so no knees are in danger of buckling.

The news is a balm for every witch in the room, inspiring a wave of cheers across the hall. Besides the tempestuous Alder feelings, Tally feels genuine elation at the news. Winter Solstice is one her favorite holidays and, unlike the rest of her unit, she loves a good party. Fort Salem usually goes all out, but this was gonna be something else entirely. Pretty dresses and finger food and open bars; it’s the most surefire way to annihilate her multifaceted stress before the Camarilla make their next move.

Then Alder raises her hand for a second announcement.

“...And of course, our brother witches will join us. Together, we’ll thank the Goddess for another bountiful year under the sun’s rays, for the power to vanquish our enemies into night and dust.”

Fort Salem erupts into more cheering and a much happier round of stomping. Alder waits patiently, a small smile on her face. Tally hasn’t seen her smile in a bit. She forgot how nice it was. She basks in her smile, forgetting to be sad or mad, or whatever’s been clogging up her mind. That is, until Alder finishes with, “…And I urge you all to make great use of the festivities. Fill your cups on the shortest night to keep you strong during the long, long days ahead.”

Foreboding words aside, every young witch (and plenty of upper brass members) devolve into smirks and nudges and winks. Last year, Tally and Abi might have joined them, Raelle rolling her eyes. Now, Abi immediately searches for Adil across the room to share a private smile, Raelle just looks sad, and Tally…well, she’s definitely done with boys for the time being. She halfheartedly considers exploring her options when every implication of Alder’s words hits her at once. Brother witches.

The Witchfather will be there. The very same Witchfather who raised storm and fury with the General during Beltane. He’ll take Alder’s advice to heart again, Tally knows. Probably between her powerful thighs.

Gross. Ew. No no no. No. Tally cannot think about that, ever. Sure, she found their hookup on the mountain altar kinda hot during Beltane, but that was before, and now is now, and Tally will puke if she has to see them make significant eye contact. She might die if she stumbles across them at the Yule altar, casting storm after storm.

“This will be so fun!” she forces out of her mouth as they spill outside the assembly doors. She hooks her arms around Bells’ and Raelle’s necks, willing herself to feel a single happy emotion. “We should go shopping this weekend. Like, my dress from Beltane is practically virgin sacrifice cosplay. It’s the time to be truly daring.”

“For that special someone,” Abi croons, grinning.

Tally groans. “To boost our confidence before we go to war, guys. Come on.”

Abigail cackles and Raelle gleefully joins the fun at her expense by suggesting different classmates and professors, each more ridiculous than the last. It’s actually Abigail who suggests General Alder and they all laugh so hard at the idea that Tally can almost believe it’s a joke. Raelle clocks her dipping mood afterwards, though, and distracts her with windstrike practice, mud edition. Raelle and Abs predictably turn the battle into a one-on-one duel to the death, however, giving Tally a chance to slip through a door and run to a training classroom.

Not to train, obviously.

Finally alone, Tally sits back against the wall and nibbles in a stolen donut from the cafeteria. She allows herself to imagine Alder for a few seconds, settling into her office for endless paperwork and a glass of merlot. The door to their bond remains firmly shut, but Tally focuses her energies all the same. Her muscles tense up and sweat quickly beads across her brow; she won’t even be lying later, when she tells Abigail and Raelle about her extra training sessions.

Her breath soon grows ragged, too, but she holds on tight until she feels…something. There. Bitterness on her tongue, acid on the roof of her mouth. Long fingers digging into her scalp after unraveling a tight braid. Alder’s face, taut with every anxiety the biddies carry on her behalf, keep away from everyone else. Tally takes a breath and raises a curled fist to the door.

Then, Alder’s head snaps up. She looks right at Tally, lips parted, forehead creased in the heaviest kind of pain. Tally tries to say something, anything, but Alder’s biddies crowd around her first, laying hands on shoulders. They close their eyes and open their mouths to sing; Tally can’t hear anything, but she knows they’re intoning Seed 74. The Song of Tranquility and Everlasting Glory. She tries to join, but can’t remember how it goes.

Tally backs away from the door, the image slipping back into nothing. You chose this path, she reminds herself again. That isn’t how you serve anymore.

She rolls onto her feet too quickly and pukes the entire donut into a nearby trash can.

Excitement and terror alike spurs Sekhmet Coven on to train with everything they have during the weeks leading up to the Winter Solstice. Every news station covers the memorials, after all—the hate rallies—in tones ranging from sentimental to foreboding, with notes of support for the old days, when witches were hunted instead of the hunters. Nevertheless, Yule approaches fast, like she can’t wait to show off her pretty wreaths and twinkling lights. Everyone on base is more ready to forget the world and drink a shitton of mulled wine.

Except Alder, maybe. Probably.

Tally misses the bond like a limb, but distance and time should make everything with Alder less weird and piney. Or absence will make the heart grow gayer. The Camarilla won’t care either way, so Tally is resolved to be normal. She tutors Penelope and practices the Mothertongue with Raelle on her bunk and teaches her coven how to play Ultimate Frisbee with wind strikes–a frivolity the North Atlantic community would never abide. When she sees Alder and the biddies in the hallway, she nods, says Ma’am, and moves on with her day.

Most importantly, she doesn’t try knocking on the door again, even when the barest impressions filter past the barrier. She envisions her own lock on the door and holds fast to it, regardless of whether it’s real or symbolic. (And if she’s massively disappointed when Alder never tries the lock, instead of relieved? That’s none of Tally’s business, actually.)

In a blink of an eye, Tally is on a bus from Salem back to base, a daring new dress draped across her bouncing knees. She blinks again, and she’s looking at that same dress in the mirror. It’s all black satin and lace and gauze; she tries to move fabric around the chest region until there’s just a hint of boob, instead of the full shebang. It’s not going very well at all.

“So much for daring,” Raelle quips beside her in the mirror. She buttons her silver suit jacket, frowns, then unbuttons it again. “Hand me another safety pin, will ya?”

“I didn’t mean nip slips for the entire base!” Tally raises her arms and one boob flops out of the cup entirely. She groans when Raelle laughs, but still hands her the safety pin. “I’m glad Abi and Adil are going on a real date today, but this is a fucking disaster.”

Raelle stares at Tally’s boobs with a professional consideration. “Okay. I think if you safety pin that lace bit over uh, the left one, everything essential should be covered by fabric.”

“Gauze fabric.”

“See through as shit fabric, yeah.” Raelle’s smile turns smug, which can only mean one terrible thing. “You know, I bet the General—“

“—No!! Not tonight.” Tally clamps her hand over Raelle’s mouth, grimacing when her tongue pokes at her ring finger. She wipes off the saliva with a makeup sponge soaked in ethanol, and glares, points her finger like a kindergarten teacher. “I’m deadly serious Raelle. I want to have fun tonight and that means I cannot mope about her even once.”

Raelle stares at her in the mirror suspiciously, then drops the whole thing with a shrug. She begins futzing with the safety pin again. “Sure, Tal. Whatever you say. ”

They lapse into a semi-uncomfortable silence, interrupted only by requests for make-up utensils, until the door bursts open with a loud crash.

“My beautiful sisters!”

Abigail Bellweather sashays in wearing a glittery silver number, brandishing her makeup kit like a scourge. Following her is a sheepish Adil in a simple satin tunic and an anxious Penelope in a modest black dress with a red shrug. She waves shyly, back still pressed against the door like she’s ready to bolt. Abigail beckons her closer, grinning. “I picked up the stray in the hallway–figured she could use a friendly Tally face.”

“Of course! Thank you, Abigail.” Tally pretends her heart doesn’t do somersaults, like it often does when she sees Penelope walking around campus. It’s not her pupil’s fault that her brain formed an unfortunate association. She plasters on a smile. “Come on in. Sorry about my boobs.”

“No worries,” Penelope replies quietly. Adil coughs.

Abigail closely assesses both Tally and Raelle in the mirror for several seconds, then presses her makeup kit to her forehead with a sharp sigh. She gives both Adil and Penelope wry looks. . “See what I mean? I may not be the great Tally Craven when it comes to Sight, but I knew I’d be needed.”

“Shut up, Bellweather,” Raelle mutters around the safety pin in her mouth, trying to hold two sides of her suit jacket together in one hand. When Abigail motions for the safety pin, however, Raelle hands it over without much grief.

Tally can’t feign annoyance; she throws her arms around Abigail in sweet, sweet relief, also not even caring about the state of her cleavage. (Adil and Penelope politely look at the ceiling until the girls are secure and they’re ready to go.)

By the time everyone is finally ready to head down, Tally feels a spark of daring after all. Abigail braided the top of her hair into a crown of pine and holly, then used a high seed note to curl the ends over her right shoulder. She also added way more golden eyeshadow than Tally thought necessary, swearing it would make her witch mark sparkle more under the moonlight. Raelle now sports newly purple eyelids and one sprig of holly tucked behind her ear, the latter a hard won addition. Abigail, it looks so fucking stupid. Shut up and get festive, Shitbird. That conversation went in circles until Penelope suggested the compromise. Tally nearly kissed her.

Like last year, Fort Salem set up the festival on the vast field between War College and the barracks–the very same field where Tally would read during free hours, back when they still had those. To reach the grounds, Bellweather Unit and friends opt for a shortcut that Abi knows, which turns out to be a winding forest path with very familiar canopied trees. Despite her declaration to Raelle, Tally can’t help but mull over her shaky, nervous voice during that clandestine walk with Alder, how they stood close together. Or her stupid question.

The one time she chickened out of an Alder question, and it’s somehow her gravest offense.

Nope. None of that tonight.

Defying her rapidly souring mood, Tally decides to admire the lanterns hovering above, bumping against the canopied leaves; some impressive seed work makes them glow brighter when the group passes underneath. Abigail explains the seed work with pride; they’re apparently a Bellweather invention from the 18th century.

Tally shivers when she realizes that Alder was at the very first Yule celebration to use them, but shakes her head violently at the thought to reset her wandering mind. Raelle asks if she’s finally cold in all that sheer fabric and gallantly offers her jacket. (“Not after all the magic I pulled with that fucking safety pin,” Abigail says. “You can suffer for your beauty tonight, Craven.”)

Marking the threshold to the festival grounds is a towering archway made of twisting leaves, pine cones, and rune carvings inscribed with the essence of fire. They light the archway from the inside out, illuminating the purpling veins on each leaf. Penelope freezes, gapes in wonder. Tally smiles and squeezes her arm to acknowledge that yeah, this is a huge moment for her, reconnecting with a beautiful part of her heritage. Sometimes she forgets that Work can be beautiful. They all do, she thinks. Especially…

Ugh. For not literally being in her head these days, Alder is sure in her head.

Tally clears her throat. “Let’s find a table in the back, near the woods. That way, we can still talk.” They all nod in agreement, and she leads their group through the arch to the festival ahead. The grounds are larger than last year to accommodate the boys and the North Atlantic witch community; the latter grouped together in one corner and the former dispersed throughout, happy to drape themselves around the covens in clusters.

Pinpricks of light disperse the growing gray December darkness shrouding everything and everyone–red and orange candles forming the centerpiece of each circular table, smaller lanterns carving pathways into the field and lining the festival’s perimeter. Front and center is the Yule tree, a massive structure bedecked in painted pine cones, frozen cranberries, and glowing crystals.

Tally isn’t tall enough to see the altar placed before the tree, but she can see the biddies crowding it, each holding a candle. She doesn’t need the bond to know who’s with them. She looks back at the group. “Tell me someone snuck in a flask of witch’s tears?”

Raelle grins, patting her suit pocket, and Abigail pulls one from seemingly nowhere. “I haven’t been sober during Yule since I was fourteen, and I certainly don’t plan to start now,” she says.

“Um.” Penelope looks at them wide-eyed, still hovering behind the group by a half step. “Are they…actually tears from a witch?”

“Definitely not.” Tally smiles at her reassuringly. Or at least, she hopes she does. “It’s like, magical vodka.”

Penelope’s eyes open, somehow, even wider. “What’s the magical part?”

Abigail laughs. She darts back to throw an arm around Penelope, pulling her forward towards a cluster of tables on the right-side edge of the grounds. “Your ex-normie is adorable, Craven!” she calls over her shoulder. Adil shakes his head fondly, and follows, hands in his pockets.

“Please don’t break her!” Tally calls back. Abigail winks, then dives into another explanation of esoteric witch lore. Tally thinks she’s explaining how the lantern pathways form a sun and its rays, but the murmuring crowd gathered in the center dance circle swallows Abigail’s words up and they soon disappear into the shifting growing darkness.

Tally thinks about Yule last year, when she pestered Abigail for all the stories not covered in the textbooks, how she dragged her and Raelle to a table up front, close enough that she could smell the pine needles and watch the mist form when Alder spoke. Against her better judgment, Tally stands on her toes to get a better look at the altar and sees…the Witchfather. Talking to someone. And smiling.

She must have made a face, because Raelle nudges her arm with the flask. “Ready?”

“Almost.” Tally uncorks the flask and takes a long pull. It burns her throat and makes her eyes water enough to fill a river, but at least she’s not thinking about the Witchfather looking at whoever is next to him with serene, obvious affection.

“Let’s gooooo, Private,” she says hoarsely. She shucks off her heels and dashes across the perimeter, letting the lights guide her along the path. The wind catches the curled ends of her hair with long, gentle fingers. “Last one to the table is a hag’s toe!”

Raelle gives a carefree laugh. “Weirdo!” 

Holy shit. Alder’s hair is down.

Okay, not totally down, but definitely in a much looser, ornate braid than usual. It’s adorned with holly and pine sprigs, just like Tally’s own. It reminds Tally of how her hair looked in the Liberian jungle from the memory dream, plastered with debris and sweat. It looks really, really good.

For the first time in days, Tally stares at the door to bond and considers knocking. Just to tell her. People probably don’t approach Alder with a compliment often, on account of her being very scary and unapproachable. That’s normal, right? (What’s not normal is Tally's urge to grab Alder’s hand and run until they’re both safe from the centipedes. She focuses on her dress blues, the Yuletide crown perched on her head, her smile–ugh, at him–all signs that memories are still memories and Fort Salem is still safe. Today, at least.)

“Weird right? Alder usually just changes up her look for Beltane.” Abigail tracks Tally’s gaze from her seat across the table. She picks up an unlit candle and hums a low seed, flicking her fingers above the flame to help it grow. She smirks. “Maybe it’s because the Witchfather came this year.”

Tally looks away fast and gives a nervous laugh. “Oh, I didn’t see her, actually! Yeah. Super weird. But her business is her business, including who’s her business. You know.”

Penelope giggles. Adil just raises his brows. Raelle also does this, unfortunately.

Abigail opens her mouth to say something else, a curious gleam in her eye, but blessed Adil saves Tally by choosing that exact moment to ask a complex question about Yule traditions before and after the Accords, thoroughly distracting both her and Penelope. Tally would kiss him, if she had some sort of death wish.

Maybe she does have a death wish. She’s still mentally standing in front of the door.

“Well, Alder definitely sees you,” Raelle says, a minute later.

Tally chokes on a breath. “Please say you’re messing with me.”

Raelle shrugs. She picks up a lit candle and hums a low seed to toy with the orange flames, weaves them into a braid. “I mean, she’s definitely looking in our direction. And I don’t think she’s pondering my mushroom magic right now.”

“She probably is,” Tally consoles herself. “She never takes enough breaks. The biddies complain about it all the time.”

“Huh.” Raelle squints. She opens her mouth, then closes it. She waits three excruciating seconds to try speaking again, all the while peering at Tally like she’s a magic mushroom herself. “Trouble in paradise?”

Her heart pounds loudly in her chest. “What are you talking about?”

At Tally’s dark look, Raelle drops any notion of joking around. She flicks her gaze to Bells, still flirting with Adil, then back at Tally with very pointed concern. “Alder looks kinda…mad, dude. Did you pick another fight? You know, I was pretty surprised she didn’t windstrike your ass to–”

“Describe her face to me, exactly.”

Raelle squints for a moment, then sighs. She pulls out her flask and takes another pull. “She always looks kind of mad to me. You better look for yourself, Tal.”

Tally isn’t going to do that. First of all, Raelle is clearly wrong. Second of all…Raelle is clearly wrong. There are so many people Alder could be mad at for whatever reason. General Bellweather is here, making Abigail a great proxy candidate for Alder’s ire. Tally doesn’t need to feel weirdly jealous that General Bellweather is getting Alder’s attention, and not her. She should also probably admit that Alder would just glare at General Bellweather herself, not Abigail.

She makes it about five more seconds.

“Goddess,” Tally breathes out. Sending a quick prayer the deity’s way, Tally forces herself to turn her head. Across a sea of candlelight and leafy handmade crowns, General Alder stands at attention, hands clasped behind her back. She catches Tally’s eyes immediately and stares, head on, jaw tight and eyes dark despite her medals catching candlelight. Without warning, a frustrated emotion slams against the door to the bond–a flash flood that rings in Tally’s ears and lurches her stomach. When the torrent ends, her skin prickles like she stepped on a creaky floorboard in a haunted house; she has to grab the tablecloth to stop herself from swaying.

Yep. She’s pissed.

“Raelle, hand me the flask,” she says, holding out her hand without breaking the staring contest. She hopes she looks every inch defiant. To her surprise, Alder’s expression carefully evens out into perfect propaganda portraiture. Like it was never anything different. Then, she looks away. Back at the Witchfather, who’s asking a question. She leans in closer to him and doesn’t look back at Tally. The door stays silent.

She’s so tempted to use Knowing, but she really, really doesn’t want to know what the Witchfather just asked. Tally is, once again, left scrambling for purchase in the dark.

When she feels an object pressed into her hands, she looks down to find a ceremonial goblet full of red wine. She frowns. “Ceremonial wine has several different vowels, Raelle.”

“You gotta pace yourself on that shit.” Raelle looks at her sympathetically. “What actually happened between you guys? I didn’t want to say anything, but you’ve been acting weird for like, a while.”

Tally deflates at knowing she was being kind of obvious, even though only Raelle knows the truth. Alder is still speaking quietly to the Witchfather, too, so Tally resolutely turns her back on them and swirls the ceremonial wine like a civilian sommelier. “There was no fight. Fighting would require her to actually acknowledge I exist in the same universe.” Tally takes a huge sip. “So, no. I have no idea what the hell I did this time.”

Saying a thing out loud always makes it real, especially for a witch. She knows that. As Raelle takes in her words, Tally can’t stop an unholy tangle of emotions—frustration and hurt and annoyance and affection and more and more–from boiling over. Her breath comes in ragged and harsh, like she ran a desert marathon.

Raelle stares at Tally. She doesn’t say anything for a while, just intones the seed braid with the flame again, her eyebrows doing all sorts of configurations. When Tally finishes the last sip of her wine, she takes a sip of her own, makes a face, then slides it over. “Here. I think you need this more than me.”

Tally pours Raelle’s wine into her own goblet, not even caring when a few drops land on the tablecloth. It’s literally dark purple. “Weren’t you telling me to pace yourself?”

“I know what I should be telling you.”

Tally smiles wryly. She picks up her glass and toasts Raelle, making sure to arrange her middle finger on the stem just so. She wasn’t able to taste the wine before, so the vinegary acid hits hard, makes her mouth taste vile. “Goddess, did they source this from a civilian liquor sto–”

“Welcome, witches all.”

Augmented with a seed, Alder’s voice is rich and sonorous, echoing through the entire field. Tally’s chest warms, and it’s unfortunately not from the wine.

“Blessings be upon your hearths on this, the year’s longest night. For generations, Yule has—“”

“—Blah, blah, nourished the blood, blah,” Tally mutters under her breath. Abigail shoots her a surprised look, tempered by a little smirk in the corners of her mouth. She lifts a finger to her mouth and whispers Shh.

Fort Salem echoes the greeting back with customary stomping; Tally grips the stem of her goblet, barely managing to join as it builds and builds. After the rumbles underfoot taper out, Alder introduces the North Atlantic upper crusts, followed by the Witchfather and the brother witches. She touches his shoulder as the stomping resumes, this time with a lot of hooting and hollering. Tally takes another tiny sip of the wine. She leans back and looks at the stars, feeling every healed bruise on her knuckles from training flare to life, like Izadora undid the Work all the way from her necro cave. “They better get through the rituals fast this year,” she whispers to Raelle. “I wanna dance.”

“Tally Craven wanting to skip over the army ritual…feels like a bad omen.”

“Welcome to my villain era.”

Abigail shushes her again.

As the last round of stomping peters out, a new commotion starts up from the left side of the field. Alder’s features melt into pure softness, so it’s no surprise when four little fosterlings carry a handmade Yule log down the path, followed closely by their minder. There’s a chorus of awwws and Tally has to physically stop herself from smiling sappily at the sight, especially when Alder gracefully drops to one knee in front of the group, removes her crown, and places it on a boy’s head, plucking off a pine comb so it doesn’t cover his eyes. The boy beams at her and she beams back. She only stops smiling to intone a seed that immolates the Yule log, and smiles again when the fosterings cheer.

“Dude, seriously?” Raelle whines at Tally.

Drat. Tally is smiling. She toasts Raelle cheekily and takes another horrible sip. It wipes the smile right off her face again. It also makes her a little tipsy.

Watching Alder help each fosterling light the candles and recite the right prayers with all the gentleness in the world, Tally eyes the door. She steps closer, slowly. Warmth emanates from the darkness ahead, but it’s spiked with panic, sharp as teeth. Tally grips the goblet again to brace herself and looks back at Alder, but the Witchfather is standing in her place now, hands raised high and singing out a low seed with a deep, rich vibrato. Every light source glows brighter in response, including the red candles on each table and all the crystals in the Yule tree.

Alder adds her own voice a minute later, stepping into the glow beside him. She offers him a gentle, relaxed smile. It makes her look younger–like the nineteen-year-old Sarah in Tally’s memory dream, dancing with reckless abandon around a fire with her coven like flames were never something to fear.

Stupid sexy Witchfather.

HEY she shouts at the door. GREAT SPEECH EARLIER, GENERAL.

Alder keeps intoning. Tally considers the ethical implications of kicking the door.

HELLO she shouts again. Despite saying nothing out loud, her throat starts to feel hoarse. For a moment, she thinks she hears—sees?—a sound on the opposite side of the wall, the lightest bit of pressure. Like fingertips. In real life, Alder’s hand stops halfway to a candle on the altar, wavers in the air for one precious second. Back in the void, Tally lifts her own hand. She hovers it over a doorknob. She holds her breath.

Then, all at once, the seed song ends. The glow dims into a muted orange and goes out completely, leaving them all in the dark. Tally knows it’s time to infuse her Work with the night’s energies but her pounding heart echoes throughout her entire body, drowning out any benefits the night can offer. She takes little, sad sips of her rancid wine until the biddies hum and the lights slowly turn back on.

Alder is staring at Tally again. Her eyes are dark, despite the glow reflecting in them. Darker than Tally’s ever seen them before. The door shudders and Tally feels…breath, or fire, something that needs air. She lifts a shaking hand and presses it flat against the door. It’s warm, like the flank of some great beast.

Craven. Tally gasps–hopefully not in real life. What are you doing?

“Ugh, kneeling is so Churchy,” Abigail says. Tally blinks back into the world. She hears birdsong in the woods. She looks at the altar; Alder and the Witchfather are kneeling, clasping hands. Soon, they stand and walk towards the dance circle. They face each other. The Witchfather bows; she bows back. The biddies begin intoning a waltz, raising their candles high. He takes hold of her waist and they begin, just as they had during Beltane. The door feels cold again.

Raelle tugs on her arm to get ready—once the two leaders finish their dance, everyone else is likely allowed to join—but Tally no longer wants to dance. She kinda wants to puke again.

“I’ll be back later,” she murmurs, freeing her arm. She hums what she hopes is a litany of invisibility and hightails it out of there, forbidding herself any last, lingering glances. There’s no use, though. Psychic bond or no psychic bond, Tally’s always had a great imagination.

Having a crush really sucks.

Tally spends several minutes wandering the halls of War College like an impatient spirit on Samhain, unable to find whomever called her home. She finally stops in the training room to throw sloppy wind strikes, hoping to tire herself out,but each shout only charges up all the spare electricity coiled in her gut, making her itch for a fight with no one in particular, even Alder. She really doesn’t want to fight Alder. That’s the problem.

Of course, she stomps down to Alder’s office door right afterwards. Her feet make the decision before anything with brain cells tries; after all, she can hardly approach the door in her mind again. Somehow, disappointment still settles hard when the room beyond is obviously dark, the door locked with an elaborate, glimmering sigil. Sweat runs indelicately down her back, so she hums a seed sound for Evaporation under her breath, tries not to feel some type of way when the vapor pouring off her own flesh condenses on General Alder’s gold nameplate. But, fucking unfortunately, Tally feels all the type of way. And more.

She really wants to call her mom.

Last year, Tally did call her mom. It was a nice conversation, too; no crying on either end, no accusations, no begging Tally to come home before it’s too late. Instead, Tally got a rare story about her aunts that didn’t involve their grisly deaths. Prunella and Audrey always called home on Yule to sing seed 98, the song for renewal of the spirit. They’d pocket some of those famous Bellweather cannolis from the festival grounds, while mom snuck a carton of vanilla ice cream to the hallway phone. The year before Prunella was deployed, they taught her mom the Sun Dance–a complex, fast-paced waltz with spins and lifts, only performed on the Winter Solstice to celebrate the return of light.

Mom got tangled up in the phone cord and her sisters laughed and laughed, promising to teach her properly when they visit home. That’s when Tally hung up. She heard a hitched breath and wanted to keep the memory sweet, wanted to smash a cannoli in Raelle’s face and giggle about boys with Bells. Goddess, what would she even say now? Sorry, mom! I really want to fingerbang the woman who sent our entire family to die in Lithuania! Somehow, that’d be less mortifying to explain the biddy thing, the memory dreams. Sorry, mom. I gave up my life for General Alder. I’d do it again, and again and–

“Get a grip, Craven,” she tells herself, again.

The music outside turns from haunting glockenspiels to jaunty violins and pounding drums; Tally hears whoops and cheers and sharp, reckless laughter. It could very well be the Sun Dance.

She suddenly feels like such a dick. Raelle has no partner this year and neither does Penelope, for that matter. She considers turning toward the exit until an image of Alder with the Witchfather flashes hot in her mind again; the image wages battle with Tally’s guilt, the image of her mom at thirteen, spinning at home, all alone. Then the Witchfather in her mind hooks a hand under Alder’s thigh and–noooope, Raelle’s just gonna have to get over her terrorist girlfriend and babysit Penelope tonight on her behalf.

Deciding it’s too pathetic to stare longingly at the golden nameplate for another second, Tally uses her Knowing to locate a balcony that overlooks the festival–the one attached to Grafton’s Mothertongue classroom. Tally slips through the empty room and undoes the sigil lock with an apology under her breath. Cold air races down her spine; she slips across the freezing asphalt to grab the railing, shivering. Having no shoes and no sweater for her mope fest aren’t the most toad-brained ideas of the night, but they certainly come close.

She closes her eyes, and channels her Sight again. There’s Raelle by an archway, laughing with Byron, looking everywhere but the dance floor. Abigail and Adill are locked arm-in-arm, looking only at each other. Oh, Penelope found someone! She’s holding her waist awkwardly, but she does have really nice eyes. The biddies are dancing with each other, too; a group of male witches took over the singing for them. Huh. The Witchfather is one of them. He’s swaying with the seed sound, head tipped upward to receive the night’s bounty. Where’s…

“War College is locked tonight for a reason, Cadet.”

Tally’s spine tingles. She turns around, slowly, to prevent a full-body spin. She still needs to brace herself on the rail. Unfamiliar–and yet very, very familiar–emotions slam against the door, flooding her entire body and stealing her lungs. She smiles, knowing it outshines every glowing thing below. She cannot care. “Hi, General.”

Alder smiles back, briefly. “Hello, again.”

“Why–What are you doing here?”

Alder steps out of the doorway, hands clasped behind her back. She’s still flushed from the dance before, but she still walks stiffly and her facial muscles tense up the closer she gets. She’s also wearing dark (unsmudged) lipstick, which is kind of a problem. “Last week, you assured me the bond wasn’t causing you distress. Tell me, then, why I just experienced enough distress to signal the Hague.”

“It was two weeks ago. Ma’am.”

Alder narrows her brows. She takes another step closer and lifts her impressive jaw. “Explain, Cadet. Now.”

Elation and resentment are two sides of the same coin, and so very easy to flip. Logic says, Alder commands the army and has done so for three centuries; she can demand anything she wants from her lowest-ranking officers. Logic also says, hey, asshole, you literally just said you’d die for her.

Tally ignores Logic, and lifts her own comparatively less impressive jaw. “Sorry. I don’t remember that part of my oath.”

Alder stares. She breathes heavily enough through her nostrils that Tally expects smoke to filter out, like she’s smoking civilian cannabis. (Alder has definitely smoked civilian cannabis, right? Like, three centuries is a long time not to smoke civilian cannabis.) Then, unexpectedly, her voice lowers. “Craven…the bond, it goes both ways. When you’re in distress, at this stage–”

“Oh, I get it.” Tally really doesn’t, but Alder’s scary general stance is suddenly fucking unbearable, no matter how attractive it is. If strangling Tally is the only way she’ll loosen the hell up, then…okay, maybe Abigail had a point, about situationally appropriate choking. No, focus. She takes a step forward, so she has to look up to meet Alder’s eyes. “It’s an unnecessary distraction. You have way more important things to worry about than a cadet’s mental health.”

“Yes,” Alder says. “Exactly. But I am concerned.”

Tally blinks. This close, she can see the fine lines around Alder’s eyes, count the strands of fly-away hair tucked behind her ear. Her warm breath curls across Tally’s jaw. It’s almost enough to soothe Tally’s hurt feelings, but shame is a much stronger foe. So is anger, broiling like a witch’s brew in her gut. “Right. Well, it’s passed and I’m clearly okay now. So you really shouldn’t have bothered.” She swallows harshly. “Besides, I’m sure the Witchfather really misses you down there.”

Alder blinks, looks genuinely shocked. After a moment, she glares with the entire force of herself. “You’re treading on some very thin ice, cadet.”

Logic screams at her to apologize, understand her own very important duty and that Alder has a million more, has the entire international community watching and waiting for her to fail. The words sit on her tongue, begging for release, but too many different thoughts and emotions claw at her throat, sending sparks everywhere at once. She doesn’t even know which ones are hers, alone. “Why the hell did you follow me?” Tally snaps, clenching her fists. “If my–if I’m so distracting, then why not send a biddy to…”

The biddies aren’t here.

Tally glances into the hallway using her Sight. It’s still dark and empty. Alder stands formidably and alone and certainly not immortal before her, breath fogging up in the cold. She knows exactly two places Alder will go without her biddies: her bedroom and her personal library. Warm fuzzy emotions knock her anger down a peg, threatening to knock her entire body out as well. She grips the railing to remain steady on her feet and tries to glare. “Respectfully,” she grits out, “what do you need from me, General?”

The dance picks up in a flurry of glockenspiels. A piercing cry echoes across the field, then dissolves into wild laughter. Alder’s expression darkens. “I felt your distress,” she says, again. Her voice dips a little quieter. “I saw you run. I’ve learned to never take for granted when a witch must run.”

A wave of sadness courses through the bond. Though muted by whatever Alder’s using to keep the door shut, Tally can feel her heart pounding, see flames lick at the edges of her vision. Hear echoes of echoes of screams, centuries old and growing still. She thinks of Alder’s coven, tripping over their own feet from a night of drinking, not war. She suddenly remembers something else. “The Camarilla,” Tally murmurs. Her chest burns. “They’ve attacked during Yule before, right? In 1871, when the new War College facilities were built.”

Alder breaks eye contact again, nodding once, sharply. Her mouth is so pursed and her jaw is so taut that Tally’s sort of afraid the tendons will snap at the hinge. Alder steps toward the rail and grips it with both hands, looks out past the balcony. “Last year, a missing cadet meant an ill-advised rendezvous in the weapons shed.” She looks at Tally with a raised eyebrow and wow, not the time for her face to get super hot. “This year…”

She tilts her head at Tally, clearly waiting for her to fill in the dots and feel super somber, or apologetic, or fall for the whole sexy, lonely war criminal thing–okay, probably not–but leftover anger spikes up her spine again, nonetheless.

“Okay,” Tally says, crossing her arms. “But the only witch running was me, General. Doesn’t exactly scream danger, Will Robinson.”

Alder blinks, again. Her grip on the railing loosens. If Tally’s not mistaken, her glamorously high cheekbones get a little bit ruddy. This makes Tally’s stomach do some traitorous, gay somersaults. “You should go back to your friends,” Alder says, too clipped and hoarse to sound normal. “I’m sure they miss you. The night will only get darker.”

She looks over the balcony again impassively. The General gazing down upon her army from a White House podium, from all the history books Tally read when she was supposed to be asleep.

Tally laughs.

“You know, General, you’re a real piece of work.” Alder turns toward her, shocked enough to slice through the bond. Shadows gather in the hollows underneath her cheekbones. Tally wonders, without meaning to, when she last slept. “You all but run from my very sight for two weeks–”

“–Craven, I certainly do not run from–”

“–Nope! You’re gonna let me finish. I know you can feel how annoyed I am.” Alder’s cheeks are definitely, definitely ruddy now. She tightens her grip on the rail. “You ignore me after I just like, ask if you’re okay? Like a normal frie…” Tally swallows. “Like a normal person would. Then you demand I explain what I’m feeling when you could just knock on the door!”

Alder gives her a perplexed stare. Tally points stupidly at her head, then Alder’s head, then frantically back and forth, until Alder’s features smooth into comprehension. “I closed…the door,” her lips quirk up, seemingly without her permission, “because Petra Bellweather barged into my office. When you didn’t…knock on the door…I assumed it was by choice to reduce distraction.” She looks at Tally pointedly. “Especially considering your unusually lackluster training scores.”

“It was my choice!” Tally blurts, close to literally stamping a foot. “I mean, I wanted–you could have opened it again. Without asking. I wouldn’t have minded.”

“Really, Cadet. You wouldn’t have minded the General of the US Armed Forces invading your privacy?”

Great, now Tally is blushing. She looks furtively around the small balcony at the potted plants and hanging lights until she forces herself to meet Alder’s beseeching stare, if Alder did beseeching, that is. Maybe she does. Can Tally really know anything tangible anymore, now that her brain doesn’t have the space to catalog Alder’s emotions, store them safely away? Tally glances down at Alder’s hands; she’s worrying a thumb over her pulse point. She’s monitoring her heart beats. Trying to slow them. She did that a lot when Tally was still a biddy. Her heart pangs and pangs. “No,” she says. “Not really. Your presence was...pretty comforting.”

Alder’s forehead creases. She swallows and avoids eye contact, just for a moment. Just long enough.

She sighs. “As I assume mine wasn’t. You’ve made that clear, if nothing else.” Tally holds the rail again, comforted by the cool metal underneath her skin. She looks up and across at the thin branches swaying back and forth in the breeze, webbing the night sky beyond. She takes deep, soothing breaths at regular intervals. The cold soothes her throat, hoarse from all the words she still really wants to say. The Sun Dance–or whatever sounds so much like it–continues, distorted by wind and distance; Tally sees Abigail pulling Raelle into the circle of spinning couples with one hand, her flask of witch’s tears in the other.

Seeing her sisters happy together after enduring so much grief should be what’s making her eyes well up right now, not General Alder being a little fucking standoffish with a cadet. She lets the image go, wishing she’d just stayed down there with them.

“Craven,” Alder says a moment later, almost soft. A warm, calloused hand covers her own. Her grip is light enough that Tally almost blames her imagination, until she looks down.

“What? What is it?”

Goddess, why must her voice wobble like that.

A pang of–something–courses through the bond, cautious and gentle as her hand. “I told you,” she says very, very quietly. Tally suddenly sees Alder sitting against the door, back ramrod straight, of course, but still there. She looks up to meet Alder’s darkened eyes again. Her warm breath is now wine-sweet and close enough to drink in deep. She feels caught in the crosshairs. She feels safe. “The bond goes both ways. I needed to know you were alright.”

Oh. Wow.

Before she can lose her nerve, Tally turns her palm up and holds Alder’s hand back. So much for daring, indeed. Alder's breath hitches, but she doesn’t move away. Nor does she look away. It feels like hours before Tally can speak like a regular person again, but she’s sure it’s only seconds. “Same, you know. Not that you can’t look after yourself, obviously, but…did you never consider that your going dark was the source of my crappy scores?”

Alder furrows her brow. Her grip tightens, almost imperceptibly. “That’s not acceptable,” she murmurs, almost to herself–or to whichever biddy is currently offering advice.” She sighs, worries her thumb over Tally’s knuckles like they’re her own. “If I asked you to visit Izadora for help, would you agree?”

“Ordered me to, you mean.”

“Asked, Craven. It would be a request.” She hums. “Though if you’re looking for a fight again, I can make it a demand.”

Tally tenses until a smile tugs at Alder’s lips, betraying a glimmer in her gaze. She can’t help but smile back, feeling the warmth only Alder’s smile and approval can bring for the first time in weeks. Nevertheless, the question makes her chest feel heavy. She considers the question for a long moment, then shakes her head, slowly. “The bond won’t be this strong forever. You said that yourself.”

“And the Camarilla won’t stay away forever. You need to be sensible.”

“I know.” Tally searches her eyes. “If I’m distracted next week, I promise I’ll see Izadora. Do I need to make an official oath?”

Alder’s smile turns a touch wistful, then disappears. She swallows and nods, accepting the bargain. Tally looks at their hands and, deciding she’s already done enough inappropriate shit during this conversation to mitigate the risk, carefully intertwines their fingers. “Look, this thing is already super…weird and inexplicable. Never been done before, right? At least I couldn’t find it in the history books.”

“No,” Alder agrees. She clears her throat. She stares at their intertwined hands in wonder. Or fear. Or revulsion. “Nothing quite like this in my three centuries on the Goddess’ earth.”

It’s none of those, Tally thinks. It’s like the deep breath Tally took before her first Salva jump, the adrenaline tingling her spine as she suspended in the air, and the exhale that became laughter when the air rushed up to meet her with eager, friendly hands. Tally can’t feel being three centuries old anymore, but she remembers the edges of monotony in Alder’s daily life. Same breakfast, same lunch, same hateful crowds of civilians wanting to spill her daughters’ blood. The Camarilla sent shockwaves through her entire body, through every biddy’s body, too, but underneath all that was a keen, sharp readiness.

Not for the first time, Tally feels a wave of sorrow for Alder’s long life and all those losses, both senseless and not—her own sorrow, entirely. Alder would hate the pity, even if pity is the last thing Tally holds in her heart. Hate even the suggestion. Still, Tally suggests, “Would being my friend be so terrible? It’s important to have those. Friends. I don’t know what I’d do without Abigail and Raelle. I think they need me just the same.”

There’s silence, only punctuated by the wind and the choir in the distance. Alder’s face tries to go stony, but her expression lands on wistful, again. She still doesn’t let go of Tally’s hand, which is a good sign. Unless she forgot she’s holding it. Which is still a good sign, probably. She lifts her chin. “I have the biddies for companionship. That is their purpose, as I know you know.”

Frustration brews in her gut again. “They care for your body and mind, sure. That’s not the same.” She squeezes her hand. “As I know you know.”

I know you had friends, Tally wants to say. I know they died and I know you had to watch.

Alder’s fingers tense. Tally can trace the tension up the veins in her neck to the crows feet by her eyes. She watches her shoulders lift until she’s a quarter inch taller. “I am still your superior officer, Private.” Her voice is still soft and so fucking sad. “And one day you’ll recall just what you thought of me in the Tarim.”

Good things come in threes, Tally knows.

For today, that’s going to include sheer insanity.

Drumming up all her courage, she looks right at the door of their bond. She plants two feet at the threshold, raises a gently curled fist. She allows herself to feel every emotion at once, all the care and frustration and anger and loathing and adoration–yes, the horniness, too, since it unfortunately twines through everything else–and condenses them into one, small, tender thing. Then, she knocks, once.

When Alder lets out a deep exhale, Tally hears it from the other side. She feels the breath dancing across her lips grow hot. She feels warm pressure on Tally’s forehead—another forehead, Alder’s, a bit sticky with sweat. Why does her sweat literally smell good, Tally grouses, and course, that’s when the lock clicks and the door swings open.

Alder’s everything pours around Tally in a great rush, like she’s weather-working the wind into a potent gale. If she were still a biddy, she’d be part of that wind, helping to create it in equal turns. Instead, Tally catches whispers and murmurings and flashes, but nothing concrete; throughout the onslaught, she stays rooted to the ground through the hand still holding her own.

As the rush settles, a figure appears on the threshold. The double image of the Alder’s face pressed close to Tally’s own, loose strands fluttering in the light wind clashes with the General Alder in her mind, dressed in all grays, her typical braid immaculate. On the balcony, she starts to sway and Alder gently tightens her grip, holding them both up. In their minds, Alder keeps her hands behind her back.

Please tell me you didn’t hear that.

I can only hear what you send my way, cadet.

Uh huh. Yep.

Alder smiles. Despite her perfect military posture, her face is serene in the bond, almost youthful.

Thank you for knocking. I do wish Petra would learn from your example.

Tally laughs, feels their mutual mirth echo back and forth, back and forth. Again, she’s reminded of a young Alder dancing around the fire, loved and loving in return. She pulls the memory forward, removing the terror and rage that lingers there–which, of course, removes her friends from the image entirely. She pulls it back, not knowing which version would cause pain, actually knowing that both would, in different ways.

Then: an idea. Excitement flashes through the bond, catching them both off guard.

Can I show you something?

Alder raises a brow. After a moment, she nods.

Cool. Thanks.

She salutes, grinning when Alder rolls her eyes fondly, like she did whenever Devon sent a dirty joke through the biddy bond. Then, she dives into her own memories; there’s Raelle and Abi soothing her after a nightmare, wrapping arms around her shoulders while they stumble home after a brutal exercise during basic, laughing at Tally’s flailing attempt at charades. Her own terror and rage and sadness lingers there too, but less potently than Alder’s does. They change the colors without annihilating all the happiness to be found there, lurking when she most needs it.

Some memories soothe the flames, too: Raelle and Abigail finally rescued from the Tarim, barreling into her and shouting her name in relief. Tally savoring the ache in her newly aged bones when they didn’t let go, even for a second.

(Will I become the same? some voice within her can’t help but ask. After serving my years, will remembering hurt more than it heals?)

Tally carefully packages the memories together, like a gift. Hoping it’s a gift. If they can’t be friends, if they can never be…anything else than what they have to be, then Tally can at least give her this. Help them both sleep at night, maybe. Her love language is acts of service, but witches make do. Okay, I know I’m overstepping—

“There you are! Bells and I have been looking everywhere for–oh, fu…uh, Ma’am?”

The door slams shut; Alder’s forehead smacks against her own. Before Tally can even react, the warmth of Alder’s body wrenches away, making her lean forward to escape the chill. Her eyes are wide open and panicked, red splotches bloom across her face and down her neck, and Tally knows she looks exactly the same, if not worse.

Leaning halfway out the open balcony door, Raelle openly gawks between them. “Uh. Sorry for…we were just looking for Tally. Making sure all was…” Her eyes dart fast between them, mouth open. “...Uh, good. Tally, you good?”

Tally’s head hurts. Her heart feels worse, and better. Tally gives a thumbs up. “Much better, Rae. Thanks. Uh, General Alder and I were—”

“—Private Collar,” Alder says sharply, recovered enough to put all her commanding strength into the honorific. Raelle gulps. Tally gulps for a different reason. “As I was just informing your wayward covenmate, the War College grounds are off limits during Yule.”

There’s a pause. Raelle’s face contorts into several expressions before she can give an affirmative nod. Unfortunately, Tally thinks one of those expressions may have been wry amusement. “Yes, ma’am. Certainly, ma’am.”

Alder gives the same nod back. “As you were, Private.”

“Is that Tally?” calls Abigail from the empty classroom. Seconds later, she crashes into Raelle’s back with an oomph, nearly toppling them both over. Abi eyes the scene over Raelle’s shoulder–Tally rubbing her aching head, Alder’s military posture offset by her otherwise disheveled appearance–with suspicion and confusion in equal measures. She pushes Raelle through the door and adopts her own stance. “General Alder, hello. What a wonderful surprise.”

“Private,” Alder says. She gives another stiff nod. “Good Yule to you both.”

“Same,” Raelle stutters. “Great Yule, yeah.”

No one speaks for several seconds; Tally watches Abigail’s confusion fade, replaced by a growing horror. As though the trees behind the balcony sprouted wooden heads and started working the weather on their own. Right as Abigail opens her mouth, Alder clears her throat and takes a step forward. She looks back at Tally, who prays she’s not imagining the way Alder’s brow softens in her direction. “My thanks for the update on Penelope, Craven. Her scores are improving radically, and she credits you for the change in pace.”

Tally can only glow brighter than a Yule log at midnight under the praise. She smiles. “Of course. She’s one of my sisters now, after all.”

Across the bond, Tally hears a gentle knock on the door. A rush of gratitude sweeps past the edges of her consciousness. She smiles wider, even as Alder gives another stiff nod in her direction. She turns to go on a heel. Raelle and Abigail quickly separate to make a path between them.

Tally’s breath leaves her body in a lurching woosh. “General,” she stammers.

Alder pauses at the balcony door, turns her head slightly. “Yes, Private?”

Warning bells across the bond, not unkind. Tally feels her shoulders cave, regardless. The other door is locked now; she knows without having to ask. She forces herself to stay all the way upright. She takes a deep breath. “I’ll…give you another update on her progress next week?”

For a while, Alder doesn’t reply. She stares at something Tally can’t fathom.

Meanwhile, Abigail studies Tally like a Mothertongue textbook. She opens her mouth to say something again, but Raelle shakes her head imperceptibly. (Tally is so not getting through the Sekhmet after-hours party without several types of distilled alcohol.)

When Alder next speaks, her voice is almost gentle. “Of course, if time permits.” She looks back and offers Tally a curious expression–raised brows and careful consideration, like they’ve never met before tonight. Before she can really use those General Sarah Alder Analysis chops, the woman in question turns around to leave once more. She stares straight ahead into the empty classroom. “There are many uncertain days ahead, my daughters. Stay close to each other.”

Tally gives a final, affirmative nod. Then, Alder leaves, taking a bit of Tally with her.