Day one. Desperation is a stimulant. Dahlia Markham stood with tears in her eyes, pleading, her chin slick with the mess she just made as her body rejected the medicine. She was utterly distraught, inconsolable, staring at the cheap copper encircling her ring finger and feeling the pit in her stomach grow.

“P-P-Please… I can’t leave the palace… I-I… I need to stay by Marie’s side, she’s my—”

“Your what? She’s my Doll now, she serves the queen regent and reports only to myself. Her mother.” The Dollmother spoke in a tranquil yet stern voice, perfect in cadence and unflinching in its confidence. Everything the head Doll did was for the sake of its Owner, who was barely cognisant of her surroundings on the best of days. Miss Markham wanted to laugh in the woman’s face and tell her that in this fucked up royal court they made, the regent would be the Dollmother herself and not the invalid queen. Dahlia wanted to mock the woman’s poor understanding of such terms, and point out how such a lack of knowledge did not bode well for their rule, but then the next words out of the mother’s mouth froze her very blood. “Maribel, please enter.” The door to the maid quarters creaked open and a Doll approached with perfectly uniform footsteps, staring at the hand extended out by its mother and taking it gladly. Mother was a tether; Dolls did not need to strain themselves to think when she was there to give out instructions manually.

“Marie…” Miss Markham, who had committed herself to holding such a title for the rest of her days due to marital restrictions, toyed with the cheap band on her finger that was meant as a promise. They said to hell with what the courts and the churches said, not a soul alive could stop them purchasing what rings they could with their measly earnings and exchanging vows like any other folks. Dahlia thought of their kiss on that night of taboo consummation, and she stared blankly at the discoloured skin on her Marie’s finger where the copper once hugged it. Once upon a fairytale.

“See its hair?” The Dollmother spoke, her porcelain smile a mask of sadistic delight—though more purposeful than it was purely indulgent. “Its smile? The way it stands so still and pretty and perfect for its mother? That’s what my Maribel is. If you’d taken to the tincture you could’ve stayed by its side and made a pair, but with your frail biology the way it is, I’m afraid I’ve absolutely no use for a snot-nosed servant girl I could smell the humanity on from miles away. Get out of here, child.”

Child? Dahlia’s hands balled into tight fists that she did her best to hide from the woman she needed to convince of her value. That was an intimidating prospect under the current circumstances, the girl regretfully conceded. Marie—or Maribel as she was now being called—seemed nothing like her old, energetic self. She was in some manner of drug-induced trance, eyes fully open but not all there and her hair void of its former pigment. It pained her to see the woman she loved reduced to a docile thing like that, but her discomfort with the change was overshadowed by her present urgency to ensure she would stay by her love’s side at all costs. Where else was she to go? She was just an orphaned girl, who was raised from birth as a palace servant and never truly took to the role, a girl who dragged her feet through life with nothing to show for it at all. Nothing but Marie, her secret lover, who now stood before Dahlia and looked right through her. Past her. It was something she could only fix with warmth, which meant she needed to remain. If she had to, Dahlia was prepared to beg.

“Miss… I… I need this. I’ve nowhere to go, this palace is my home. I promise I will do everything in my power a-and then some to serve you properly… perfectly. I’ll do all the worst, most terrible tasks. I simply need to stay. Please…” The girl was trembling uncontrollably, her eyes starting to well again.

Dollmother assessed her with a sharp and dismissive glare, lording over the begging maid despite the latter holding several inches over the former. The inhuman woman that the new and improved palace staff all seemed to call ‘mother’ even with her evident youth donned a dress more valuable than everything Dahlia had to her name, and she wore it so elegantly the meek brunette could not help but blush despite herself. “There will be no rats in my house. Only daughters.”

“Then let me be your daughter.” Dahlia said calmly, turning her gaze back towards Maribel’s cold, marble stare. “You don’t have to waste a bed on me, I’ll sleep in hers. That’s what we’ve been doing up until now, at least… and you don’t need to pay me, just so long as I’m fed and watered enough to work. I’m really serious, I want for nothing… I just need to remain with Marie.” Even as she spoke the words, Dahlia felt herself wanting to throw up again. She wondered if she was doing an adequate job of hiding her present hatred for the woman who wiped the brilliant light from her lover’s eyes. Marie was going places, she sung when she could be sure they were alone and had the voice of a starlet. Now, her prospects were hadal, lost to depths so icy and dark that not even the whales could find them. In truth, Dahlia wanted nothing more than to rip this inhuman interloper’s throat out with her own dull teeth, but she had to bide her time. If the medicine forced down her throat had taken, she wondered where she might be right now. In the skies above, or the deep trenches of the ocean?

“Very well then, but only because every group needs an example.”

An example of what not to be, Dahlia supposed. If only both of them knew how deeply the maid would later go to prove that notion false.

Day fourteen. Work is castigation. Dahlia almost felt that she was being unfaithful to her wife on account of her constant affair with fatigue. Exhaustion made it difficult to be loving, but the Doll named Maribel did not seem to fault her for it. In fact, if that sunken lover told her anything at all it was a perfect echo of its supposed mother’s script, telling Dahlia just how well she was doing like the brunette gave a damn if she was appeasing Dollmother or not. Dahlia knew Marie’s mother rather well before she took ill and they lost her, so the way Marie was talking seemed disturbed. It made Dahlia, who had never had a parent to her name since birth, as though love knew to reject her from the very start, so terribly frustrated.

Work was brutal. She was made the example just as Dollmother had promised. Dahlia’s workload must have been at least three times more intense than the second busiest Doll, and not only that, she had all the worst tasks imaginable. For the past few days she had been toiling in the furnace room, breaking out into a near ceaseless sweat that did not seem to end when she left for bed. The scent of that black ore she had to burn felt dangerous to her lungs, and the endless shovelling was doing a number on her back. Dahlia wondered if her suffering was ever going to end and reminded herself, shamefully, that she was performing this labour out of choice. Unlike the other Dolls, she was occupying the palace entirely of her own volition and could leave at any time. After just two weeks of back breaking work, her feet aching as badly as fingers and her body yearning for touch that didn’t feel hollow and instructed, Dahlia was already worried she was going to break. This was for Marie. She needed to stay with her wife and make plans to take the Doll away from here, to a place where they could rekindle what they had. It wasn’t lost, just buried, Dahlia told herself with a cracking smile unbefitting of a royal Doll.

That was fine, she wagered. Dahlia was not a Doll, there was nothing she wanted less. Even if they did have it easier, and seemed far happier, than it felt she ever could as a woman bolted and bound within the confines of her humanity. It hurt, the work, but the fact that she seemed to suffer alone was what really twisted the knife.

“It’s only been a fortnight…” Dahlia sighed. She was too weary to realise that this was only the beginning.

Day twenty-seven. Solitude is exacting. Dahlia had been serving her supposed mother for almost an entire month by now, and palace life was much different to how it once was. She adjusted as best she could, letting resolve and spite and love fuel her through the worst of it while passively revelling in the brighter aspects. She did not particularly mind the complete absence of men inside of the prison she called a home, and not having to hide her relationship was—at first—a massive weight off the girl’s encumbered shoulders. Her wife in all but legal view was more than happy to continue their previous sleeping arrangements, because the mother had told her she was. Therein lay the issue: Marie, no, Maribel was only ever truly enthused by the whims and wants of her mother. It was as though the Dollmother and her medicine spread through Dahlia’s pretty little starlet’s mind like a cancer, engulfing all her former feelings. Her body held the same warmth, but her kisses were a hollow performance of real affection. They began to hurt; after the month of hard labour and emotional solitude, they hurt like hell.

“I wish I could be like you,” whispered the loneliest of the daughters as she kissed the back of Maribel’s head and held her close by the thing’s slim waist. Dahlia cursed herself for the awful thought as she considered the slow, dependent nature of these chemically lobotomised women she now called sisters, but the sentiment yet lingered. She regarded their bone-white hair and felt a pang of unwanted jealousy in that unifying aesthetic shared by all but she—even the Dollmother and queen regent. She lamented their contentedness in the narrow tunnels they’d been boxed into, simple, happy lives that would leave each and every daughter wanting for naught until their life’s duty in servitude had been fulfilled. Dahlia thought on decommissioned dollys, and then she turned her thoughts inward, on herself. Like a knife.

Day sixty-one. Praise is a potent poison. Today, mother thanked her. Dahlia was always seething with a quiet rage, held beneath the still waters of her mirror-trained smile, whenever the Dollmother would sully her presence. She’d committed to serving the woman, but that did not mean she was required to like her. No, Dahlia hated the subhuman manipulator for filing down her lover’s soul and leaving nothing but a simulacrum of herself. For working her so hard that weakness began to worm itself into her heart. If Dahlia had to concede anything at all, it was that a part of her admired the woman’s efficiency and craftsmanship. It really did become difficult to see these Dolldaughters as people after spending so much time with them. Still, they were her sisters in a sense, and she’d resolved to save them from the grim fate they’d been dealt.

She really had intended to rescue them at first. It seemed the noble thing to do. It was her own envy that gave her pause, poisoning her bloodstream and infecting her brain with a truth so persuasive and compelling that it hurt to deny: wasn’t she the one who required rescuing here? She was the one living out the hell of a crushing alienation, so deep and harrowing that it made her want to strike her own precious love out of spite for telling her she needed permission to sing for Dahlia now. The Dolls were victims, sure, but they were happy. Dahlia consented to this, and she was miserable.

Then it happened. Something strange and scary and exciting. She was carrying laundry through the halls when she noticed the mother opposite her, walking the other way. As they crossed paths the head Doll’s commanding tone of voice stopped Dahlia in her tracks with a single spoken word.

“Halt.” She said, and when Dahlia obliged the command added “Good Doll.”

The words made Dahlia feel like she was being seen for the first time in two entire months. Not only that, but she was being talked to like she was one of the others. Did the mother simply not recognise the runt, she wondered. She did not care to ask, lest she ruin the spell. This was heaven, to be part of a collective for just one simple moment. She told herself she could deny it later, privately, and continue making arrangements to do something about this mess she and Marie were trapped in.

“Thank you… Mother.” The words were embarrassing to say, but it was how any of the other Dolls would have responded. In that moment the roleplay was everything to Dahlia.

Dollmother ordered the maidservant to turn and face her, so Dahlia eagerly obliged, getting a good look at the imposing woman’s impenetrable stare and attempting to remind herself that hatred she had felt the last time they spoke like this. It was so long ago, Dahlia had begun to feel forgotten. A Doll neglected. “You’ve been doing really great work here, I’ve been meaning to let you know how proud I am.” The mother’s smile was so perfect, even as she spoke such coy little words. Dahlia wished to scoff, but could not. She’d noticed that despite her outward demeanour, the mother, too, was touched by tincture. She figured, derisively, that the woman was no longer able to actively distinguish one Doll from the next and laid on thick, meaningless praise like this to keep the dimmer sisters nice and docile. Only, Dahlia’s hair was a stark brown compared to the white worn by her betters. Better at being drug-fucked nobodies, that was. It was certainly not something that anybody in their right mind would find themselves jealous of.

“Thank you, Mother.” Dahlia repeated, half-smiling as she clutched the laundry to her chest in a heap of manufactured pride. The praise wasn’t real. It wasn’t really for her. And if it was, it was a manipulation tactic, preying on the isolation that ate at her in every waking hour. Her petty rhetoric was almost effective until the next words that left the mother’s mouth hammered a chink into the unmedicated Doll’s mental fortitude forever.

“No, no. Thank you, Dahlie.” Mother thanked her.

The Doll hid her reddened face behind the stack of clothes in her hands.

Day sixty-two. Suspense is a carnivore. Dahlia thought of the past, when Marie would sing for her and she played piano. She knew music theory once, in a past life where she was permitted such hobbies and passions even as a member of the palace staff. She learned of chords and suspensions—one discordant note overlapping the next, clashing with a permeating tension. Dollmother’s suspension was corrupting Dahlia’s private thoughts as she tossed and turned in bed, overlapping her petty human troubles with the softly spoken words of a mother doting on her Doll. She did not hold Maribel in her arms that night. Dahlie instead tossed and turned on the bed restlessly, passing that midnight hour with eyes wide open as she let the parasite of personalised praise eat at her mind like her own wants were just a platter to be served. A sacrifice. People make those for family, do they not?

Thank you, Dahlie. The suspense was killing her in her cot. Dahlia wished she’d had the strength in that moment to ask for better clarification. Her mouth had been too dry. Her throat was in her chest. She wanted so badly to know whether the Dollmother had intentionally said her name wrong or not, whether it was an honest slip of speech or a genuine renaming. Dahlie. It was slightly juvenile, and the way it read phonetically did not pass her by. Dahlie. She felt the pang in her chest again, clutching at it as she curled up into a ball atop the bedsheets. For just a second, she had felt like she truly belonged. Her mind was playing tricks on her, Dahlia knew this. She was getting weaker to the yearning, becoming hopeful whenever something came along that shuffled her closer to that narrow tunnel she’d observed before. She had to escape soon, drag Marie with her kicking and screaming, perhaps, or she feared she’d begin to lose herself in something fierce and unhealthy as a means of coping with that stabbing feeling in her heart.

Soon. Very, very soon… Dahlia would escape. She hooked her pinkie finger into a sleeping Maribel’s, and wished it so. Soon, she said, drifting off to sleep and wondering one last time if Mother had meant what she said.

Day one hundred fifteen. Denial is anaesthetic. Penance is a remedy. Obedience is pleasure. Dahlie stood in front of the body-length wall mirror in the sleepy maid quarters, her body heaving dramatically in the wake of the punishment she had just administered herself dutifully. Every day she chose to stay, she flogged herself; one more strike than the day before, with a tally kept across her stomach and thigh—etched deep enough to leave a mark that would last. As a Doll, she knew better than to leave scars where her uniform would not hide them, but otherwise her body was a canvas of personal disappointment. Loathing that stung just right.

“There’s nowhere else to go, it’s… I’m not weak.” She bargained with her mirror-self each and every night. Like a confessional it absolved her of her guilt. It was her magic trick, performed for an audience of one. She’d been sufficiently scarred, right? So now she could enjoy the rest of her day unburdened by the weight of her own selfish need.

Dahlie could not bring herself to leave. Mother paid attention to her so rarely, but just enough to make her feel special and wanted and maybe even loved if she was feeling especially lonely on that given day. She wanted to get better at this ritual of hers, a self-deception that allowed her to justify her own growing weakness to the praise. At first, she wanted nothing more than to become just like her sisters, wholly indistinguishable, but her goals had changed. She wanted to stand out, to be worthy of a Mother’s love. It began to consume her, day after day, until she started to forget things that were once so very important to her. Living with subhumans for so long, with no exposure to the real thing, made it very hard to remember what being a person even truly entailed outside of the aesthetic quirks. Being human hurt, Dahlie remembered that.

“Dahlie?” It was her name, being called through the darkness. She had a different one before, but this one made her flush to hear and that feeling overrode her past. Maribel, she thought. It was getting difficult to tell her sisters apart, though, and there was never really any need.

“I’m sorry, ehe, I’m coming to bed now. I need this ritual as much as you need your medicine, dear sister. You know that…”

Yes, this was her cure.

Day one hundred seventy-nine. Dahlia is transient. The human who yearned to be a Doll—a good Doll, at that—sat at the foot of a bed with a hand between her legs as she traced lazy circles over her sex with tears specking the corners of her vision. She wanted to be Dahlie. The hate that she felt for this was only directed back at herself now, because she’d grown too pathetic to hate Mother. The woman sometimes took her hand and led her on a stroll to the next horrible task she had to perform, and Dahlie began to take pride in the fact that she was the hardest working, most suffering Doll. It strengthened her, made her double down on the devotion like her past one hundred seventy-nine days would have been a sunk cost if she did not. If she left now, all those terrible punishments—both the ones given by Mother and the self administered ones, would have been for naught.

Dahlie had to be good. She had to be better than Dahlia, who was too weak to complete the single task she set herself. This Doll was so much more useful, productive, efficient. She strove to be perfect, needing that approval more than she cared for the copper on her finger. It was incessant, that beautiful nightmare of Dollhood, while Dahlia was transient. A wilting flower, plucked by wooden hand. A love so black you could not see through it flooded Dahlie’s lungs like water. It was enough to drown a human. Her hair was shedding its pigment with each and every little death.

Dahlie came again.

Day two hundred. Mother is absolute. Dahlie knew this now, kneeling in the Dollmother’s chambers with a face burning redder than the cushion which spared her knees the hard floor. Her hair had miraculously turned the same bone-white as her sisters’, which she now presented to her Mother excitedly. They had to be quiet, though, for the Princess was fast asleep under the covers. But when Mother petted the lap that was typically only reserved for the queen regent Herself, Dahlie felt her thoughts immolate, her past priorities melting into the links of a chain that pulled taut and guided her directly into that warmth, comfort and safety.

“I must confess, child, that I’d expected to run out of patience with you within a week of permitting your stay here. I’ve been so very busy taking care of my lovely girl over there that I barely had a moment to observe you—let alone guide you. I’m impressed, and startled, by your initiative.”

The praise was a bolt to the brain, Dahlie shifting in the other’s lap and truly becoming lost in that natural scent; Princess never did permit Her Doll to wear perfume. “I-I-I uhm… it’s nothing. And that’s not true… you were guiding me the whole time, from a distance. I… I’m grateful to… oh my, s-sorry…” She was too dizzy to remember what she had meant to say, feeling like a little girl with an innocent first crush as she sunk into the other’s hold like she was casting anchor. Mother stroked her hair, shushed her affectionately, and roamed the Doll’s body freely as the silence lingered. Dahlie let her legs part when commanded to do so, and cooed out dreamily when her Mother stroked her sopping cunt. She let the woman’s words seep into her malleable head and wondered how she became so devoted when she spent her early days meaning to do the exact opposite. Was she really that weak? No, loving Mother was her greatest strength.

The woman did not have to lift a finger. “You broke yourself with your own desolation, sweetie.” Dollmother informed her smugly. “Sleeping with a phantom of somebody you loved, given just enough affection at an arms length by yours truly… my, the emptiness in your heart needed to be filled by something. Anything. So you let me in.”

Dahlie gasped, pushing her hips up into that touch which made her head all light and spinny. She was floating in water, at a seafloor over 6000 metres below the surface of her soul. “I let you in…” she cooed, lusting over this woman, the closest thing to love she had left, like her life depended on it. Maybe it did. “I let you in, Mother… gods… I’m so f-fucking confused these days… my head’s a mess…”

“Language, dear.” The Mother chuckled, kissing across her property’s neck wantonly. “Let me take care of that head of yours. You just have to agree to be mine forever. My lovely daughter-toy. Until a tally isn’t necessary at all. Until you don’t even question your own surrender any more, but take pride in it with a perfect Doll smile.” Dollmother’s fingers lifted up Dahlie’s uniform past her waist and then some, revealing those scars which looked more like they were for keeping score than anything else. Maybe a part of her was already proud, corrupting that last vestige of her own resistance into something more depraved and celebratory.

“Mmmgh… wh-who told on me?” The Doll whined, her body felt electric. She wanted more; she wanted her Mother to touch her all over until there was no stretch of her skin that wasn’t consummated as property. It was so cathartic to give into, the fantasy of being raped by this perfect, superior goddess in mind, body and soul. Especially soul. She wanted her core to be fucked hollow and pumped full of familial seed so that she may never feel alone again; giving birth to new children of desire in her head that compelled her—controlled her—like a wooden imitation of a real whore.

“Does it matter? All my daughters are the same, you sisters are mirror images of my and the lovely Princess’s radiance. Lesser, like hand mirrors—objects used to maintain one’s vanity.” It was true, thought Dahlie, having observed the daughter Dolls as someone distinct from them and lost pieces of herself when she no longer felt so alienated. Sisters are a gestalt entity.

“N-No, Mother.” Dahlie felt so wonderfully violated as the woman who would not give her the time of day before now traced her delicate fingertips over those raised little tally lines like she was reading braille. She was not a person in this moment, and that simple thought made her smile so earnest it began to hurt her cheeks. She was a hand mirror, the edges of her personality rounded off into nice bevelled corners to fit the frame and handle. She was being handled by her Mother, the only one she’d ever had, and lost herself to the fantasy ardently. Dahlie was becoming a zealot for that touch, craving it more than she ever had her wife Marie—no—her sister Maribel’s. Until this moment, she couldn’t understand what was wrong with her to crave this woman’s attention, approval, affections, so strongly that she was willing to shed her personhood like it was little more than dead skin. She thought that she was safe without the chemical dependence doping her up night after night like the others, but that too only served to stoke her pride; the thought that she had no comedown period. This is what she was, she didn’t need a crutch. She was the big sister. It wasn’t confusing at all why she’d choose this over vagrancy. This was a life, and she was thriving.

This was her life now, and it had to be perfect.

Day two hundred fifty-one. Perfection is a knife. Dahlie no longer needed to cut into her body physically. She’d long since moved onto a new method of penance that sought to shame her in such a way that she could not secretly take pride in the amassing wounds. There she stood, before the mirror she perfected herself in front of each and every night, retrieving the small, handcrafted branding iron from her apron’s deep pocket and holding it to the open flame of the ceramic oil lamp she was using to illuminate herself.

Copper was a perfect material for fashioning a brand from, it heated up quickly and held that heat evenly. It took the Doll a month of learning and doing to be able to make the punishment tool she now heated with a glassy stare. At least the copper was easy to come by. She’d been wearing the metal on her finger for so long she could almost convince herself she did not remember why. It was repurposed for something yet tangible, and she had need to use Maribel’s band too.

The brand was a coupling of a sort; it was the best marriage those two dead lovebirds could have hoped for, one of molten copper fusing together for an eternity within the mould that Dahlie had painstakingly etched.

“Mmmnh… Dahlie?” A weak voice called out, sounding needy in the absence of its stronger sibling’s arms around it. The Dolls occupied one bed now, mattresses pushed together so that they could share their warmth amongst each other evenly—just like copper—while they were up dreaming in the clouds. It was Dahlie’s idea to sleep together, and the Dolls listened to her.

“Not now, okay? Your Big Sister’s burning for Mother.” Just as Dahlie let the maid dress spill down from her shoulders to expose her bare upper body to the cold of the room, moonlight shone in from the overhead lancets and painted the Doll’s bare back a grossly luminescent white. The Moon held dominion over illusions, casting the projected image of a large wind up key protruding from that moonlit skin. It overlapped with all the prophetic symbols, such as the skinning knife perforating playing card and the jaws of the wolf clenching crescent. Dahlie’s body was celestial, just for a moment, as destiny dragged its silver tongue against her back and marked her.

Then, the calm ended. A searing hot pain kissed against the Doll’s ribs and she hissed in pain, muffling the sound with a leather strap she clenched tight between her teeth; she did not wish to wake her little sisters. Still, it burned so good. Dahlie felt herself becoming a masochist for her Mother. She’d take a knife for the Dollmother, or a flurry of arrows, or any other painful death that she could replace her beloved saviour in. Still, Dahlie knew that she wanted to live. Dying meant her servitude, and her vice-like penance, would abruptly end.

So she needed a second knife. Perfection for herself, and cold steel for her enemies. Perhaps she could make one for herself with the same tools she had used to fashion her brand. Dahlie felt excitement flood her like a painkiller, numbing the pain against her burning flesh as she licked her lips and imagined sinking inches of metal between the ribs of some ugly cur who threatened her Mother’s life. It drove her wet. It—

“You’re hurting me…”

Oh. Dahlie blinked away the past and stared at the raven haired problem she was talking to before she drifted away in that strong current. Her hand was inside of Maggie Haine’s doublet, the heavy coat having fallen past the stupid girl’s shoulders. Fingers pushed against the mercenary’s ribs as Maggie’s breath hitched, back flat against the bars behind her. Dahlie’s leg was between the other’s, and her lips were close enough to Maggie’s that they could feel each other talk.

“My apologies. You’re just so…” Dahlie had gotten carried away again. It was something that she had tried to scratch out of the oral history she made up in her head. In truth, temptation touched upon her each and every night. She fucked her sisters so often she lost count of all the punishments she was still overdue on. Maggie was giving her the same dark feelings; she was vulnerable and lost and easily flustered. Day one hundred eighty. Little sisters are toys. Maggie was not her sister, so Dahlie managed to catch herself and pull away before smothering the traitor with a lust that wasn’t for her.

When Dahlie pulled back, Maggie sighed and wiped her face. She’d broken out into a cold sweat, staring at the Doll that curled its lips into a wicked little smirk. “What’s so funny? You could’ve done it you know, whatever you just held back from. I’m not some prudish little girl…” The former sellsword turned vagrant spat onto the floor, which only led Dahlie’s gaze down to what she’d already felt against her thigh. It was probably Maggie’s erection that snapped her out of her reverie. It was a new toy, one The Devil had never had a chance to play with before. Temptation clawed, and Dahlie shook her head sternly. Perfection cuts deep; a dull knife is no knife at all.

“How about I give you a fresh wound instead? Make sure you’re not strong enough to follow me and Mother wherever we may—”

“No. She’s coming with us.” A stern voice called out from the top of the dungeon’s stairwell, Dahlie feeling a phantom lace wrap around her and pull her Doll body back into perfect posture. Mother’s presence reminded her of the bondage she agreed to, yearned for, accepting a corset of speech that made it harder to breathe and impossible to talk as openly as she had before—lest she choke on her own filthy words and suffocate.

Anarres descended the steps with an assessing glance thrown in the direction of her lacklustre companions. She had never seen Dahlie acting so impulsively, nor Maggie so pathetically weak. Both of them would need fixing on the road, she told herself, before moving her cold glance over to the still-occupied cell and cocking her head. The way that the former Dollmother’s eyes narrowed against the image of her barely conscious godmother told the silent onlookers that something had changed. Tavia was a soporific parasite that kept Anarres weak and needy and sleepwalking. With the tumour cut out and thrown onto the floor in a bloody lump, Ana was beginning to realise that she no longer had the luxury of escaping into the arms of a convenient abuser.

More importantly, she had a goal. Princess was gone, taken by some foreign empire she did not so much as know the name of. Only their colours and their emblem.

“Mother? But… she’s…”

Anarres gave Dahlie that look, the one that Tavia would give her, and the Doll’s mouth fell closed. “Maggie’s a sellsword in my debt, so helping us is how she can repay that.” With a clack of her scuffed brown boots, which needed polishing by someone with either the loyalty or guilt to spare, Anarres stepped closer to Maggie—her daughter stepping out of the way automatically. “You didn’t think I’d let you run off before settling the books, hm?” Ana hummed, lifting Maggie’s downturned face with her hand and watching her former rival in love and battle fold for her so easily. A wet paper woman who could hopefully wield her sword better than she could control her cock. “You’re mine now, until I get my lovely Princess back. Okay, pet?”

Dahlie swallowed the spit and worry in her mouth and said nothing. It looked like her Mother was becoming herself again—which was to say, the intimidating figure that would forge daughter-dolls out of wasting human flesh that Dahlie always knew her to be, but something was off. Anarres was seething, not simpering. She was smug, but scary. She herself was scared, and burned through confidence to mask that like she was shovelling black ore into the furnace in her heart to keep the blood boiling just right. The woman’s daughter knew just how much that exhausted you to keep up day after day, but still, she said nothing. What words could convince a fire to die down?

Maggie was barely breathing she had hitched so much, staring incredulously at the figure that offered her salvation with such a smouldering stare. She had nowhere else to go, and more than that, she secretly wanted to remain by the freak’s side. Anarres was her only living family, save for the caged bear across from them.

Eventually her breath settled and she shrugged her coat back on with her typical scowl. It was a performance necessary for her, though she did not remember why. “Whatever. Just keep me fed and—”

“Oh, I know exactly how you like to be fed.” Anarres relaxed, sighing with a half-smile that betrayed her relief at having convinced her only handy blade to help reclaim what was hers. Her comment made Maggie turn a fierce red, the shorter woman swinging her arm up to aim for Anarres’ gut only for the uppercut to be intercepted, and twisted, by loyal daughter.

Watching Maggie curse and attempt to get out of Dahlie’s hold made Anarres want to laugh earnestly for the first time in years. She could not foresee the three of them getting along without her performative strictness, but fortunately for her she knew just what both of them wanted and had the capacity to provide—or withhold—these things at any given moment.

“Once you two are done play fighting, we’re packing what we can afford to carry and leaving. Tents and food, no luxuries, okay?” Anarres tapped a finger to her chin as she paced, trying to ignore the terrible panic that festered in her gut for every second she had to endure her other half’s absence. It was worse than being away and knowing she was safe. “A group of their size must have left deep tracks, especially with my daughters in tow… going to gods know where.” She bit her lip, trembling, before catching sight of the two who needed her to be strong if she was going to maintain her sway over them.

Anarres swallowed that panic and let her digestive tract make short work of it. She was going to shit out her weakness and remember how fucking good it felt to wield power. The palace really did wonders for her ego, playing Dollmother was her finest role. Even if it was just a pale imitation of a borrowed power, Anarres decided that she was going to disappear into whatever role was necessary to see her goals met.

She would save her Princess.

She would kill every single person who laid a finger on Her.

She would find a quiet life for them both, and perhaps the other daughters too, and they would finally live like pigs.

These were her demands of fate, who never seemed to listen to her pleas in the past but had finally done its damn duty with the girl’s monstrous godmother. Maybe now it had chosen to favour her. Maybe now, Anarres could be one to speak on victory.

Of course, she had no way of knowing at the time just what fate truly had in store. Her only clue was a folded piece of card in Tavia Von Durenburg’s pocket, which held the future’s secret in a painted night sky.

Of course, she should have known that her hulking godmother really was too stubborn to die. The woman was due a homecoming with the living relatives before she could be ferried off to the rest of her line.

And of course, Anarres knew… her immortal dreamer could never truly be harmed. This was not a rescue, but a reclamation effort. Something of hers had been stolen, a comfort she could not continue without, and so she sought to take it back by force. This was not a selfless endeavour. Anarres was no hero.

This was a quest driven by obsession, and lust, and fear, and loneliness, and a love so black it blinds. This was egotistical and desperate and Anarres cared not for she had no other motivations, no direction in her life save for Her. For the first time in her entire life, she was not living aimlessly. The motivation stirred her heart and made it beat so fast she felt alive for the first time since she was a little girl watching her brother poke through dove guts.

Shamefully, it felt good.