Arc 8 | Chapter 282: Problem Children

“Is that for me?”

Valor’s eyes flicked up to Emilia, finding her standing in the doorway that connected the Hyrat Dorm’s third floor hallway to the small communal living room he had been waiting in. Baylor, so often messy from just existing, had gone off to shower alone—something he would suffer for, now that Taelor was back and not with Emilia—while he had no desire to either upset Taelor or bring down punishment on himself. Enjoying pushing their eldest brother’s buttons was all Baylor and Emilia’s territory. So, he’d sat there, idly playing a video game Halen had designed for a class project over a decade earlier.

“Yes,” he replied, setting the controller down onto the table and motioning Emilia over. “Baylor was convinced you didn’t have anything to wear to dinner,” he teased, shifting so Emilia could grab the pile of boxes and curl into him as she took a seat on the couch. One of his arms wrapped around her shoulder, pulling her even closer.

She was so small, shorter than average, and there was some speculation it was the result of how questionable the care at the orphanage had been. Emilia was perfect, and yet she, as well as Indigo and Atticus, had been irreparably damaged by their time there, not just in spirit—in the way Atticus flinched away from so much of the world, Indigo never quite able to connect with the things she learned about it, Emilia giving the point it was suicidal—but physically as well.

As much as her slightness likely came from those first, cruel years of life, Valor couldn’t bring himself to feel too bad about those years. An Emilia who hadn’t been raised that way wouldn’t have come into their lives, wouldn’t have attracted Miles Starrberg’s attention as he took a tour of the facility in an attempt to encourage people to adopt, wouldn’t have been the sort of person who could love

them

—who could even still feel friendship, slight as it was, for the man she had killed. He had been trying to kill her and Lux, yet Valor knew she still remembered the good times with him and thought of him in an overall favourable light.

Emilia was small and perfect and broken due to those early years of her life, and while Valor and his brothers—the Laprise siblings and Baxter twins as well—would gladly hunt down every terrible adults who had made each of the children in that place feel like they were worthless and strike them from the planet, none of them could regret their friend being who she was either.

“Big one first,” Valor said, gently tugging the two smaller boxes away from her so she could open the one that contained the dress Baylor had picked out for her.

Their friend laughed as she took in the dress. “As much as I’m sure you’ll love me in this, I can’t imagine you were cruel enough to pick this out,” she teased, holding up the dress, and no, Valor certainly wouldn’t have picked out something quite so… involved. “Stars, this is gonna be a massive pain to get on.”

Indeed, the dress featured a ridiculous number of ribbons that would wrap around each of Emilia’s limbs, while the back was largely open, more ribbons needing to be tightened to cinch it, leaving, well, a lot on display. It would be beautiful on Emilia, but as she said, it would be a pain to put on—would probably require help, in fact—and as for getting it off…

Well, there was a good chance that if Emilia wanted to keep the dress intact, she was going to have to run away from them when they returned from dinner, lest one of them rip it off her.

“Thank you,” she said, fingering the ribbons in a way that sent blood spiralling down to Valor’s cock.

Valor might not be the sort of sadist who would get Emilia something that she couldn’t easily get in and out of—he knew she preferred more relaxed, lounging clothes, even if those wouldn’t be appropriate for the night’s restaurant, not that anyone would dare say anything to them about it—he was the only one of his brothers who enjoyed seeing her tied up, left at his mercy in a purely consensual way; there was no way Emilia wouldn’t be able to break out of any of the situations he left her in, the girl was far too powerful, far too touchy about any scenario where she felt

too

trapped.

Humming, Emilia pushed her mind into his, letting a dozen

alternative

uses for the dress flood through his mind, and fuck. Maybe she should run away from them later, keep the dress safe so he could use the ribbons to tie her up another time, push the hem of the dress up so he could have his way with her.

“You like that?” she asked, fingers brushing light over his aching cock, and yes, he did. Then again, when it came to Emilia, every one of them would be into her even if she were covered in mud, shit, blood. It was something of a problem.

“Yes, but Taelor already had to change the reservation once. He will not be happy if he has to do so again because I’ve tied you up to have another go at you.”

His big brother wouldn’t really be unhappy, just a little annoyed, a message having already come in informing them that he and Baylor would be ready to go in about twenty. Their progress was apparently slower than expected because Baylor had somehow managed to get soap in his eyes while showering, and honestly, Valor wasn’t sure if his middle brother was just that incompetent at some of the things Taelor did for them or if he was just playing along, making sure Taelor felt needed.

While it was probably the latter—and if it were actual incompetence they were gonna have problems, given they were meant to be able to function apart from each other while working—it was amazing how much some of the finer details of their lives and personalities could be shrouded in mystery, even to one another. Probably, Baylor was just playing it up, but it was possible he wasn’t, and the question of which it was was both interesting and concerning.

“Oh… Valie…”

Idly, Valor let his fingers brush over the bare skin of Emilia’s shoulder, still cool from her and Taelor’s adventures through the city. “You like it?”

Emilia brushed a thumb over the bracelet he had swooped into a shop near the dress shop to buy. The owner had not been impressed to have a Hyrat clone in his store. He had also been an odd mix of concerned and confused about his purchase—it wasn’t every day a clone came in and bought something clearly intended as a gift, not with their real face, anyways.

Courting their marks was an expected part of many jobs, and each clone went through training to be sure they could flirt, pass as boyfriends, buy proper gifts. There had also been lessons on being terrible boyfriends and partners, lest they find themselves in a situation where they needed that particular brand of being a shitty person to someone.

Those jobs, however, were generally done with a different face, and different name. Most likely, the man from the jewellery store would be asking other people in the industry if they’d ever had a clone buy from them, trying to figure out who in the world he could have been buying for, as though they couldn’t possibly have even friends they would buy gifts for. Of course, Baylor had stupidity mentioned to the dress store employee that they were buying for Emilia—how was it that even after decades of being told

not

to mention they knew her to random shopkeepers outside of The Penns, the guy still managed to accidentally mention it so often? Unfortunately, that meant it probably wouldn’t take long for it to get around that they were buying for the silverstrain who occasionally wandered by.

Hopefully nothing bad would come of it. In the few weeks Emilia had been staying with them alone, she’d been effectively banned from two or three stores a week for

bringing Hyrat clones into their fine establishments.

A few stores had banned her for being seen with them elsewhere. At the very least, Dean Vickers was from The Penns and unlikely to ban them from the university, and Emilia had no intention of setting down roots at Yurndale, so their visiting her there wouldn’t cause any serious problems, assuming Olivier de la Rue wasn’t completely turned off from her case by them.

He probably wouldn’t be—such an attitude was liable to get him blacklisted by every clone and The Black Knot as a whole, lawyers who treated black knots badly faring poorly in their profession—and as Baylor had said, the man seemed to want Emilia. It might just be sexual—although how the lawyer could possibly have Emilia’s mind in his class and not fall in love with her, Valor had no idea—but men did stupid things while trying to get into someone’s pants, things like take a case they weren’t sure they could win. Plus, Baylor hadn’t been watching him when they’d left, hadn’t seen the way the lawyer watched as Emilia left with

them.

Olivier de la Rue hadn’t been afraid or turned off; rather, he had been… fascinated, confused, intrigued. So, no, Valor didn’t foresee Emilia’s relationship with them being a reason for him to continue refusing to take her case.

What might keep the man from taking her case, however, was his parents learning of Emilia’s connection to The Black Knot’s ruling families—something they undoubtedly would, after the way those bodyguards of his had reacted. That had been a risk Emilia had shrugged off, however, insisting that she wouldn’t allow anyone who viewed her friends as a negative to represent her in court, nor even someone who would defer to the decisions of people who would.

The elder de la Rues were highly unpleasant people, from what The Black Knot had been able to determine while looking into their eldest son and his career, trying to figure out why Sorvell had sent Emilia to beg his father to let her audit a class or two with the non-dev lawyer. While the man himself seemed to be a kind, if standoffish, person, his parents were similar to the Drydens and Zentaris in terms of how stuck up they were, and something told him they would not be happy to learn their son was even distantly acquainted with them. It was a bit ironic, considering helping Emilia would effectively earn him the protection of their organization for the rest of his life—or until he pissed Emilia off, which was exceptionally difficult to do, most things flowing off her like a spring storm.

It would forever strike Valor as odd, how families that strove to make as many powerful connections as they could, networking and attending boring conferences and far too many weddings, always seemed to shirk connections to The Black Knot. It wasn’t even a secret that a positive connection to a single agent was always a blessing, their influence leaving a significant amount of wiggle room with the law. That said, perhaps it was the

positive connection

part of it that was concerning—not that black knots generally hated anyone unless they’d threatened a loved one. Mostly, they just didn’t give a shit about most people.

Then, of course, as Emilia being charged with manslaughter proved, their protection wasn’t absolute, if the person had the misfortune of pissing off the wrong person. Unfortunately, killing the son of a high-ranking SecOps officer—regardless of said son’s very obvious intention to kill her and Lux, his promise to never give up, even if he was arrested, his father liable to pull strings so he would be released into less than adequate supervision yet again—had put Emilia onto the side of the legal system where government prosecutors had taken on the case directly, their horrible little army of

investigators

descending onto The Penns and questioning all of them like they were the criminals, even sweet, shy Janie.

Emilia had spent over twenty years pissing off various government officials and law enforcement, both in Baalphoria and abroad.

Technically,

she was still considered a criminal in Norvel and would be thrown in the Dread Coliseum if she ever returned, and while Dion

hadn’t

started a small war because of her—a long finished war, and not one Baalphoria had had any part of—they also hadn’t

not

started a war because of her. He was also pretty sure she’d helped one of her Dionese friends kill their father, but he wasn’t completely positive on that one. The timing just fit—not that anyone was liable to miss the man, from what he’d heard of the Inner Court Member.

That was all on top of the chaos her presence caused virtually everywhere she went. Seer’ik’tine had even been forced to add a climbing section to the Huss’tra, after she and a bunch of other children of diplomats had climbed it a few too many times, while he was pretty sure she was on some Atrium watchlist for stars knew what.

Honestly, it wasn’t surprising that the government was just done with her, likely hoping the manslaughter charge and mandatory prison sentence of a decade—something they were all sure would be as house arrest, largely because she was the sort of person to cause too much mayhem in an actual prison—would be just enough of a punishment to perhaps make an impact on her.

Something to put her in line.

Something to keep her out of the government’s business—Valor didn’t think the head of the department that managed the OIC System would ever forgive her for hacking his system during her early twenties.

Not that any of that would happen. There was no way they were letting Emilia be caged, all of them—even Rafe, regardless of how weird he was being—had agreed that if it came to it, they would take her away. Emilia had friends in Dion, as well as a collection of smaller Free Colonies, through her father’s work. There were also Free Colonies who wouldn’t care about offending the Baalphorian government—would probably even welcome so many powerful sub-30s with open arms, regardless of whether they saw the charges as an overreach or not.

Even without having looked into any of those Free Colonies too closely—international politics were always so turbulent, and it wouldn’t do to make even vague plans on where to relocate so far off from the court date, let alone sentencing—Valor knew that Zironia’s weird, non-dev lecturer had given a long, impassioned speech about the injustice of the charges and the laws that allowed it. While it would be sweltering year-round there, Zironia would be an easy enough Free Colony to relocate to, and they had a long history of being more liberal than many other Free Colonies, even if there were still rumours that they abandoned silverstrain babies to the desert and Chinsatan scavengers. Most likely, those rumours were just the work of purists, though.

Leaving the country would cost each of them—would cost Baalphoria’s defence and prosperity as well, should so much of The Black Knot, and countless young adults who were considered destined for greatness, leave the country—but they would protect Emilia from being caged.

A giggle escaped the woman in question as she opened the last box, revealing the tiara Baylor had bought after he caught up with Valor in the jewellery store. “You know, Olivier called me a princess the first time we met. With this, I’ll actually look the part.”

Valor snorted. There were a few ways in which Emilia acted a princess, especially in bed, but she was generally more a brat, curious and mischievous, and sure, a bit entitled, but also so giving.

Princess

wasn’t a way Valor would ever describe her; rather, his friend was a strange mix of not giving a shit about what anyone thought of her and someone who would willingly break herself, trying to make the world a better place.

Emilia couldn’t make the world a better place from prison, regardless of whether it was from a cold hall of barren rooms or a house she suddenly found herself unable to leave. Her first action upon moving to The Penns had been to scale a fence and fall into a world she definitely didn’t belong and yet fit so perfectly within, after all.

Emilia would not be caged. Ever.

Yet, leaving Baalphoria would be a prison of its own, and regardless of the look Taelor had given Baylor in the bubble, his soft, hidden signs communicating to their middle brother that he was not to interfere in Emilia’s attempts to woo Olivier de la Rue, Valor didn’t think Taelor was right in this.

If Olivier de la Rue thought of Emilia as nothing but a princess, perhaps he needed someone to tell him otherwise.