“Viktor gets along well with humans,” Amaranth assured him on our way over. “And he’ll think well of the fact that you’re coming out to make a stand for Steff’s well-being.”

“Assuming he even lets us talk,” I added.

“Wait, why are we even going if we’re not going to get to say anything?” Ian asked.

“Well, I suggest you be open and direct with him, Ian,” Amaranth said. She looked at me. “And you control yourself until we’ve established why we’re there and he says you can talk to Dee. If she’s way involved, obviously we’re going to stay out of the way, and if I tell you to step outside, you get to stepping. A half-ogre smacking around a half-demon isn’t going to be conducive to Steff’s recovery.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“If he’s really concerned about Steff’s health, you’d think he wouldn’t make things hard for someone coming to help her,” Ian said.

“Well, I don’t expect him to be following strict protocol,” Amaranth said. “But since he considers it his due, at least from my Mack, it seems the respectful thing to do is to show him proper deference and let him establish that it’s not necessary.”

“What do you mean, at least from her?” Ian asked.

“It seems Viktor gets a little homesick if there isn’t anybody he can treat like yesterday’s toilet paper,” I said. “And since I’m responsible for the sins of the world anyway…”

I shrugged.

“Okay… so, masochist and all… but why the hell do you put up with that?” Ian asked.

“I don’t, mostly,” I said. “I avoid him. But when I can’t… well, it’s for Steff.”

“Is she really worth that?”

“Am I?” I asked.

“I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out,” he said.

We bumped into Finbar, the canid resident alchemist and potion dealer of Harlowe, at the door to the fourth floor. Since he was a junior, I took a guess what he’d been doing there.

“Were you helping Steff?” I asked.

“Hey, it’s cool,” he said, throwing up his short-furred hands. “Viktor came and got me. I know better than to sell to her.”

“I didn’t mean… how is she?” I asked.

“Sleeping, I guess,” Finbar said. His eyes were kind of wide. “Also… well, I guess you’ll see.”

“They didn’t need healing potions, did they?” Amaranth asked. “Dee promised me she’d stay…”

“The cave elf? Yeah, she’s there,” Fin said. “They just wanted some foxglove extract and some other stuff I barely even use. I told the big guy he could have it for free, goodwill gesture, since I’m on his shit list anyway… though that’s really not my fault. Anyway, I’m getting out of here for a bit… I don’t want to be around if… well…”

“If what?” I asked, but he took off downstairs and didn’t stop, going down past his floor.

“What do you think?” Ian said quietly.

Feeling a little extra somber, we headed onto the floor. The door to Viktor’s room opened silently as we approached. Amaranth stepped through first into the dim room, and we followed. Only two illusionary candles were lit. Viktor knelt by the bed, where Steff was asleep, though trembling and sweating and… well… a little bit bulgy in places. Three of them, to be specific.

Dee, who must have heard us coming and let us in to avoid any loud knocking, was standing in front of the mirror.

“Shh,” Viktor said, barely sparing us a glance, though his eye caught on me and he whispered to Amaranth, “Remove that one from the floor if you cannot keep her quiet.”

“She’ll behave,” Amaranth said. “What’s happening?”

“After you left, I had a separate conversation with the elf,” Viktor said quietly. “We both came to a mutual agreement that it would be best for her to consult with experts before things took a turn for the worse. She contacted her people at Ceilos, confessed what she had done. They were furious, at her and at the one who gave the potion to her, but once they understood that the recipient was half-human, the recriminations were put on hold. They’ve been suggesting treatments.”

“Wait, you mean Dee agreed…” Amaranth said, surprised.

“Shh,” Viktor said again. He stroked the skin of Steff’s arm with the tips of two of his large, surprisingly long fingers. “We had a good talk after you left. It was… productive.”

Dee stood in front of the mirror, her own hood thrown back. She looked anxious, even physically pained. She was sweating and… well… sort of pale, probably with worry.

Inside the mirror were a pair of hooded figures… Dee’s people, I guessed… and a third one, a green-scaled gorgon with a bandage over her eyes. They weren’t facing the mirror, but were conferring among each other. There was a small flickering light behind them.

“Is something wrong with the mirror?” Amaranth asked.

“What do you mean?” I replied.

“It’s dark,” she said.

“No, there’s a candle or something behind the middle one, the main elf,” I said. “Magic mirrors don’t work in total darkness… even for races that can see without light, there has to be something to reflect.”

“I guess I can kind of see a shape in the middle,” Amaranth said.

The conference ended and the elves turned back to face towards us, though the gorgon remained as she was. The elf in the center of the image came forward.

“We feel that administering anything stronger than a sleep potion… a potion of slowing… would interfere with the transformation potion in ways we could not predict. If it were just a matter of muting the effect of it, we would not hesitate to recommend it, but we can’t be certain,” she said. “So, simply try to keep the half-elf calm. Also, while we’re unfamiliar with the heart remedy your apothecary supplied, the consensus is that it should not matter. Something to moderate the heartbeat is indicated. The surface equivalent should be fine. It might even be better, for a surface dweller. But it would be a good idea to also have something else to restart a heart, should it come to that.”

“I can heal a damaged heart,” Dee said.

“A ruptured heart can be restored to full health but still lie dead in the chest,” the gorgon said. “At least, it has proven to be so in our case. I’m told a mammal’s heart is a little more complicated, but I do not think that an extra chamber or two would make the difference there.”

“You must understand, Delia Daella, that we are as much in the cold here as you are,” the other elf said. “Our halfkind are examined thoroughly before undergoing the change, and even the sickliest elf will not have one sixty-fourth of the hidden lurking defects in the most robust of the fading kind. No offense,” she added to the gorgon.

“Is she talking to me?” the gorgon asked.

“Yes,” the lead elf said. “Please take that ridiculous thing off… your reflection is at least three hundred and twenty miles away.”

“And even if you did stone yourself, it isn’t as though we wouldn’t be able to put you right again immediately,” the other elf said.

“I don’t care,” the gorgon said. “Mirrors are terrible luck. Terrible. I know I’ll give myself a heart attack if I look at it, even if I do keep my membranes down.”

“I thank you for your advice, Alimnae,” Dee said, dipping her head to the middle figure, “which I consider to be quite invaluable, even if it is speculation.”

“You are most welcome, daughter of d’Wyr,” Alimnae said, bowing so low she went out of frame, though she sounded less than deferential when she came back up. “As the immediate crisis has been contained, I will point out that we would not have to speculate if you had not given our potion to a strange race.”

“When I made my oath of investiture, it was impressed upon me that in times of peace, my obligation to heal applied to anyone outside of my house equally, even faint kind or dweorg,” Dee said.

“This is true,” Alimnae said. “And this is why we are helping now. But no such intervention was required before you administered the potion to a person of untried mortal stock. You by your actions have created this situation, Delia Daella.”

“Perhaps my view of the initial situation from here is more clear than yours from Ceilos,” Dee said. “I saw a soul in pain and I acted in order to save a life.”

“Whatever distress this half-breed halfkind felt at being incomplete, I am certain it would have borne a more considered approach,” Alimnae said. “The Imperium will not make war on distant Durakesh over the death of a single citizen, and neither will the faint ones’ censure touch it. It would be our community here at Ceilos that suffered the brunt of the fall-in from such a thing… and that could very well spell the end of our beautiful mixed community of underdwellers living in the very ceiling of the world, our grand experiment in peace and diplomacy.”

“I am sorry, Alimnae, I truly am,” Dee said, with more emphasis and emotion than I’d ever heard her put in one of her apologies. It made me wonder how much she actually meant them. I’d always assumed she was just very controlled and reserved… which she obviously was… but if this was what an actual apology sounded like from her, then I doubted I’d ever heard one before. “I did not intend to administer the potion so hastily. I had been praying and meditating and thinking on the subject…”

“You might have thought to involve someone with a little more useful perspective in your meditations,” Alimnae said. “We have no authority to punish you, Delia Daella d’Wyr, nor would punishment beyond what the circumstances inflict be appropriate in this case. But as you are a daughter of your line and may be considered for a throne, I feel that it is imperative that your house be made aware of your conduct.”

“I… I understand,” Dee said, bowing her head. “Please, do nothing except what you think is fitting.”

“And don’t think she means we’ll be telling your mother,” the other elf said. “Your matriarch will hear of this directly.”

“You have as much of a treatment plan as we’ve been able to come up with, so I am going to leave Ehtra here with the reflection open,” Alimnae said. “In case there is any change. In the meantime… I have a harem full of halvsies who have much to answer for.”

“It was no one’s fault but my own!” Dee insisted.

“Shh!” Viktor said.

“That is very true,” Alimnae said. “I hope you will meditate on that fact in the coming weeks, as you continue to receive regular dispatches from your friends here in Ceilos. I have no authority to punish you, Delia Daella d’Wyr, but what authority I have I wield well.”

Alimnae turned and headed out of frame, taking the gorgon by the arm and leading her away as well. Dee turned around to face us. It was kind of shocking how sickly she looked.

“Well… we have worked out some preventative measures for Steff’s heart, as all are agreed that this is the weak spot,” she said, forcing a smile that looked almost painful. “The exact level of results we can expect are still unknown, but in terms of a negative outcome that seems to be the only real concern.”

“Well, that’s good,” Amaranth said. “If it comes to that… well, I read an interesting science paper about the idea that the heart can be massaged, just like any other muscle, though it’s not really a well-developed technique and there’s the problem of how to apply pressure to it behind the ribcage and skin and stuff, but with your mind… well…”

“It is something to keep in mind, but I fear that would be a desperate gambit for a desperate strait. Excuse me,” Dee said. She turned to the desk with Steff’s bones and her pilfered hand on it. With her left hand, she picked up a bowl of water with a sponge in it, then set it down and picked up just the sponge. She concentrated and the bowl started to lift into the air, but after it wobbled a bit she put it down. “I would be more useful if both of my arms were usable,” she said to Viktor.

“If you heal it before I tell you that you can heal it, I’m keeping it,” he said.

Ian looked at me. I just kind of shrugged. He started moving very quietly towards the door. I caught Amaranth’s eye and then did the same.

“Well, it seems like you have everything under control,” Amaranth said.

“Yes,” Viktor said.

“So we’re just going to go,” she said, following after Ian and me.

“Wait,” Viktor said, and the three of us froze.

“Yes?” Amaranth asked.

“Thank you for your concern,” he said. “We will talk later.”

Discuss this story.

“Hold on, you’ve done enough work,” Hazel said, snatching the plate away so fast she almost tipped over the stool she was standing on.

“Oh, come on, Hazel,” Steff said sleepily from the pile of coats, where she’d collapsed about an hour before. “It’s her party and she’ll dry if she wants to.”

“I think you may as well let her help, Haze,” Amaranth said. “She’s sleeping with you tonight, so there’s no point in her going back to Harlowe before you.”

“Sleeping over with me,” Hazel said, handing the plate back to Two.

“Oh, well, yes,” Amaranth said, blushing. “I didn’t mean to imply… I mean, if it happened we’d all be tremendously supportive…”

“Er, are you crossing your fingers for luck?” Hazel asked, looking at Amaranth’s hands.

“Um… no?” Amaranth said, holding up her hands with fingers still intertwined. “I mean, I was,” she said, quickly unfolding them. “Obviously. Duh.” She laughed. “But… for something else, not for the possibility that you and Two hook up.”

“Right,” Hazel said. “Well…”

She didn’t seem to have anything else to say, because she just turned around and went back to washing.

After Dee and Honey had slunk away and Feejee and Iona left, Hazel didn’t let anybody else get out of the party room without a container full of leftovers.

“It’s against my conscience to let somebody out of a party empty-handed,” she said with grim solemnity as she loaded us down. “It’s a matter of principle, it is. Never again!”

After receiving my half-hearted confirmation that I was friends with Feejee, she also gave me the dishes for her and Iona. Since we were also taking Dee’s grainless offering and managing Steff… who was not particularly refreshed after her nap… Amaranth took all the various containers and disappeared them. I was glad she took charge of them, because it lessened the chance that I’d be sent down to Iona’s room to deliver hers.

Of course, that just meant that Amaranth would have to do it. I loved Amaranth and she was certainly worldly in some… well, maybe exactly one… sense of the word, but I didn’t think she was quite canny enough to be dealing with Iona, especially when the mermaid’s predatory blood was raised.

“We can probably just leave Iona’s with Feejee,” I suggested as the three of us headed back to Harlowe. “So we can get to bed sooner.”

“I think it’ll be more personable if we deliver it to her door,” Amaranth said. “After we get Steff home, of course. I’m sure Viktor will want to thank you for showing her so much concern, baby.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll have something to say to me,” I said.

“You had very good reasons for not wanting to touch that dagger,” Amaranth said. “Which meant your choices were either get Steff in trouble by calling in the authorities or trust her to put it back, which she did eventually do.”

“I don’t know why you guys are making such a big deal over it,” Steff said. “Just a knife. Just…”

“Steff, from what Celia says you burned through half your life force playing vampire games with it,” I said.

“What’s she know?” Steff said. “Probably took a bad elixir… or ate some bad squirrel. Something. I’m just… sleepy. I’m fine.”

“Can I get that in writing before we get to Viktor’s?” I asked.

“Oh, hush, baby,” Amaranth said. “It’s going to be fine.”

Steff had been leaning against Amaranth for most of the walk, and by the time we got inside we were both supporting her. She was practically dead… unconscious, I should say… on her feet.

Amaranth paused when we got up to Viktor’s door on the boys’ side of the fourth floor. She raised her knuckles and her face scrunched up like she was trying to remember something, but then the door opened before she could decide how to knock.

Viktor was all business. He was also all naked.

“What has happened to her?” he asked, pulling Steff away from us and leaning her against his body.

“Low energy,” Amaranth said. “She just needs rest… physical rest, but especially rest from magic. A good night’s sleep should put her mostly right, I think… but you sh… I would send her to the healing center if she doesn’t seem any better.”

“Where was she?” Viktor asked, stroking the top of Steff’s head with his entire hand.

“She just came…” Amaranth started to say.

“Mack found me,” Steff said quickly.

“Tell me if this is true,” Viktor said, looking straight down at me.

“Um… no,” I said. “It’s not,” I clarified, in case he thought I was refusing rather than answering in the negative, then added, “I was at the…”

The back of Viktor’s hand slapped across my face, wrenching my head backwards and knocking me off my feet.

“We use a finger to the lips, Viktor,” Amaranth said, with surprising sternness that only sounded ridiculous, considering who she was and whom she was addressing… or more particularly, what she was and what she was addressing.

“I believe that was involved in my solution,” he said.

“You aren’t allowed to hit her,” Amaranth said, tilting her head forward to give him a shot of the over-the-glasses look. It didn’t exactly leave him quaking in his lack of boots… but it didn’t make him throw her across the hall, either.

“I do not allow her to speak to me beyond what she is directed to,” Viktor said.

“That’s fine,” Amaranth said. “A finger to the lips is all it takes. Stand up, baby.”

More or less on instinct, I’d been staying exactly where I’d fallen, doing my best imitation of a rug. Since I didn’t know if the confrontation was over or not, I kind of would have liked to stay where I was, out of the fray, but Amaranth was standing up for me and I wasn’t going to undermine her position as my owner by disobeying her, so I got to my feet, accepting a hand from her to help me up.

“Say goodnight to Steff,” Amaranth said.

“Goodnight,” I said.

“Night,” Steff said.

“Goodnight, both of you,” Amaranth said.

“Goodnight, Amaranth,” Viktor said, and he turned and stepped back inside the room with Steff and closed the door.

“Thanks,” I said to Amaranth. “Thank you.” That sounded inadequate considering the fact that she’d just stared down a half-ogre, so I added, “Ma’am,” and she glowed with pride.

“You’re welcome, baby.”

“I thought you were submissive to him,” I said.

“I have obligations to you that go beyond that,” Amaranth said. “For as long as I’m allowed to keep them, anyway… and I just thought that was excessive.”

“Oh, you think?” I said.

“You weren’t being disrespectful, you were being… expansive,” she said.

“So you don’t have a problem with him backhanding me across a room when I am being disrespectful.”

“Do you have a problem with it?” Amaranth asked, and I realized I didn’t have an immediate answer.

I resented the hell out of the way Viktor treated me. That resentment crawled across my skin in a way only the most powerful and most unpleasant feelings could. But that wasn’t the only thing I’d felt in his room. Was the resentment so bad that I’d forego the peace that came from total objectification, or from the utter seclusion inside his box?

Honestly, I had to think about it… but once I did, the answer was obvious. I hadn’t sought Viktor out. I’d done my best to avoid him. I would have loved the chance to crawl into the box and spend a couple hours by myself working out the rest of my Mecknights story or putting together my thoughts on everything that had been happening to me or just get away from it all, but that chance wasn’t worth putting up with somebody who would sooner wipe his boots on me than look at me.

“Yeah, I kinda do,” I said.

“Baby, you have to remember Viktor comes from a place where he always could lash out at anybody for pretty much any reason,” Amaranth said. “And he doesn’t necessarily like that fact or agree with the system behind it, but it’s how he was raised. It’s a privilege he grew up with, and when he lost self-control and lashed out it was seen as a sign of strength and praised. Now he spends most of the year in a place where doing that could have real consequences, and not just for him.”

“But he can hit me as hard as he wants without breaking me, so I’m the designated whipping girl,” I said. I heaved a disgusted sigh. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“It’s not,” Amaranth said. “And I’m not saying he sat down and thought about you and decided this… but when he gets angry like that, there’s a lot of frustration and anger that he doesn’t know how else to vent and it’s all coming out through the only channel it can.”

“And I’ve just got to take it,” I said.

“No, you don’t!” Amaranth said with alarming vehemence. She stomped her foot. “Sweet Mother, Mack! Are you even listening? Did you hear me ask you if you had a problem with it? Did you hear me tell him he’s not allowed to do that anymore?”

“I… I… you never cared before,” I said. “If you knew all this…”

“I never saw it before,” she said. “Intellectually, I thought it might be good for him to have an invulnerable receptacle for his anger and I thought you might enjoy it, but then I saw his face when he lashed out… and I saw yours… and… well, you should show Viktor proper respect because it’s respectful to Steff, if for no other reason, but you don’t have to put up with that.”

A feeling of profound gratitude and relief washed over me as I realized that she meant it. She gave me a hug, which I held onto for about a minute, and then we continued on back down the stairs and then over and up.

“So, Dee says you’re going to write to your grandmother?” Amaranth said.

“Uh… we did talk about that,” I said.

“So you’re really going to do it?” she asked. “That’s wonderful, baby.”

“I guess,” I said. “Dee thinks it’s a good idea. I’m not sure about it.”

“Well…” Amaranth said. “Family ties are important, when they can be salvaged… but I don’t think any of us are in a better position to know whether this one can be than you are. Though,” she added, a hopeful note in her voice, “if you have any uncertainty about it I think it’s best to err on the side of forgiveness. After all, where would you be if nobody was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt?”

“If it’s up to me…” I said.

“Of course it’s up to you,” Amaranth said.

“Okay, then I think I’ve given her more than enough benefit through the course of plenty of doubt,” I said. “Dee thinks her expertise would be valuable…”

“Oh, that is a good point!” Amaranth said. “But… still your choice.”

“It’s just, I really don’t know who I could trust to both see my side and not take advantage of me, among exorcists and diabolists and everybody else who might be available… but… I wouldn’t feel any safer with her,” I said, and once the words had left my mouth I felt strangely good about things.

I didn’t feel safe with her. I didn’t trust her. Awful things to think about my own grandmother, but true. Safe had been down in the basement with a sturdy door between us.

“I guess that’s that, then,” Amaranth said, and she sounded disappointed, but it didn’t feel like she was disappointed in me and that was what was important.

“The thing is, I already told Dee that I would,” I said.

“Oh, well, Dee’s not Sooni,” Amaranth said. “I think she’ll take a change of heart a little better than Sooni does.”

“I don’t know about this change of heart,” I said as we went out of the stairwell and into the hallway. “She seemed pretty set on the idea.”

“I’m sure she’s got some good reasoning, but… well, family ties really are a big deal, but Dee’s going to be attaching even more importance to them,” Amaranth said. “Because of her culture, and because she’s dealing with the fact that she was taught to idolize a mother when it doesn’t sound like her mother’s ever been a big part of her life.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That’s the impression I get,” Amaranth said. “Think about how often she talks about her mother in specific terms.”

“She’s a private person,” I said. “I don’t think I’d be comfortable reading too much into the things she doesn’t mention.”

“But when she has an unguarded moment, she talks about her lovers,” Amaranth said. “When she talks about her childhood, it’s Dehsah she mentions… what are you doing?”

I’d just turned to go into my room, and then I realized I wasn’t looking at my room, but 317… the same room I’d tried to go into on accident before, home of a medusan girl and Trina’s blabby friend Gladys.

“We stopped on the wrong floor,” I said.

“No, we stopped on Iona’s floor,” Amaranth said, holding out a covered rubber container with Iona’s share of the leftover food in it. “You can knock on her door, since you know her better,” she said, giving me a nudge towards it.

Maybe this would have been the time to tell her in no uncertain terms that I wanted as little to do with Iona as I did with my grandmother, but I felt like Amaranth had been so accommodating already that I would have felt guilty digging in my heels now. Compromise. She wasn’t asking me to spend the night with Iona, or even go in her room with her. Just knock on the door and stand next to her while she handed off the dish.

“Go ahead,” Amaranth said. “It’s okay. I think reaching out to Iona and Feejee is going to do more good than anything in the long run.”

I sighed and knocked on the door.

Iona opened it, smiling a dazzlingly inviting smile

“Well, this is a nice surprise,” she said. She stepped back, opening the door wider. “Come on in.”

“Thank you,” Amaranth said, pushing me forward. “We can’t stay long, but we brought you some food since you left the party early.”

“I see that,” Iona said, looking me up and down as we stepped past her into the room. She closed the door. It was probably just reflex that she twisted and locked the knob as she did so, but I gulped as I heard it clicking.

“So, can I just set this on the desk?” Amaranth asked.

“Sure,” Iona said. “Your friend make it back okay?”

“Oh, yes,” Amaranth said. “I think she’s going to be fine with a little rest.”

“She looked good, I thought,” Iona said. “Take off your coat, Mackenzie.”

“I’m fine,” I said, pulling it around me like a magic cloak to shield me from her hungry gaze.

“Really?” Iona said. “You ought to be roasting.”

“You know, we really should be going,” Amaranth said, grabbing my hand and pulling me towards the door.

“Oh, can’t stay?” Iona asked, affecting a pout.

“Sorry, no,” Amaranth said, fumbling at the doorknob.

“How about Mack?”

“I need her,” Amaranth said. She got the door open. “Say goodnight, baby.”

“Uh… goodnight,” I said.

“Goodnight, Iona!” Amaranth said.

“Night,” Iona said, following us out into the hall. She stayed leaning against the doorframe watching us as we headed as quick as we could without being obviously rude for the stairwell.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Amaranth said, once we were through the door and out of sight.

“It’s okay,” I said, thinking she was apologizing for putting me in the room with a hungry, amoral predator who had a taste for me.

“I didn’t mean to pull you out of there like that,” she said. “I was just getting so worked up watching Iona, listening to her talk like that…” She shivered all over. “Let’s get Feejee and Dee their stuff and then get to bed.”

From the avid way he’d led her on through it, it was painfully obvious what was going on. This was the torture. This was the real punishment. He was going to break us up.

“No!” I protested. It wasn’t fair. “It’s my choice! I don’t wa…”

Viktor let the heavy pliers drop where they were. “Where they were,” incidentally, describes a point in the air about six or seven inches above my clit. My outraged words became a cry of pain.

“So, what you are saying,” Viktor said, his sonorous voice carrying over my scream with the same slow, carefully measured enunciation he had used in the build-up on me, “is that you would give her up, throw away any chance to be with her, rather than allow her to take any further pain in your place?”

“Yes,” Steff sobbed. I couldn’t look around to see, but her voice seemed to be coming from a level lower than the table.

“You would pass on the opportunity to see her tortured and to torture her?” Viktor asked.

“Yes, yes!”

“You would give up the chance to walk with her, to hold her, to kiss her ever again?” Viktor asked.

At these words, I panicked. Didn’t Steff see that if Viktor let her do this, then it would all have been for nothing?

I could take it, whatever was coming, for her sake… but if she threw that away then what I’d already suffered would be wasted.

“It’s not her choice!” I insisted, straining against my bonds in spite of the pain it caused.

I didn’t see the blow coming. I didn’t know what he hit me with, but I don’t think he held back at all. It felt like my head shattered, and dazzling explosions went off inside my eyes.

Eventually the ringing in my ears cleared enough that I could hear Viktor, though it sounded a bit like he was underwater.

“…understand what you are saying?” he was saying. The ceiling of the room was starting to come back into focus, though I was seeing two of the light fixture.

“Yes,” Steff cried. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry… I didn’t mean… just… just… let her go. Punish me, and let her go.”

The blurry form of Viktor lurched into view. I heard a loud click and then the metal loop on my left wrist popped off.

“No!” I protested. Viktor grabbed my arm and jerked it down over the side of the table with human-bone-crunching force.

I was still screaming when he had undone all the bonds. He grabbed me by my hair, carried me to the door, and opened it.

“Wait,” he said, extending his arm and dropping me not quite on my feet just outside the door. “Steff will be with you shortly, after she and I have had words.”

Steff would be with me?

“What do you mean?” I blurted out, but Viktor let out a very unmodulated growl of frustration, grabbed the hair on the back of my head and slammed my face into the door frame before hurling me across the hall.

I hit the door opposite his and bounced. There was an indignant cry of “What the fuck, man?” from inside, but the door remained closed.

Maybe I was a slow learner, but it seemed like Viktor really didn’t like it when I talked to him.

But, what had he meant when he said Steff would be with me?

A few moments later, my clothes landed on me.

Before I had a chance to even pick myself up of the floor, to say nothing of them, Gwynedd came charging up and started kicking me in the head.

“Hey, knock it off!” I said, before I realized that she couldn’t hear me. I used my hands to try to block her next kick, though I could barely move my left arm.

It hardly mattered. She stopped kicking, grabbed me by my wrists, and hauled me to my feet. She started turning me around, with absolutely no concern for where she put her hands or what she grabbed to do so.

I lurched away from her, still dizzy and disoriented but more than strong enough to break her grip without trying.

“Fucking stop!” I said, pointlessly. I turned to face her. Viktor had spoken to her before, so she probably could read lips. “Stop it,” I said.

She didn’t listen, but grabbed me by the hurt arm and lifted it, jerking me around while she looked up and down my body.

Again, I pulled myself away from her. What was her problem?

“What’s your problem?” I asked. I felt like I was shouting but sounds were still kind of indistinct and I was trying to be distinct for her.

She held up her arm, running a finger over the letters cut into it.

“No,” I said, trying to make my mouth form the words as clear as possible. I don’t know how well I did, with my head full of fuzz. “He didn’t mark me.”

She raised her forefinger and gave it a twirl. I stared at it without comprehending for a few seconds, then sighed, and turned slowly around in a full circle, letting her see my body. I was feeling very wobbly. My head hurt and my eyes weren’t quite coming together right. It was like there was two of everything.

Part of me was glad for the distraction, no matter how absurd it was, of being made to dance like this for Gwynedd’s inspection… but mostly I wanted a chance to clear my head, to think, to puzzle out what the hell had just happened.

What had Viktor meant?

Well, I’d do what she told me now, just to get it over with faster.

She motioned for me to turn in the other direction when I came back around.

“Why?” I asked, even as I complied, which meant I was talking to myself, effectively. “It’s the same this way as the other way.” When I was facing her again, I said, “There, see? No cuts. No name. Nothing.”

She relaxed a little, though she was still looking at me like I was some half-drowned insect climbing up the side of a toilet bowl. Well, at least we were communicating. That was good.

“I’m Mackenzie,” I said, resisting the urge to point at chest as I said this. She knew Pax. She would understand the concept of “I am” without a visual aid.

She shook her head, holding up a thumb and two fingers and making a little sort of biting motion or something with it.

“Uh, yes,” I said. “I am. Mackenzie. That’s me. Or maybe you’ve heard of me as Mack?”

She shook her head and signed something.

“I don’t understand that,” I said.

She pointed between my legs.

“What?” I asked.

She jabbed her finger insistently, taking a step forward. I took a step back.

“Oh, right,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You think I’m a cunt.”

She made a little motion in front of her mouth.

“What, I need to brush my teeth?” I guessed.

She made the snippy-biting sign again, which I figured meant no. She tapped her chin a couple times and pointed at my pussy again.

“You want to eat my pussy?”

That one made her mad. I thought she was going to hit me, but she grabbed my face, pinching my cheeks with her finger and thumb to open my mouth while her other hand grabbed between my legs. She didn’t seem to have any concept of personal space. I lurched back as soon as she made contact down there, but I’d got her point.

“You want me to say it,” I said.

She raised a fist and “nodded” with it.

I sighed.

“I’m a cunt,” I said.

She signed yes.

“Happy now?” I said, then bent down to gather my clothes. She stepped on the pile and pulled it away. “Hey!” I said, straightening up. “Give me those!”

She ignored my protestation and stooped to pick the paddle out of the pile.

“Hey, don’t touch that!” I said. “That’s mine!”

I reached for it, but she stepped back and gestured for me to turn around.

“No,” I said.

She smacked me across the face with the studded side.

“Quit it!” I said. She was lashing out with it fairly wildly, hitting my chin, neck, and chest as I tried to fend off the blows one-handed. My left arm was hanging uselessly at my side, a mess of pain in the shoulder, wrist, and most of all the upper arm where Viktor had cracked it against the edge of the table. “That’s not how you use it!”

My feet got tangled up as I was backing away, and I landed on my ass. Gwynedd planted her foot on my chest and pushed my back down to the floor. She let the paddle drop beside me and stared down at me, grinning disconcertingly.

It seemed like there was a lesson in this, about going along with an unreasonable person to get things over with quickly.

The knowledge that I could have kicked her ass even with an arm that thought it was broken as long I didn’t mind hurting her was at the forefront of my thoughts, but I don’t think she would have cared. Her face was blank, except her eyes, and the only thing in them was scorn.

With a hall light almost directly overhead, she was blurrier than before, but it looked like she was repeating the mouth gesture.

“You want me to say it again?” I asked. “I’m a cunt.”

She nodded.

“I’m a cunt,” I repeated. “Okay? Can I have my clothes now?”

No, she indicated, I could not. She did take her foot off me and offer me a hand up. As soon as I was on my feet, though, she gave me a backhand slap across the cheek.

“Ow, fuck, what the hell is wrong with you?” I asked.

She was smiling now, her expression mirthful. She put on a questioning look, and made some kind of motion in front of her face. Even leaving aside the fact that I didn’t know the hand cant, it was hard for me to follow her moves after the pounding I’d taken.

“What?” I asked. She hit me again, then jabbed her finger towards me. “I don’t understand what you’re asking,” I said, and this time she balled her fist up and punched me in the throat. I reeled back, choking once.

She looked angry again now, like she thought I was being slow on purpose. She jammed a fingernail between my breasts.

“Who am I?” I guessed. “I’m a cunt, okay? That‘s who I am. A cunt.”

She stepped back, looking pleased… but then she smacked me again, on my sore shoulder.

“Ow!” I said. “What the hell is going to make you happy?”

She hit me again.

“I’m a cunt,” I said. “You just want me to say that?”

She signaled yes.

“I’m a cunt,” I said. She hit me lightly on the other shoulder. “I’m a cunt,” I repeated.

She raised her hand like she was going to slap my face again, but after holding it in place for several seconds, she lowered it and smiled.

“You know, if I get tired of you smacking me around, you could be in serious trouble,” I told her.

She punched me in my left arm, then slugged me in the stomach and brought her knee up to my face as I doubled over.

Okay, apparently there was only one thing I was allowed to say to her, in her mind. That was fine with me. I wasn’t looking for conversation. When the fresh stars in my eyes cleared, I told her I was a cunt and then I sat down against the wall with my knees drawn up and my arms folded on top of them. It hurt to move the left one into that position, but it was okay once I had it settled.

Gwynedd seemed positively delighted by my adoption of this posture, but I didn’t care. Fuck her and her whole comic shop full of issues, whatever they were. I put my head down and closed my eyes, shutting out the painful brightness.

“Steff will be with you shortly.”

Was he turning her out of the room? Maybe that was the final punishment for her disobedience. He’d already taken her key.

Or maybe it was for a last goodbye.

But maybe… just maybe…

But, then, maybe I’d misheard completely. I had just been hit pretty hard on the head.

Everything was dark and cool, but the coolness didn’t bother me. Then the door opened, jerking me back to awareness of the fact that I’d lost awareness of my surroundings.

I looked up, across the hall, and saw Steff. She looked very drawn and haggard, but the expression on her face was one of amazed relief. She looked like somebody who thought she’d lost everything and then found out she hadn’t.

As soon as I thought that, fireworks went off inside me. It was true. I could see it on her face. I didn’t understand it, but there it was.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. Tears poured forth from her eyes as she spoke, but she wasn’t sobbing. In fact, she broke into a smile. “Yes, it’s over. He… he was torturing me, not you.”

“Huh?” I asked. Once again, it seemed like I wasn’t quite hearing things right.

“You were just… well, you were the instrument. When I said I’d rather give you up than watch you suffer like that… that was what he was waiting for,” she said. “He said he wanted to find my breaking point, so he could show me that I had one… and then, I told him I was sorry.” She shook her head. “And I was. I am. I am so sorry, Mack.”

“We both are… but, you’ve hurt me yourself, before,” I said.

“Not like that,” she said. “I’ve thought about it, and I’ve dr… uh, dreamed about some pretty extreme things, but, to actually see you, laid out like that, cringing in terror…” She shuddered. “It wasn’t like I thought it would be.”

“Then, it was all a bluff?” I asked. “The knives? The waiver? Everything?”

“Oh, honey, I don’t think so,” Steff said. “I mean, he was gambling on how I’d react, but if I hadn’t… he’d probably have kept going and finished punishing you on principle. I mean, I didn’t ask, but I assume he would have.”

“So… does this mean… we can still…” It seemed like the answer would have to be yes, or Steff wouldn’t be smiling, but I was still afraid to ask.

“Viktor gave me three things to tell you,” she said. “Before I answer that.”

“Okay,” I said, bracing myself. I figured probably, if he was laying out conditions, then the answer at the end of it all would be mostly positive.

Probably.

Mostly.

“One, he wants you to replace the tongs you broke.”

“What?” I asked. He hadn’t even used the tongs.

“They kind of got all bent when they hit your skull,” Steff said. “Um, he also said you’re vulnerable to the symptoms of a concussion but you don’t have to worry about actual damage, according to his research.”

“Is that the second thing?” I asked.

“No, that was just something he mentioned,” Steff said. “The second thing is that he wants to have a meeting with you, me, and Amaranth, to clarify some things for the future. Um, this wasn’t one of the three things, either, but… you should probably practice keeping your mouth shut, you know?”

“That’ll be a productive meeting,” I said. “Why does he have to do that every time I talk? I mean, he doesn’t love every last bit of his culture.”

“No, but, it’s his culture,” Steff said. “It’s how he was raised. For somebody so far beneath him to speak without being told to… it bugs him.”

“I noticed,” I said. “I guess it’s lucky for Gwynedd that she’s mute.”

“Oh, no, she’s actually allowed to respond to him,” Steff said.

“That just figures,” I said. I sighed. “What’s the third thing?”

She smiled.

“He said to take me some place nice.”

“What?”

“On our date,” she said, and the smile became a face-splitting ear-to-ear grin. “Friday. Take me some place nice.”

“Then… we’re still can dating?” I said, the sentence coming out of my mouth in a delirious jumble.

“Oh, yes, Mack, yes,” Steff said. She threw her arms around me and squeezed tight.

“Ow!” I said. “My shoulder… my arm really hurts.”

“Shit, sorry,” Steff said. She let go, then asked, “Where does it hurt most?”

“Here,” I said, pointing with my right hand at the spot just above my elbow where it had banged against the edge of the table.

She reached out and stroked her fingertips lightly across the skin there, then more firmly. I winced at the fresh wave of pain at the first touch, then moaned at the second.

“Sorry,” she said, smiling ruefully. “I… um… I still like pain.”

“I do, too,” I said, blushing.

“I still want to, you know, play,” she said. “Just not quite like that.”

“Not like that,” I agreed, shaking my head. “So… now what?”

“Now, we get your clothes back on and I help you back to your room,” Steff said.

“Right, they’re right…” I stopped and looked around.

They should have been kind of strewn about the middle of the hall, but they weren’t. Then I noticed for the first time that Gwynedd was gone.

I had a moment where I thought my clothing had departed with her, then I twisted around and saw they were all neatly folded right next to where I’d been sitting.

I did not understand her.

We both lost.

When we got to Viktor’s room, Steff did her little knocking ritual on it. There was no immediate answer from inside, and the door remained locked.

Steff leaned against the wall between Viktor’s door and the next one over.

Of course, it was her room, too, but my mind was assigning ownership of it to the half-ogre.

She wasn’t crying any more, and she wasn’t trying to get me to let her take my place any more. She seemed to be completely drained, utterly defeated. She looked like she had when she’d first started treatment, when the potion they’d had her on had basically blocked all her emotions.

I stood staring at the knob, wondering if it would start to turn slowly, or if it would fly open, or if the lock would simply click.

If I hadn’t known what the inside of the room looked like, my imagination probably would have conjured the right images anyway: black drapery, skulls, flickering candles. As it was, it was finding all sorts of embellishments.

I was slowly convincing myself that the horror would begin the instant the door was opened, that I would be faced with something more than a disappointed half-ogre with full license to punish me as he saw fit. Maybe he had enlisted the help of another student, or students.

I didn’t really know all the students on the boys’ side, or on the other floors of the girls’ side. I didn’t know what the racial make-up was. Logic told me that something like a gorgon was unlikely. Instinct told me it was inevitable.

Then, what if he’d looked up some of the students I already knew. Did he know Belinda? Maybe he’d spoken to her, half-ogre to half-ogre, and given her a chance to position herself above me once and for all.

Then, if Iona and Feejee were so interested in speaking to other “man-eaters”, maybe they had let Viktor in on the secret as well. I’d had some pleasure at their hands, but I couldn’t deny that they knew how to inflict pain and terror on the human side of me.

What had Feejee said? Iona wanted to know if my body would still be invulnerable after I died?

But… Viktor wasn’t going to…

“Maybe he isn’t in?” I said to Steff, full of desperate hope that faded even as I spoke. If he wasn’t there at the moment, that just meant we’d have to wait. “I mean, he’s not expecting us until after class.”

“Maybe,” Steff said. She sounded like she lacked the energy to care one way or the other. “He took my key, anyway.” Maybe my impression of it as his room hadn’t been completely off, I thought. “I don’t want this to happen,” she said, sniffling. “But it’s going to. I can’t stop it.”

She looked like she was about to cry again, and the fear receded a bit. I wasn’t the only one suffering. I had to be there for her.

“Steff, it’s going to be okay,” I said. It seemed like about the fifth time I’d said this to her. “Really. I’m scared, but… I don’t blame you.”

“Not yet,” she said.

She looked away.

I didn’t know what else to say.

The door picked that moment when my eyes were off it to open, provoking a startled yelp from me.

It was Gwynedd. She seemed utterly unconcerned with her appearance, which was shocking in ways beyond her being naked except for a leather collar.

Viktor’s name was still visible in puffy pink letters on her arm, and she had fresher scars on her bare breasts, spiraling out from her areolas, as well as on her other arm and her legs. She was a good sized girl, so there was plenty of room for the “artwork” to spread out. In a perverse way, it almost seemed to compliment the soft roundness of her body.

They were just red lines, not anything gory or bloody, but they looked ugly to me. That was what a wound looked like when it healed without magic? It seemed… unnatural. I suddenly wondered about my knee. I hadn’t taken a good look at since it had scabbed over. Was it scarring like that? If it was, was it too late for healing?

It seemed weird to be worried about a little scar on my knee at that time, but I was in a mood to worry about anything.

What if not being healed was going to be part of the punishment? I remembered Kai going around with her hands in bandages at the start of the school year. I’d thought at the time that this was barbaric beyond belief, and I’d wondered how in the world she could let Sooni have that kind of power over her.

I was learning how, it seemed.

Gwynedd and Steff were making flurries of hand signs back and forth, then Gwynedd abruptly stepped back and slammed the door.

“We’re early,” Steff explained.

“Why do you have to sign back to her?” I asked. “Is she deaf?”

“Uh, yeah?” Steff said. She sounded a little surprised, underneath the emotional fatigue. “Didn’t you know?”

“I knew she was mute,” I said. “But… isn’t she a bardic student?”

“Yeah.”

“How?” I asked.

Before Steff could muster an answer, the door opened again, with Gwynedd still standing in the opening. She signed something to Steff, which involved pointing at me. Steff responded, and Gwynedd repeated part of it, and then repeated it again. It looked like she was being insistent.

“She says that you’re a shitty cunt,” Steff said to me.

“What the hell?” I asked, directing it at either or both of them.

Steff shrugged. Gwynedd nodded and gave me a bit of non-verbal communication that even I could understand, then closed the door.

“What the hell is her problem?” I asked.

“She feels threatened,” Steff said. “He took her out of the box and put you in it. He kicked her out of the room for you.”

“That doesn’t mean he likes me, or anything,” I said. “And she doesn’t seem to mind you.”

“I don’t have a vag,” Steff said. “I’m not a threat.”

“Did you… make all those cuts on her?” I asked.

Steff nodded.

“I did more, too,” she said. “But… we healed that stuff.”

“How am I more of a threat than you?” I asked.

“She lets me do those things because I’m not a threat,” Steff said. “I’m not competing for the same position as she is.”

“Neither am I,” I said. “I’m doing this because I said I would, but… that’s it.” I hugged myself, putting my hands on my elbows. The hallway seemed cold. “After this is done… well, I guess I’m going to have to watch myself.”

“She’s really not bad,” Steff said. “She’s… not really socialized. Viktor says she’s a pretty good musician, though..”

“How?” I asked again.

“Well, she can read music,” Steff said. “And she likes the way the instruments feel when she plays them. We can probably go in a few minutes. She’s just asking Viktor if she can beat on you first.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. Even ignoring the sound-absorbing cloth the room was draped with, I couldn’t believe that Steff’s elven senses were keen enough to make out hand signs by their sound.

“She said so, the first time she answered the door,” Steff said.

“Is… is she going to be part of the punishment?” I asked.

This idea was adding to my apprehension. It skewed the situation from “I broke Viktor’s rules and will get what’s coming to me, however horrible that will be.” to “A crazy woman who’s into scars and has an irrational hatred of me is perhaps going to be handed sharp, enchanted objects and told to go to town.”

Steff didn’t answer.

How could she? She didn’t know any better than I did.

“Don’t forget,” Steff said, still avoiding looking at me. “Don’t talk, don’t look him in the eye.”

I nodded. I probably would’ve forgotten, at least about the second part. Perversely, caring for Steff had done something to dull my sense of impending doom, but now that she’d gone so numb, there was nothing left to distract me. Even my irritation at Gwynedd just fed into my worry.

Would she be part of it? If Viktor’s goal was to make it just as awful as he could… but then, maybe what he had in mind was worse. Even the bitchiest human probably couldn’t compare to what an intelligent, experienced half-ogre could do.

I got one answer when the door opened again and she came flying out, her bare feet skipping on the floor as if she’d been shoved. I just barely managed to avoid being bowled over, then reached out to help steady her. She bit my hand, punched me in the chest, and then stomped on my foot.

Considering I was wearing shoes and she wasn’t, the first two kind of made the last one superfluous.

I had a moment of thinking, “At least it isn’t going to be her.” before I started thinking “That means it’s something worse.”

Steff pulled me towards the door. I wasn’t exactly digging in my feet, but I’d just been socked in my left breast. I was a little distracted.

The room was mostly as I remembered it, though the desk had been pushed into the corner by the foot of the bed and the keyboard had been disassembled. A metal table with built in restraints had been set up in the middle of the room. It looked like it was modular.

That was another question answered. He did have specialized equipment tucked away.

There was a bucket on the floor next to it, covered with a lid, with a pair of tongs next to it, and what looked like a pair of pliers. There were a series of three jagged blades with oversized handles, as well. I almost reached out to see if they were magical, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I didn’t really want to know.

“Get the door,” Viktor said to Steff. I hadn’t even noticed him, as he was standing in the blind corner as we came in. I remained perfectly still. I wasn’t having any trouble remembering my place. I was paralyzed with fear, my eyes locked on those three knives.

Steff shut and locked the door. The sound of the bolt sliding into place fell away instantly with the noise-damping enchantments, but it somehow managed to echo in my mind.

Locked in a torture chamber with a half-ogre.

Of course, I wasn’t actually locked in. The doors worked the other way. Everybody else was locked out. Try telling me that, though.

“You look worried, my sweet darling,” Viktor said. I heard him moving, coming closer… to Steff, not me. They were in my peripheral vision, but my brain processed them as distractions, not real people.

It was still focused on the blades.

“Do not be,” Viktor said, in measured, cultured tones. “You lasted from Sunday until Friday, almost a week. That sort of progress is more than I expected from you. For that, a small reward. You will be allowed to witness… even perhaps participate in… the chastisement of your friend, from whom I expected a little more.”

Steff made a noise that I think was her trying to say something. I don’t know if she was trying to voice her appreciation or her disapproval.

Maybe she didn’t, either. Maybe that’s why it came out like that.

Then Viktor was behind me—between me and the door!—and I could feel his hot breath on my head, could sense his looming presence.

“Before I place you into the restraints,” he said, and even with him so terribly close to me it was a moment before I realized he was actually addressing me, “I will go over a few things. There is a waiver that I will require you to sign. I have written it myself, but it is based on a selection of perfectly legal dueling agreements with which I am familiar.”

He paused and then walked around in front of me, not looking at me, but pacing back and forth as he spoke. My head was low. I couldn’t see his face, even in profile. He was just an immense, terrible presence in the room.

I resisted the urge to follow him with my eyes. There was something more terrible than the knives in the room now.

“The difference is that this one is rather more… unilateral, I think is the word,” he continued. He was speaking slowly, drawing each word out like he was coaxing sounds from some rare instrument. “It indemnifies me in the event of your permanent injury… disfigurement… or death. Originally, it specified ‘accidental’, but upon reflection that seemed unwise. In the event of anything unfortunate, it would then fall to me to prove my intentions… and honestly, I cannot be bothered. So, the waiver is total and without conditions. You will sign it and we will begin, or you will not and you will leave.”

He didn’t have to elaborate. He didn’t have to say “leave and not come back.” He didn’t have to say “leave and allow Steff to take your punishment, and then never so much as speak to her again.” That had already been established and he wasn’t going to waste words.

He walked to the metal table and slammed a hand holding a pen and piece of paper down on it.

“Go,” he said, stepping to the side without turning to look at me. “Sign.”

Trembling, I stepped forward. The piece of paper was my new object of dread, the new focal point for my fear. Once I signed it, I was effectively stuck. Even if I said I’d changed my mind, Viktor could strike me down with impunity. He hadn’t said as much, but it seemed to me like this was the point of no return.

If I signed the paper, then my last exit was closed.

I couldn’t seem to lift my arms to pick the paper up, so I looked down at it instead. It was short, if not sweet, and utterly to the point.

By signing this form, I, MACKENZIE BLAISE, do hereby waive all relevant protections and remedies of law in the event of my injury, disfigurement, or death at the hands of Viktor Constantinescu (illegible), citizen of Kilrest, the Ogre Territories.

The illegible portion was some kind of scratchy print that I assumed was an ogre clan name or similar. It did sound a bit like the examples of dueling forms we’d been shown during health class, with the exception that it was not reciprocal.

I also couldn’t help noticing that there was no expiration date on it, or any indication that the waiver only covered a single event.

“If you have any questions you would like to ask before you sign,” Viktor said, “then you may go.”

With a trembling hand, I picked up the pen, and touching the bare minimum surface of the form necessary to hold it in place, I signed and dated the form, then straightened out. Viktor’s massive hand swiped across to grab it, and then he stowed it away somewhere.

“Very good,” he said. “Your clothes must be removed.”

My hands started to move, but I stopped.

“Very good,” he repeated. “You will now remove your clothes.”

I peeled off my shirt with difficulty… why had I worn something so form-fitting? My shoes, belt, and jeans were next, then my socks, my bra, and last… with only a slight hesitation… my panties.

I stood there, naked and motionless. Fear had done what heat could not and covered me in sweat, which left me cold. Viktor came over and picked up the paddle which had hung on my belt. He chuckled and put it aside.

“We will not, I think, be needing that,” he said.

With surprising speed and agility, he grabbed me by my leg and neck and swung me up over the table. I landed hard on the freezing metal surface. Before I had a chance to recover from the shock and settle my limbs into place, he began wrenching them into the restraints.

My ankles, wrists, and even my neck were all shackled in steel bonds. The edges of the cold metal bit into my skin, without actually penetrating.

“The restraints are not magical,” Viktor said. “So when you struggle… and you will struggle… there will be no risk of injury from that. It is possible that given sufficient time and determination, you could wrench free of them, though I would react very poorly to any such deliberate attempt. I have no intention of inflicting anything more permanent than a lesson upon you, but it is indeed possible that the waiver will come into play. Some of the things I mean to do have never been attempted. It is not often that one of your unusual nature submits to torture.”

He reached down beneath the table and lifted up the bucket. As soon as he set it down on the table, I felt the chill coming off it. I had a horrible premonition about what was to come.

“We will begin with something light,” he said. “Something with very little chance of misadventure, though I doubt you will find it very relaxing. Come closer, Steff. Do not hide away. I know you have looked forward to this.”

I couldn’t see her, but I heard shuffling footsteps.

He lifted the cover off the pail and reached a gloved hand in. I wasn’t surprised to see him hold up a very large piece of ice… and yet, it was a little underwhelming. He was going to torture me with ice cubes?

Then he touched it to the bond on my wrist, and the cold started to creep through it. I tried to jerk my arm away, which only caused more pain. He held the ice against the bond until the metal felt like it was frozen through, then he put the chunk away and put the cover over it again.

That was it? One application? It had been terrible, my wrist hurt and I’d wrenched my shoulder trying to jerk away, but… it was over. If the other parts were as brief as that… it was just a demonstration, after all. Something to show his displeasure, prove he was serious, and give me a warning not to mess up again.

“The ice will be the first stage,” he said. My heart sank as I realized it was just a demonstration. The real torture was coming up. “I thought I would give you a little tour before we begin properly, so you know what you have to look forward to. Of course, I do not know whether it will be more excruciating for you to have the ice applied to your bonds, or to your bare skin, though I look forward to finding out.”

He ducked down again and retrieved the tongs and the pliers.

“These will be next,” he said. “With the average person, only so much force can be applied, the flesh can only be twisted so hard, before things begin to snap. With you? There can be no such limit. The ice will prove useful at this stage, as well. I hope the fact that the instruments are made of metal has not been lost on you. Steff, come closer!” he said, turning away. “I wish you to witness this.”

He laid the tongs down alongside me and held the pliers in his hand, opening and closing them as he moved the head of the tool back and forth over my chest, circling between my nipples as if wracked with indecision.

All thought of averting my eyes had long since flown from my head. I was looking up at his face, which seemed to be oblivious to me as a person. He was utterly impassive, entirely fixed on the task in front of him.

Suddenly, he straightened up, and lowered the pliers.

“I cannot do this,” he declared.

Again, a spark of hope flared up in my heart. It was over. We were done.

“It is too much,” he said, and that spark was fanned into a flickering flame.

“I cannot decide,” he said, and the flame died, leaving me colder and darker inside than I had been before.

“Steff, you must choose… left, right,” he said, waving the pliers over me, and then lowering them so that they touched between my breasts and dragging them down my body, until they were just touching where the folds of my labia hooded my clit. “Or lower? Hmm? What should it be, sweet Steff?”

“Don’t!” Steff croaked.

“The nipples, then?” Viktor said.

“No!”

“The clitoris? You aren’t making sense, lover,” Viktor said, waving the pliers above my pubic region. “Unless you mean you cannot choose, either, in which case we shall have to do all three.”

“No!” Steff said again, sobbing. “Me… take me.”

“That is her choice, and she has said no. She would rather not risk losing you, I think. Isn’t that sweet?” Viktor said. “So, sunwise, do you think?”

“I… I won’t,” Steff said.

“You will not what?” Viktor asked.

“I won’t be with her!” Steff said. “I won’t! Do you hear me, Mack?” she said. “Tell him to take me! Tell him to take me, because I don’t want to be with you anyway!”

Thursday, Astera 25th, 221

So, I get my essay back with a B. Big note on the front, too. Says, “Your premise is interesting but I wonder how firmly you actually believe it.” Fuck it, anyway.

I worked my ass off on that thing. I figure, either it’s good or it’s not. What the hell is Professor Nimitz doing, judging the sincerity of it? He just doesn’t like what I have to say.

I don’t care, though. Dead is fucking dead, right? A corpse is just raw materials. How’s it any different from the clay or whatever a golem maker uses? I mean, even without necromancy you can animate flesh or bones the same way you animate a carriage or a factory line or a dancing sword or whatever. They’re just objects. Necromancy makes them more useful, but once you realize that they’re objects it doesn’t matter how you use them.

When I die, I hope somebody uses my body somehow. I don’t care how. They can zombify me or eat me or turn me into a cute pair of boots, for all I care. For all I will care. I won’t be around any more to complain.

I wouldn’t mind being boots. Fashion immortality. That’s something, right?

I’m not suicidal, though. I don’t want to die. I hate the thought that I’ll have to. My fucking dad might live until the Last Battle, if he never gets bored enough to go on ahead, or careless. I’d love to outlive him on principle, but I’m not stupid enough to think that’s really going to happen.

I don’t care, though.

I don’t.

Lisa’s waiting for me when I get to the fountain.

Smoking, of course.

She offers me a cigarette. I give her a dirty look.

“My one vice,” she says. “And the only one you don’t have. How come you won’t smoke?”

“I told you,” I say.

“You told me you caught a cold,” she says. “So? Everybody gets sick.”

“Mortals get sick,” I tell her.

She laughs. Her laugh’s so annoying. Her voice is pretty good, but I can’t help hearing what she doesn’t want me to, especially when she laughs.

I want to strangle her, a bit. More when she laughs like that.

I wonder if she knows that. I wonder if she suspects how often I think about it.

“What’s so funny?” I ask instead.

“You are mortal,” she says.

“Only on my mom’s side,” I say. “I don’t want to spend my whole day coughing and hacking, okay? It happened once. If I don’t do anything stupid, I can hopefully go my whole life without it happening again.”

Lisa’s got that stupid bit in the front of her throat that human men have. She wears these ugly yellow or red scarves to hide it. When I imagine myself choking her, she doesn’t have it. Her throat is smooth and perfect.

I’m not serious about that, by the way. I mean, I think about it, but it’s just a daydream, a stupid fantasy. It’s something to jerk off to, something to sketch in my notebook. Not something I’d actually do.

Oh, don’t even pretend you don’t have fantasies that you’d never act on. Everybody does. I think the people who can’t own up to it are the ones who actually go off and kill somebody.

I’d totally fuck Lisa, though, if she’d let me, but as she says, her legs are “closed for renovations.” She won’t let anybody near her ass because she’s a good little Anankhan Khersian, or as good as she can be under the circumstances.

“I’ve been thinking about my name,” she says.

“Oh?” I say.

She does this like, every other day. I take out my notebook and flip open to the last page I was working on. I’ve got a sketch of her half-started. There’s a snake on a tree branch, with its tail hanging down and coiled around her neck like a noose.

I think it’s actually the scarves that do it for me. She looks like she’s half-choked all the time to begin with. She’d probably pass better without them. They draw attention to what she wants to hide. Humans have such dull eyesight and who looks at a throat, anyway?

“I don’t know,” she says. “I liked ‘Lisa’ when I picked it, but it seems kind of boring. I mean, there’s a lot of Lisas on campus, you know?”

“I guess,” I say. I add some half-assed shading to the drawing. I draw like my half-ogre roommate plays the harpsichord. Doesn’t matter. Since I can’t ever show anybody what I draw, it doesn’t really matter how shitty it is.

“So, have you given any thought to your ‘after’ name?”

“Well, I don’t see what’s wrong with Steff,” I say.

“Don’t you want to make a clean break, though?” Lisa asks.

I close my notebook. She’s giving me a look that makes me want to smack her a little. Kind of half-pleading. Like she wants me to give her permission to change her name. Like I’m supposed to be her partner in this.

Or co-conspirator, or something.

I take a deep breath and let it out through my nostrils. This is why I stopped hanging out on the TS tapestries. That and the drama.

“When I’m done with school, I’m gonna tell my dad to take a flying fuck at the dome of the world and move a million miles away,” I say. “That’s all the break I want or need.”

“You know why I hate you?” she says.

She does this all the time. She doesn’t actually have the brains to hate anybody, but she thinks it’s cute to say this instead of “You know what bugs me about you?”

I hate lots of people, and there isn’t anything cute about it.

“What?” I ask.

“You don’t care about any of this,” she says. “It takes me ninety minutes to get ready for my day and I’ve still got about a fifty-fifty chance of passing as a woman to people who don’t already know, but you can just pull on a skirt and you’re good to go. Even when you’re wearing jeans like today, you get taken as a woman more often than me.”

“If you really want to be taken as a woman, you just have to say the word,” I say. I smirk at her. She hits me with her bag.

She isn’t even really that cute. Lines like that do something to me, though. It’s like the gods hand me a set-up line, and I’ve got to use it.

I wonder if it would be a violation of her religious world view for me to fuck her between the breasts. Hers are real. She’s been taking potions of feminization for years. Since she was fourteen. Really understanding mom.

And the money to buy that kind of stuff.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

“You’ve got that look on your face,” she says.

“What look?” I ask. I try to give her an innocent smile.

“The look that you’ve got something awful that you’re just bursting to say,” she says. “So say it.”

“I want to fuck your tits,” I say.

She punches me in the stomach. Hard. Femmed out or not, she’s still a full human and she’s still stronger than me.

“You asked!” I say, laughing. She’s so easy to provoke. Sometimes I wonder if I could get her to choke me, a little. It would be almost as good as the other way, and probably safer, since she wouldn’t really do it for real.

“I’ve got to scoot,” she says, flicking her cigarette into the fountain.

“You haven’t said no,” I remind her.

“To what?”

“The tit thing,” I say.

“No, Steff,” she says, getting up and smoothing her skirt. “N-O. No.”

“Your mom spent all that gold on potions and you won’t even use them,” I say. “How do you think she feels about that?”

“Bringing my mom into it’s not going to help,” she says.

“There’s poor, flat-chested children in the Argentus who’d kill for what you have.”

“Goodbye, Steff.”

I watch her walk away. My cock stirs for some reason. I’m going to have to stop tucking it down if it’s going to keep doing that.

She’s not that cute. She’s a year older than me and she’s fat. She outweighs me by like three times. She’s a fat, self-righteous know-it-all tranny and I wish to no one in particular that she’d let me in her pants.

I’m jealous of her breasts. That’s what it is. Simple jealousy.

I head back to Harlowe with my backpack in front of me. It’s annoying having a fucking hard-on, especially since I spent more money than I have trying to stop it.

I stop on the second floor. Moahr’s room. Door’s open. Some kid I don’t know is there. Looks like a dog. I mean, really. Fur and all.

Kind of hot. The fur/dog thing is, I mean. The guy as a whole’s kind of blah.

I knock on the door frame.

“Oh, hey,” Moahr says. He hands a stone jar to dogboy. About a third of Moahr’s alchemy shit is stone or metal stuff I guess he brought from Koboldland. “I’ll be with you in a second.” To dogboy, he says, “Now, when you do this for class, you want to use spider webs, but when you do it for your personal collection, use silkworm shit, if you can get it.”

“Got it,” dogboy says.

“Now go put that over on the windowsill,” Moahr says. “Uncovered. My assistant, Finbar,” he says to me. “How’d that dick numbing stuff work for you?”

The guy called Finbar chokes and almost spills the jar of whatever.

“Fine,” I say. “It wore off too quick, though.”

Moahr shrugs.

“That’s the way it goes,” he says.

“It didn’t even last an hour,” I say. “For what you charged me…”

“I charge what I have to,” he says. “First axiom of potionmaking: rarity of materials and difficulty are proportional to applicability of the finished product. That’s before you factor in supply and demand.”

“There’s a lot of demand and applicability for oil of impotence?” I ask.

“It doesn’t just work on dicks,” he says. “Numbness is useful for all kinds of shit, both offensive and healing, and anything with healing uses just about counts double. I could give you something that kills your sex drive…”

“No,” I say. “How about something that makes me not care so much?”

“About your dick?”

“About anything,” I say.

“Apathy?”

“Not apathy,” I say. “Just something so I’m not, you know, bothered.”

“How about happy?” he asks. “I can do happy.”

“About everything?”

“Easy,” he says. “Easier to make you happy about everything than some things.”

“How much will that cost?” I ask.

He shrugs, and looks at Finbar, who nods.

“We’ll have to work it out,” Moahr says. “It won’t be too much, though.”

“Why not?”

“Because happiness isn’t that useful, in the big scheme,” he says.

“Okay,” I say. “How long?”

“Come back tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll have something then, or I’ll know how long it’ll take.”

“Okay,” I say.

I’m halfway to the stairwell when I hear Finbar saying, “Dick-numbing oil?”

“He’s okay, for a faggot,” Moahr says. “Little creepy. The good thing about dealing to fags is they’ll give you head, if you’re hard up.”

Yeah, fat chance of that. Like I’d go near that ugly little goblin thing’s thing, or his dog-faced sidekick.

I don’t care. I really don’t.

I’ll care even less, if Moahr comes through.

Meanwhile, I know where to get a cheap substitute.

Viktor’s staring at his stupid keyboard like he doesn’t know what it’s for when I come in.

“Knock,” he says. He sounds pissed, but he’s not even playing anything, so I don’t know why he’s all bent out of shape.

“Sorry,” I say. I head for his bed and reach underneath it. “I need to borrow a beer.”

“This early in the morning?”

I stop and turn around to look at him, to see if he’s joking.

“What is funny?” he asks.

“It’s like, one in the afternoon,” I say.

He looks at me like he thinks I’m joking, or something, then puts his hand up on his forehead like he’s slapping himself in slow motion.

“You forgot to go to class again,” I say. We’re only on the second week of school and this is like the third time he’s just completely zoned out at his keyboard.

He throws his head back and roars. He’s shirtless. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with a shirt on except when he’s going to class. Somebody next door drops something.

My cock’s doing the shifty thing again. I probably shouldn’t stare at my half-ogre roommate. It’s a miracle he hasn’t killed me already. Just about any roommate would have had disaster potential for a “faggot” like me, but a big manly half-ogre was about the top of the chart. Even one who thought he was a musician.

They eat their dead. Ogres, I mean. Assuming that’s not humanocentric propaganda. Their own dead. Their enemies. Their slaves. Can’t let any meat go to waste.

Meat.

Raw materials.

Objects.

Maybe he’ll even make my skin into boots.

There’s no pretending my cock isn’t hard. It slips completely free of its makeshift prison as I watch Viktor.

He smashes his chair and knocks all the shit off his desk, then brings his forearm down on top of it and splinters it. He raises a fist over his magic keyboard and stops inches above it. He turns around, his red eyes flashing. His lips are curled in a snarl, and it makes his tusky pointy teeth more prominent.

His chest is heaving.

Mine, too.

His cock is rock-hard and sticking out as well as it can beneath his pants.

Mine, too.

Don’t notice. Don’t notice. Don’t notice.

He notices. His eyes lock right on to it. I wait for him to say something. He doesn’t, though. I realize that it’s coming. He’s going to kill me. He’s totally going to kill me and eat me and that’s going to be it.

“Get a beer,” he says. He sounds a little hoarse. “Get me one, too.”

So maybe I’m not dead yet.

Apparently, he didn’t let a little thing like a lack of clothing stop him from roaming the halls when something lit a fire underneath him. While I worried about Steff, I found the fact that he’d ran out naked a little encouraging, as it suggested he didn’t intend to be gone for long. I wondered what I would do if he didn’t come back, but only a few minutes passed before I heard the key in the lock.

I forgot not to look as he came into the room, dragging Steff by the arm. I watched him give a jerk and let go, slamming her into one of the padded walls. From the look of it, the black drapes muffled impact a bit as well as sound, but it was still pretty brutal looking.

Viktor’s eyes locked with mine. They were almost paralyzing in their fiery intensity. He lunged at me and I cringed, then yelped as he squeezed the sides of my head between his palms and wrenched my head back up and faced me forwards again.

I could feel my heart trying to escape from my chest and was whimpering even after he let me go. Half-human or not, angry Viktor was scary.

“I told you what I’d do,” he said to Steff, reaching past me to pick up the skull from the desk. “I told you what I’d do if you went back there.”

“I didn’t!” Steff wailed. “I was just looking for Ronnie.”

“The whole third floor is off limits,” Viktor said.

“You said… you said,” Steff hiccupped. “You said if I went back to Fin. I didn’t… I didn’t.”

“Gah!” Viktor said. He slammed the skull back down on the desk, prompting an anxious gasp from Steff. Then, with surprising speed, he grabbed the chair and tipped it sideways, dumping me off.

“Hey!” I protested, forgetting myself… or maybe forgetting my lack of self. I started to get up, but Viktor planted a foot on my stomach and put his weight on it. Ow.

“Sit,” he said to Steff, still standing on me.

I couldn’t breathe. I could have rolled over, thrown him off… but I didn’t want to make the situation worse than it was. I went as limp and still as I could. He lifted his weight off that foot, but kept it in place.

“I was not precise enough in my instructions,” Viktor said when Steff had sat down. “If you break any of the rulings I have given you today, I will take your skull away.”

“I was just looking for Ronnie,” Steff repeated. She’d lost all the subtle modulation of her voice… she was almost screeching now. “I was…”

“Silence,” Viktor said. “It still remains for you to be punished.”

He stepped off of me. I would have relaxed, except I had no desire whatsoever to see or hear Steff’s punishment. Viktor stooped down and grabbed me by the seat and the back of my neck, lifting me upright and setting me on my feet. I hoped he was going to direct me by the door, but instead he dragged me to the closet.

He slid open the door. Inside the closet was a big, black box standing up on its end, sort of like a wooden locker. The shelf had been removed to make room for it. He opened the box to reveal a somewhat plump human girl in satin panties and stockings.

Her eyes went from wild with excitement when the door opened to wild with confusion when she saw Viktor’s face and me.

“Out!” Viktor bellowed at her.

She stared at me in confusion and maybe a little anger.

“Out,” Viktor repeated, yanking her out of the box with his free hand and then shoving me in it.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” I said as the door slammed shut. I tried to push it open, but it didn’t budge. It wasn’t even a matter of being latched or locked. It didn’t move at all. There was a handle, but it didn’t turn from the inside.

So, I was stuck inside Viktor’s magic bondage box.

Okay.

It occurred to me that he might actually have been showing me consideration, of a kind he felt was appropriate for my “level.” Instead of giving Steff what was no doubt a severe punishment in front of me, he’d put me away first where I couldn’t see or hear anything.

How long had the other girl been stuck inside? She’d seemed surprised, but she hadn’t been complaining. Maybe Viktor had ordered her inside when we arrived… Steff had knocked and then waited before coming in. There hadn’t been that long a delay, though… not enough time for argument or explanation. That meant she’d been there completely willingly. She’d been expecting to be ordered or placed inside the box, if she hadn’t simply been there already.

I felt a little bit better having worked that out. Not a lot, but a little bit. It was hard to imagine even a submissive putting up with this kind of treatment: being put away in a box in the closet, like a toy you never play with any more. It was hard to imagine anything more demeaning.

Though, it was a little bit arousing.

I wasn’t in the box of my own free will, of course, but I was willing to stay there for the time being. The opening had some kind of holding charm on it, but the wood was probably just wood. That meant I could batter my way out of it eventually if I had to. If it wasn’t fireproof, I had that as an option of last resort.

The box seemed to be sealed up pretty tight, but there was enough light at least for me to see myself and the sides. They were painted black, so there wasn’t a lot to see. I had room to turn around, barely.

After I’d been in there for maybe fifteen minutes, dimly glowing blue lines started to form on the door. I thought my vision was just swimming, but the lines formed a word and then disappeared

“Panic?” I read, and the door clicked open, hitting the inside of the closet door. Whoops. I grabbed the handle and pulled it shut, feeling a little guilty.

It had been a reminder to the bondee, apparently, of the device’s safe word or emergency escape clause or whatever. I hadn’t actually been in a panic or an emergency.

The word appeared another time before the door was opened again. I wondered in an idle sort of way if it did it at regular intervals, or just once for every time the door was opened and closed? I could see the pros and cons either way.

If you were seriously into the treatment enough to enjoy being locked away for an hour, it might wreck the experience to have your prison keep reminding you that it’s all just make-believe. On the other hand, if for some reason you didn’t know the code word and you missed it, you’d be out of luck… unless there were other safety features. Like a maximum duration of incarceration, or spells to detect physical comfort and safety.

Maybe the reminder could be disabled, for couples who used it regularly? Of course, that would be easy to abuse. The best way to do it would be to have a counter word that only worked from inside with the door closed. If you wanted to go all-out, it would have to be confirmed by the safe word.

Before, I never would have conceived of an enchanted box for storing sex partners in. Now, I was wondering what the state of the art was for such things, and whether I could improve on it.

Well, enchantment was my major.

It hadn’t occurred to me until just then that I could have poked around a bit to find how the spells were weaved, but that felt like it would be… cheating. I’d been put in the box under the assumption that I would be a passive object. Poking around to see how the box worked didn’t mesh with that. Also, it would have been like the flashing reminder: another way of saying “this isn’t real.”

I knew it wasn’t, but… I felt kind of safe locked in the box. Nobody could see me. Nobody could attack me. Nobody could judge me.

Nobody could touch me.

I’d never been a claustrophobe. The basement I’d spent so much time in had been a good deal bigger than a box, but it hadn’t exactly been expansive, and it had been dark and underground. It had also been my private place, even though it would always be tinged with feelings of shame.

When my grandmother had made noises about getting rid of my Mecknights, I’d hidden them down there, in the old well that had been covered over. Not only had that kept them safe, it gave me something to do during the long empty hours.

Not that they were particularly boring, even without the toys. I’d always been able to entertain myself, when left alone and with no other options. It had been down in the basement that I’d come up with my ideas for stories. I’d never really thought about it, but as I’d grown older and been sent downstairs less and less, I’d written less and less, too.

When the door finally opened from the outside, it took me by surprise. I’d almost forgotten there was a door, much less a whole room outside it. Viktor grabbed me and yanked me out. He let go of me just outside the closet. I stayed where I was, not just meek but… content. I felt almost as though I’d had a really good nap.

Was that a property of the box, or of me?

“Put on your underwear,” Viktor said to Steff. “Take her back. I will see you again after dinner… and stay away from the third floor.”

I can only assume Steff signaled her assent in some way. She came over and took me by the arm. She was pale and trembling, her eyes bleary and her cheeks wet. I led her to the door as much as the other way around.

The girl in the panties was waiting right outside the door, standing stock still with her arms at her side, as if she were still in a box. I noticed now that she had the word “Viktor” cut in big angry lines on her arm. When we came out, she slipped back into the room without a word.

“Are you okay?” I asked Steff when she’d locked the door behind the girl.

She nodded, then shook her head.

“He took my skull,” she said in the sort of small, meek voice I more commonly associated with myself than with Steff.. “He’s keeping it for now.”

I thought about telling her there were other skulls, but frankly, the whole “keeping parts of people’s bodies” thing creeped me out. Maybe it was hypocritical, given the fact that I’d eaten parts of somebody’s body not too long ago. Then again, that creeped me out, too.

“Is it special?” I asked. I’d almost asked, “What’s so special about it?” Yeah, I’m sensitive like that.

She nodded.

“He gave it to me,” she said.

I thought that I could almost understand what was going on. Though it might have seemed like he was being petty for taking a toy away in anger and she was being petty for crying over it, the, um… item in question had been a token of love between them. For Viktor to take it away was a very serious thing.

“I’m pretty sure he loves you,” I said.

“I know,” Steff said. She started to turn away, then turned back to me and collapsed against me. There was no embrace. Her arms were limp at her side. If I hadn’t hugged her quickly, she probably would have fallen. “I love him so much, Mack,” she said, bursting into tears.

“I know,” I said. Lamest answer ever.

“I-I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him,” she said.

“Why would you?” I asked. “He loves you.”

“I can’t… I can’t handle it,” she said. “What he wants. I need… I can’t do it.”

Ordinarily, this probably would have been a good clue that there was something very wrong with the relationship. If she was talking about staying away from mind-altering potions, though, I think Viktor had the right idea. On the other hand, if she really lacked the strength to follow through on his order, that right idea wouldn’t take them very far.

I could do my best to support her… and if we did move into the dating phase, maybe Viktor’s “hostage” idea would help tip the scales. In the end, though, I was way out of my depths. I was not prepared to handle Steff’s problems, whatever they were.

I was simply not qualified.

Then I realized that there were people who were.

“Steff,” I said, in the gentlest tone I could manage. It was pretty gentle. As much as I felt for Steff, I was still pretty relaxed from my little time-out. “Have you ever considered mental healing sessions?”

She pulled back from me. I saw a twinge in her face, as if the idea disturbed her. I expected her to protest, or laugh off the suggestion, or even slap me. I remembered how vigorously Puddy had put down the idea of any kind of counseling for me after the first time Barley had attacked me. I failed to repress a shudder at that. Of course she would have. That made me all the more determined to defend the idea with Steff.

Then, her face softened.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I really do.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed, rocking on her feet a little. She hiccupped.

“Okay then,” she said.

He’d just been dicking around with a couple notes before… now it was like he was fucking the entire concept of music, and fucking it hard, ogre-style, with the harpsichord alternately moaning in pleasure and screaming in pain.

Even though I was hardly a musical whiz, I could tell the piece lacked a certain polish… but the roughness seemed to work for it.

It wasn’t a “pretty” song, but it was far from terrible, and impressive in its speed and intensity. It was the emotion behind the music that was harsh… the sound itself was oddly beautiful. It was hard to believe that such big hands could move so quickly and so deftly, that a man with only two arms could seem to pull so many voices out of an instrument at the same time.

Had Viktor never played like this for Steff? Or did she just not have the taste to recognize it for what it was?

The raucous song ended abruptly. I’d say it was anticlimactic, except he just stopped at what seemed pretty damn climactic to me, at a swelling sort of crescendo when it sounded like all the different strands of the song he’d been weaving in and out were all coming together. He just stopped, and brought his hands down on the keyboard again with a roar of frustration.

His whole body tensed when he did this… I think he must have been holding quite a bit back for the sake of not destroying his instrument.

“Wrong,” he muttered. “Wrong, wrong… wrong.”

He played a single note, the lower of the two he’d been toying with during his little soliloquy, then snorted and mashed the keyboard again

“Speak,” he said.

I hadn’t been expecting this, and blurted out the first thing that popped into my head.

“I liked it.”

Viktor waved one massive hand and turned away.

“You do not know anything,” he said. “You are as bad as Steff, who only wants to know when I will write something she can dance to.”

Well, that might explain something: Steff was a pop music junkie, with no appreciation for the… well, I couldn’t think of a word for Viktor’s music. It sounded kind of classical, but it wasn’t. It kind of rocked. Actually, it–and I promise to never use this phrase again–rocked hard, but it wasn’t rock and roll.

“Stand,” he said, and I did.

I was more than a little clumsy at it, because my legs weren’t a little stiff and my arm had fallen asleep beneath me.

“You handle passivity well,” he said, when I’d steadied myself on my feet. “Like somebody who is accustomed to it.”

I don’t know how I would have answered that if I’d been allowed to. Not talking and trying to stay perfectly still while he ignored me might have been incredibly awkward under another circumstance, but the truth was I had no clue how to act in front of somebody like Viktor, period. Being passive was easier.

“It will be necessary for us to speak with one another now,” he said, going over to Steff’s desk. He pulled out the chair and turned it to the side. “Sit.”

Though I was a little squeamish at the thought of being seated so close to the grisly semi-animated arm and the assorted bones which cluttered the desk, I did as I was bade. I did not feel at all relieved to finally be allowed to sit while Viktor stood and glowered over me. Then, he went over to his harpsichord stool and sat on it. He was still looking down at me, but we were on closer to an equal level.

“Answer me: you wish to date my Steff?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Tell me why.”

“She seems so sad inside,” I said. The blunt command had prompted my reply without thought or reflection.

“And you think this will make her happier,” Viktor said. He swiveled the stool around and fiddled with something on the keyboard, then began to play… silently.

“Imagine that we brought Steff back in here and I told her that she may go on a date with you, or she may have an hour to do anything to your body that she wishes,” he said, his fingers gliding easily over the keys. “Try to guess which she would choose.”

I swallowed uncomfortably. Steff had once expressed regret over never having been on a “real date”, but she’d repeatedly expressed interest in doing shocking and even frankly horrible things to me for fun.

Was he actually proposing this? I wasn’t sure how confident I was that Steff would jump at a chance for a night out on the town or whatever over an opportunity to play out one of her more disturbing fantasies… say, in the vaults of the necromancy labs.

Of course, I had my safeword, but it seemed cruel to offer Steff something I wouldn’t follow through on.

“Tell me, do you understand what I said to you before?” Viktor said. “About what would happen if you hurt Steff?”

“I, um, think so,” I said. He hadn’t exactly been ambiguous, but I wasn’t completely sure why he’d chosen to give me that warning.

“If you do not understand, ask,” he said.

“Were you… was that your way of giving me permission to date her?”

“I will not give you permission,” he said. “I will tell your owner my decision at a later time. That was my way of telling you that if you do receive permission, you should think carefully before you act on it. You are a dangerous creature… far more dangerous than my own kin, but not as dangerous as I will be to you if you fail to keep my Steff safe.”

He played a little bit more. I couldn’t translate his hand motions into sounds, but it seemed an altogether lighter piece of music, much more mellow and with his hands frequently drifting into the higher end of the keys.

“Here are the rules you will follow if you date my Steff,” he said. “She drinks no alcohol. She takes no potions or herbs which affect the mind. If she does these things in your presence, you will pay. If you hurt her in the process of preventing it, you will suffer. Safewords and blacklists will not apply in this case. This is not BDSM play. This is a man who is also an ogre protecting what he loves. I do not think you will have to do anything… Steff will know that you are hostage to her behavior.”

I thought he was probably right. Steff always seemed to be genuinely concerned about me. Would that give her the willpower she needed to practice self-denial, though?

“Steff is on punishment now,” he continued. “She is to be mine exclusively, physically, until further notice. This does not change if she dates you. She frequently disobeys me in this sort of matter, but in this case I feel it is important that she does not. If she strays with another, you will share in her punishment. If she strays with you, you will take all of it for yourself.”

He paused, and played what probably would have been a rather dramatic chord if he’d had the sound turned on.

“You will not enjoy this sort of punishment, not even a little bit,” he said. “If you do not wish to abide by these terms… if you do not wish to be subject to penalties for the actions of another… then you do not need to date my Steff. There is no agreement or disagreement. You do not date her if you cannot accept.”

He gave me a good, long look.

“Now that you understand all of that, you may speak freely for a time,” he said. “You have no doubt noticed that Steff is upset by something?”

“Um, yeah, actually,” I said. I probably should have relaxed to be allowed to speak, but suddenly I felt like there was pressure on me. I could no longer fall back on my assumed objecthood. I had to perform as a person now. Making polite conversation would have been a stretch, but this one thing really did need talking about. “I wanted to ask if you knew why.”

“She will not tell me what happened, though she swore it had nothing to do with you,” he said. “I have heard stories about the things you’ve done lately, you see, and so I was prepared to kill you when she came back to my room late at night, distraught… destroyed.”

I almost protested that I hadn’t done anything to her, but of course, Viktor already believed that, or else he wouldn’t be speaking so calmly to me.

Or maybe he would be speaking calmly. It was kind of a chilling thought.

“This is not something I can safely beat out of her,” Viktor said. “I want you to find out for me, if you can. I offer no threats for failure. I am not sure she will tell anybody, but I believe she might tell you. Which do you think Steff would choose, if we asked her? Torture or romance?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I do not either,” Viktor said. “It would be… interesting… to find out.”

I shivered at the way he inflected the word “interesting.” Viktor was smarter and more refined than Belinda, but he was also more of a true ogre. I guessed that being too “interesting” to him was probably not healthy, even with his hands-off attitude to torture.

“Can’t she hear us talking?” I asked. I’d wondered about this before. She was right outside the door, and had whatever hearing she’d inherited from her elven father.

Viktor shook his head.

“Not even if she is still standing by the door,” he said. “The proper knock on the door triggers a chime, but no sound enters or escapes this room. It is necessary for my music, as well as Steff’s.”

Steff had mentioned something about soundproofing, but it seemed prohibitively expensive to me. It was easy to do an area of silence. It was harder to make an area that kept sound from entering or leaving. To make that kind of spell permanent was pretty energy-intensive, especially if it would just have to be undone when the school year was over. Of course, it could be attached to the wall hangings and the carpet…

Then I remembered Viktor’s silent footsteps. Heavy fabric like the carpet and the wall hangings would naturally absorb sound. If that property was enhanced, the way I’d enhanced the insulating property of the shower curtain only permanent, then you could have a portable, reusable soundproofing kit.

It still wouldn’t be cheap, but cheaper than an aura of total silence.

“Would you actually offer Steff that choice?” I asked.

“You are not mine to offer,” Viktor said. “You are beneath me, lower than me, but your owner does not belong to Steff and thus the two of you do not belong to me.”

“Do you… do you honestly believe I’m beneath you?” I asked. Being allowed to talk, to converse was making me a little bit bolder. “I mean, I kind of submit willingly. I’m not actually that weak.”

“Yes, you submit willingly,” he said. “You are passive. You could be strong, but you are not… and that means your physical abilities only make you a more desirable and dangerous possession.”

“I’m really not a person to you,” I said, feeling oddly detached from that observation. When Kyla had acted like anything non-human was an animal, I’d felt personally demeaned. With Viktor, it all seemed so… impersonal. “You’re sitting here talking to me but I’m still not a real person to you.”

He nodded.

“I will not apologize for my upbringing,” he said. “I would not apologize to somebody closer to my level, because I do not believe it is wrong. Most of the people here are neither above nor below me, but you have voluntarily placed yourself beneath another and named yourself as her possession. Why should I argue that this is not your true nature?”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

“Do you have anything else you need to say?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Then we are done speaking,” he said, and I understood that my conversation license had just been revoked. “I will retrieve Steff.”

The walls and ceiling were draped in thick black cloth. The floor was covered with a plush red carpet. They seemed to have got rid of one of the beds and one of the desks. The remaining desk had a skull and several other bones on it. The centerpiece of the display was a mostly intact forearm held in a vise, its fingers twitching. I felt a little sick at the sight of that.

Steff kept hold of my arm while she closed and locked the door, and then grabbed me by both shoulders and marched me a bit away from it.

The room was lit by candles scattered around the room. The flames might very well have been illusionary, though, because none of the candles seemed to be even a little melted and some of them were dangerously close to books, piles of paper, and other hazards.

Viktor the half-ogre was seated at his keyboard, which seemed to have been designed for larger-than-usual musicians as it was both taller and wider across than the desk, with keys sized for thicker fingers. It was a magic model… obviously a full-sized instrument could have been problematic in a dorm room. There was a whole row of candles running along the back of the instrument, lighting Viktor from the front and making the view from the back look a bit… well… demonic, for lack of a better term.

He raised a hand and brought his finger down on a single key, producing the sound of a somber-sounding note being plucked within an imaginary harpsichord.

I saw that he was shirtless, and realized a second later that he was in fact naked. I took this all in, resisting the urge to look around and see everything. I was an object. I wasn’t supposed to move. Even just turning my neck was probably pushing it, though Viktor wasn’t watching. I tried to find a comfortable position to lock my head in place.

I realized that Steff had vanished from my peripheral vision. I turned my head without thinking and saw that she’d got down on her knees, bent over with her head almost touching the ground. I wondered if I was supposed to bow, too… but, no. Steff had been very clear about the proper way for me to show Viktor respect.

I had every reason to want to be on his good side. I needed a chance to talk to him about Steff, if he would listen. Long term, I wanted his permission to date her. I could put up with a little cultural weirdness for that. It would be worth it, to see Steff so happy…

Viktor hit the same note again, waited a little while, and then hit it again. It seemed like Steff hadn’t been exaggerating his lack of skill. He hit it for a fourth time, then moved his hand back and forth over a range of five or six keys before hitting another one. Then he hit that one again.

Was he trying to compose a song one note at a time? I wondered how he managed to pass a music class. Probably the instructors were too afraid to flunk him. He definitely looked more like a warrior than a bard of any kind.

I don’t say that just because he was a half-ogre. He seemed huge, even sitting down… both tall and incredibly broad shouldered. I kind of vaguely remembered having heard that there’s no size difference between male and female ogres, but there was still a noticeable disparity between Viktor and Belinda in bulk. Maybe their human blood affected that in some way… or maybe he was just a larger specimen of his kind.

I hadn’t really noticed his face the first time I’d seen him, back before classes had started. That time, I’d been too busy failing to not look at the massive bulge in his pants. Now I could see his head in profile when he occasionally turned his ear toward the keyboard and I realized he was handsome in a way.

I mean, human-handsome. I’m sure the average ogre looks perfectly acceptable to other ogres. They just look a little… well, lumpy to humans. There used to be a myth that ogres weren’t born, they were hewn by other ogres out of the side of a mountain, which explained their craggy, uneven features. Belinda had some of that going on, though her face was softer and rounder than any full ogre I’d ever seen a picture of.

Viktor was another story. He had long black hair, held up in a very non-girly ponytail at the moment. He didn’t look like he’d been hewn roughly out of rock… he looked like he’d been sculpted. Carved. Chiseled. The kind of gray-brown skin tone helped the impression of being generally statue-like. From what I could tell, his face seemed to be both broader and more angular than would have necessarily been attractive on a human–in fact it probably would have looked like a caricature of masculinity on a human–but he carried it off.

He kept going back and forth between those two notes, playing each one two or three times, pausing, and then going to the other. Steff was still crouched on the floor and I was doing my best imitation of a statue. It felt a little ridiculous, to have been summoned like this and then ignored.

Finally, after what seemed like forever he gave an exasperated grunt and brought both hands down on the keyboard, mashing the keys and producing a twangily discordant cacophony. He pushed the stool back and swung around, getting to his feet. I shrank back as he strode towards us, the candle light reflecting on his eyes and catching on his bone-white, tiny tusk-like canines.

I couldn’t help it. When he lunged forward, I jumped back half a step and let out a shriek. Okay, he could no more have harmed me unarmed than Belinda could have but when there’s a big and legitimately scary looking half-ogre guy coming at you, you don’t think about things like that.

Viktor hadn’t been reaching for me, though. He was reaching for Steff. He grabbed her by the hair and hauled her up on her feet. I’d already broken my statue routine, so I watched him haul her over to the bed and yank her skirt off before throwing her onto it. Steff had been going ranger beneath it… I looked away before I caught more than a glimpse.

Viktor turned around and crossed the room back towards me in two strides. Granted it wasn’t a very big room, of course, but it was still impressive. He grabbed a big handful of my hair, yanked me off my feet, and then slammed me down back more or less where I had been with enough force that I felt a bit like an accordion. It had been a purely symbolic action… my feet weren’t any more in the exact spot I’d been standing in than before he’d moved me.

The message was clear, though: it was okay for him to move me, but not for me to move myself.

He put a hand under my chin and the other on top of my head and twisted my head painfully to the side with a quick jerk. If I’d had mortal bones, it probably would have either killed me or paralyzed me. Lucky me, I got to live and keep feeling the pain.

He’d turned my gaze away from the bed, a fact which I appreciated when he rejoined Steff. The sound track was plenty graphic enough. “Ogre men can go for half an hour to forty-five minutes on average” is one of those little known facts that everybody knows because it gets forwarded all over the ethernet, even though nobody’s really sure if it’s true or not.

I wasn’t exactly facing a timepiece, but if somebody told me that Viktor lasted an hour I would believe them.

What did I think about during that time, however long it actually lasted?

At first I tried to tune out the sounds from behind my field of vision. Viktor was… surprisingly restrained, at least in that department. If I’d ever spent even a moment trying to imagine what a big manly dominant half-ogre would sound like while presumably sodomizing a half-elf, I would have imagined a lot of grunting and growling.

The sort of noises Ian had made, but… a lot more so.

He was apparently tight-lipped in the sack, though, because aside from an occasional puff of breath through his nose, all I heard was the bed moving, and Steff.

She was whimpering, crying, gasping, and moaning… and every so often, crying out in something between anguish and pleasure. I tried to tune it out, but I really couldn’t because there was nothing else to listen to.

They were having sex while I was in the room, yards away, and acting like I wasn’t even there… or wasn’t worth noticing. I remembered my dream of the previous night, of being used as a coffee table… Amaranth and Ian fucking on top of me like I wasn’t even there.

I felt heat rushing into my cheeks… liquid fire swirling down below.

As it went on, I found I couldn’t stop from picturing what was happening. From a tasteful angle, like from behind where I could maybe only see Viktor’s back and glimpses of Steff. Then, my mind drifted further and imagined myself as a part of their rough love… not as participant but as accessory.

Me laying lengthwise across a large bed while Steff rested her head on my stomach like a pillow. Me on the floor like a footstool, Steff bent over me while Viktor had his way. It was bizarre stuff. I had no idea where it came from.

The longer the sex went on, though, the more pointedly it felt like Viktor was ignoring me, and the hotter it became.

That didn’t make it any easier to try to stand in place, though.

Finally, Steff gave out a protracted “Aaah… aaah… aaah!” and then a single, unmistakably orgasmic scream. A minute or so later, the sound of movement stopped.

There was a long silence after that.

“Who had you today?” Viktor asked finally.

“Jay,” Steff said.

“You went to his room?”

“Yes.”

“Where else did you go?”

“Nowhere,” Steff said. While I wasn’t permitted to speak unless ordered, it seemed like she was limited to one word answers by default.

“Where… else?”

“Nowhere,” Steff said again. She gave out a gasp, which turned into a yell and then a scream.

“Where else did you go?” Viktor asked again.

“Fin’s!” Steff sobbed.

“What did he sell you?” Viktor asked.

“Nothing!” Steff said.

“I will break your skull if you go back there again,” Viktor said. “Do you understand me? I will grind it into dust beneath my heel.”

I fought not to move, not to act. This was play. He didn’t mean it. It was hyperbole. It might even have been ogre pillow talk, for all I knew. Steff had a safeword.

Steff choked on her reply.

“Do you understand me?” Viktor said. “You swore you were finished. That was your present for being clean. If you are not clean, I will take it back and you will watch me destroy it. Do you understand?”

Steff must have nodded, because Viktor made what sounded like a satisfied grunt. My brain had only just caught hold of the fact that Viktor hadn’t been threatening Steff’s life, in play or otherwise… he’d been talking about her ghastly paperweight.

“The whole third floor is off limits now,” Viktor said. “You are private property until I tell you otherwise. Get dressed and go wait outside the door. I need to be alone.”

I expected to feel Steff’s hands on me, but then I heard the door open, close, and lock. Had she forgotten about me? No. Viktor hadn’t said to take me, though, and “alone” didn’t seem to preclude my presence as a nonentity.

He sat back down heavily on the stool in front of the keyboard and began to alternate monotonously between the same two notes. Was this ogre-style music?

Then I heard him get up. His bare feet made no sound against the plush carpet, but I felt it moving as he walked towards me. A strong hand grabbed my ankle, and I was hoisted upside down into the air, dangling by one foot. I let out a little yip, but bit my lip to keep from screaming. Steff had said it was okay, but I figured it was better not to, all the same.

He pinched my legs, prodded my ass through my jeans. He squeezed my breast. I was turned away from him, but he reached down and stuck his big, meaty fingers in my mouth, prying it open painfully wide. I beat back the urge to whip my head away. It was almost too intrusive, almost a violation. If I hadn’t ever tried oral sex, it might not have felt that way.

“What is so special about you?” he asked as he withdrew them, right before dropping me to the floor. I cried out as I landed on my head and fell in a heap.

He went back to his magic harpsichord and played the first note again. Without moving from where I’d landed, I was looking at his feet and the base of the stool. I had just made up my mind to say something, to get up, to move, to leave… to do anything to get a response from him, when he started speaking.

“The place where I am from is called Kilrest,” he said, repeating the two notes irregularly as he spoke like it was some bizarre high-concept spoken word album. “It is a mountain fortress, ruled by my mother. She is a full ogre, one of the last remaining ones in the holding. Ogres do not discriminate by sex, you see. There is weak,” he said, playing the slightly higher note as if for emphasis, “and there is strong.” He played the lower note. “My mother is very strong. Some decades ago, a human war band tried to take the keep so they could control the trade route it guards. They were defeated. My mother kept the leader for herself.”

He lapsed into broody silence and played the two notes, now alternating directly between them, but still with no fixed interval. After several repetitions he spoke again.

“This man was my father, and he was strong for a man,” Viktor said. “My mother made him wear a collar that was meant for an ogre. He bore up under it well, and with his knowledge of human arts like tactics and planning, logistics… the strength of Kilrest increased.”

Silence again, while he twiddled back and forth between the two notes.

“Human slaves do not last long among ogres,” he said. “Sometimes, they are ransomed or released for diplomatic reasons, but our laws say that those who are in our territory without permission are ours to take. However, they are too fragile to keep for long. They are bred, if that is desired, and then they are put to work until they give out, or else tortured to death or killed for sport.”

He paused again, and this time even the music… if that’s what it was… came to a stop. I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears. Tortured to death. Of course I knew that a half-ogre was, well, half ogre, but that intellectual knowledge wasn’t the same thing as listening to one sitting there and coldly talking about torturing somebody to death.

“The bodies are not wasted. Ogres do not distinguish between higher orders of life and lower. All living creatures are animals. All are meat.”

He began playing the notes again.

“The man who was my father lasted fifteen years,” Viktor said. “Partly because he was strong, but mostly because my mother wanted him to. He finally died under torture.” He played another note, lower than the other two, and it sounded sour and out of place after I’d become so used to the other two. “If she had stopped sooner, he could have been saved, but ogre healing is not the same as human healing. We did not know he had a weak heart. No one could tell. As strong as he looked on the outside, he was weak on the inside, where nobody could see.”

He stopped playing. His legs folded up beneath him, and his hand fell into view. I thought he must be slumped over, his whole body contracting. Then, he straightened and resumed his methodical, tuneless playing.

“I lost my taste for torture then,” he continued. “It would have been remarked on as I grew into adulthood, but my mother had already arranged for me to go to a human boarding school the next year, and young humans do not torture each other in the same way that ogres do. At least, most do not.”

He played the higher note a few times in a row.

“At school, I learned many things in my lessons, but I learned outside of the classroom as well. I learned about sadomasochism, and dominance as it is practiced by humans… as both a game and a lifestyle,” Viktor said. “I learned about safewords.”

Now that he wasn’t talking about torturing people to death, I was starting to become aware of how uncomfortable it was to lie crumpled on the floor, with one arm stuck beneath me.

“I never regained my youthful stomach for torture, but I learned a… sort of framework… in which I could function,” the half-ogre said. “I learned something of my father, too, even though he was dead. I had long suspected he gained something from my mother’s attentions, but I had never understood how this could be. Learning of masochistic pleasure brought me comprehension, and a measure of peace.”

He stopped playing again. It was hard to tell from looking at his legs, but it seemed like he drew himself up a bit. The silence seemed reflective. Then, he relaxed a bit and started back up again.

“When I was accepted into the university, I made up my mind not to return to Kilrest until I had a found a masochist to be my willing partner… a receptacle for my darkest impulses, a showpiece to demonstrate my true ogrish nature. When I came here last year and met Steff, I thought she was nothing short of miraculous. She enjoys the sort of treatment my slave will be expected to endure, and her heart will not give out,” Viktor said. “It is half-elven, and far less prone to mortal failings than any human’s. She is weak, but her tiny body is exactly as fragile as it looks. I will not overestimate her and damage her unnecessarily. In addition, she loves inflicting pain as a full-blooded ogre does… and when I would rather not torture, she will happily do it for me.”

He paused and swung around on the stool to face me. His legs were spread out wide. I could see his massive dick hanging down, rock-like and imposing even in its flaccidity. I went tight and loose at the same time. He leaned forward and I moved my eyes up and lifted my head a little so I could see his face. It was grim, expressionless.

The only emotion was in his eyes, which seemed to glow red in the candle light. They were intense, focused.

“I want you to understand that I am very much in love with my Steff,” Viktor said. “I want you to understand that I am very serious about this, so you will trust I am not kidding when I tell you that if you ever hurt her… if you raise a hand against her… I will lose my distaste for the traditional ogre arts. You will come to curse your invulnerability, and then you will die the slowest death ever conceived of by ogre, demon, or man.”

He stared into me as if he could see directly into my soul, whatever that must have looked like, and then he whirled around and began to play.

This time, he played for real.