There was only one mercy—under the influence of Phaedra’s gas, I did not return to the Void space within my soul. So Greg-Theryx himself could not boast about my downfall. Instead, I was haunted by nightmares, by the feeling of being devoured by beasts.

My eyes flashed open and red sunlight danced across my vision. For a moment, as I awoke, I forgot what had happened and, in my foolishness, expected things to be the same. It was only as I took in my surroundings that I remembered.

I looked down, noticing that I was still wearing the tattered remains of my uniform that had been torn the last time I had transformed. The bed sheets had been pulled over me to protect my modesty.

My wrists ached, and as I pulled at them, I realized I was chained to my bed. Sadly, I was not bound in harmless fire this time but by dull metal which resembled the collar around my neck.

Fuck. I cursed myself for not taking her more seriously. I had been so focused on Shatterbone and his goons that I had failed to consider Phaedra properly. If I wished to indulge in paranoia, I might have thought that Greg-Theryx gave me a misleading memory on purpose, one designed for me to fail.

But in the end, I could only blame myself. That was the long and short of it. If I had been smarter, stronger, I wouldn’t be in this situation. Now I had to find a way to get the hell out of it.

“Master, you’re awake,” Phaedra said from where she sat lounging in my reading chair, her feet kicked up onto the bed. She must have dragged the chair from across the room. How long had she waited for me to wake up from whatever she’d drugged us with?

“Phaedra, where is the High Priestess?” I tried to summon the Void energy in my soul. It wasn’t difficult—the sight of the green-skinned witch filled me with fury. I felt my arms beginning to grow, but Phaedra didn’t seem afraid.

“Dark Lord,” she said coolly. “Please, let us be civilized about this. Could you choke me to death before the guards arrived? Maybe, but you’d never see her again if you did.”

I didn’t need to ask Phaedra who she was talking about. Out of curiosity more than anything else, I tried to summon a flame in my hand, but nothing happened. I felt the collar around my neck grow hot as if it had absorbed some of my Will’s energy. Was there a way to circumvent it? Overload it? In the back of my mind, I considered my options and how to test the collar’s limits.

I could have yelled at Phaedra all I wanted, but I doubted I would be very intimidating in this state. She had me, and she must have known it. I sat still, trying to calm my heart, as I stared at her with hatred.

Phaedra smiled and rose from the chair wordlessly. I realized she’d had the copy of Gravity and Time in her lap as if she’d been reading it earlier, but she tossed it onto the floor as she got up. The massive tome hit the floor with a bang. Fundamentals of Pyromancy was already lying there as if she’d flipped through it before growing bored.

She sat down beside me on the bed and looked down with her gleaming emerald eyes. She had put her hair up to disguise its length, and I wondered if she was trying to copy Mona’s look. My stomach twisted.

“Your High Priestess is right here, Master,” she said, stroking my head with her clawed finger. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to be alluring, but it only made my skin crawl.

“You know what I meant, Phaedra. Where is Desdemona?”

“You needn’t worry about her, Master. She was clearly an enemy agent and needed to be punished.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is that the story you’re telling? Where is she?”

Phaedra looked at me for a long moment, then shook her head and sighed. “You don’t really understand your situation, do you, you silly fool? You shouldn’t be asking so many questions.”

I felt a foreign sensation in my right arm, one that had been there this whole time but had barely registered compared to everything else that had been bombarding my senses. I looked over to see a needle sticking out of me, one connected to some kind of transfusion apparatus. My blood was slowly dripping into a glass vial. Phaedra had wasted no time collecting what “resources” she could from my body.

I bared my teeth at her, but my aggression only strengthened her smile. For a moment, she was almost beaming.

Time, perhaps, for a different tactic. “Phaedra, where is she? Is she still alive?” I was afraid to hear the answer, but I had to know.

“She wouldn’t be useful as leverage if she weren’t,” Phaedra replied in a dry, monotone voice. “She’s down in the dungeon, next to your favorite pup. I was making that collar for her, you know—the paladin. But when the situation changed, I realized it might also work on you. If you cooperate, Lord Shatterbone could be persuaded to let her live.”

Lord Shatterbone, now? I suppose I should have expected his sudden promotion. But that hardly mattered. I needed to know Mona was really alive and that Phaedra wasn’t simply telling me what I wanted to hear. “I need to see her.”

“Only the General could approve such a visitation,” Phaedra said after a moment of hesitation.

Something in her reply, the way her bottom lip twitched when she spoke of the General, the way she had said could approve, made me want to drill further.

“And where is Ignak, that piece of shit? Can’t face me directly, so he has to send you?”

I really hadn’t taken Phaedra’s warning not to ask questions to heart.

Phaedra scowled. “Lord Shatterbone has extensive burns over ninety percent of his body thanks to the actions of the crazed anarchist Desdemona Fell, and almost half his bones are, indeed, broken. He is currently fading in and out of consciousness while experiencing what I can only assume from his stoic grunting is unbearable pain and torment. It is perhaps a wonder that he is still alive, but the General is extremely hard to kill. As you can see, I drew some of your blood, Dark One. I am attempting to formulate a balm in addition to the regular transfusions I have already started. Without them, he would have died.” Her eyes focused on mine, and she stared into my soul. “Your blood has many useful properties, as do the other parts of your biology. In time, I hope to discover how best to utilize every part of you.”

That explained the needle in my arm and my light-headedness, though I suppose that could also be attributed to the aftereffects of whatever Phaedra had dosed me with earlier.

“Due to the General’s current injuries,” she continued, “I have assumed command in his absence. As the High Priestess, I am the highest ranking tower official still of sound mind and body.”

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“You’re not the High Priestess, Phaedra,” I said.

“Is that so?” she asked, abruptly hopping off the bed and walking over to the table. She grabbed some papers and a small golden needle then brought them to me. She placed them before me on the bed, then produced a key from a pocket in her robe and unlocked the shackle of my left hand. It fell to the bed and rolled onto the floor with a clang.

I looked down at the papers, but my eyes couldn’t focus on the runes. The light from the tower's windows danced in my eyes, and the text came in and out of focus. Despite the fact I’d apparently been unconscious through the night, I felt like I’d gotten no rest at all, and my mind ached.

My clawed hand tapped the paper, and I blinked and looked up at Phaedra. She was leaning towards me, and I realized she was within my reach. If I tried, perhaps I could…

She smiled at me as if she’d realized what was on my mind. She leaned in even further, and I felt her breath on my bare shoulder. I realized my hand had moved up without my realizing it. Carefully, Phaedra lowered her neck into my waiting claws.

“Her survival depends on what you do next,” Phaedra said, her green eyes looking up at me innocently, only a few inches from my face. “This document names me as your new High Priestess. If you sign it, both you and Desdemona will live. If I don’t return this to the Council with your signature in the next fifteen minutes, they will ask a guard to cut something off her. Small pieces first, of course. They’ll start with an ear or a finger, but there are only so many—”

“I understand,” I barked through gritted teeth, and Phaedra abruptly fell silent. I looked at the small golden needle, which she held ready between her finger and her thumb, as if yearning for nothing more than to stab me with it.

I didn’t have a choice. Not really. I moved my hand away from her neck, then poked myself in the thumb. I held my thumb over the paper, then paused for a moment. “You’ll need more than just one signature from me if you wish to keep up the charade that I’m still in charge of Dreadthorn.”

Phaedra raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think we need your cooperation at all, godling?”

“If you didn’t, why the pretense of having me sign this? You want everyone outside to think I’m still in charge.”

Her eyes focused on me intently for a moment. She sighed, then shook her head. “You may be an idiot, but you’re not as dumb as I hoped. I admit some ongoing cooperation on your part would be helpful, yes. If you sign this, I’ll ask the General if you can see her.”

“Oh?” She was trying to sweeten the deal. I took a deep breath. “I want to see her today.”

Phaedra only laughed, then shook her head. “Lord Shatterbone can’t agree to that.”

Not won’t, I noticed, but can’t.

“Then when?” Something within me boiled. The weight on my soul from Phaedra’s collar kept my energy contained, but the fire of my Will still churned within its bonds, and I could feel it protesting this treatment.

She rolled her eyes. “This isn’t a negotiation, you fool.” The way she called me a fool almost made me nostalgic for Mona, but then Phaedra grabbed me by the wrist and pressed my bloody thumb against the parchment. I felt a sizzling sensation, heat from where my blood touched the paper. I blinked and saw it glowing with magic.

I looked up at Phaedra with rage but knew I couldn’t do anything. The battle had been lost when I turned my back on her and allowed her to deploy her gas.

However, I couldn’t help but notice that none of us had died from it. “The gas you used on us wasn’t the same formula you showed me before.”

Phaedra smirked. “Very observant, godling. I may have diluted it and added a tranquilizer. I did not wish to harm you, only subdue you. You may not believe me, but I am on your side, and the side of all demonkind.”

Phaedra looked down at the paper in her hand, and I saw perhaps a glimmer of pride in her eyes. Which I thought was funny, considering she had obtained her promotion through extortion. But to a demon, that was as good a method of career advancement as anything else.

She looked at me, and her eyes softened in pity for a moment. “I can’t promise you anything, Dark One, but I will try to give you the reassurance you seek in return for your cooperation.”

I nodded. “Let Ilmatar go if you haven’t already. He has nothing to do with—”

To my surprise, Phaedra looked suddenly annoyed. “Majordomo Lampshade disappeared in the confusion of the fight and is now a fugitive.”

“Disappeared?” My face broke into a grin despite myself. “You mean he escaped from you.”

Phaedra rolled her eyes, then placed my finger against the other paper whose meaning I wasn’t sure of. “I suppose I didn’t give him enough credit,” she said.

“Neither did I,” I replied. Ilmatar had warned me about Shatterbone. He’d told me to be careful right before everything had fallen apart. It’s not that I had doubted him, but I clearly hadn’t taken his words seriously enough. I hoped he was far away now, out of the clutches of these maniacs.

Phaedra shuffled the papers in her hands, reading them repeatedly as if she needed confirmation that she had won, that her coup was successful. At last, placing the papers down on the desk, she turned and looked at me, and something new entered her eyes—something I hadn’t seen before.

I felt she was sizing me up, taking her measure of me. I felt exposed for the first time, aware of my almost nakedness in those tattered clothes under the bedsheet.

“So now that all the paperwork is settled, would you like to fuck now or fuck later?” Phaedra asked, as she approached me.

I clenched my teeth. “Neither.” Physically, she was attractive, even beautiful—a tall, thin woman with the features of a model but with pale green skin and small, curvy horns. But no part of me wanted to fuck the woman who had drugged and captured me and Mona.

Well, a small part, if only to work out my aggression.

“Aw, my dear Dark One,” she said. “Are you upset because I overthrew you? Because I outsmarted you? You shouldn’t be. As long as you keep doing what I say—”

“What Ignak says, you mean.” I looked at her coldly. “We both know who has the power, Phaedra.”

She smiled and leaned in conspiratorially. “The truth is, Master, the General’s recovery is entirely in my hands. I am, after all, the one responsible for supplying his medicine.”

My heart skipped a beat. Had she really spoken so brazenly? My eyes looked to the doors, which had been closed this whole time. I doubted the guards could hear us, so she had confided it to me alone.

As if wishing to twist the knife, she continued, “And now that you’ve signed those papers, you’ve made me the most powerful demon in Dreadthorn.”

She sprung up from the bed and collected the papers off the desk. She pulled a pair of glass vials from a pocket in her robe and tossed them on the bed next to me.

“I suppose I can be patient with you for now,” Phaedra said. “Cum into these so I have some samples to analyze.” How she said the word analyze made me wonder if it was a synonym for something else. “Or I could send up a few girls from the Hall of Pleasures since you’re so upset with me?”

I eyed the vials suspiciously. “That won’t be necessary.”

She pouted at me, then shook her head. “And here I thought I was being generous, letting you have a little fun.” She shrugged. “Soon, Master, I will expect you to share your power with me, as you did with Desdemona. What you made her capable of… The raw energy she wielded…” Her eyes glittered with envy.

I nodded after a moment. “I understand the power you seek,” I said, though inwardly, I was still panicking, for I didn’t even truly understand what Mona and I had done. “But the truth is, Phaedra, I don’t exactly know what happened. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to reproduce it. I don’t think my blood will be enough. Nor even if we fucked.”

She stared at me for a moment, and I worried she might think I was lying, walk down to the dungeons, and start cutting.

“You really are fucking useless, aren’t you?” she said and shook her head in bafflement. “Part of me wants to think you’re lying, godling, but I believe you. I saw those books you’ve been reading. Those books full of things you should already know. And you’re right. There isn't enough essence in your blood or seed to do what Desdemona did. The way she wielded such power, it was like she possessed a conduit to you directly. I've never seen the like.” She started walking towards the doors, then stopped and looked over her shoulder at me. “Whatever happened to you, Dark Lord?” She shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong. I almost like you better this way. It’s nice that you’re so stupid. I’ve never liked anyone—sexually, I mean—who was smarter than me. Or even equally so.”

I couldn’t help but feel her admission was a big red flag, but I had nothing much to say.

After she left, I listened to her footsteps recede down the hallway, followed by the clang of the elevator. I stared at the silk canopy above the bed, suddenly unsure what to do. It seemed I was alone for the first time since hell had broken.

My thoughts turned to escape, searching desperately for a way out of here. A different path than the one that had been laid out for me.

By now, I’d had just about as much of this room as I could stand.