Drake nearly fell out of the bed as he clambered to the edge. “Did you freeze her?” Zuri’s agonized shrieks were horrifying, like she was being ripped apart from the inside out.
“I’ve done nothing but restrain her!” Valentia shouted in frustration. “Is this him?”
She meant Lord Dickcheese, somehow. Stilled pinned to the floor on her stomach, Zuri thrashed and howled as if she was under the effects of an agony bracelet. Yet her arms were completely bare, and her chest had been far too visible from the moment he met her.
The door slammed open as Raylan rushed back into the room, eyes wide, carrying a mug of mead he immediately tossed aside. “What’s happened?”
“Zuri’s got a fetish.” Nicole dropped to Zuri’s other side, then glanced up. “Hold her.”
A visibly frightened Olivia nevertheless rushed to drop beside Valentia, then aided her in pinning the shrieking, trembling woman to the floor. Raylan joined them as well. Drake stumbled out of bed on bare feet, still a bit dizzy, but saw no way to help them.
Nicole’s hand dropped to her skirt and then emerged with a glowing golden knife like Lydia’s. Then, she stabbed the tip straight into Zuri’s middle back.
Drake gasped and snatched her wrist before she could stab Zuri again. “It’s not her!”
She glanced his way in obvious annoyance. “I know that. If we can’t see the fetish, he must have buried it in proximity to her heart. I need to dig it out of there.”
Drake stared in horror as he stood up. “Shit. Find it!”
“Already doing that.” Nicole tore the back of Zuri’s tunic straight off, leaving her sweat-soaked back bare. Without the tunic to hide it, it became obvious how tight Zuri’s muscles were and how badly her spine was bending. She was in absolute agony.
As Raylan, Olivia, and Valentia held Zuri down, Nicole stabbed again and again into Zuri’s back with her knife, tiny little cuts. Each drew a divot of blood but seemed to cause no worse damage. Finally, Nicole’s knife clinked audibly.
“Found it.” Nicole looked at Valentia and Raylan. “Get ready to heal her after I cut this out.” She looked to Drake. “Help the others hold her down. I need to cut this out of her, and if she thrashes too much, I could cut her spine with it.”
Drake dropped to Zuri’s other side and pinned the thrashing, screaming woman with his full weight. “Raylan, other arm! Val, Oli, legs!”
As Raylan followed his orders, Olivia leapt over him and dropped her whole body on Zuri’s legs. With Valentia and Olivia pinning Olivia’s legs and Raylan and Drake pinning her upper body from above, they managed to immobilize a shrieking, shaking Zuri just enough that she might not die in surgery.
Drake didn’t have the luxury to watch Nicole work and lacked the desire. He couldn’t hear the sound of a knife slipping into flesh over all Zuri’s shrieking, but then, just when he was certain the poor woman would break in half beneath them, her shrieks abruptly ended.
Zuri went limp beneath his weight. Suddenly worried he’d suffocated her, Drake rolled off her and crawled back. “Is she—”
“Alive,” Raylan assured them with audible relief. “Her warmth remains strong.”
“Thank the Eidolons,” Olivia whispered.
Drake sat back and breathed as he watched Valentia, Nicole, and Olivia all pass their glowing white gloves up and down each side of Zuri’s bloodied back. Raylan merely observed, perhaps because his own healing might interfere with their healing gloves. As his battle maids spent their own blood to power their healing gloves, Zuri’s flesh mended.
Still, there was more blood everywhere, likely from Nicole’s field surgery, and a small black disc covered in blood on the carpet. Drake could see the shaky rise and fall of Zuri’s back. While each breath came with a harsh and nasty rattle, she was breathing. She was alive.
But she was obviously going to need a minute.
Drake rose, stared down at the visibly unconscious, horribly tortured woman lying near breathless at his feet, and then ground his teeth. He stomped over where the small black disc sat covered in Zuri’s blood. He picked it up.
“Lord!” Valentia called out in alarm. “That is a priceless artifact!”
Drake gripped the hateful little disc on both sides in two fingers and bent it until it snapped, then tossed it in the bowl where he’d vomited his man guts. “Now it’s trash.”
“That was unnecessary,” Valentia said calmly. “Obedience fetishes are valuable.”
Nicole snorted. “That was satisfying, though.”
Still seething at the fact that he couldn’t kill Lord Dickcheese again, Drake turned to Raylan. “Let’s get her in a bed. Right now. Can she breathe on her chest?”
The man nodded calmly. “She should be fine, lord, so long as we monitor her.”
Working together, he, Raylan, Valentia, and Nicole lifted Zuri’s limp body and settled her, as gently as possible, on her stomach on the bed. There was enough blood on her back that the sheets would need a good bleaching, but that wasn’t important. Zuri was alive, and Drake was still incensed at all the agony the old lord had inflicted on her from beyond the grave.
They had only just settled Zuri in the bed when her eyelids fluttered. Breaths still raspy in her throat, she forced her eyes open. It took her a moment to focus on Drake.
She smiled. “I knew you would not fall victim to his scheme.”
“Don’t talk,” Drake ordered. “You need to rest.”
“We don’t have that luxury right now,” Valentia said from his side.
Drake frowned at her. “Why not?”
“Zuri was, until just now, being compelled by an obedience fetish. She could have instigated more plots or even be involved in one right now. We must know all she knows about the old lord’s plots so we can disarm any remaining traps before they snap shut.”
“She is right,” Zuri rasped. “I can speak, lord. You have saved me, and I must reveal everything I can to you right now.”
“Lord?” Olivia spoke up timidly. “No one is watching the door.”
“Right. Good call, Olivia. Can you go stand watch?”
She nodded eagerly. “At once, lord!”
As Olivia hurried away to make sure they weren’t attacked again, Drake turned back to Zuri. “Nicole saved you, not me. But... if you can talk, then talk.”
“Be a dear and flip me over?” Zuri asked. “My back does hurt, but I can barely breathe right now.”
“Of course,” Raylan said gently.
Drake immediately turned his back out of courtesy as the others flipped Zuri over, given she still lacked a top. Not long after, Raylan spoke. “She is resting comfortably now, lord.”
Drake cautiously turned around, and as he did so, he was surprised to see Nicole giving him an odd look. What was that about? He’d ask her later.
Zuri now looked at ease. She rested in what had been Drake’s bed with her head propped up and a sheet pulled up to her collarbone. The way she smiled at him, a tired yet truly warm smile, felt more genuine than any smile he’d seen from her since he arrived.
She almost looked like a different woman now. How much had that obedience fetish been screwing with her brain? He couldn’t imagine it had been pleasant.
“Thank you, lord, again.”
Drake waved her off. “Thank Nicole. Now... can you tell me what the fuck that was all about? Why did the old lord stick that fetish inside you?”
Zuri took a breath. “Lord Dickcheese gave three standing orders a week before you arrived. First, he ordered me to seduce anyone who took his place and then, once we shared in the blood pact, to order your blood thralls to kill each other. Second, he ordered me not to reveal this fact. Finally, after your thralls killed each other, he instructed me to kill myself.”
Drake stared as he mentally vacillated between shock, horror, and rage. He focused past all that. Lord Dickcheese was dead, Zuri had survived, and he needed to move forward. But if he ever met anyone who had a rarity that could bring back the dead, he’d have them bring the old lord so he could kill the man a dozen times over.
Drake took a calming breath. “So he definitely knew if he failed, his replacement wouldn’t know how a blood pact worked.”
Zuri nodded in silence.
“But why hurt you? What was all that screaming about?”
“My punishment.” Zuri swallowed. “He gave a fourth command as well. If anyone were ever to make me reveal the presence of the obedience fetish inside me, I was to feel as if my body was being shredded from the inside out. And then die.”
Drake clenched his fists. “But we saved you.”
“You did. We are fortunate that the old lord intended me to suffer for some time before death. That allowed Nicole time to dig the fetish out of me before the death command completed. Without her quick action, I would not have survived.”
“That was easy,” said Nicole. “I’m good with knives.”
Still grimacing, Drake shook his head. He’d almost killed Zuri without meaning to. “Why order my thralls to kill each other? Why not just order you to kill me?”
“The blood pact would not allow that,” Zuri said. “Even the commands of an obedience fetish cannot supersede the demands of a blood pact, so I could not harm you directly. However, whoever controls the blood pact can compel those within it to attack their enemies.”
“So he wanted to make everyone in the manor my enemies.” Drake groaned. “Have all my blood thralls slaughter each other and leave me alive, just to fuck me over.”
“That is correct, lord,” Zuri said. “I was to be the instigator of our manor’s demise.”
“Obedience fetish,” Drake said sharply. “Not you.”
As she blinked rapidly, he recognized the wetness in her eyes. “You may not be able to imagine how thrilled I was when you removed all compulsions from everyone in the manor.”
“You cried,” Drake remembered. “I thought you were just overwhelmed.”
“I was,” Zuri said quietly. “While the fetish would not allow me to reveal that you had saved us, the moment you removed all compulsions of the blood pact, you saved the manor and every thrall inside it. I could die knowing that the old lord’s plot would never succeed.”
Nicole grinned. “You tried to seduce Lord Gloomwood? Bad Zuri.”
“Once you assured me I would not succeed in my seduction,” Zuri said, “I finally found hope that you would uncover the old lord’s plot. Unless I succeeded in the first command, to seduce you, the others could not activate.”
Nicole glanced at him. “Thanks for keeping it in your pants, lord.”
Drake cocked an eyebrow at her. “You just say whatever’s on your mind, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “Gonna kill me for it?”
He chuckled despite how angry he was at what the old lord had done to Zuri... or maybe to ease the horror of it. “No. And remember, now, you can kill me if I try that.”
“And that doesn’t concern you?”
“I mean, should it?”
She crossed her arms and glanced at Zuri. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Beside her, Valentia closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with both hands.
“All right, Zuri,” Drake said. “Is there anything else that fetish prevented you from telling me? And to be clear, nothing in the old blood pact can affect you, right?”
“It cannot. Through the obedience fetish, the old lord also commanded I keep two things from you. First, I could not volunteer that Samuel’s rarity was physical regeneration. I could only answer a direct question if asked, and only if I needed to answer to avoid suspicion.”
“So that’s why you didn’t tell me until I asked,” Drake said. “That all makes sense now.”
As Zuri blinked, real tears slid down her cheeks. “I couldn’t help him.”
“You did,” he reminded her. “We did. What’s the other thing?”
“Your spies await your orders. Samuel is the man who maintained your spy network, but he took missives from your spies and sent them in a secret chamber only you can access.”
“Where is it?”
“The prior lords of Gloomwood wished that knowledge to remain with them.”
“Fuck that. I trust everyone in this room.”
“Respectfully, lord, you should not,” Valentia said. “Not because we are not loyal, but because others knowing how to contact your spies will place the manor at further risk.”
“She’s right, lord,” Raylan said. “With your permission, I will excuse myself. I should check on Lydia and Emily as well.”
Drake mentally debated, then nodded. “All right, Raylan. Thanks again.”
As the man bowed his head and left the room, they all waited until the door closed behind him.
Drake looked to Zuri. “If I can’t tell my battle maids where I’m going when I check in with my spies, who’s going to protect me when I go hang in my secret lair?”
“You need protection in your secret lair?” Nicole asked in amusement.
“I need protection everywhere. I’ve had hard lessons on that.”
“Lord Dickcheese forbid Samuel to reveal the location to others,” Zuri said. “I only know it because a prior lord revealed it to me. So if you wish, I can reveal it to all here.”
Drake was tempted to order her to reveal it right now, but he glanced at Valentia instead. “You think it’s a good idea for me to go into a room no one knows about, alone?”
She shook her head. “It is not. However, we need not all know how to find it.” She glanced at Nicole. “Can I trust you to watch him in this spy room?”
Nicole groaned. “Why me?”
“Because no one will see you enter it,” Valentia said. “Or leave.”
“Oh, fine.” Nicole glanced at Drake. “That work for you, boss?”
Drake nodded. Valentia squeezed Nicole’s hand, glanced at Drake, and then bowed her head before she too filed out. That left him alone with Zuri and Nicole.
“All right.” Drake turned back to Zuri. “Lay it on us.”
And with no more ado, Zuri told Drake how to contact his spy network.
Next Week: Cringe-worthy interrogations! Revisions to daydrinking policies! And the full power of Drake's rarity is revealed.
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Drake nearly fell out of the bed as he clambered to the edge. “Did you freeze her?” Zuri’s agonized shrieks were horrifying, like she was being ripped apart from the inside out.
“I’ve done nothing but restrain her!” Valentia shouted in frustration. “Is this him?”
She meant Lord Dickcheese, somehow. Stilled pinned to the floor on her stomach, Zuri thrashed and howled as if she was under the effects of an agony bracelet. Yet her arms were completely bare, and her chest had been far too visible from the moment he met her.
The door slammed open as Raylan rushed back into the room, eyes wide, carrying a mug of mead he immediately tossed aside. “What’s happened?”
“Zuri’s got a fetish.” Nicole dropped to Zuri’s other side, then glanced up. “Hold her.”
A visibly frightened Olivia nevertheless rushed to drop beside Valentia, then aided her in pinning the shrieking, trembling woman to the floor. Raylan joined them as well. Drake stumbled out of bed on bare feet, still a bit dizzy, but saw no way to help them.
Nicole’s hand dropped to her skirt and then emerged with a glowing golden knife like Lydia’s. Then, she stabbed the tip straight into Zuri’s middle back.
Drake gasped and snatched her wrist before she could stab Zuri again. “It’s not her!”
She glanced his way in obvious annoyance. “I know that. If we can’t see the fetish, he must have buried it in proximity to her heart. I need to dig it out of there.”
Drake stared in horror as he stood up. “Shit. Find it!”
“Already doing that.” Nicole tore the back of Zuri’s tunic straight off, leaving her sweat-soaked back bare. Without the tunic to hide it, it became obvious how tight Zuri’s muscles were and how badly her spine was bending. She was in absolute agony.
As Raylan, Olivia, and Valentia held Zuri down, Nicole stabbed again and again into Zuri’s back with her knife, tiny little cuts. Each drew a divot of blood but seemed to cause no worse damage. Finally, Nicole’s knife clinked audibly.
“Found it.” Nicole looked at Valentia and Raylan. “Get ready to heal her after I cut this out.” She looked to Drake. “Help the others hold her down. I need to cut this out of her, and if she thrashes too much, I could cut her spine with it.”
Drake dropped to Zuri’s other side and pinned the thrashing, screaming woman with his full weight. “Raylan, other arm! Val, Oli, legs!”
As Raylan followed his orders, Olivia leapt over him and dropped her whole body on Zuri’s legs. With Valentia and Olivia pinning Olivia’s legs and Raylan and Drake pinning her upper body from above, they managed to immobilize a shrieking, shaking Zuri just enough that she might not die in surgery.
Drake didn’t have the luxury to watch Nicole work and lacked the desire. He couldn’t hear the sound of a knife slipping into flesh over all Zuri’s shrieking, but then, just when he was certain the poor woman would break in half beneath them, her shrieks abruptly ended.
Zuri went limp beneath his weight. Suddenly worried he’d suffocated her, Drake rolled off her and crawled back. “Is she—”
“Alive,” Raylan assured them with audible relief. “Her warmth remains strong.”
“Thank the Eidolons,” Olivia whispered.
Drake sat back and breathed as he watched Valentia, Nicole, and Olivia all pass their glowing white gloves up and down each side of Zuri’s bloodied back. Raylan merely observed, perhaps because his own healing might interfere with their healing gloves. As his battle maids spent their own blood to power their healing gloves, Zuri’s flesh mended.
Still, there was more blood everywhere, likely from Nicole’s field surgery, and a small black disc covered in blood on the carpet. Drake could see the shaky rise and fall of Zuri’s back. While each breath came with a harsh and nasty rattle, she was breathing. She was alive.
But she was obviously going to need a minute.
Drake rose, stared down at the visibly unconscious, horribly tortured woman lying near breathless at his feet, and then ground his teeth. He stomped over where the small black disc sat covered in Zuri’s blood. He picked it up.
“Lord!” Valentia called out in alarm. “That is a priceless artifact!”
Drake gripped the hateful little disc on both sides in two fingers and bent it until it snapped, then tossed it in the bowl where he’d vomited his man guts. “Now it’s trash.”
“That was unnecessary,” Valentia said calmly. “Obedience fetishes are valuable.”
Nicole snorted. “That was satisfying, though.”
Still seething at the fact that he couldn’t kill Lord Dickcheese again, Drake turned to Raylan. “Let’s get her in a bed. Right now. Can she breathe on her chest?”
The man nodded calmly. “She should be fine, lord, so long as we monitor her.”
Working together, he, Raylan, Valentia, and Nicole lifted Zuri’s limp body and settled her, as gently as possible, on her stomach on the bed. There was enough blood on her back that the sheets would need a good bleaching, but that wasn’t important. Zuri was alive, and Drake was still incensed at all the agony the old lord had inflicted on her from beyond the grave.
They had only just settled Zuri in the bed when her eyelids fluttered. Breaths still raspy in her throat, she forced her eyes open. It took her a moment to focus on Drake.
She smiled. “I knew you would not fall victim to his scheme.”
“Don’t talk,” Drake ordered. “You need to rest.”
“We don’t have that luxury right now,” Valentia said from his side.
Drake frowned at her. “Why not?”
“Zuri was, until just now, being compelled by an obedience fetish. She could have instigated more plots or even be involved in one right now. We must know all she knows about the old lord’s plots so we can disarm any remaining traps before they snap shut.”
“She is right,” Zuri rasped. “I can speak, lord. You have saved me, and I must reveal everything I can to you right now.”
“Lord?” Olivia spoke up timidly. “No one is watching the door.”
“Right. Good call, Olivia. Can you go stand watch?”
She nodded eagerly. “At once, lord!”
As Olivia hurried away to make sure they weren’t attacked again, Drake turned back to Zuri. “Nicole saved you, not me. But... if you can talk, then talk.”
“Be a dear and flip me over?” Zuri asked. “My back does hurt, but I can barely breathe right now.”
“Of course,” Raylan said gently.
Drake immediately turned his back out of courtesy as the others flipped Zuri over, given she still lacked a top. Not long after, Raylan spoke. “She is resting comfortably now, lord.”
Drake cautiously turned around, and as he did so, he was surprised to see Nicole giving him an odd look. What was that about? He’d ask her later.
Zuri now looked at ease. She rested in what had been Drake’s bed with her head propped up and a sheet pulled up to her collarbone. The way she smiled at him, a tired yet truly warm smile, felt more genuine than any smile he’d seen from her since he arrived.
She almost looked like a different woman now. How much had that obedience fetish been screwing with her brain? He couldn’t imagine it had been pleasant.
“Thank you, lord, again.”
Drake waved her off. “Thank Nicole. Now... can you tell me what the fuck that was all about? Why did the old lord stick that fetish inside you?”
Zuri took a breath. “Lord Dickcheese gave three standing orders a week before you arrived. First, he ordered me to seduce anyone who took his place and then, once we shared in the blood pact, to order your blood thralls to kill each other. Second, he ordered me not to reveal this fact. Finally, after your thralls killed each other, he instructed me to kill myself.”
Drake stared as he mentally vacillated between shock, horror, and rage. He focused past all that. Lord Dickcheese was dead, Zuri had survived, and he needed to move forward. But if he ever met anyone who had a rarity that could bring back the dead, he’d have them bring the old lord so he could kill the man a dozen times over.
Drake took a calming breath. “So he definitely knew if he failed, his replacement wouldn’t know how a blood pact worked.”
Zuri nodded in silence.
“But why hurt you? What was all that screaming about?”
“My punishment.” Zuri swallowed. “He gave a fourth command as well. If anyone were ever to make me reveal the presence of the obedience fetish inside me, I was to feel as if my body was being shredded from the inside out. And then die.”
Drake clenched his fists. “But we saved you.”
“You did. We are fortunate that the old lord intended me to suffer for some time before death. That allowed Nicole time to dig the fetish out of me before the death command completed. Without her quick action, I would not have survived.”
“That was easy,” said Nicole. “I’m good with knives.”
Still grimacing, Drake shook his head. He’d almost killed Zuri without meaning to. “Why order my thralls to kill each other? Why not just order you to kill me?”
“The blood pact would not allow that,” Zuri said. “Even the commands of an obedience fetish cannot supersede the demands of a blood pact, so I could not harm you directly. However, whoever controls the blood pact can compel those within it to attack their enemies.”
“So he wanted to make everyone in the manor my enemies.” Drake groaned. “Have all my blood thralls slaughter each other and leave me alive, just to fuck me over.”
“That is correct, lord,” Zuri said. “I was to be the instigator of our manor’s demise.”
“Obedience fetish,” Drake said sharply. “Not you.”
As she blinked rapidly, he recognized the wetness in her eyes. “You may not be able to imagine how thrilled I was when you removed all compulsions from everyone in the manor.”
“You cried,” Drake remembered. “I thought you were just overwhelmed.”
“I was,” Zuri said quietly. “While the fetish would not allow me to reveal that you had saved us, the moment you removed all compulsions of the blood pact, you saved the manor and every thrall inside it. I could die knowing that the old lord’s plot would never succeed.”
Nicole grinned. “You tried to seduce Lord Gloomwood? Bad Zuri.”
“Once you assured me I would not succeed in my seduction,” Zuri said, “I finally found hope that you would uncover the old lord’s plot. Unless I succeeded in the first command, to seduce you, the others could not activate.”
Nicole glanced at him. “Thanks for keeping it in your pants, lord.”
Drake cocked an eyebrow at her. “You just say whatever’s on your mind, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “Gonna kill me for it?”
He chuckled despite how angry he was at what the old lord had done to Zuri... or maybe to ease the horror of it. “No. And remember, now, you can kill me if I try that.”
“And that doesn’t concern you?”
“I mean, should it?”
She crossed her arms and glanced at Zuri. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Beside her, Valentia closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with both hands.
“All right, Zuri,” Drake said. “Is there anything else that fetish prevented you from telling me? And to be clear, nothing in the old blood pact can affect you, right?”
“It cannot. Through the obedience fetish, the old lord also commanded I keep two things from you. First, I could not volunteer that Samuel’s rarity was physical regeneration. I could only answer a direct question if asked, and only if I needed to answer to avoid suspicion.”
“So that’s why you didn’t tell me until I asked,” Drake said. “That all makes sense now.”
As Zuri blinked, real tears slid down her cheeks. “I couldn’t help him.”
“You did,” he reminded her. “We did. What’s the other thing?”
“Your spies await your orders. Samuel is the man who maintained your spy network, but he took missives from your spies and sent them in a secret chamber only you can access.”
“Where is it?”
“The prior lords of Gloomwood wished that knowledge to remain with them.”
“Fuck that. I trust everyone in this room.”
“Respectfully, lord, you should not,” Valentia said. “Not because we are not loyal, but because others knowing how to contact your spies will place the manor at further risk.”
“She’s right, lord,” Raylan said. “With your permission, I will excuse myself. I should check on Lydia and Emily as well.”
Drake mentally debated, then nodded. “All right, Raylan. Thanks again.”
As the man bowed his head and left the room, they all waited until the door closed behind him.
Drake looked to Zuri. “If I can’t tell my battle maids where I’m going when I check in with my spies, who’s going to protect me when I go hang in my secret lair?”
“You need protection in your secret lair?” Nicole asked in amusement.
“I need protection everywhere. I’ve had hard lessons on that.”
“Lord Dickcheese forbid Samuel to reveal the location to others,” Zuri said. “I only know it because a prior lord revealed it to me. So if you wish, I can reveal it to all here.”
Drake was tempted to order her to reveal it right now, but he glanced at Valentia instead. “You think it’s a good idea for me to go into a room no one knows about, alone?”
She shook her head. “It is not. However, we need not all know how to find it.” She glanced at Nicole. “Can I trust you to watch him in this spy room?”
Nicole groaned. “Why me?”
“Because no one will see you enter it,” Valentia said. “Or leave.”
“Oh, fine.” Nicole glanced at Drake. “That work for you, boss?”
Drake nodded. Valentia squeezed Nicole’s hand, glanced at Drake, and then bowed her head before she too filed out. That left him alone with Zuri and Nicole.
“All right.” Drake turned back to Zuri. “Lay it on us.”
And with no more ado, Zuri told Drake how to contact his spy network.
Next Week: Cringe-worthy interrogations! Revisions to daydrinking policies! And the full power of Drake's rarity is revealed.
Read Ahead on My Patreon
Chat on My Discord
