Page 80 of Fatality on the Field

“Ten minutes until liftoff,” Channing says without looking up. “As we’ve discussed, you’ll open with the speech, recognize the donors and the board, and then rally the students and alumni for the win. The band’s at the ready, according to the director.”

I sip my coffee—half full, hot enough to melt plastic, and the only thing keeping my molars from grinding to dust—and say, “Thank you, Channing. Anything else I need to know before I go out there and pretend this place isn’t one spark away from going up like a powder keg?”

Channing’s lips quirk up as she adjusts her headset. “Keep your remarks under three minutes or the crowd will get restless. It’s chilly, but not cold, though that doesn’t matter when everyone is sitting on metal chairs. The good vibes will fade if you go on too long.”

“Noted,” I reply. “Any word from the reps for the courts besides Daybreak? I haven’t seen a single one since they arrived, despite the fact that they are using houses on the street I live on. Li’s obviously waiting until the last minute to arrive so he isn’t mobbed, but what are the others doing? They’re not royalty; no one is going to jump them if they come a few minutes ahead of schedule.”

“Not a peep from Harvest, Midnight, or Reaping,” Channing reports, her eyes flicking up as she checks the quad. “I spotted their cars parked in their driveways this morning. Black SUVs, all of them, and decked out as if they’re the crowned ones, not your guy. It was weird as hell.”

“I hate dramatics,” I mutter, taking another sip of my sanity fuel. “Being a donor doesn’t make them a fucking celebrity on campus, no matter how much whatever diplomat they sent wants it to.”

Channing makes a noncommittal noise, which I think is agreement, and moves on. “Liam will be here, Morgana. I know you’d rather the others attend as well, but at least you know the dragon is lurking somewhere watching, right? Oh, wait… there he is!”

I scan the quad and spot Liam ten feet from the edge of the crowd, talking to staff members for the event in the most unassuming way possible for a Fae prince. He’s dressed down, no wings on display, his hair tied back, and his expression blank. The semi-disguise is enough that you’d guess him to be a very good-looking postdoc rather than the crown prince of a realm that could buy and sell this university a thousand times over. He’s got the chameleon act down, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be called up with the other donors when the time comes.

“Have you actually seen Kaspar?” I say, keeping my voice low. “I know he’s doing his bodyguard thing from a distance, which is odd, but he’s gone invisible, it seems.”

“Nope,” Channing says as she grins at me. “Per the prince, he’s discreetly engaged, but at a distance that gives him the chance to shift into defense mode.”

Ahhh, that’s why he’s not close; he believes we could need the dragon and has to have space.

“What about the rest of them?”

“Ignatius is in class,” my assistant says cheerily. “He’s…” She makes a vague hand motion that I instantly understand. “Recovering, according to Slade. Lucas is also in class, but he might make the end. You know that there was no way to schedule this so that you avoided all the conflicts, Morgana.”

Recovering, in this context, means ‘hungover and emotionally wrecked from last night’s drunken bro-down with Lucas’, but that’s not something we need to discuss in public. I watched the professor stumble into the kitchen this morning looking like he was on a battlefield, rather than in the HQ with bottles of scotch and snacks when we got home. Lucas just clapped him on the back and said they had to stick together, and Iggy had mumbled something that might have been ‘thank you’ or ‘kill me’. Slade fed them both coffee and carbs until they were ambulatory, which made everyone else laugh and smirk. But I noticed that Iggy and my darling bear seem closer now, which makes me less concerned about whether he’ll flip-flop back to being a dickhead.

There’s no more time-honored way to build a real family than shared self-destruction, I suppose.

Channing pauses mid-swipe, turning her tablet toward me with a curious expression. “This just in, M. The ticket office forwarded a request for eight VIP box tickets from some very important alumni from Whistler’s Hollow.”

My mouth curves up before I can stop it. “Think it’s our intrepid doctors’ family? The number sounds right, if I remember correctly.”

She nods as she checks out the email more closely. “I think so. Should I approve it even though the deadline has long passed?”

“Yes, and put them in my section as personal guests,” I reply as I glance back at the crowd. “I’d like to meet the woman the docs talked about and honestly, I think I could get some tips for handling multiple fucking dudes from her. She’s got an entire offensive line almost.”

“You know, that’s a great idea.” Channing starts typing again, but I see her smile as she adds, “There’s also a request for approval of service animals for the family. Is that okay?”

“Service animals?” I arch a brow. “That must be their code for familiars, I guess.”

“Probably.” She scrolls the request and her eyes widen. “That’s a lot, but if they really are familiars…”

I open my mouth to say something snarky, but then I just shake my head and sigh. “Approve it. If anyone asks, tell them it’s a pilot program for therapy animals in high-stress athletic environments. That way, we don’t get cornered into letting every pet pig in the South into our box next year.”

Channing snorts. “Aye, aye, Captain. Just remember that when we’re drowning in the requests at the next big event. We’ll have to draw up some sort of policy once this thing is over.”

I finish my coffee, hand the cup to a passing staffer, and flex my hands once before rolling my shoulders. The air is sharp enough that it slices through my blazer, but I barely feel it. Every muscle in my body is set for this bullshit, because I need to make this talk resonate more than anything else I’ve done this week.

Well, okay, maybe not more than saving the kids, but that’s a given.

The alarm on Channing’s tablet dings softly and I sigh. Somewhere behind the platform, the marching band strikes up the opening notes of the State U fight song. The noise swells, hundreds of voices rise, and the quad becomes a single, living organism of expectation and anxiety.

I adjust my lapel, check my lipstick on my phone screen, and say, “Let’s get this over with.”

My friend doesn’t reply, just falls in behind me as I walk to the platform steps. The instant my foot hits the riser, the student section howls with the kind of force usually reserved for the aftermath of a big game. Somewhere dead center, there’s a bouquet of boos—loud, brief, but sharp enough to register—and the front rows of power assemble their faces into masks of interest so uniform I’m not convinced half of them aren’t literal clones.

Rich people and their weird fucking body dysmorphia plastic surgery creep me out.