The sound of multiple worried voices vaguely bothered Drake, but they were coming from so far away that none felt like his problem. He remembered something about a peaceful field full of green grass and being very angry, but all certainty was already crumbling like a sandcastle at high tide. What had come before had no more relevance than a dream.
“Did you see that?” someone asked excitedly.
Drake knew that voice. Was she a friend of his? Was he still asleep? When had he fallen asleep? He felt drugged.
“His finger moved!” the same voice continued, overly excited. “I saw it move!”
That was Emily. Emily was speaking, and she was talking about his finger for some reason. Weren’t both her legs still broken? What was she doing by his bed?
“Are you certain?” Lydia sounded quite worried. “You can’t see much from there.”
“I can see his hand, Lydia, which moved. One finger. It definitely twitched.”
“I’m fine,” Drake told them, or tried. “Stop worrying about me.”
His body refused to cooperate. His limbs refused to move, his lips refused to open, and his eyes stayed shut. He was breathing, but that was an automatic function, nothing purposeful. Purposeful movement no longer seemed possible for his body. That... was disconcerting.
“I’m sorry,” a smooth, slightly regretful male voice said. “I simply can’t find anything wrong with him.” That was Raylan, the guy who could make people regenerate. “I can find no injuries. There is nothing to heal. He is simply... asleep.”
“You did fine.” Emily again. “His finger twitched. He’ll wake up soon.”
“I only wish I could do more,” Raylan said mournfully. “I feel as if I have failed him. We owe him so much more than this.”
“Oh, stop,” Emily said. “You did all you could. Now go get something to eat, and let Lady Marissa know his finger twitched. That should ease her mind a little.”
“Of course,” Raylan said. “Please, come get me the moment anything changes.”
“I’m glad someone’s so confident,” Nicole said snarkily. “I still say some assassin reached him in the sacred chamber and squished his brain. That’s why he’s still not waking up, just breathing and twitching randomly. He might never recover from this attack, and then—”
“He is still alive, and he will recover.” Valentia cut Nicole off with force that surprised Drake. “Samuel is not yet Lord Gloomwood, and we must not forget that Samuel’s burnished rarity remains inside our lord. We will wait until he wakes and informs us what happened.”
“If he even remembers,” Nicole reminded everyone. “And to be clear, I’m not keen to jump straight to euthanasia. Though I would ask you never tell him this, I actually like our current manor lord. He’s not the worst.”
Drake cheered silently. “I knew it!”
“But if his brain is horse feed now, he’s not waking up and not dead. That’s the perfect way to cripple our manor. Leaving us without a leader might be exactly what the assassin intended.”
“Don’t put me down yet,” Drake thought. “I’m going to come out of this.”
Yet his paralyzed body and closed eyes offered little evidence of that. Even he was starting to believe Nicole might be right about him. Why else would he be here, paralyzed and near comatose... somewhere... if he hadn’t been attacked by an assassin?
Sky wouldn’t do this. Felix had left. No one else could have entered the sacred chamber without bypassing Lydia, four capital guards, Haley, and a very secure door, unless they had a rarity that let them pass through solid rock. Even then, he was so far into the earth he doubted anyone could find their way down here. So who could have done this to him?
The images returned slowly, blurry reflections in a broken frame, until all that had happened before what now paralyzed his body returned in a rush. The press of the stone against his folded arms. The tingle of Sky close at his side. The pile of sleeping horse gods below them, snoozing gently beneath folding wings, and the 747-sized horse god that opened its eyes.
The black one. The Eidolon. It had looked up at him, yawned, and smacked its lips.
“There you are,” the god had said.
Fuzzy memories came and went.
“May I call you Drake?” the thing asked.
“Sure.” He obviously couldn’t lie to a horse god. “So... what’s this all about?”
An Eidolon. He’d had a conversation with an actual Eidolon! How in the hell?
As he struggled to remember their exchange, most of what he remembered was frustration. “So you’re fine with what Lord Crow did to Samuel? Letting those demons rip him apart? And everything every other shitty manor lord has done to every innocent they’ve hurt?”
More anger. More arguments. He remembered thinking it likely wasn’t the best idea to argue with a god, but not caring at the time. Which might explain his current predicament.
“Your own capital could fall to the kromian army,” Orphena said.
Drake glowered. “Not if I kill Prince Varnath first.”
“That would be impressive. So, you will not change your mind?”
About what? What had Orphena asked him to change his mind about? Already the few memories he could snatch were fading away like a barely remembered dream.
“I won’t tell them I’ve spoken with you.”
“They could compel you to tell them.”
“I won’t let them do that.”
“You don’t know that.”
The conversation was fading so fast. His mind felt scraped raw with the effort of holding onto these fragments. In the end, it all proved for naught.
“But until then, you must forget.”
“Until what?” Drake thrashed inside his own mind. “Until what, Orphena?”
Nothing new came to mind, and his absence of memories didn’t feel natural. There was now no doubt in his mind. An Eidolon—one of the gods who had created the world and in whose dreams it and every mortal being resided—had opened its eyes and said hello.
And Drake had argued with it.
No wonder he was lying comatose in a bed. Mouthing off to gods was never a good idea. If he really had told the Eidolons what he thought of their cursed blood pacts, and the world they’d created, he was lucky he was still alive... if he was still alive.
So if a god had woken up, why hadn’t this world ended? His battle maids were still around and obviously worried about him. Maybe this was this world’s version of the afterlife? If that were the case, why would Lydia and the others be talking about who would inherit the blood pact? About possibly pulling his plug?
“It twitched again!” Emily shouted. “Just now! His pinky! It twitched!”
“Let me see that,” Lydia said hurriedly.
Pressure congealed around his hand. He had a hand still, and the pressure grew warmer. It went from a distant sensation to a more immediate sensation, warm flesh and a gentle grip. One hand gripped another by the palm as the faint scent of flowers brushed his nose.
“Lydia.” He couldn’t speak her name or reassure her, but it reassured him that his loyal friend and steward was still with him. The touch of her hand kept him from slipping back into whatever abyss he’d been in before now. It hadn’t been dark, but it had been deep.
“I see nothing,” Lydia said with disappointment. “Nothing has moved.”
“Then why are you still holding his hand?” Emily asked smugly.
“If he is still in there, perhaps it will give him comfort.” She sounded like she was justifying herself.
“You’re ridiculous!” Emily sounded exasperated. “Come on, Lids. If anything, this happening to him makes it all the more clear you should just—”
“Move, dammit,” Drake thought.
Lydia gasped. She dropped his hand so abruptly he felt it smack against his chest.
“He moved!” Lydia’s words were so soft he likely wouldn’t have heard them if she hadn’t been kneeling so close at his side. “Two fingers! They twitched! I felt them!”
Was that really all he could do now? No. He could do more, and whatever had happened in the sacred chamber with that horse god, Drake was done being fussed over by his people. After all he’d survived, he wasn’t going down because of a six-legged My Little Pony.
“Move, dammit.” He flexed his fingers again. “That’s right. Like that.”
“Someone get Lady Marissa,” Lydia said forcefully. “And Samuel.”
“I’ll do it!” Emily shouted enthusiastically.
“You can’t even walk,” Nicole snarked. “And no shouting. Do you want to wake everyone up?”
“It’s not like anyone is actually sleeping out there,” Emily retorted.
“I will gather the others,” Valentia said with a commanding tone Drake couldn’t help but envy. “The rest of you remain here. Until our lord is fully recovered, we will leave nothing to chance. If someone struck at him in the sacred chamber, they could strike anywhere.”
“Brain. Mush,” Nicole reminded everyone. “It happens!”
Just the effort of moving his fingers had exhausted him. Drake wanted to cling to consciousness for a while longer, but the fight he’d been putting up until now had only been possible with Lydia’s support. He hated to disappoint everyone, but sleep was already rising to claim him. At least this felt like a real sleep. A good sleep.
When he opened his eyes to the bright morning light, he moved his head—he could move his head now—to find his mother sitting in a chair beside him, slumped over and half-asleep. At his movement, Marissa stirred, then jolted wide awake.
“Drake!” She said his name in a blind panic, then gasped as if someone had punched her in the stomach. She had been worried about him.
The fact that she’d just blurted out the name only she knew was all the evidence he needed to know he’d just scared the hell out of her. He felt vaguely guilty about that. Still, it was comforting to know she cared. More comforting than he wanted to admit.
“Where?” he rasped. “I don’t think I’m ready to fight one of those.”
“Gods, you’re impossible,” Marissa whispered. She leaned close and gently took one of his hands in both of hers. “You had us all very worried. We thought you had...”
“What?” He swallowed. “Like I’d go down that easy.”
“You need water,” Marissa said patiently. “Is that correct, Lord Gloomwood? Could you use a bit of water right now?”
Drake nodded. Given how dry his throat was, he could certainly use some ice cold water. He’d stopped caring about the possible bacteria weeks ago. He’d lapped water directly from a stream after he ratted out and tore through Captain Ro’s mercenaries, and it hadn’t killed him. Besides, he had Samuel’s rarity again. Very few things in this world could kill him.
Which was probably the only reason he’d survived an argument with a god.
“Aren’t you worried I’ll keel over without anyone to guard me?” Drake rasped.
“I am not.” Marissa rose and nodded to someone on his other side. “I will give you a moment before I bring the others in. Be quick.”
“Thank you,” Lydia said quietly. “We won’t be long.”
Drake turned his head to the other side of the bed—and this was his bed, or the nice bed he’d borrowed in his noble chambers in Korhaurbauten—to find Lydia sitting in a chair on the other side of his bed, or rather, almost falling out of it. She sat right on the edge.
Drake forced a grin. “Bad news. Looks like you’re stuck with me a while longer.”
“That is good news,” Lydia corrected evenly. She looked paler than he expected, and her dark eyes were rimmed with lack of sleep. She must have been up for some time.
“Sorry about my...” Drake almost said “mother” before he caught himself. His brain was still annoyingly fuzzy. “About Lady Marissa. Her curses are even weirder than my own.”
“That could be true,” Lydia agreed. “Though you must know by now that nothing you do or wish others to never know will leave my lips. I’ve proven that, haven’t I?”
Drake managed a nod. Lydia looked more somber and introspective than he’d expected, especially this early in the morning. It was morning, wasn’t it?
“I’m sorry if I worried you,” he said.
She simply shook her head. “What happened to you?”
“Well, for one thing, your horse god woke up and I told it to fuck off.” Drake’s mouth seized up as he spoke the words inside his head and they somehow failed to reach his mouth. This wasn’t a dry throat or numb muscles. This was something else.
“Hold up,” he said. “What I...”
Again, his mouth simply stopped working. His brain could process the worlds, think them, push them all the way to his mouth and tongue, but the muscles themselves stubbornly refused to take any part in it. Every time he attempted to tell Lydia what he’d seen in the sacred chamber before this—an Eidolon raising its head and speaking to him—his mouth rebelled.
Was this what it felt like to be compelled? Drake had never experienced the compulsion of a blood pact after he arrived, but Lydia had told him that manor lords could forbid their blood thralls from speaking of matters they did not wish them to reveal.
Was this that? Had the Eidolon compelled him not to speak about it? Why bother? He’d argued with the horse god and then... blacked out?
No. There was more to it than that. There had to be more to it than that, possibly a whole conversation. Vague traces of what had come before this remained inside him, whispers of something bigger. He remembered shock, awe, frustration, and then this. This bed.
Drake supposed this was the problem with blasphemy. It tended to piss those you blasphemed against off. Which was why he’d been comatose in a bed yesterday.
“I’m compelled not to speak of what happened.”
Nothing came out. His mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
“I can’t tell you.”
Again his lips failed. Was the compulsion so absolute?
This compulsion from an Eidolon didn’t just forbid him from telling his people what had happened. It expected him to outright lie. He’d reveled in his ability to speak words he didn’t believe since he arrived, but being forced to do that really pissed him off.
“Fuck blood pacts. Fuck this magical bullshit. And fuck you, horse god.”
None of that came out either, and Lydia was growing more visibly concerned each moment she went without an answer. If nothing else, he wanted to ease some of her worry. She’d likely had it rough covering for him for however long he’d been gone.
“I’m not sure what happened.” That lie, finally, escaped his traitorous lips. “I remember talking with Sky and then... hearing you all talking. About if I was going to ever wake up.”
“The Judge will need an explanation. She, too, was worried about you.”
“I think I just passed out,” Drake said. “Exhaustion, maybe.”
The way Lydia watched him told him she wasn’t sure what to believe. Had she remembered he could lie since they last spoke? In the end, she just nodded.
“That is what I will tell the noble court.”
He sighed. “Thanks, Lydia.”
“You never have to thank me, lord.”
“There,” Drake thought silently, and vengefully. “I lied to her, you six-legged horsefucker. Now get out of my head and get out of my life. I’m done with you and your stupid capital.”
Lydia visibly forced herself to settle back in her chair. “Whether your collapse was natural or induced by something else, you have recovered. We should take comfort in that.”
Drake cracked a grin he didn’t entirely feel. “That’s why I’m so grateful to have you around. Nothing ever knocks you down for long. You always get right back up again.”
A tired smile warmed her features. “I would say the same of you, lord.”
Drake hadn’t expected her smile to feel quite that good. It surprised him. In the warm light of the early morning, she was a lot more beautiful than he remembered.
No time to focus on that. Wasn’t appropriate. Best to focus on getting home. He was done with Korhaurbauten, done with the noble court, and done with handling matters that weren’t his concern. If Prince Varnath showed up, he’d crush the fishman’s head.
But after this one colossal pain in the ass, he simply wanted to get home to his manor. He’d leave the capital to their war and the other manor lords to their business. He’d done all that was required of him and more, so now, he would focus on rebuilding his manor.
As for the Eidolons, well... after this, they could all go fuck themselves.
The sound of multiple worried voices vaguely bothered Drake, but they were coming from so far away that none felt like his problem. He remembered something about a peaceful field full of green grass and being very angry, but all certainty was already crumbling like a sandcastle at high tide. What had come before had no more relevance than a dream.
“Did you see that?” someone asked excitedly.
Drake knew that voice. Was she a friend of his? Was he still asleep? When had he fallen asleep? He felt drugged.
“His finger moved!” the same voice continued, overly excited. “I saw it move!”
That was Emily. Emily was speaking, and she was talking about his finger for some reason. Weren’t both her legs still broken? What was she doing by his bed?
“Are you certain?” Lydia sounded quite worried. “You can’t see much from there.”
“I can see his hand, Lydia, which moved. One finger. It definitely twitched.”
“I’m fine,” Drake told them, or tried. “Stop worrying about me.”
His body refused to cooperate. His limbs refused to move, his lips refused to open, and his eyes stayed shut. He was breathing, but that was an automatic function, nothing purposeful. Purposeful movement no longer seemed possible for his body. That... was disconcerting.
“I’m sorry,” a smooth, slightly regretful male voice said. “I simply can’t find anything wrong with him.” That was Raylan, the guy who could make people regenerate. “I can find no injuries. There is nothing to heal. He is simply... asleep.”
“You did fine.” Emily again. “His finger twitched. He’ll wake up soon.”
“I only wish I could do more,” Raylan said mournfully. “I feel as if I have failed him. We owe him so much more than this.”
“Oh, stop,” Emily said. “You did all you could. Now go get something to eat, and let Lady Marissa know his finger twitched. That should ease her mind a little.”
“Of course,” Raylan said. “Please, come get me the moment anything changes.”
“I’m glad someone’s so confident,” Nicole said snarkily. “I still say some assassin reached him in the sacred chamber and squished his brain. That’s why he’s still not waking up, just breathing and twitching randomly. He might never recover from this attack, and then—”
“He is still alive, and he will recover.” Valentia cut Nicole off with force that surprised Drake. “Samuel is not yet Lord Gloomwood, and we must not forget that Samuel’s burnished rarity remains inside our lord. We will wait until he wakes and informs us what happened.”
“If he even remembers,” Nicole reminded everyone. “And to be clear, I’m not keen to jump straight to euthanasia. Though I would ask you never tell him this, I actually like our current manor lord. He’s not the worst.”
Drake cheered silently. “I knew it!”
“But if his brain is horse feed now, he’s not waking up and not dead. That’s the perfect way to cripple our manor. Leaving us without a leader might be exactly what the assassin intended.”
“Don’t put me down yet,” Drake thought. “I’m going to come out of this.”
Yet his paralyzed body and closed eyes offered little evidence of that. Even he was starting to believe Nicole might be right about him. Why else would he be here, paralyzed and near comatose... somewhere... if he hadn’t been attacked by an assassin?
Sky wouldn’t do this. Felix had left. No one else could have entered the sacred chamber without bypassing Lydia, four capital guards, Haley, and a very secure door, unless they had a rarity that let them pass through solid rock. Even then, he was so far into the earth he doubted anyone could find their way down here. So who could have done this to him?
The images returned slowly, blurry reflections in a broken frame, until all that had happened before what now paralyzed his body returned in a rush. The press of the stone against his folded arms. The tingle of Sky close at his side. The pile of sleeping horse gods below them, snoozing gently beneath folding wings, and the 747-sized horse god that opened its eyes.
The black one. The Eidolon. It had looked up at him, yawned, and smacked its lips.
“There you are,” the god had said.
Fuzzy memories came and went.
“May I call you Drake?” the thing asked.
“Sure.” He obviously couldn’t lie to a horse god. “So... what’s this all about?”
An Eidolon. He’d had a conversation with an actual Eidolon! How in the hell?
As he struggled to remember their exchange, most of what he remembered was frustration. “So you’re fine with what Lord Crow did to Samuel? Letting those demons rip him apart? And everything every other shitty manor lord has done to every innocent they’ve hurt?”
More anger. More arguments. He remembered thinking it likely wasn’t the best idea to argue with a god, but not caring at the time. Which might explain his current predicament.
“Your own capital could fall to the kromian army,” Orphena said.
Drake glowered. “Not if I kill Prince Varnath first.”
“That would be impressive. So, you will not change your mind?”
About what? What had Orphena asked him to change his mind about? Already the few memories he could snatch were fading away like a barely remembered dream.
“I won’t tell them I’ve spoken with you.”
“They could compel you to tell them.”
“I won’t let them do that.”
“You don’t know that.”
The conversation was fading so fast. His mind felt scraped raw with the effort of holding onto these fragments. In the end, it all proved for naught.
“But until then, you must forget.”
“Until what?” Drake thrashed inside his own mind. “Until what, Orphena?”
Nothing new came to mind, and his absence of memories didn’t feel natural. There was now no doubt in his mind. An Eidolon—one of the gods who had created the world and in whose dreams it and every mortal being resided—had opened its eyes and said hello.
And Drake had argued with it.
No wonder he was lying comatose in a bed. Mouthing off to gods was never a good idea. If he really had told the Eidolons what he thought of their cursed blood pacts, and the world they’d created, he was lucky he was still alive... if he was still alive.
So if a god had woken up, why hadn’t this world ended? His battle maids were still around and obviously worried about him. Maybe this was this world’s version of the afterlife? If that were the case, why would Lydia and the others be talking about who would inherit the blood pact? About possibly pulling his plug?
“It twitched again!” Emily shouted. “Just now! His pinky! It twitched!”
“Let me see that,” Lydia said hurriedly.
Pressure congealed around his hand. He had a hand still, and the pressure grew warmer. It went from a distant sensation to a more immediate sensation, warm flesh and a gentle grip. One hand gripped another by the palm as the faint scent of flowers brushed his nose.
“Lydia.” He couldn’t speak her name or reassure her, but it reassured him that his loyal friend and steward was still with him. The touch of her hand kept him from slipping back into whatever abyss he’d been in before now. It hadn’t been dark, but it had been deep.
“I see nothing,” Lydia said with disappointment. “Nothing has moved.”
“Then why are you still holding his hand?” Emily asked smugly.
“If he is still in there, perhaps it will give him comfort.” She sounded like she was justifying herself.
“You’re ridiculous!” Emily sounded exasperated. “Come on, Lids. If anything, this happening to him makes it all the more clear you should just—”
“Move, dammit,” Drake thought.
Lydia gasped. She dropped his hand so abruptly he felt it smack against his chest.
“He moved!” Lydia’s words were so soft he likely wouldn’t have heard them if she hadn’t been kneeling so close at his side. “Two fingers! They twitched! I felt them!”
Was that really all he could do now? No. He could do more, and whatever had happened in the sacred chamber with that horse god, Drake was done being fussed over by his people. After all he’d survived, he wasn’t going down because of a six-legged My Little Pony.
“Move, dammit.” He flexed his fingers again. “That’s right. Like that.”
“Someone get Lady Marissa,” Lydia said forcefully. “And Samuel.”
“I’ll do it!” Emily shouted enthusiastically.
“You can’t even walk,” Nicole snarked. “And no shouting. Do you want to wake everyone up?”
“It’s not like anyone is actually sleeping out there,” Emily retorted.
“I will gather the others,” Valentia said with a commanding tone Drake couldn’t help but envy. “The rest of you remain here. Until our lord is fully recovered, we will leave nothing to chance. If someone struck at him in the sacred chamber, they could strike anywhere.”
“Brain. Mush,” Nicole reminded everyone. “It happens!”
Just the effort of moving his fingers had exhausted him. Drake wanted to cling to consciousness for a while longer, but the fight he’d been putting up until now had only been possible with Lydia’s support. He hated to disappoint everyone, but sleep was already rising to claim him. At least this felt like a real sleep. A good sleep.
When he opened his eyes to the bright morning light, he moved his head—he could move his head now—to find his mother sitting in a chair beside him, slumped over and half-asleep. At his movement, Marissa stirred, then jolted wide awake.
“Drake!” She said his name in a blind panic, then gasped as if someone had punched her in the stomach. She had been worried about him.
The fact that she’d just blurted out the name only she knew was all the evidence he needed to know he’d just scared the hell out of her. He felt vaguely guilty about that. Still, it was comforting to know she cared. More comforting than he wanted to admit.
“Where?” he rasped. “I don’t think I’m ready to fight one of those.”
“Gods, you’re impossible,” Marissa whispered. She leaned close and gently took one of his hands in both of hers. “You had us all very worried. We thought you had...”
“What?” He swallowed. “Like I’d go down that easy.”
“You need water,” Marissa said patiently. “Is that correct, Lord Gloomwood? Could you use a bit of water right now?”
Drake nodded. Given how dry his throat was, he could certainly use some ice cold water. He’d stopped caring about the possible bacteria weeks ago. He’d lapped water directly from a stream after he ratted out and tore through Captain Ro’s mercenaries, and it hadn’t killed him. Besides, he had Samuel’s rarity again. Very few things in this world could kill him.
Which was probably the only reason he’d survived an argument with a god.
“Aren’t you worried I’ll keel over without anyone to guard me?” Drake rasped.
“I am not.” Marissa rose and nodded to someone on his other side. “I will give you a moment before I bring the others in. Be quick.”
“Thank you,” Lydia said quietly. “We won’t be long.”
Drake turned his head to the other side of the bed—and this was his bed, or the nice bed he’d borrowed in his noble chambers in Korhaurbauten—to find Lydia sitting in a chair on the other side of his bed, or rather, almost falling out of it. She sat right on the edge.
Drake forced a grin. “Bad news. Looks like you’re stuck with me a while longer.”
“That is good news,” Lydia corrected evenly. She looked paler than he expected, and her dark eyes were rimmed with lack of sleep. She must have been up for some time.
“Sorry about my...” Drake almost said “mother” before he caught himself. His brain was still annoyingly fuzzy. “About Lady Marissa. Her curses are even weirder than my own.”
“That could be true,” Lydia agreed. “Though you must know by now that nothing you do or wish others to never know will leave my lips. I’ve proven that, haven’t I?”
Drake managed a nod. Lydia looked more somber and introspective than he’d expected, especially this early in the morning. It was morning, wasn’t it?
“I’m sorry if I worried you,” he said.
She simply shook her head. “What happened to you?”
“Well, for one thing, your horse god woke up and I told it to fuck off.” Drake’s mouth seized up as he spoke the words inside his head and they somehow failed to reach his mouth. This wasn’t a dry throat or numb muscles. This was something else.
“Hold up,” he said. “What I...”
Again, his mouth simply stopped working. His brain could process the worlds, think them, push them all the way to his mouth and tongue, but the muscles themselves stubbornly refused to take any part in it. Every time he attempted to tell Lydia what he’d seen in the sacred chamber before this—an Eidolon raising its head and speaking to him—his mouth rebelled.
Was this what it felt like to be compelled? Drake had never experienced the compulsion of a blood pact after he arrived, but Lydia had told him that manor lords could forbid their blood thralls from speaking of matters they did not wish them to reveal.
Was this that? Had the Eidolon compelled him not to speak about it? Why bother? He’d argued with the horse god and then... blacked out?
No. There was more to it than that. There had to be more to it than that, possibly a whole conversation. Vague traces of what had come before this remained inside him, whispers of something bigger. He remembered shock, awe, frustration, and then this. This bed.
Drake supposed this was the problem with blasphemy. It tended to piss those you blasphemed against off. Which was why he’d been comatose in a bed yesterday.
“I’m compelled not to speak of what happened.”
Nothing came out. His mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
“I can’t tell you.”
Again his lips failed. Was the compulsion so absolute?
This compulsion from an Eidolon didn’t just forbid him from telling his people what had happened. It expected him to outright lie. He’d reveled in his ability to speak words he didn’t believe since he arrived, but being forced to do that really pissed him off.
“Fuck blood pacts. Fuck this magical bullshit. And fuck you, horse god.”
None of that came out either, and Lydia was growing more visibly concerned each moment she went without an answer. If nothing else, he wanted to ease some of her worry. She’d likely had it rough covering for him for however long he’d been gone.
“I’m not sure what happened.” That lie, finally, escaped his traitorous lips. “I remember talking with Sky and then... hearing you all talking. About if I was going to ever wake up.”
“The Judge will need an explanation. She, too, was worried about you.”
“I think I just passed out,” Drake said. “Exhaustion, maybe.”
The way Lydia watched him told him she wasn’t sure what to believe. Had she remembered he could lie since they last spoke? In the end, she just nodded.
“That is what I will tell the noble court.”
He sighed. “Thanks, Lydia.”
“You never have to thank me, lord.”
“There,” Drake thought silently, and vengefully. “I lied to her, you six-legged horsefucker. Now get out of my head and get out of my life. I’m done with you and your stupid capital.”
Lydia visibly forced herself to settle back in her chair. “Whether your collapse was natural or induced by something else, you have recovered. We should take comfort in that.”
Drake cracked a grin he didn’t entirely feel. “That’s why I’m so grateful to have you around. Nothing ever knocks you down for long. You always get right back up again.”
A tired smile warmed her features. “I would say the same of you, lord.”
Drake hadn’t expected her smile to feel quite that good. It surprised him. In the warm light of the early morning, she was a lot more beautiful than he remembered.
No time to focus on that. Wasn’t appropriate. Best to focus on getting home. He was done with Korhaurbauten, done with the noble court, and done with handling matters that weren’t his concern. If Prince Varnath showed up, he’d crush the fishman’s head.
But after this one colossal pain in the ass, he simply wanted to get home to his manor. He’d leave the capital to their war and the other manor lords to their business. He’d done all that was required of him and more, so now, he would focus on rebuilding his manor.
As for the Eidolons, well... after this, they could all go fuck themselves.
