Interlude: Doug

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“Your daughter…!”

Doug looked up from his book, feeling his Masked stubs of wings flaring out in response to his father’s obvious anger. “Niassa?”

Of course Niassa. He only had one child at the school at the moment – his second, which made two more than his father’d had here so far – and of his three children, only one of them was a daughter.

“Is she in trouble?” He found himself standing and forced himself to sit back down. “How bad of trouble is she in?” Doug’s scale of how much trouble a teenager could get in had escalated severely since Donegal had first stepped down into Addergoole. He bunched his fists and started plotting his attack. “I know Elfred’s been sniffing around…”

“Easy.” Luke pulled his wings in and made slow-down gestures with both hands, patting the air with flat palms. “No. No, she’s not collared, she’s not…” He caught his own breath. “I’m sorry.” He sat down in the second chair Doug’s office afforded, wings folded, looking surprisingly apologetic. “That was stupid. She’s fine. And far as I can tell, nobody’s done anything to or with or near her that she didn’t want, and I don’t think anyone would dare.”

Doug allowed himself a vicious smirk. It might not be fair, but hell, Regine had played favorites a lot worse than they were doing. All they did was glower and flap. Regine had overlooked blatant violations from both her daughter and her grandson and bent rules to protect them both. “She’s a tough girl, too.”

“Of course she is. She’s your daughter.” Luke shook his head. “Which also means she’s stubborn, self-righteous, a pain in the ass, and prone to cause trouble at the drop of a hat.”

Dough raised his eyebrows. “And?” No use arguing that she got that from her grandfather. For one, her grandfather already knew it.

“She’s gone and taken Agmund as a Mentor.”

Agmund. Doug reached under his desk. He pulled out two of the cut-crystal rocks glasses Mike had decided he needed and the large bottle of expensive bourbon his father had given him and poured two large slugs of one into the other. “She went cy’Fridmar. After –”

“Yeah.” Luke took the offered glass and downed half of it in a gulp. “After we told her it was her decision, of course. After we suggested why cy’Luca might be better for her than cy’Doug.”

“…we were idiots.” Doug gulped down his own bourbon.

“Yeah.” Luke sighed, contemplating the glass. “It’s starting to look that way. I mean. There was a good chance she’d go cy’Valerian or cy’Shou or something sane…”

“But no.” Doug found himself laughing. “Well, at least she’ll learn to fight, and Agmund won’t play favorites.”

“You’re not worried?” Luke studied him. Doug fought back another chuckle.

“For Agmund? Maybe.” Doug shrugged. “She’s trying to make us angry. But she’s a good kid, and she’s not going to suddenly turn evil. Too much of you in her for that.”

He sipped his bourbon and tried to pretend he didn’t see the way his father was studying him.