To an anonymous Leopard (Rix’s) prompt during my Live Writing Wednesday.  I hope I got the prompt right, since I lost it in a chat delete. 

Fae Apoc, probably early post-apoc

🧚🏽

“I owe you one.”

If there were words Uršula less wanted to be saying, she couldn’t think of them.

“Yep, you do.”

Einarr, on the other hand, sounded particularly pleased to be saying that.

“You don’t have to smile about it.”

“Oh, but I think I do.  Four years of school, three years here and there afterwards, and you, miss Perfect, have never let me in, not one bit.  Now -”

“Now, you saved my life.”  The bullet had been meant for her, and it would have killed her.  Einarr, twice her size even before their Changes, had taken it on his armor.  “Yep.  That is, as ill-fitting as the metaphor might be right now, a chink in my armor.”

“And I am going to look forward to claiming it.  I really am.  When the time is right.  Do you have tokens?”

“I’ve never needed to owe anyone a favor before.”  She snipped the words off.  She wanted to get away, to get on her bike and flee.

She had to see this through to the end.

“Ah, yes.  Miss independent.  No crew, no Kept – do you breed by budding?  Some people do, you know. Nobody.  No cy’ree, even.  And now-”

He was nearly crowing.  Putting her blade against his neck was child’s play, her other blade against his spine.  Scissors of razor-sharp hawthorn.

He froze.  “You-”

“Now I save your life, or you agree to be mine.  Either way, I don’t have to listen to you anymore.”

“So… so I get to be your Kept?  Or I have to give up a favor?  Uršula sa’Cave-Virgin, I Belong to you.”

She tightened the blades.  “You were supposed to take the favor.  Anyone who graduated Addergoole-”

“Ah, but you and I, we’re different.  And I Belong to you.”

And she still owed him one.  “You Belong to me.”

And he was laughing his fool head off.