The Wright (Friday Updates)

Glome

"We are already halfway up," I reminded her. "That's just cheating."

"Well, then if somebody asks if I started halfway up, I'll tell them I did."

She was impossible. We headed for the incline, our thighs burning as we climbed. There was no path so, in some places, our boots slipped as clods of dirt broke free and we had to cling to roots and smaller trees to pull ourselves higher.

As the sun reached its peak, we were both panting and fatigued, deciding to stop for lunch. I had brought us some things from the kitchen; rolls, slices of cheese, grapes and salami. We made little sandwiches and stared out from our vantage point. From where we were, we could see the house in the distance and the gardens. People were arriving, traipsing up the main path, colorful dresses sprinkled around the outside of the house like confetti that moved.

"Ooh, you see that one with the white q-tip for a head? I bet that's a fae, yeah? And that tall one in pink has to be a shifter female."

"He seemed really miserable about all of this," I confessed.

"Would you want to make a baby with someone other than your husband? I'm sure all those women are suffocating him."

"It was his idea. He should have just called it off."

"I would hate to be a Royal. There's so much duty and the expectations are just...crazy," Toddy said. "I don't even think the wealth would be worth it. Unless you were like the youngest child and furthest from the throne."

"But, if you could help people, wouldn't you do it?"

She shrugged, pulling out her sketchbook and a pencil, staring at the miniature house. "You are nicer than me. I would just have a harem and eat a lot until I was so fat they would have to roll me down the mountain to get me out."

I clomped my boot against hers.

"The world revolves around people finding their mates, Clia. You'd have as much success preventing shifters from taking theirs as you would banning vampires from making blood ties. You can't outlaw love..."

"I would never try to get in between fated mates that willingly wanted to be together, but the shifters stealing humans and forcing them to mate has to stop."

"You are talking about Lissa," she surmised, facing the house again. We sat in silence for a while, remembering that horrible day that we had argued about for years. When Toddy started visiting the shifter barn during our first years at the Academy, the conversation was forbidden. Her pencil hissed over the paper, mountains taking form. "Sometimes warlocks force their mates. Humans force themselves upon each other. It's not a racial issue, it's certain individuals and their inability to keep their dicks in their pants. Your mother and grandma are just very opinionated and have been stuffing your ears full of wool your entire life."

My grandmother despised shifters and thought they were nearly-mindless barbarians. Some of that had definitely leaked down, especially after witnessing them cut each other to ribbons for fun. My mother was very against non-fated pairings, but that just made sense. As for vampires and fae, well, they were more tricky all around to deal with.

The Book of Marks was a great idea, but there had to be a way to implement something similar for humans and other races to find one another. Safely.

"I think it has less to do with my grandmother and mother and more to do with the fact that Kinnut needs to take action. The fact that you saw a human gun going off means there are enough that they have infiltrated not only our hometown and around the Academy, but definitely in larger cities. What's he doing to stop the distribution? What's he doing to stop the Stardust epidemic in Velhara?"