She looked a wreck.

Her mail shirt was spattered with blood, some of it hers, some not. It was torn in places, along with the padded suit underneath. Her short, black hair was matted to her scalp with still more blood—none of that her own—and copious quantities of sweat, left over from her discarded helmet. Her blue eye, the left, was clear, piercing, sharp, while the right, the brown eye, was tearing up from an old injury. She sported a scar that slipped just past her pencil-thin eyebrow and barely missed that brown eye, marring that small bit of skin between it and the bridge of her nose. After months, she was used to the constant blurriness in her vision, and she ignored it. A fresh, shallow cut on her cheek had stopped dripping—the cut which has severed the helmet strap and knocked it from her head. The padded leather on her arms was scored with blows and even cut away in spots. A battered wooden shield in her left hand paired menacingly with a short, messy, very keen double-bladed axe in her right. The leather gloves she wore seemed remarkably undamaged, though the left didn't seem to be fitting properly. Loose leather leggings were in much the same shape as her sleeves, though few of those fractures were fresh, and her solid brown leather boots were caked with muck and grime.

Vlis took a long, slow breath. She had arrived.

And there, in a place of prominence opposite the door she had just battered her way through, in a glass case nine feet tall, stood her prize. Floating, literally floating in the air, about half way up in the case, still dressed in the spotless pink gown she had been wearing when she had been taken three years ago. A look of peace and serenity on her face, as though she were just sleeping, and not kidnapped by a wizard five hundred miles from her parents' palace.

The Princess Ylharai di D'Orsoneyl. Not aged a moment in three years, as far as Vlis could tell. Eleven years old, stolen. Not even reached her first blood.

Vlis hesitated. The prize was there before her. After three years of searching, hunting, fighting, learning and training and practicing, spending days on her back in bed recovering from injury, doing odd jobs here and there as a mercenary to pay for rooms and meals in wayside inns, upgrades and replacements to lost, broken, or used-up equipment, or safe travel from one place to another... The weight of lost time, lost opportunity, pulls her to a stop. After all that she'd given up to find the girl, this moment seems anticlimactic. All too easy. No ogre she's faced, no troll, no human robber positioning themself as a noble, leaves the most precious gem in their collection unguarded. On display, it's possible, but unguarded, never.

Still. No sight of any defenses, any traps. Vlis took a step towards the princess. Nothing happened. Her good eye examined the glass case closely, the brass corners framing the pure, clear crystalline panels that were so clean as to nearly be invisible, better-made than any window she'd seen ever in any of her adventures or in any time before.

No sign, Vlis noticed as she took another step, of any way of opening the case, either. No real worry, she hadn't had a key to get through the tower door; her axe had done the job quite well. Another step, and she raised the weapon.

"I would not."

The voice startled her, though she did not show it. Still, she did not bring her axe down on the glass, but she also did not lower the weapon. "Why would you not?" Her focus remained on the princess, fixed on her target.

"Because I know how the magic on the case works," the voice replied. Vlis could assess it, finally. Behind her. Deep, masculine, but gentle, calm. "It opens with a spell. If so much as a crack appears in the glass and the spell is not spoken, the princess within may well be killed."

Vlis lowered her arm, keeping the weapon at the ready, and turned about to see a tall, slim man, taller than her by only perhaps an inch, standing in the arch that once held the broken door. For a wizard, especially who had taken such a strongly political action as kidnapping a princess, he seemed young, maybe no more than ten years older than Vlis' twenty, though perhaps he was older than he seemed. He bore no weapon, visibly, and wore only an immaculate robe in vibrant green and purple, with elaborate designs all about with gold thread. Only, Vlis confirmed, seeing bare feet sticking out beneath the hem, and a bare chest under the fringe with a slight bit of blond tuft that matched with the shoulder-length hair on his head. The black cloth belt which tied it shut left her unsure about any breeches or loincloth, not that she was particularly interested in such things out of anything but their strategic importance. She looked back at his green eyes, scowling.

"You put her there," Vlis accused.

"I did. And it was something of a success." He stepped into the foyer rather casually. "For it has brought you here."

Vlis scoffed, once more raising her axe. "I have cut a wide swathe through your servants, wizard, I could continue with you."

"You will not," the wizard responded casually, stepping closer again. "Not if you wish to free your sister."

This, finally, caused Vlis to register a moment of shock. "You... know?"

The wizard nodded. "Oh, I have watched you closely, Velissara. From the moment of your infuriated tirade that no one was going to be sent to rescue your younger sister led you, perhaps foolishly—though, you're here, so perhaps not—to storm from the palace and take up the life of an adventurer. You were the heir, after all, and there was no real need for Ylharai to be rescued, especially from a resource-strapped and endangered kingdom like D'Orsoneyl. Enemies massing on two fronts means that there's no forces available for palace intrigue."

Princess Velissara di D'Orsoneyl stepped forward, her axe swinging into the empty air where the wizard had been standing a moment earlier. Her eyes, both of them, betrayed a certain nervous fear. "No one has spoken that name in my presence in..." She looked around, trying to find where the spellcaster had gone.

A hand on her elbow and a mystical word caused her to gasp, and her axe to slip to the ground with a clatter, her fingers having gone entirely numb. "Has it been months, Princess? Years, perhaps? Have you been named Velissara since the moment you disappeared into the streets of Ethrophel and took bread with beggars and thieves?"

"Stop it!" she shouted, turning quickly to force the sorcerer back with her buckler, to no avail. He was not where he had been just a second before. She pulled her arm in to cradle it as she flexed her fingers. "Free the princess and let us be on our way!"

"I shall free neither princess until I have finished what I have to say," the wizard said, standing halfway up the stairs to the next floor. "For I did not take Ylharai for her own sake, and thus I have kept her safe, well-preserved. Her next breath will be her first in near three years, and not an iota of harm has come to her in that time."

"Then what do you want?" Vlis snapped. "You know my kingdom has no money for a ransom, with two rivals massing at her gates."

"Look around you. There is no need for money."

"Then what?"

The wizard sat nonchalantly on the steps. "There comes a time in any seer's life when they must reach out and find a companion."

Once more, Vlis was momentarily stunned to silence. "A... companion? I do not understand."

"No, I imagine not." The wizard chuckled. "The ways of magic are ever mysterious, often even so to its practitioners. No, I cast the bones, so to speak—not literally—and determined how I might find myself the perfect companion. And this led me to this somewhat unorthodox solution."

"You... kidnapped my sister as your companion?" She could not keep the disgust from her voice.

He shook his head. "No, certainly not. She is a child! Not suited for the world of a sorcerer and the myriad problems a seeker like me faces in trying to keep the world from falling apart. No, I need someone older, politically astute, but also clever, strong, well-read..."

Vlis sighed. The thrill of combat was fading and the talk was starting to make her weary. The feeling having returned to her fingers, she bent down to pick up her weapon. "Do you intend to converse until I give up and walk away?"

"I do not intend you to walk away at all," the wizard replied. "I have visited the palace at Ethrophel more than once, in disguise. I saw there a princess stifled by palace life: intelligent, adventurous, and yet forced into the role of heir, taught propriety and custom; and I saw her sister, who was even at a young age taking to diplomacy and courtly life much more easily, and managing a frustration of being unable to use her own gifts."

Vlis frowned. "You speak of—"

"Yes, I do. You and Ylharai."

Realization was starting to dawn. "You want me as a companion."

"You said, as you left the palace, that you would give all of yourself to rescue your beloved sister. Body, mind, soul. Well..." He rose to his feet. "I can see the wounds on you from your encounters with my minions, but I also know that scar from the blow that nearly blinded you came from a branch falling in a storm, and that your left glove doesn't fit properly because you lifted your shield a mite slowly and my black knight severed your smallest finger. I know how you spent hours of your time and coins from your purse convalescing. I watched as every challenge that confronted you, every one that defeated you, forced you into a retreat, would soon be overcome. You are very, very different from the angry, adventurous, but naïve and untested seventeen-year-old that abandoned her life and her position to rescue her sister."

Vlis squirmed a bit uncomfortably. She couldn't deny what she was hearing, and she certainly didn't want to; she had not just spent her time and money on healing magics and a place for bed rest, but also on training, instruction, exercise. Time not spent searching was time to become better. She looked at the source of her obsession of the past three years. "So all this was a... a ploy, to bring me here?"

"It was." The wizard walked down the stairs, slowly. "Hatched along with my co-conspirator, there, in the display case."

The princess blanched. "Ylharai... plotted this with you?"

"I wouldn't exactly say that the whole thing was her idea, but the thought of becoming queen in your stead was a pleasant one for her. So I stole her. But of course, I have conditions, as did she."

"Conditions?" The axe came back up. "Maybe I should just break her out of there and ask her myself."

"She wanted to be rescued, and rescued by you, specifically, so that you might become a champion of the realm. Her words. Seems someone's been filling her mind with romantic notions of how the world works, fairy stories crossed with histories delivered through night-time readings..." His voice took a slightly, teasingly accusatory tone. It was true, at bedtime Vlis often read, or just invented, chivalric stories, fantasies of knights and fair maidens and evil wizards or dragons, for her sister's amusement, to get her ready for sleep.

The wizard had finished his descent down the stairs before continuing. "And so in your creativity, you have in a sense given her a piece of your soul."

"Poetic. Can I hurt you now?"

He laughed. "I rather doubt you could, without taking me by surprise."

She swung, knowing what he said was true, and was not surprised when he was suddenly elsewhere. She hadn't been intending to harm him, not really, and her attack hadn't been powerful or well-aimed. Maybe, if he hadn't done his vanishing act, she might have opened a mild gash on his upper arm.

If he noticed, or cared, he didn't say anything about it. "Body, mind, and soul, you pledged." She couldn't immediately locate the voice, but could still feel the presence nearby.

"And yes," she replied to the air, "my body has been broken in this quest, and sure, maybe I've given her some part of my soul." She walked warily into the open middle of the room, turning about to try and spot the sorcerer, conscious of his warning about damaging the glass case the princess was resting in. "And my mind? She has been all that was on my mind for the last three years, I hardly see how I could give more of it."

"Ah, but there is much more you could give," the wizard said, walking once more through the front door of the tower. "Your body has been put on the line, and suffered for it." He leaned almost casually on the door frame. "The sharing of creativity is one thing, but another metaphor for the soul works well, too. You are very much not the same soul that left your home three years ago. As I said, you are no longer naïve, no longer sheltered, for all intents and purposes you are no longer even a princess."

"Do you ever get to the point, sorcerer?" Vlis sighed, preparing another attack, knowing it was more than likely futile.

"Do you ever stop to listen, warrior?" An infuriating grin. "Or maybe ask a relevant question? No, the point isn't about risking or giving those three things. Instead, you are having them worn down, altered. And not always in bad ways. Yes, you are scarred, short a finger, missing two teeth on the left side, but you are in far better shape, physically, than when you were living soft and nobly. And you're not as gentle and kind as you were once, but you're also far more resilient and confident."

There was a brief pause as the sorcerer vanished and the axe embedded itself at about thigh height in the wooden frame.

"So that accounts for the soul," he said once more from the top of the stairs, "which leaves only your mind."

The adventurer reached down to pull the knife from her shoe as she backed carefully towards the door to retrieve her main weapon. "I suppose you're going to tell me how my mind has changed and grown in the last three years."

He shook his head. "You said it yourself. She has been all that was on your mind for the last three years. You have an obsession you need to be free of."

She didn't turn away from him but still made her way to the broken door. "So you're going to—"

"Why has she been on your mind these three years?" he interrupted her easily, as if she'd never spoken. "You are the heir of D'Orsoneyl. Your duty is—"

"My duty is none of your concern." The axe had been retrieved and once again was at the ready, the dagger left to sit on the floor. "My duty is to my family."

"You've heard, then, so many times, that your duty is to the kingdom you left behind."

"Oh surely you're not going to change my mind about that."

"No one would spare the resources to rescue the second in line to the throne, not while the first still lives, not while armies mass on the borders and threats to the nation's sovereignty or even her continued existence loom ever closer. The land on the wings of the Orso might soon become a lucrative province in one of her enemies' empires."

"She. Is. My. Sister." She felt the anger within her, an anger she hadn't felt, hadn't acknowledged, since that day three years ago when she had left the palace, but she held her position. Three years prior she would have charged. Instead, she waited.

"She is more than that, I think," the wizard retorted. "While the second heir exists, if the first refuses her duty, or abdicates, or is found wanting, or is... unhappily lost in adventuring, perhaps? There is a continuity of power, then. And I took that safety away from you. You know what the next years of your life would have looked like. Under constant, frightful guard. Every movement watched. Every meal tasted and re-tasted before reaching your plate, every visitor checked for weapons, every suitor's history looked into with a depth bordering on the deepest unkindness. That day three years ago, I stole your freedom, and you knew it even then. And now that you have tasted that freedom, that real freedom, the freedom to vanish into a crowd, or to sleep rough in the woods if you wish, or to raise arms against a foe without considering broader political implications, you cannot go back, can you?"

Vlis blinked. His words were shocking. Something she always knew, but never acknowledged. She could see it now, as she never could have before. She could not come up with a reply.

"You lamented that day," he continued, "not that I had taken your sister, but that I had taken the wrong sister."

"What?"

"And you've come to me now to see if I might take you in her stead."

"But I—"

The wizard lifted a hand, and Vlis froze in place mid-step, unable to move, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. He walked slowly down the stairs, and her eyes and head still tracked him, kept him in her view, involuntarily. "This is what we have done. We have molded you. Created you into something more than a mere lonesome princess tied to duty and crown. This one," he indicated Ylharai with a wave of his hand, "is far, far more suited to diplomacy, subterfuge, courtly intrigue, even at age eleven. You are much more... direct."

He stood before her now. His magic softened, enough that she might speak. "At..." she began, then swallowed, and tried again. "At any moment, you could have..."

He nodded. "I've been toying with you this entire time, Velissara di D'Orsoneyl. To some extent for three years, in fact, but much more right now. I could have struck you dead when you entered my courtyard. I could have transformed you into a mouse, or a wolf, or placed you in a stasis like that which holds your sister, though I haven't a glass case to keep you in, I'm afraid."

"But... But why?"

"I told you. D'Orsoneyl needs a champion, and an heir. Your sister can be the heir—she has no trouble with that—and your parents have a good fifteen or twenty years left of life in them to train her as they trained, well, tried to train you. And now, after three years of real training..."

She could feel her fingers clutch the weapons a bit tighter. "I could..."

He nodded again, a smile on his face. "And with me at your side—"

"Wait, what?"

"There is a price to be paid, Vlis!" he exclaimed, turning dramatically, releasing his paralytic spell with a suddenness that sent her stumbling forward, the adventurer only managing to pull back just before she crashed into him. "This training I've given you, that has honed and sharpened your body, your spirit, and your mind, there is a price to be paid for it all, and I wish to take it from you."

She was sitting in a soft armchair. A cup of tea was in her right hand, its supporting saucer in her left. Her axe and knife were nowhere to be seen. She felt out of place in her tattered armour. "What... what price are you... wait, what has happened?"

The wizard stood by the fireplace, prodding at the dying embers with a long poker. "We have moved from combat to negotiations. A peace treaty, if you will."

"I don't under—"

"You don't really need to."

"I don't?" She sipped at her tea reflexively. It seemed polite.

"What is there to understand?" he laughed. "Diplomacy is just a different battlefield, an extension of the war. You cannot harm me with your axe, but this is where you have years of training that I do not."

She laughed in reply. "I was never good at those lessons! If I had been, perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place."

He walked to another chair, facing hers, and sat. "Then perhaps instead of one of us having an advantage, we are on an equal footing."

"I think that, with your powers, you would still have an advantage." She lifted the teacup and saucer in her hands to make the point.

"You might think that, but there are limits even to my magic." His smile was charming, even disarming. "If this is to be a real negotiation, I can't really hold a threat over your head."

"If you say that, you must not know how real negotiations work." She put the tea down on a side table. "You've pointed out that D'Orsoneyl is a very fertile, rich land with very dangerous neighbours, I'm very familiar with negotiating from a position of weakness. In fact, usually you go to the negotiating table either when you've won and want to stop destroying the prize by fighting over it, or when you've lost and you want to limit your losses. And I know what side of that table I'm on."

"Well, it would be a terrible thing to do any further harm to such a glorious prize."

Vlis opened her mouth, closed it, and considered her words carefully. "I would respectfully request that you clarify that remark." The voice that she hadn't used in three years came back to her very easily.

He chuckled. "I wish to take the price for your training from you, as I said. That carefully trained body, mind, and soul, both my work and my payment."

She flushed a deep red. "I was concerned that that was what you meant." She took a breath, containing her anger. "Even in the depths of despair, I never whored myself, and if that's what you're proposing, I'm afraid I will have to decline."

"The princess never fell so far, eh?" The wizard shook his head. "I never suggested that you might. This would be no mere transactional arrangement. Though I have known more than one such worker—"

"I do wonder why that might be." She wasn't able to resist a sarcastic dig.

He ignored her. "—and I must say that they do spend a lot of time on their craft. I imagine that they are arts you were not trained in."

"Indeed not." She was not without experience, and good experience, but it was not saleable experience. Moreover, while she could be dressed up well, and made up with powders and lotions, she was, when not being a princess, a little plain. She was too tall, for some; her eyes did not match; her hair too dark (and now, too short); her breasts were too small and hips too narrow... And now she was marred, scarred, and damaged, and her body was wiry and muscled, and not soft and pampered as might be expected of nobility.

And she was tired. The weight of the last three years felt heavy on her shoulders.

"No, it is not my intent to make a prostitute out of you. I have my reasons, but my goal is to make you that chivalric champion you've created in your sister's mind. And to lend my magic in support of that cause and of D'Orsoneyl."

She tilted her head. "Why would you do such a thing?"

"Because it is in my interest for the kingdom to survive, thrive, and grow," he explained, "and its philosophy and ideals to expand to align with mine."

"Because?"

"Because I wish to see this world bettered, which is also in my interest."

"You want to see the world better by your standard," she retorted, "which might not align with everyone else's."

He nodded, acknowledging her response. "But it does align with yours, your kingdom's, and, most importantly of all today, your sister's." He rose from his seat, and moved again towards the fireplace. "Your sister has some remarkably egalitarian, even utopian ideals. Seems she's been spending time among the common folk and is far more aware of their struggles than most nobles. Much as I'm sure you are, having lived rough for three years."

"It certainly wasn't all rough. Rougher than I was used to, to begin with, but—"

"But you've had a change of heart." He chuckled. "Of soul, if you will."

She laughed with him. "I suppose that's true." She shook her head. "I would like to improve the lot of the sorts of people who took me in, accepted me..."

"You do not know how, even as queen."

"Yes."

"But your sister does. Or believes she knows how to try. And is willing to risk her own neck to do so against the nobles along the Orso river. Which is—"

"Why she needs a champion. And a wizard."

"Now you've caught on." The fireplace burst into life, warming the room somehow instantly.

Vlis stopped herself as her toe reached the hot water. There was a dreamlike quality to the wizard's bathing room; perhaps all the steam contributed to the feeling. She realized she was still fully dressed but for her boots, which was an unusual way to take a bath. Without further thought, she started to work at the straps of her mail shirt. If she was going to get cleaned up, she would have to take off her protective gear. No doubt the wizard would have some way to launder them.

The bathwater, meanwhile, was almost too hot to bear, which, when she had the opportunity, was just how she wanted it. Too many baths in cold streams or under waterfalls pouring down from glacial runoff meant that Vlis would often offer a few coins for the maid to put an extra kettle on.

The armour clattered to the floor, and Vlis breathed deep as the literal weight came off her shoulders and chest. It had been worn far too long. She was about to unlace and remove her padded shirt when she paused and stopped to question what she was doing.

"Wizard?" she called out, looking around the warm, damp room. The floor was stone, hard but warm on her feet. The metal tub looked big enough for even her long frame to sit comfortably. Several towels sat on a shelf by a closed wooden door. The fireplace was nowhere to be found, nor the armchair she had just been sitting in, nor her cup of tea.

She heard a chuckle in reply. "Can proper negotiations be had if hospitality is not offered—or accepted?"

The water was inviting, and again without thinking she pulled off her shirt, stopping herself before dropping the garment and using it to cover her bare chest. "You will, I'm sure, be watching. Are you using your powers to persuade me to partake?"

She was immersed to her stomach in the hot, hot water. Eyes closed. Strong, gentle hands massaged her shoulders. A soft voice in her ear confirmed that, yes, he would be drinking in the entirety of her loveliness, and yes, he would indeed continue to use his magic to manipulate her reality and her mind, and for some reason she did not seem to be concerned about that; she realized it was his spell suppressing her objections, and for some reason—likely the same reason—she was not concerned about that either.

"Sorcerer," she said, her voice a soft moan of relaxation, "if you could do this to my mind—"

"Why go through all the intermediary steps?"

"I'm very curious." She gasped as he worked into a sore place in her back.

"The magic works better first with conversation," he explained. "If I'd tried this sort of reality shifting, or this sort of mind control, when you first burst through my door, it likely wouldn't have accomplished much. I had to get you to stop intending violence, to pique your curiosity, and then to get you into a conversational frame of mind, and to have you understand and accept our plan, even if you're not quite ready to be a part of it." His fingers rubbed her collarbones. "I cannot just make you say yes. I can lead you towards it, but the decision is yours. That decision is, anyway."

"Mmm, and what decision aren't mine, wizard?"

"Fewer than you might think. This one, for example, is up to you." She felt him leaning close, and knew that she was making the decision to turn her head and kiss him.

It was the right decision. He tasted of honey and strawberry, for some reason. The power of that kiss opened her mind further, she knew, as each step of acceptance lowered her defenses further, but...

He had been right. For three years, she had lamented that he had taken the wrong sister. And on more than one occasion, she had imagined that magic drawing her in, stealing her away, what she might do under the wizard's power, and a fantasy had formed in her mind, a constant fantasy that kept her occupied when she wandered alone, that staved off boredom, and when alone and safe in the night...

Her hands slipped into the water, traced lines up her inner thighs. A second kiss, and another, followed. The wizard's hands slipped under her arms, cupped her breasts, as her own hands teased her labia. She moaned into his mouth, and kissed him again, and again.

She was wet. In more way than one.

She suddenly wasn't touching herself. She wasn't able to touch herself.

Her feet were not on the stone floor. But her bare ass was held against a warm stone wall.

She was pressed against that wall. Restrained to it. At wrists and ankles, bound by solid iron.

And her eyes opened when she felt the sorcerer's lips encircle her left nipple, his hands dig into her sides. She cried out in pleasure. His tongue and teeth worked at her breast, making her strain against the bonds that held her. She stared at a softly-lit stone ceiling, her vision blurred and unfocused, and not just because of the damage to her eye.

His thumbs pressed against her hip bones, hard enough to make her wince. This did nothing to lessen her joy.

An open hand slapped against the outside of her left thigh, producing a gasp of surprise followed by a moan of happiness. His teeth found her collarbone and she wrenched and twisted as much as she could, alternately trying to escape from and press into his bite. A closed fist drilled into her shoulder, slowly, inexorably, achingly, sending waves of ecstasy through her, and then, only then, did he roughly put his finger into her soaking slit, his smooth skin tracing rapid circles on her clit in a way that no other lover had done before. His other hand struck her forcibly across the face, then tangled in her hair and pulled her head back as much as he could, kissing, sucking, biting at the softest part of her throat. Magic coursed through her body, setting her nerves on fire, sending pulses of energy through her body that resonated with the insistent, eager orgasm that shook her whole being to its core.

There was no space between that shrieking, breath-taking wash of pleasure and finding herself on her back, pinned to a hard mattress, being fucked with an almost violent eagerness by the sorcerer. She was able to make out a serene expression on his face that contrasted shockingly with the tightness of his grip on her shoulders and the forcefulness of his thrusting.

She tried to speak, to say something, she didn't know what, and without missing a beat, his hand moved from her left shoulder to roughly cover her mouth, forcing her to breathe through her nose. The strength of his grip made her jaw ache, just as the power of his movements stung her pussy wonderfully.

He was hurting her, and she loved it. No one else had ever tried, and she had never dared to ask. But this wizard knew well where, how, and how hard to strike her, with a nearly—no, definitely magical sense of where the line existed between enjoyment and actual harm.

His hand left her mouth and made its way to her neck, holding her heavily but for once not painfully against the mattress as her pressed into her one last time, pumping his seed into her and triggering her own powerful orgasm.

Her vision cleared.

She knelt beside the bed, an iron collar around her neck. Manacles bound her hands behind her, and her ankles were similarly restricted.

His hand grabbed her hair, pulled her head back. She could feel the magic pressing in on her mind from all sides. There was no choice given to her when she saw his softened, wet cock in front of her eyes, and she took it in her mouth, cleaning it ferociously with her lips and tongue, swallowing every drop of both her and his juices that had been left on it with tremendous aplomb, knowing that her motions needed to be as gentle and quick as his were brutal and quick. She finished her first task and passed her tongue over his scrotum, up and down, slowly and sensually, his mind controlling magic directing her movements, until he was satisfied and released her.

He rolled up onto the bed.

She knelt on the hard floor.

She heard a soft, slow breath.

She bowed her head, closed her eyes.

She heard him snore.

She tested the bonds that held her, once, only for a moment. They were firm.

She waited for him to awaken.

Her knees hurt. Her body ached from the pose. She longed to give her tired, battered self the release of sleep.

She waited.

She woke up.

She wasn't surprised when there had been no notable gap between the waiting and the waking. Even in only a few hours, she had grown used to the wizard's reality warping magic. She was sitting in the armchair by the fireplace, a cold cup of tea on the side table beside her, the dying embers of the fire casting the only light into the room.

She was sore, aching, in the best way. She was naked.

The wizard sat across from her, in purple and green and gold, bare feet crossed at the ankles, with a smug expression. "You'll want to dress," he said.

She took a breath. "Why?"

"Because you do not want to greet your sister thusly arrayed," he replied with a grin.

Vlis laughed, and stood. "I do not know where my clothing is. I removed my battle gear in the bathhouse. I do not even know where the bathhouse is!" She shook her head. "What have you done to me, sorcerer?"

"Taken part in your body, mind, and soul," he answered. With a wave of his hand, her nudity was covered by a supportive garment, a long dress in purple and green to match his robe, sleeveless, with a gold belt at her waist and long white gloves. "I'm afraid I was never good with shoes," he apologized.

"I can survive, I think," the princess replied, awestruck, slowly turning to see herself in the dim light. The dress flowed beautifully over her form, and was as fine as anything that the D'Orsoneyl dressmakers had ever conjured for her. And their art was measured in months, rather than moments.

"There is a condition," the wizard warned. "If you act against me, it will vanish."

Vellisara faced her captor and knelt on one knee, bowing her head. "I shall act as you direct for so long as you will have me." She lifted her head and smirked. "Of course, it seems to me that you can make it so whether I choose it or not."

He raised an eyebrow. "And if that is what you wish, then so shall it be."

"I do."

He placed a hand on her forehead. "Your journey home, at least, will be a lot swifter."

"Our journey. And it would seem that where one journey ends, soon another will begin."

"So shall it be the rest of our lives."

She stood in the entry hall, before the case that held her sister.

Her mind was not her own as she pressed her hands to it and spoke the magic words that caused the glass to vanish.