It’s dark outside, or as dark as the city ever gets, anyway.

“That trigger,” your mistress says, “was never meant to be used casually. It is not gentle, and it leaves the thrall worse off than blank. Blanks can be brought up again easily. You, on the other hand, took some work. The operation’s on hold for a bit, or the parts that need me, anyway; I’ve had you in a deep trance almost since then, and have been putting your memories back in the right order for a day and a half.”

“Theta,” she asks, worried despite herself, “given all that… how are you feeling?”

“This thrall is a little tired,” you say, but with a wicked smile on your face, “and yet she’s very, very glad that she stayed up for the ending. There’s just one thing she’d still like to hear, Mistress: what was it that you needed to hear from Elder Mara?”

She sighs. “She told me that it seemed that I was so shy that I couldn’t have a real conversation with anyone I hadn’t enthralled. She insinuated that this was why the T series domination venoms work so well. Now that I’ve had some time to consider her motives, it seems like she was trying to goad me into doing what she needed done. I’m not sure I can say that she’s wrong. It may be true. Maybe I can’t have a real conversation with someone unless I’ve dominated them.”

“Mistress… given all that, how are you feeling?”

She leans over to kiss you, tenderly, on the lips. “I’ve decided that I don’t care.”