Nicole was as tall as Valentia but much slimmer, with an athlete’s frame. Her sleeves only came down to mid-bicep and showed off taut muscle that looked like it belonged to a gymnast or a circus performer. Her brown bangs fell across her forehead and framed her face.
As her gray eyes languidly took in Olivia and then met his, she looked... bored.
Valentia smoothly slid ahead of Nicole. “I am very glad to see you awake.”
His eldest battle maid looked truly concerned. He had worried her. Drake smiled and motioned for the two of them to come closer. “Emily and Lydia are going to recover. I asked.”
“I am glad to hear that,” Valentia said. “This is Nicole.” She gestured with one hand.
Beside her, Nicole offered an awkward wave. “Hey.”
Hey? That was a new one. Drake’s smile grew. “Hey yourself.”
Valentia colored visibly and offered Nicole a warning glance. “We talked about this. He may look young, but he is still Lord Gloomwood. Just because we are no longer compelled to serve him through the blood pact does not mean we do not show him respect.”
Nicole frowned. “Well I said hey.”
Valentia glanced his way and grimaced. “Forgive her casual manner. She is still recovering from our ordeal near Skybreak Manor.”
“It’s fine,” Drake assured them both. “So? Nicole? Here’s my new decree.”
Once Drake removed all her compulsions, Nicole glanced at Valentia. “I don’t feel any different. Can I really stab our lord now?”
“Do not attempt that,” Valentia warned.
“I’d only stab him a little,” Nicole insisted coyly. “Like, in the finger. As an experiment.”
“Let’s wait on the tests for now,” Drake cautioned. “Please. Now, where’s Zuri?”
The door opened once more, and Valentia and Nicole’s gaze snapped in that direction like a hawk at the rustle of prey. Both visibly relaxed as Zuri cautiously strode into view, looking between the battle maids and Drake. Her expression eased as she saw him awake.
Drake was pleased to see Zuri now wore an actual tunic and loose cloth pants. She hadn’t walked in yet another slinky dress. She was done with her seduction attempts.
“Lord.” Zuri greeted him as she usually did. “It is a relief to see you well.”
“And it’s good to see you too, given I owe you my life.”
Zuri’s features lightened. “I am all the more glad to have been of service to you, lord.”
Nicole frowned Zuri’s way. “What’d she do?”
“Zuri is the reason I was able to turn into a dire rat in the courtyard today,” Drake said. “She gave me a way to activate my rarity that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. That’s the only reason I, Lydia, and Emily are alive.”
Nicole nodded Zuri’s way. “Nice one.”
“Thank you,” Zuri said evenly. “Now, lord. You have need of us?”
“I do.” He looked over them all in turn. “As much as I’d like to wait for Lydia and Emily to join us, I think this discussion can’t wait. First... what time is it?” He realized he hadn’t asked, and this room had no windows.
“Just past supper,” Valentia said. “Why do you ask?”
“I have a date.”
Nicole tilted her head. “Really?”
Olivia gasped and clasped her hands together. “Oh lord, that’s wonderful! Who is she?” She gasped and then looked down. “I mean, of course it isn’t my place to ask.”
Drake chuckled at all of their reactions, most especially Valentia’s. “It’s not a romantic date. Just a meeting I need to take. If I’d missed it, I’d have been pissed.”
“Is that why you assembled us?” Valentia asked coolly.
“We’re here to figure out why Arno betrayed us.”
Drake could swear the temperature in the room cooled by several degrees, and he doubted that was just Valentia. Every person in the room, other than him, now looked distinctly uncomfortable. That meant they all understood just how serious this was.
Valentia spoke first. “We knew that betrayal was a risk once you removed all compulsions from every blood thrall in this manor.”
“We did,” Drake assured her. “To be clear, I don’t blame any of you for this. I knew what I was signing up for when I gave up on magic-enforced slavery, and I didn’t call you here to yell at you. I need your thoughts and input. We need to know how we were compromised.”
“In what sense, lord?” Zuri asked.
“I need to know everything about Arno,” Drake said. “Does he have family outside the manor that might be in danger? Did he have any gambling debts? Could another manor lord have promised him a huge sum of gold if he let those assassins in through the tunnel?”
“Wow,” Nicole said. “Those possibilities weren’t ever a problem before.”
“Hush,” Valentia cautioned. She looked to Drake. “Lydia would know.”
“I know,” Drake agreed. “But she’s resting.”
“Whatever was promised Arno, he did not receive it,” Valentia continued thoughtfully. “Sachi found him with his throat slit. The assassins slit his throat right after he opened the secret passage into the kitchen.”
“That suggests coercion, right?” Drake asked. “If he took a bribe, he would have made sure the person offering it told him he wouldn’t be harmed. How could they deceive him?”
Arno, unless he was an idiot, would have asked for an assurance he could not be killed by any assassins. And since whoever was hiring him couldn’t lie, they would have given it. That suggested the person who hired him hadn’t known Arno was going to be killed by the assassins as well, but from there, it got ever more complex.
“There would need to be multiple layers to this,” Zuri agreed. “Yet you are correct, lord. If he was bribed, someone must have told Arno he would not be killed. And if he was coerced, he would have had no choice but to hope he would not be.”
“And people can’t speak that which they do not believe, right?” Drake remembered the test he’d done with Lydia’s handkerchief. She hadn’t been able to tell him it was in either hand until she knew for certain. “Still... what if it was possible to deceive Arno another way?”
“How?” Nicole asked curiously.
“Val, could it have been the same rarity that they used to frame you for Steward Rodney’s murder?”
If Drake’s enemy had a way to make people see things that weren’t there, perhaps Arno had seen a fake person who hired him and even heard them say he would be spared. Still... that felt flimsy. He hated that rarities could basically do anything in the world.
“What rarity is this?” Nicole asked. “What are you talking about?”
Drake couldn’t remember who he’d told about the incident in Skybreak Manor, and he certainly didn’t know who Valentia had told, so he’d just cover all bases. “Someone working for my enemy made one of Lord Skybreak’s blood thralls see Val stab Steward Rodney in the chest with an ice spike. She never did that, of course. They can make people see illusions.”
“That’s lame.” Nicole frowned at Valentia. “And you didn’t tell me about that.”
“I didn’t want to worry you, and you were still recovering,” Valentia said firmly. “This is also not the time for such debate. Our lord needs our counsel.”
“Don’t remember the old lord needing counsel,” Nicole said. “But hey, I’m game.”
Drake was starting to get a feel for Nicole. She seemed more relaxed and casual than any battle maid he’d met so far. Hopefully, that meant she’d be easier to win to his side than the others had been. Regardless, they needed to secure his manor.
“So what if he wasn’t bribed or coerced?” Drake asked. “What if he saw an illusion that made him open those doors without even knowing he was betraying me? Is that possible?”
“I don’t see how,” Valentia said crossly. “Even targeted rarities require line of sight. So even if the person who tried to implicate me somehow got over the walls, which shouldn’t be possible, they would still be unable to target a servant in the cellars.”
“I agree,” Zuri said. “The only way I can imagine someone could trick or compel Arno into opening the kitchen and tunnel entries is through targeted magic, which would be possible if they knew his name. Yet even then, I know of no rarity that could reach him through stone, and they would have had to remain in proximity despite him being underground.”
Zuri was right. Even if someone could reach Arno through the manor walls and the stone, they’d still have to have followed him along the entire tunnel, which would have led to them stumbling into silverwood or the manor walls. It just didn’t work.
So bribery or coercion made the most sense. If only Lydia wasn’t in recovery. She would likely know everything there was to tell about Arno and how he’d been compromised.
“This is horrible,” Olivia said quietly. “One of our own let people those assassins in to kill Lord Gloomwood, after he helped us.” She thumped a foot. “We should question them all!”
Zuri nodded. “It may be a good time to organize another assemblage. We have not had one since Lord Gloomwood took over the manor.”
“What’s an assemblage?” Drake asked.
“It’s where every blood thrall in your employ meets with and swears their loyalty to you under pain of death,” Zuri said. “Typically, it is done while you stand atop the stairs in the main hall. Below, your thralls present themselves and renew their vow of loyalty to you.”
Drake snorted. “So I set aside an entire day to have people suck up to me or die? That sounds fun, but I don’t see how it helps us. I can’t compel them to answer my questions.”
“Yet if they do not speak, you will know they have reason not to speak,” Valentia reminded him. “In that way, you could verify the loyalty of every thrall in this manor.”
“Not really. If he was coerced, Arno may have believed he was loyal to me up until the point he couldn’t be loyal any longer. Also, threatening people with death is what Dickcheese would do, and I’m not him.”
“Dickcheese?” Nicole asked. “Is that a new thrall?”
“That is the name of our former lord,” Valentia said calmly.
Nicole snorted. “Seriously?”
As she frowned at Nicole, Valentia stiffened. “I have just had a thought.”
“Nice,” Nicole said. “You going to share?”
“What is it?” Drake prompted.
“Zuri may be right about the need for you to speak personally with each blood thrall in your manor. Ask every thrall who serves you if they are wearing an obedience fetish.”
Drake gasped as he spotted a weakness he hadn’t considered. “You have more of those things? I thought the only two Dickcheese had were in the torture dungeon!”
“Those assassins must have traveled a great distance to make this attempt on your life,” Valentia said. “They were a small squad who were highly trained and well equipped. They also seem to know the floor plan of your manor, which, I should remind you, remains missing. The floor plans were under lock and key before they vanished. Hiring talent like those you defeated today and smuggling them the floor plan to the manor would take weeks, not days.”
“And I’ve been here, what... two weeks?” It was hard to keep track. “So whoever hired those assassins must have set this plot in motion before I even arrived. In other words, Dickcheese could have placed an obedience fetish on Arno and ordered him to admit those assassins in two weeks if he didn’t change the order.”
Ending the compulsions of the blood pact wouldn’t also end the compulsions of an obedience fetish, because they were two different things. Any obedience fetish that still compelled one of his people would be a ticking time bomb... and what if there was more than one? There could be multiple fetish-compromised people!
Valentia nodded. “I believe you might be right, lord.”
“You were right,” Drake pointed out. “If it’s true. So how can we know for sure? Did anyone find a fetish on Arno’s body?”
“A fetish can even be placed inside the body if necessary,” Valentia said grimly. “It could easily have been missed in a routine examination.”
Drake paled. “You can stick a fetish inside someone?”
“Only near the heart, lord,” Nicole said. “It has to be in proximity to the heart.”
“This does seem plausible,” Zuri said thoughtfully. “If Lord Dickcheese placed an obedience fetish on or within Arno before you arrived, and then ordered him to open the secret passage into the manor on a particular night at a particular time, the fact that you removed the compulsion of the blood pact would not matter.”
This was worrying. “Can an obedience fetish override a blood pact?”
“The compulsion of a fetish can win out in the short term, but only if it forces the target to do something that doesn’t directly contradict the pact. So while Lord Dickcheese would not have been able to use an obedience fetish to force Arno to murder you... he did not, after all, have any way to know you would alter the blood pact... it is possible the compulsion provided by the fetish could force him to open the passage. That was not a direct attack.”
“So what if a fetish forced someone to attack their lord when they were still under a blood pact? What compulsion wins then?”
“I do not know,” Zuri said. “It’s possible the subject might simply go mad.”
Drake grimaced. It sounded like this betrayal might have happened even if he hadn’t changed his blood pact, which was a small relief. Still, it was a reminder his morals came with consequences... and that Lord Dickcheese hadn’t had any.
Zuri continued. “In retrospect, hiring assassins to kill you is exactly the sort of plot the old lord would put in motion. A trap to eliminate you if you managed to eliminate him. Had he successfully defeated you when you arrived, he could simply have cancelled the contract.”
“Fucking bullshit,” Drake muttered. As much as he hated the idea of this, it also made an annoying amount of sense. “So basically, I could have sleeper agents all over my manor.”
Valentia stepped forward. “We must uncover any remaining standing orders at once. Start with me, lord. Ask me if I am compelled by an obedience fetish. If I do not tell you I am not compelled, you will know I am.”
He liked that she immediately volunteered, but he should have expected it. “Valentia, are you compelled by or wearing an obedience fetish?”
“No, lord.”
He repeated the question with Olivia and Nicole, and was relieved when each gave the proper response. When he got to Zuri, she simply stared in silence.
“Zuri?” Had she not heard him? “Are you compelled by an obedience fetish?”
Again she did not answer. As Valentia seized Zuri and slammed her to the floor facedown, Drake suddenly had a horrible suspicion. “Please tell me he didn’t do that to you!”
Instead of answering him, Zuri began to scream.
Nicole was as tall as Valentia but much slimmer, with an athlete’s frame. Her sleeves only came down to mid-bicep and showed off taut muscle that looked like it belonged to a gymnast or a circus performer. Her brown bangs fell across her forehead and framed her face.
As her gray eyes languidly took in Olivia and then met his, she looked... bored.
Valentia smoothly slid ahead of Nicole. “I am very glad to see you awake.”
His eldest battle maid looked truly concerned. He had worried her. Drake smiled and motioned for the two of them to come closer. “Emily and Lydia are going to recover. I asked.”
“I am glad to hear that,” Valentia said. “This is Nicole.” She gestured with one hand.
Beside her, Nicole offered an awkward wave. “Hey.”
Hey? That was a new one. Drake’s smile grew. “Hey yourself.”
Valentia colored visibly and offered Nicole a warning glance. “We talked about this. He may look young, but he is still Lord Gloomwood. Just because we are no longer compelled to serve him through the blood pact does not mean we do not show him respect.”
Nicole frowned. “Well I said hey.”
Valentia glanced his way and grimaced. “Forgive her casual manner. She is still recovering from our ordeal near Skybreak Manor.”
“It’s fine,” Drake assured them both. “So? Nicole? Here’s my new decree.”
Once Drake removed all her compulsions, Nicole glanced at Valentia. “I don’t feel any different. Can I really stab our lord now?”
“Do not attempt that,” Valentia warned.
“I’d only stab him a little,” Nicole insisted coyly. “Like, in the finger. As an experiment.”
“Let’s wait on the tests for now,” Drake cautioned. “Please. Now, where’s Zuri?”
The door opened once more, and Valentia and Nicole’s gaze snapped in that direction like a hawk at the rustle of prey. Both visibly relaxed as Zuri cautiously strode into view, looking between the battle maids and Drake. Her expression eased as she saw him awake.
Drake was pleased to see Zuri now wore an actual tunic and loose cloth pants. She hadn’t walked in yet another slinky dress. She was done with her seduction attempts.
“Lord.” Zuri greeted him as she usually did. “It is a relief to see you well.”
“And it’s good to see you too, given I owe you my life.”
Zuri’s features lightened. “I am all the more glad to have been of service to you, lord.”
Nicole frowned Zuri’s way. “What’d she do?”
“Zuri is the reason I was able to turn into a dire rat in the courtyard today,” Drake said. “She gave me a way to activate my rarity that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. That’s the only reason I, Lydia, and Emily are alive.”
Nicole nodded Zuri’s way. “Nice one.”
“Thank you,” Zuri said evenly. “Now, lord. You have need of us?”
“I do.” He looked over them all in turn. “As much as I’d like to wait for Lydia and Emily to join us, I think this discussion can’t wait. First... what time is it?” He realized he hadn’t asked, and this room had no windows.
“Just past supper,” Valentia said. “Why do you ask?”
“I have a date.”
Nicole tilted her head. “Really?”
Olivia gasped and clasped her hands together. “Oh lord, that’s wonderful! Who is she?” She gasped and then looked down. “I mean, of course it isn’t my place to ask.”
Drake chuckled at all of their reactions, most especially Valentia’s. “It’s not a romantic date. Just a meeting I need to take. If I’d missed it, I’d have been pissed.”
“Is that why you assembled us?” Valentia asked coolly.
“We’re here to figure out why Arno betrayed us.”
Drake could swear the temperature in the room cooled by several degrees, and he doubted that was just Valentia. Every person in the room, other than him, now looked distinctly uncomfortable. That meant they all understood just how serious this was.
Valentia spoke first. “We knew that betrayal was a risk once you removed all compulsions from every blood thrall in this manor.”
“We did,” Drake assured her. “To be clear, I don’t blame any of you for this. I knew what I was signing up for when I gave up on magic-enforced slavery, and I didn’t call you here to yell at you. I need your thoughts and input. We need to know how we were compromised.”
“In what sense, lord?” Zuri asked.
“I need to know everything about Arno,” Drake said. “Does he have family outside the manor that might be in danger? Did he have any gambling debts? Could another manor lord have promised him a huge sum of gold if he let those assassins in through the tunnel?”
“Wow,” Nicole said. “Those possibilities weren’t ever a problem before.”
“Hush,” Valentia cautioned. She looked to Drake. “Lydia would know.”
“I know,” Drake agreed. “But she’s resting.”
“Whatever was promised Arno, he did not receive it,” Valentia continued thoughtfully. “Sachi found him with his throat slit. The assassins slit his throat right after he opened the secret passage into the kitchen.”
“That suggests coercion, right?” Drake asked. “If he took a bribe, he would have made sure the person offering it told him he wouldn’t be harmed. How could they deceive him?”
Arno, unless he was an idiot, would have asked for an assurance he could not be killed by any assassins. And since whoever was hiring him couldn’t lie, they would have given it. That suggested the person who hired him hadn’t known Arno was going to be killed by the assassins as well, but from there, it got ever more complex.
“There would need to be multiple layers to this,” Zuri agreed. “Yet you are correct, lord. If he was bribed, someone must have told Arno he would not be killed. And if he was coerced, he would have had no choice but to hope he would not be.”
“And people can’t speak that which they do not believe, right?” Drake remembered the test he’d done with Lydia’s handkerchief. She hadn’t been able to tell him it was in either hand until she knew for certain. “Still... what if it was possible to deceive Arno another way?”
“How?” Nicole asked curiously.
“Val, could it have been the same rarity that they used to frame you for Steward Rodney’s murder?”
If Drake’s enemy had a way to make people see things that weren’t there, perhaps Arno had seen a fake person who hired him and even heard them say he would be spared. Still... that felt flimsy. He hated that rarities could basically do anything in the world.
“What rarity is this?” Nicole asked. “What are you talking about?”
Drake couldn’t remember who he’d told about the incident in Skybreak Manor, and he certainly didn’t know who Valentia had told, so he’d just cover all bases. “Someone working for my enemy made one of Lord Skybreak’s blood thralls see Val stab Steward Rodney in the chest with an ice spike. She never did that, of course. They can make people see illusions.”
“That’s lame.” Nicole frowned at Valentia. “And you didn’t tell me about that.”
“I didn’t want to worry you, and you were still recovering,” Valentia said firmly. “This is also not the time for such debate. Our lord needs our counsel.”
“Don’t remember the old lord needing counsel,” Nicole said. “But hey, I’m game.”
Drake was starting to get a feel for Nicole. She seemed more relaxed and casual than any battle maid he’d met so far. Hopefully, that meant she’d be easier to win to his side than the others had been. Regardless, they needed to secure his manor.
“So what if he wasn’t bribed or coerced?” Drake asked. “What if he saw an illusion that made him open those doors without even knowing he was betraying me? Is that possible?”
“I don’t see how,” Valentia said crossly. “Even targeted rarities require line of sight. So even if the person who tried to implicate me somehow got over the walls, which shouldn’t be possible, they would still be unable to target a servant in the cellars.”
“I agree,” Zuri said. “The only way I can imagine someone could trick or compel Arno into opening the kitchen and tunnel entries is through targeted magic, which would be possible if they knew his name. Yet even then, I know of no rarity that could reach him through stone, and they would have had to remain in proximity despite him being underground.”
Zuri was right. Even if someone could reach Arno through the manor walls and the stone, they’d still have to have followed him along the entire tunnel, which would have led to them stumbling into silverwood or the manor walls. It just didn’t work.
So bribery or coercion made the most sense. If only Lydia wasn’t in recovery. She would likely know everything there was to tell about Arno and how he’d been compromised.
“This is horrible,” Olivia said quietly. “One of our own let people those assassins in to kill Lord Gloomwood, after he helped us.” She thumped a foot. “We should question them all!”
Zuri nodded. “It may be a good time to organize another assemblage. We have not had one since Lord Gloomwood took over the manor.”
“What’s an assemblage?” Drake asked.
“It’s where every blood thrall in your employ meets with and swears their loyalty to you under pain of death,” Zuri said. “Typically, it is done while you stand atop the stairs in the main hall. Below, your thralls present themselves and renew their vow of loyalty to you.”
Drake snorted. “So I set aside an entire day to have people suck up to me or die? That sounds fun, but I don’t see how it helps us. I can’t compel them to answer my questions.”
“Yet if they do not speak, you will know they have reason not to speak,” Valentia reminded him. “In that way, you could verify the loyalty of every thrall in this manor.”
“Not really. If he was coerced, Arno may have believed he was loyal to me up until the point he couldn’t be loyal any longer. Also, threatening people with death is what Dickcheese would do, and I’m not him.”
“Dickcheese?” Nicole asked. “Is that a new thrall?”
“That is the name of our former lord,” Valentia said calmly.
Nicole snorted. “Seriously?”
As she frowned at Nicole, Valentia stiffened. “I have just had a thought.”
“Nice,” Nicole said. “You going to share?”
“What is it?” Drake prompted.
“Zuri may be right about the need for you to speak personally with each blood thrall in your manor. Ask every thrall who serves you if they are wearing an obedience fetish.”
Drake gasped as he spotted a weakness he hadn’t considered. “You have more of those things? I thought the only two Dickcheese had were in the torture dungeon!”
“Those assassins must have traveled a great distance to make this attempt on your life,” Valentia said. “They were a small squad who were highly trained and well equipped. They also seem to know the floor plan of your manor, which, I should remind you, remains missing. The floor plans were under lock and key before they vanished. Hiring talent like those you defeated today and smuggling them the floor plan to the manor would take weeks, not days.”
“And I’ve been here, what... two weeks?” It was hard to keep track. “So whoever hired those assassins must have set this plot in motion before I even arrived. In other words, Dickcheese could have placed an obedience fetish on Arno and ordered him to admit those assassins in two weeks if he didn’t change the order.”
Ending the compulsions of the blood pact wouldn’t also end the compulsions of an obedience fetish, because they were two different things. Any obedience fetish that still compelled one of his people would be a ticking time bomb... and what if there was more than one? There could be multiple fetish-compromised people!
Valentia nodded. “I believe you might be right, lord.”
“You were right,” Drake pointed out. “If it’s true. So how can we know for sure? Did anyone find a fetish on Arno’s body?”
“A fetish can even be placed inside the body if necessary,” Valentia said grimly. “It could easily have been missed in a routine examination.”
Drake paled. “You can stick a fetish inside someone?”
“Only near the heart, lord,” Nicole said. “It has to be in proximity to the heart.”
“This does seem plausible,” Zuri said thoughtfully. “If Lord Dickcheese placed an obedience fetish on or within Arno before you arrived, and then ordered him to open the secret passage into the manor on a particular night at a particular time, the fact that you removed the compulsion of the blood pact would not matter.”
This was worrying. “Can an obedience fetish override a blood pact?”
“The compulsion of a fetish can win out in the short term, but only if it forces the target to do something that doesn’t directly contradict the pact. So while Lord Dickcheese would not have been able to use an obedience fetish to force Arno to murder you... he did not, after all, have any way to know you would alter the blood pact... it is possible the compulsion provided by the fetish could force him to open the passage. That was not a direct attack.”
“So what if a fetish forced someone to attack their lord when they were still under a blood pact? What compulsion wins then?”
“I do not know,” Zuri said. “It’s possible the subject might simply go mad.”
Drake grimaced. It sounded like this betrayal might have happened even if he hadn’t changed his blood pact, which was a small relief. Still, it was a reminder his morals came with consequences... and that Lord Dickcheese hadn’t had any.
Zuri continued. “In retrospect, hiring assassins to kill you is exactly the sort of plot the old lord would put in motion. A trap to eliminate you if you managed to eliminate him. Had he successfully defeated you when you arrived, he could simply have cancelled the contract.”
“Fucking bullshit,” Drake muttered. As much as he hated the idea of this, it also made an annoying amount of sense. “So basically, I could have sleeper agents all over my manor.”
Valentia stepped forward. “We must uncover any remaining standing orders at once. Start with me, lord. Ask me if I am compelled by an obedience fetish. If I do not tell you I am not compelled, you will know I am.”
He liked that she immediately volunteered, but he should have expected it. “Valentia, are you compelled by or wearing an obedience fetish?”
“No, lord.”
He repeated the question with Olivia and Nicole, and was relieved when each gave the proper response. When he got to Zuri, she simply stared in silence.
“Zuri?” Had she not heard him? “Are you compelled by an obedience fetish?”
Again she did not answer. As Valentia seized Zuri and slammed her to the floor facedown, Drake suddenly had a horrible suspicion. “Please tell me he didn’t do that to you!”
Instead of answering him, Zuri began to scream.
