When a soft touch on his shoulder woke him the next morning, Drake yawned, stretched... and realized he ached everywhere. It wasn’t just his calves, which burned. Or his thighs, which felt like they were stuffed with sticks. His whole back felt like it was on fire as well, and his ankles felt like they’d popped right out of his feet. His body was pissed.
Apparently, walking eight hours on uneven roads carrying a heavy pack, then sleeping on hard and rocky ground, wasn’t something he was ready to do just yet. He had just assumed he’d adapt to walking around this world because the others did it so readily, but they’d had their whole lives to get used to walking everywhere. He’d been here a couple of days.
He couldn’t help but groan as he forced himself to sit up. When he tried to stand, he failed the first time. He ground his teeth and pushed through the pain. When he was finally on his feet again, standing, he realized he’d have to bend down and pick up his pack.
How the fuck was he going to do that?
The others were already up, and they had apparently been up for some time. Jeremy was brushing his horse again as the animal grazed contentedly at the roadside. Anna was rushing about helping Sachi pack up last night’s cooking spit and other stuff. And Valentia stood a few paces away, watching him with what might just be amusement.
“Good morning, Clint.”
“Morning.” Drake stretched and winced as something popped loudly. “So another day of walking, yeah? Can’t wait.”
“If you wish, I can ease some of your aches and pains. We do need to make up ground today, and there is no need for you to suffer while we do that.”
“How would you... oh, wait.” He grinned with relief. “Healing magic?”
She smiled back. “Would you like me to ease your discomfort?”
“Oh, hell yes. Thank you.”
“Stand steady and spread your arms out just beyond your waist.” She visibly adjusted the white maid gloves he only now realized she was wearing. She hadn’t been wearing those gloves yesterday, but she must have brought them with her when she left the manor.
He spread his arms slightly to his sides as she walked around behind him. Soon he felt cool energy coursing across his body, staring at his shoulders. He couldn’t help but groan with relief. The aches and pains that plagued him were all melting away.
The cool worked its way slowly down his back and sides, then tingled against his ass before moving on down. Thank God Valentia wasn’t actually touching him. He’d seen how battle maids healed each other, and they simply waved their fingers nearby.
Once the cool energy finished around his ankles, he sighed. “You rock.”
“Of course.” Valentia walked back around him from behind, but he immediately noticed something different about her. Her skin wasn’t just pale. It was practically white.
Moreover, she still walked gracefully, but she now looked almost as stiff as he’d felt when he woke up. That was when the morning fog cleared and he remembered, belatedly, what Lydia had told him about what powered magic.
“Magic consumes blood. Food and special herbs restore it.”
Had Valentia just drained herself of blood to make him feel better? What the hell was she thinking? He caught her arm as she attempted to walk back to the campsite. “Wait.”
Her narrowed eyes snapped to his, and he immediately knew it had been a mistake to grab her arm and stop her by force. Any friendliness from last night vanished. Only cool evaluation remained.
Drake released her at once and stepped back, then raised his hands. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to do that.”
“Ensuring you are ready for travel is my duty as your blood thrall.” Her voice had once again gone flat. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I do, actually. I completely spaced on the fact that using your healing powers costs you blood and exhausts you, and I just asked you to heal my discomfort when we may need your skills today if someone gets wounded. Not to mention the long walk.”
Sachi, at the campfire, was now watching him with visibly amused eyes. Anna was dutifully slipping items into her pack. And Jeremy, of course, was staring off into space.
Valentia turned away. “You need not concern yourself. I healed you by choice.”
Her dismissal frustrated him. “I appreciate what you just did for me, but in the future, I don’t need you to heal me unless I’m wounded. Understood?”
She shrugged incrementally. “Understood.”
He’d been trying to apologize for making a bad call, so the fact that she looked to still be holding it against him was more than a bit frustrating. Still, he didn’t know her as well as he hoped. He’d thought he’d made progress gaining her trust last night, but... maybe not.
Nothing more to do about it now. He looked to Sachi. “We ready to break camp?”
Her amused grin turned to the pack Anna was sealing up. “Soon, lord.”
“Great. I’m going to go off and take a piss before we get back on the road. Anna, you need a potty break before we set off?”
She stared wide-eyed. “No, lord.”
“Good. If you do, just have Sachi go with you. I don’t need you eaten by a bear while you’re squatting behind some rock.”
Anna giggled. “Lord, that is not how a lord should talk.”
He winked at her. “I’ve only been a lord for a few days, so cut me some slack. I’m learning.”
She nodded vigorously. It was good to see her in better spirits than she’d been last night, but seeing her like that also made him feel a bit guiltier than he expected. As he had tried to fall asleep last night on ground that was far too hard, his late night discussion with Anna had kept him up long enough to hear her whimpering in her sleep.
She still had nightmares, probably, which were a grim reminder of all she and her father had suffered as Captain Ro’s captives. While the idea of binding anyone to him with magical compulsion still felt wrong, Drake was starting to think he might not have a choice if he wanted to do what Valentia had charged him to do: be a lord and not a hero.
A hero wouldn’t need to bind his people to him with twisted blood magic. But a lord would recognize that anyone he failed to induct into his blood pact could be turned against him by another manor lord with another blood pact, which would put his whole manor at risk. Until Drake found a way to get rid of blood pacts for good, that would be a problem.
It also meant that despite his personal distaste for his own blood pact, so long as people joined it willingly, he was simply going to have to get over it. He couldn’t expand his manor without adding more allies, and he couldn’t trust allies another manor lord could induct into a blood pact and compel to blow his manor to smithereens. That meant that, if Anna still wanted to join him when she turned sixteen... he was going to need to grant her wish.
Now, he just needed to learn how he could actually do that.
After Drake took care of business far enough away that he assumed no one would feel scandalized, he walked back to the camp to find everyone ready to go. Jeremy sat astride Brownie once more, with Anna sitting sidesaddle ahead of him. Sachi had her pack, Valentia had hers, and his gear was waiting in a neat pile. Pouch. Club. Backpack.
He’d left the crossbow he salvaged back in a field somewhere, and was starting to reevaluate his preference for the weapon. A crossbow was easy to shoot once, but heavy, and it took forever to reload. Plus, the bolts weighed down his pack.
Still, the fact that he’d splurged all Valentia’s blood this morning meant he’d have no trouble walking today. She looked as cool and uninterested as she when they first met. He’d figure out why that was later.
As Lydia had said, gaining Valentia’s trust might be a challenge. But they had four more days on the road, so there was no reason to think he couldn’t figure something out.
“Let’s roll,” Drake said.
Sachi glanced his way. “That’s a strange expression, lord.”
“I’m full of those.”
They continued down the flat and winding road for quite some time that morning. While Anna asked a few questions about sights they passed and even asked Sachi to tell her a story, Drake vetoed that when the story devolved into a whole bunch of ways to murder people. After that, they walked in relative silence and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
Valentia showed no sign of slowing down or visible discomfort, despite the fact that she’d spent all that blood this morning to heal him. She also seemed entirely uninterested in further conversation, so Drake let her be. When they broke for lunch, they didn’t bother setting up a fire. So lunch was more jerky, bread that wasn’t quite stale, and cheese.
Once Drake finished, Sachi sauntered over with her tail twitching back and forth. “Time to forage, lord. We should handle it now with plenty of daylight, so we can walk until dusk.”
He looked up at her, dismayed. “I thought foraging was your job?”
“You need to learn to hunt at some point. Otherwise, next time you’re abducted, you’re going to starve out here.”
“But I’m horrible with a bow.”
“Which is why you won’t be shooting one. You’ll be observing. Now, we should go.”
He sighed. “I suppose I must. Val, I’ll leave the others with you.”
Valentia nodded from where she stood looking back the way they had come. She didn’t look his way or say anything else. After a wave to Anna and Jeremy, only one of whom waved back, he looked to Sachi. “If you taught me to use a bow, I bet I could shoot something.”
“From what I’ve seen I doubt it, lord. But perhaps we’ll run across a lame moose.”
Sachi led him off at an easy pace that was absolutely humoring him. With no idea where they were going, he had no choice but to keep to it. It wasn’t long before they were completely out of sight of where they’d stopped, at which point Sachi started grinning his way.
Finally, exasperated, he took the bait. “What is it?”
“You and Val seem to be getting along well. She usually doesn’t warm up to anyone so fast.”
“Are you kidding? I was worried she was going to freeze my balls off this morning.”
Sachi chortled so hard she nearly lost her balance. Drake might be imagining it, but it seemed Sachi was more comfortable with him this morning as well. Maybe it was the news about Samuel.
Finally, Sachi recovered. “You insulted her, lord. What did you expect?”
He stared. “How did I insult her?”
“Think carefully, lord. You can solve this mystery. She makes her own choices now. She volunteered to heal you. You didn’t order her to do that.”
“Right, and...” He trailed off as a lingering suspicion arrived. “Oh, shit.”
“It is starting to creep up on you?”
“So the reason she went all ice queen on me this morning is because after she did something nice for me, by choice, I implied she wasn’t going to be able to hack it today?”
“Hack what? We didn’t bring a machete.”
She was definitely teasing him. “You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
“I implied she wasn’t going to be able to keep up with everyone else.” He groaned. “And worse, I implied she was completely unaware of her own limits. Like she was too dumb to know how much blood she could afford to spend healing me up and still walk all day.”
“Look at you! You are learning.”
Drake sighed. “I really did choose the hard road by trying to make everyone like me.”
“You did, lord. With most, a healthy dose of fear and threats of tongue ripping handles most blood thralls. It certainly worked for Lord Dickcheese.”
“Your lords have this crazy weird obsession with tongues.”
“It’s a way to impose power. Taking your tongue makes it clear anything you might say or ask does not and will never matter. It makes you chattel, a dumb beast, nothing more. It also means you will never again taste delicious meat.”
A life without the taste of meat. Horrific. Drake shook his head and looked away. “I’m never going to lead that way.”
“So then you must work harder, lord. You choose this path. You’re stuck with it now.”
“Right. I’ll apologize to Val and... no, you know what? That’d probably just dig a deeper hole. This isn’t something I can just fix with a few words, is it? She thinks I think she’s weak now, so I’ll just have to show her I don’t think that. Over time.”
“And she can’t be weak, lord. That isn’t possible for a woman like her.”
“You seem pretty confident about that. Want to tell me why?”
“Of all the battle maids who serve you, Val has served at Gloomwood Manor the longest. She considers herself responsible for keeping them all safe, even Lydia, who is supposed to be the mistress. So Val ever can’t be seen as weak. She has to be incorruptible.”
“That’s an interesting take. And you’re sharing all this with me why?”
Sachi clutched both hands to her chest. “I am bruised by your suspicion of my motives, lord. Am I not allowed to take pity on you from time to time? I don’t mind tossing my favorite wererat a bit of cheese.”
Drake considered her words as he scanned the rising hills around them. As much as Sachi might tease him, she’d known everyone in Gloomwood Manor far longer than he had. Long enough she could likely advise him almost as well as Lydia. “I appreciate the morsel.”
“As you should.”
“So while you’re handing out free advice, do you know how I can make someone my blood thrall?
“I thought you told Anna you didn’t wish her to join us.”
Drake stared in surprise. “You were listening after we left?”
She simply smiled her predator’s smile.
He sighed and looked away. “I should have known you’d have good ears.”
“I have absolutely gorgeous ears.”
Drake snorted. “So how would I make someone a blood thrall? If I wanted to?”
“I do not know, lord. I’ve never witnessed the ceremony myself, however, I am surprised no one has explained this to you. Anna cannot take the blood pact.”
“I know that, but dear old Dad’s old enough to do so.”
Sachi sniffed. “He has no rarity.”
“And I don’t actually give a shit. Requiring a rarity to join a blood pact was Dickcheese’s deal, and I don’t like the idea of some other lord turning Jeremy against his daughter. If that happened, she’d be right back where she was before we found her.”
“Then I can tell you one fact of note, lord. While I do not know the exact number, I do know that manor lords can only compel so many people at once.”
That explained why no manor lord had ever tried to make a whole town, or even multiple towns, join his blood pact. “So I have a cap on how many people I can induct?”
“That is my understanding. It is why lords induct only those with useful or powerful rarities to strengthen their manor. A mute man with no rarity hardly qualifies, and were you to add Jeremy to our blood pact, he would be with us until he dies.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t do it?”
“I’m simply offering information, lord. Isn’t that what you asked?”
He had, and she had. The decision was his alone, and as usual, it was a shitty one. “So why’d you join the blood pact?”
“As a favor to a friend.”
She meant Samuel, most likely. “That’s one hell of a favor.”
“He is a good friend.” She quickened her pace.
Drake almost had to jog to keep up, but he managed. The way Sachi’s ears had eased back and the fact that she’d walked ahead of him suggested she didn’t want to talk about whatever her reasons were any longer. He could respect that. It was her business.
He also realized, as Sachi raised her bow and loosed an arrow faster than he could breathe, that he’d made his decision about Jeremy. Other manor lords might see the man as a burden, but to Anna, he was just Dad. If he was going to keep Anna on his side, he’d need to protect her father from other manor lords.
The fact that he also wanted to do that didn’t mean he was being heroic or benevolent. It was the smart play. Even a ruthless manor lord would do the same thing... probably.
As Sachi returned carrying a big brown rabbit with an arrow through its head, Drake took it reluctantly as she pressed it into his hands. “So, are we heading back now that we’ve had this heart-to-heart, or are we really going to try and teach me to shoot that thing?”
“I’ll shoot. You watch. And if you pay attention, I may let you shoot it tomorrow.”
When a soft touch on his shoulder woke him the next morning, Drake yawned, stretched... and realized he ached everywhere. It wasn’t just his calves, which burned. Or his thighs, which felt like they were stuffed with sticks. His whole back felt like it was on fire as well, and his ankles felt like they’d popped right out of his feet. His body was pissed.
Apparently, walking eight hours on uneven roads carrying a heavy pack, then sleeping on hard and rocky ground, wasn’t something he was ready to do just yet. He had just assumed he’d adapt to walking around this world because the others did it so readily, but they’d had their whole lives to get used to walking everywhere. He’d been here a couple of days.
He couldn’t help but groan as he forced himself to sit up. When he tried to stand, he failed the first time. He ground his teeth and pushed through the pain. When he was finally on his feet again, standing, he realized he’d have to bend down and pick up his pack.
How the fuck was he going to do that?
The others were already up, and they had apparently been up for some time. Jeremy was brushing his horse again as the animal grazed contentedly at the roadside. Anna was rushing about helping Sachi pack up last night’s cooking spit and other stuff. And Valentia stood a few paces away, watching him with what might just be amusement.
“Good morning, Clint.”
“Morning.” Drake stretched and winced as something popped loudly. “So another day of walking, yeah? Can’t wait.”
“If you wish, I can ease some of your aches and pains. We do need to make up ground today, and there is no need for you to suffer while we do that.”
“How would you... oh, wait.” He grinned with relief. “Healing magic?”
She smiled back. “Would you like me to ease your discomfort?”
“Oh, hell yes. Thank you.”
“Stand steady and spread your arms out just beyond your waist.” She visibly adjusted the white maid gloves he only now realized she was wearing. She hadn’t been wearing those gloves yesterday, but she must have brought them with her when she left the manor.
He spread his arms slightly to his sides as she walked around behind him. Soon he felt cool energy coursing across his body, staring at his shoulders. He couldn’t help but groan with relief. The aches and pains that plagued him were all melting away.
The cool worked its way slowly down his back and sides, then tingled against his ass before moving on down. Thank God Valentia wasn’t actually touching him. He’d seen how battle maids healed each other, and they simply waved their fingers nearby.
Once the cool energy finished around his ankles, he sighed. “You rock.”
“Of course.” Valentia walked back around him from behind, but he immediately noticed something different about her. Her skin wasn’t just pale. It was practically white.
Moreover, she still walked gracefully, but she now looked almost as stiff as he’d felt when he woke up. That was when the morning fog cleared and he remembered, belatedly, what Lydia had told him about what powered magic.
“Magic consumes blood. Food and special herbs restore it.”
Had Valentia just drained herself of blood to make him feel better? What the hell was she thinking? He caught her arm as she attempted to walk back to the campsite. “Wait.”
Her narrowed eyes snapped to his, and he immediately knew it had been a mistake to grab her arm and stop her by force. Any friendliness from last night vanished. Only cool evaluation remained.
Drake released her at once and stepped back, then raised his hands. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to do that.”
“Ensuring you are ready for travel is my duty as your blood thrall.” Her voice had once again gone flat. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I do, actually. I completely spaced on the fact that using your healing powers costs you blood and exhausts you, and I just asked you to heal my discomfort when we may need your skills today if someone gets wounded. Not to mention the long walk.”
Sachi, at the campfire, was now watching him with visibly amused eyes. Anna was dutifully slipping items into her pack. And Jeremy, of course, was staring off into space.
Valentia turned away. “You need not concern yourself. I healed you by choice.”
Her dismissal frustrated him. “I appreciate what you just did for me, but in the future, I don’t need you to heal me unless I’m wounded. Understood?”
She shrugged incrementally. “Understood.”
He’d been trying to apologize for making a bad call, so the fact that she looked to still be holding it against him was more than a bit frustrating. Still, he didn’t know her as well as he hoped. He’d thought he’d made progress gaining her trust last night, but... maybe not.
Nothing more to do about it now. He looked to Sachi. “We ready to break camp?”
Her amused grin turned to the pack Anna was sealing up. “Soon, lord.”
“Great. I’m going to go off and take a piss before we get back on the road. Anna, you need a potty break before we set off?”
She stared wide-eyed. “No, lord.”
“Good. If you do, just have Sachi go with you. I don’t need you eaten by a bear while you’re squatting behind some rock.”
Anna giggled. “Lord, that is not how a lord should talk.”
He winked at her. “I’ve only been a lord for a few days, so cut me some slack. I’m learning.”
She nodded vigorously. It was good to see her in better spirits than she’d been last night, but seeing her like that also made him feel a bit guiltier than he expected. As he had tried to fall asleep last night on ground that was far too hard, his late night discussion with Anna had kept him up long enough to hear her whimpering in her sleep.
She still had nightmares, probably, which were a grim reminder of all she and her father had suffered as Captain Ro’s captives. While the idea of binding anyone to him with magical compulsion still felt wrong, Drake was starting to think he might not have a choice if he wanted to do what Valentia had charged him to do: be a lord and not a hero.
A hero wouldn’t need to bind his people to him with twisted blood magic. But a lord would recognize that anyone he failed to induct into his blood pact could be turned against him by another manor lord with another blood pact, which would put his whole manor at risk. Until Drake found a way to get rid of blood pacts for good, that would be a problem.
It also meant that despite his personal distaste for his own blood pact, so long as people joined it willingly, he was simply going to have to get over it. He couldn’t expand his manor without adding more allies, and he couldn’t trust allies another manor lord could induct into a blood pact and compel to blow his manor to smithereens. That meant that, if Anna still wanted to join him when she turned sixteen... he was going to need to grant her wish.
Now, he just needed to learn how he could actually do that.
After Drake took care of business far enough away that he assumed no one would feel scandalized, he walked back to the camp to find everyone ready to go. Jeremy sat astride Brownie once more, with Anna sitting sidesaddle ahead of him. Sachi had her pack, Valentia had hers, and his gear was waiting in a neat pile. Pouch. Club. Backpack.
He’d left the crossbow he salvaged back in a field somewhere, and was starting to reevaluate his preference for the weapon. A crossbow was easy to shoot once, but heavy, and it took forever to reload. Plus, the bolts weighed down his pack.
Still, the fact that he’d splurged all Valentia’s blood this morning meant he’d have no trouble walking today. She looked as cool and uninterested as she when they first met. He’d figure out why that was later.
As Lydia had said, gaining Valentia’s trust might be a challenge. But they had four more days on the road, so there was no reason to think he couldn’t figure something out.
“Let’s roll,” Drake said.
Sachi glanced his way. “That’s a strange expression, lord.”
“I’m full of those.”
They continued down the flat and winding road for quite some time that morning. While Anna asked a few questions about sights they passed and even asked Sachi to tell her a story, Drake vetoed that when the story devolved into a whole bunch of ways to murder people. After that, they walked in relative silence and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
Valentia showed no sign of slowing down or visible discomfort, despite the fact that she’d spent all that blood this morning to heal him. She also seemed entirely uninterested in further conversation, so Drake let her be. When they broke for lunch, they didn’t bother setting up a fire. So lunch was more jerky, bread that wasn’t quite stale, and cheese.
Once Drake finished, Sachi sauntered over with her tail twitching back and forth. “Time to forage, lord. We should handle it now with plenty of daylight, so we can walk until dusk.”
He looked up at her, dismayed. “I thought foraging was your job?”
“You need to learn to hunt at some point. Otherwise, next time you’re abducted, you’re going to starve out here.”
“But I’m horrible with a bow.”
“Which is why you won’t be shooting one. You’ll be observing. Now, we should go.”
He sighed. “I suppose I must. Val, I’ll leave the others with you.”
Valentia nodded from where she stood looking back the way they had come. She didn’t look his way or say anything else. After a wave to Anna and Jeremy, only one of whom waved back, he looked to Sachi. “If you taught me to use a bow, I bet I could shoot something.”
“From what I’ve seen I doubt it, lord. But perhaps we’ll run across a lame moose.”
Sachi led him off at an easy pace that was absolutely humoring him. With no idea where they were going, he had no choice but to keep to it. It wasn’t long before they were completely out of sight of where they’d stopped, at which point Sachi started grinning his way.
Finally, exasperated, he took the bait. “What is it?”
“You and Val seem to be getting along well. She usually doesn’t warm up to anyone so fast.”
“Are you kidding? I was worried she was going to freeze my balls off this morning.”
Sachi chortled so hard she nearly lost her balance. Drake might be imagining it, but it seemed Sachi was more comfortable with him this morning as well. Maybe it was the news about Samuel.
Finally, Sachi recovered. “You insulted her, lord. What did you expect?”
He stared. “How did I insult her?”
“Think carefully, lord. You can solve this mystery. She makes her own choices now. She volunteered to heal you. You didn’t order her to do that.”
“Right, and...” He trailed off as a lingering suspicion arrived. “Oh, shit.”
“It is starting to creep up on you?”
“So the reason she went all ice queen on me this morning is because after she did something nice for me, by choice, I implied she wasn’t going to be able to hack it today?”
“Hack what? We didn’t bring a machete.”
She was definitely teasing him. “You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
“I implied she wasn’t going to be able to keep up with everyone else.” He groaned. “And worse, I implied she was completely unaware of her own limits. Like she was too dumb to know how much blood she could afford to spend healing me up and still walk all day.”
“Look at you! You are learning.”
Drake sighed. “I really did choose the hard road by trying to make everyone like me.”
“You did, lord. With most, a healthy dose of fear and threats of tongue ripping handles most blood thralls. It certainly worked for Lord Dickcheese.”
“Your lords have this crazy weird obsession with tongues.”
“It’s a way to impose power. Taking your tongue makes it clear anything you might say or ask does not and will never matter. It makes you chattel, a dumb beast, nothing more. It also means you will never again taste delicious meat.”
A life without the taste of meat. Horrific. Drake shook his head and looked away. “I’m never going to lead that way.”
“So then you must work harder, lord. You choose this path. You’re stuck with it now.”
“Right. I’ll apologize to Val and... no, you know what? That’d probably just dig a deeper hole. This isn’t something I can just fix with a few words, is it? She thinks I think she’s weak now, so I’ll just have to show her I don’t think that. Over time.”
“And she can’t be weak, lord. That isn’t possible for a woman like her.”
“You seem pretty confident about that. Want to tell me why?”
“Of all the battle maids who serve you, Val has served at Gloomwood Manor the longest. She considers herself responsible for keeping them all safe, even Lydia, who is supposed to be the mistress. So Val ever can’t be seen as weak. She has to be incorruptible.”
“That’s an interesting take. And you’re sharing all this with me why?”
Sachi clutched both hands to her chest. “I am bruised by your suspicion of my motives, lord. Am I not allowed to take pity on you from time to time? I don’t mind tossing my favorite wererat a bit of cheese.”
Drake considered her words as he scanned the rising hills around them. As much as Sachi might tease him, she’d known everyone in Gloomwood Manor far longer than he had. Long enough she could likely advise him almost as well as Lydia. “I appreciate the morsel.”
“As you should.”
“So while you’re handing out free advice, do you know how I can make someone my blood thrall?
“I thought you told Anna you didn’t wish her to join us.”
Drake stared in surprise. “You were listening after we left?”
She simply smiled her predator’s smile.
He sighed and looked away. “I should have known you’d have good ears.”
“I have absolutely gorgeous ears.”
Drake snorted. “So how would I make someone a blood thrall? If I wanted to?”
“I do not know, lord. I’ve never witnessed the ceremony myself, however, I am surprised no one has explained this to you. Anna cannot take the blood pact.”
“I know that, but dear old Dad’s old enough to do so.”
Sachi sniffed. “He has no rarity.”
“And I don’t actually give a shit. Requiring a rarity to join a blood pact was Dickcheese’s deal, and I don’t like the idea of some other lord turning Jeremy against his daughter. If that happened, she’d be right back where she was before we found her.”
“Then I can tell you one fact of note, lord. While I do not know the exact number, I do know that manor lords can only compel so many people at once.”
That explained why no manor lord had ever tried to make a whole town, or even multiple towns, join his blood pact. “So I have a cap on how many people I can induct?”
“That is my understanding. It is why lords induct only those with useful or powerful rarities to strengthen their manor. A mute man with no rarity hardly qualifies, and were you to add Jeremy to our blood pact, he would be with us until he dies.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t do it?”
“I’m simply offering information, lord. Isn’t that what you asked?”
He had, and she had. The decision was his alone, and as usual, it was a shitty one. “So why’d you join the blood pact?”
“As a favor to a friend.”
She meant Samuel, most likely. “That’s one hell of a favor.”
“He is a good friend.” She quickened her pace.
Drake almost had to jog to keep up, but he managed. The way Sachi’s ears had eased back and the fact that she’d walked ahead of him suggested she didn’t want to talk about whatever her reasons were any longer. He could respect that. It was her business.
He also realized, as Sachi raised her bow and loosed an arrow faster than he could breathe, that he’d made his decision about Jeremy. Other manor lords might see the man as a burden, but to Anna, he was just Dad. If he was going to keep Anna on his side, he’d need to protect her father from other manor lords.
The fact that he also wanted to do that didn’t mean he was being heroic or benevolent. It was the smart play. Even a ruthless manor lord would do the same thing... probably.
As Sachi returned carrying a big brown rabbit with an arrow through its head, Drake took it reluctantly as she pressed it into his hands. “So, are we heading back now that we’ve had this heart-to-heart, or are we really going to try and teach me to shoot that thing?”
“I’ll shoot. You watch. And if you pay attention, I may let you shoot it tomorrow.”
