The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Help me. Those words, mouthed by a briefly clear-eyed Charlie, distressed Sarah of Charnia, keeping her company throughout the day and invading her dreams at night. That the plea came after Sarah had experienced an almost mystical experience at the hands and tongue of the beautiful dark-haired young woman cemented the poignancy that suffused Charlie’s supplication. For Sarah carried the memory of her time with Charlie like a treasured gem in her heart, unwilling to face the meaning of her actions and associated emotions, but relishing the pleasure she had experienced.

Sarah did not entirely succeed in camouflaging her troubled mind, but Gertrude, who kept a sharp eye on the other novices, mistook Sarah’s agitation for the emotional charge of the young woman’s first lesbian encounter.

Gertrude, always on the lookout for new novices to bring under her wings and guide and control—for they provided a small but non-negligible foothold of power within the Covenant—was more than willing to use Charlie as the temptation with which to ensnare Sarah. And if temptation did not suffice, Gertrude determined, blackmail would be an equally effective mean of persuasion.

During the day, whenever Gertrude was busy, Sarah would sneak a peek at Charlie, who remained locked in her draught-induced sleep, and would remember how those fingers and those lips and those breasts felt on her body, the memories never failing to send delicious tingles to her pussy.

Sarah understood why Charlie had to receive the quieting draught, of course—she had seen first-hand the effect of the blood fever that plagued Charlie, had seen and thoroughly enjoyed it. That her pleasure had been bought with the coin of blood sin ate at Sarah almost as much as the plea from Charlie.

Help me. What had Charlie meant? Help her with her blood fever? How could Sarah do anything in that respect? She was neither a medicine woman nor a sorceress; she knew nothing of either illnesses or curses. Help her get out of the clutches of High Novice Gertrude? But how? For all intents and purposes, as Sarah was quietly discovering, Gertrude was the Mistress of the Ward, viewing it and treating it as her personal dominion. Her blood gatherings brought money and power to the elder novice.

In the weeks that followed, Sarah participated in more of those blood gatherings, so as not to arouse Gertrude’s suspicion. She sometimes entertained patrons while they waited for a blood sinner to be free, a blood sinner to spend an hour with whom they had paid a hefty gold price—an hour with a beautiful young woman with a very pliable mind under the auspices of the quieting draught, a young woman who had no will to protest.

Charlie was by far the most popular of the blood sinners, despite being the most expensive by a remarkable margin: not only was she beautiful and with the body of goddess, she was strong and sexy and skillful; unlike the other blood sinners under sway of the quieting draught, she was not a docile and passive receptacle for men’s degenerate lust, but active and aggressive, full of energy, vigor, and hunger for the act of love. She was also strong and trained in the ways of the warrior, and those men that did not enjoy being dominated by a strong woman delighted in the allure of breaking and subduing such a specimen and taking their selfish pleasure with her.

Signore di Viroli, not quite a lord but of noble descent, was of the latter sort. He was popular with the feminine gent, and enjoyed the game of courtship and seduction like most in his position, but his blood ran hot mainly for more sporting encounters—he approached his love-making like he approach combat, as a mental and physical struggle—and it went without saying that Signore di Viroli did not find in the delicate and fragile flowers of the aristocratic circles in which he evolved the necessary companions to satiate his lust. Nor did he find among the most lowly pleasure girls of the underworld the requisite mix of beauty and brawn—those women that were capable of performing at his high level of physical and mental violence usually looked no better than dogs, and he was more liable to start beating them up than fucking them.

All of which went a long way to explain why finding Charlie was such a boon to Signore di Viroli. That such a remarkable woman was to be found in a highly questionable activity that not only bordered on immorality and illegality, but also amounted to a perversion of the mission of a Theistic Order devoted to love and righteousness, was merely an additional spice to an already flavorful dish.

So taken was Signore di Viroli with the former knight of the Royal Guard that he had been pressuring High Novice Gertrude to sell him the warrior, asking her to name her price. He was rich, and overwhelmed with a lust that went so deep so as to mimic love, a combination that afforded him little patience with High Novice Gertrude’s light but stubborn refusals. Gertrude had been graced with an intelligence that, while it might not have allowed her to complete a course of study at the Monastic College in Portia had she been born a man, was like that of a rat, an intelligence concerned with survival at any cost; and so she sensed that Signore di Viroli was willing to go to great lengths to acquire Charlie, and it made her nervous.

Sarah, meanwhile, was unaware of any of these underlying tensions, although she had taken a severe dislike to Signore di Viroli, whom she had cause to encounter often at Gertrude’s blood gatherings, if only because his obsession towards Charlie rivaled her own. The nobleman never failed to flirt with Sarah, more than once running his lecherous eyes over her body, managing to make the fair-haired novice feel no better than naked even though she wore the chaste robes of the Covenant. That his looks made her think of Lord Charnia helped not at all.

And yet Sarah knew, every time Signore di Viroli looked at her like a falcon tracking a field mouse, that il Signore was really thinking about Charlie, thinking about entering the plain room with the stone walls that Gertrude reserved for the knight, thinking about fighting with the crazed warrior who wanted nothing more than to swallow his cock whole before climbing on top of him and ravishing him—unless that day he managed to subdue her enough that he could push her down onto her knees and take her from behind in her most tight and private of holes while she squirmed in that combination of pain and ecstasy that drove him so wild he could hardly contain his shouts of triumphs.

That knowledge drove Sarah insane with jealousy, not only that il Signore took pleasure with the woman that Sarah was slowly realizing she had fallen in love with, but also from the suspicion fomented by her insecurity that Signore di Viroli could give Charlie pleasures that were simply impossible for poor inexperienced Sarah to provide. That thought depressed her most of all. She felt so alone that she cried herself to sleep many a night.

Help me. Those words were always at the foremost of her mind, especially when Gertrude allowed Sarah to spend time with Charlie after Signore di Viroli or any of the other admirers of the knight were done with her. At the end of many a blood gathering, Sarah had witnessed the state in which her fallen warrior was left, always with the onyx shaft pushing in and out of her womanhood, her eyes closed, her lust temporarily sated, her breasts, her ass, her thighs marked and bruised, her pussy raw and abused, her skin caked with male semen that Sarah lovingly washed off before Charlie’s blood fever ignited once more and she and Sarah consummated their love until Sarah passed out from the pleasures that Charlie knew so well how to pull from her body.

And so Sarah tried to find a way to help Charlie, not knowing what form that help might take, but driven to do something, anything, to save her love, the way she had failed to do with Fawn.

The idea came to Sarah one evening as she watched the novices silently distribute the quieting draught to the blood sinners of the ward. And it was so simple that she berated herself for not thinking of it sooner. Charlie’s moment of lucidity, when she had mouthed those fateful words—help me—had come about as Charlie was sliding under the effect of the quieting draught, but before the full effect of the draught knocked her out. Which suggested that a smaller dose might keep Charlie somewhat lucid, and maybe able to resist the drives of her blood fever. This seed of an idea germinated into a plan by the next evening.

It took some time for Sarah to determine how best to make her plan come to fruition. She knew she needed a half-strength quieting draught for Charlie, but she did not have access to the kitchens. She contemplated getting shifted to kitchen duties, but she dismissed the notion rapidly since she would also need ward access to be able to interact with Charlie, assuming her plan worked.

Which left finding a way to bribe the novices in charge of the kitchen, or more specifically, the novices in charge of preparing Charlie’s quieting draught. Sarah took a page from the Gertrude’s treatise on controlling and manipulating people, and set about to observe carefully the novices in the kitchens whenever she had a moment free.

Sarah paid special attention to Novice Bora, who seemed to be finishing up the last stages of the quieting draught, adjusting the dosages for each individual blood sinner, on those days when Charlie was due for her dose. Novice Bora regularly went into the supply chambers, like all the other novices in the kitchen, but she spent more time in one specific chamber than the others. It took a week before Sarah had the opportunity to investigate that chamber, and discover that the packages of Salarian roots were disturbed.

Her discrete questions revealed that Salarian roots were highly hallucinogenic, and were mostly used during the ceremonial rites of the Covenant at the yearly equinoxes. And thus Sarah discovered Novice Bora’s secret, the same secret High Novice Gertrude used to blackmail Novice Bora into helping her.

It took all of Sarah’s courage to confront Novice Bora, and she was buttressed by Charlie’s words—help me. But whatever fight Novice Bora might have put up never materialized, especially when Sarah gave her her best disapproving scowl—learned at the feet of her own mother, who had used it to great effect on her whole family—and Novice Bora was soon begging Sarah not to tell of her addiction to the Sisters.

Sarah had no intention of doing so, and she reassured Bora that the Sisters would not learn of the novice’s penchant for escapist sin, provided Bora helped Sarah. It was but a small request, Sarah emphasized, whispering even more softly than usual. The quieting draught for Charlie should be reduced in strength by half.

Novice Bora had almost bolted at that request, for Bora feared the wrath of High Novice Gertrude—although she never verbalized exactly what she was frightened of—and it took some coddling from Sarah for Bora to finally acquiesce to the request, a stalked fearful look on her face. Sarah had to promise everything would be okay, feeling not a little bit like she was reassuring an infant that there were no wild beasts underneath their cot.

The second part of the plan, making sure that the first time that the half-strength quieting draught for Charlie was served, High Novice Gertrude was not present, was easier to achieve. All the novices took their noon meal together, and an opportune distraction allowed Sarah to drop a pinch of crushed Carmelite seeds—lifted from the supply chambers—in Gertrude’s bowl. Not enough to kill her, certainly, but enough to give her cramps that would ensure Gertrude would be gone for the rest of the day. For it was the day that Charlie received her quieting draught.

And so it was that Sarah was nearby when Charlie, having received her half-strength quieting draught, stirred in her bed for the first time in the ward since Sarah started her novitiate, and that Gertrude was not. Sarah, after looking around to ensure no one was watching her, sneaked past the sheet cutting Charlie off from the rest of the ward, and stood by the bed of the dark-haired warrior.

Gently, Sarah ran her hand over Charlie’s forehead, and the young knight shivered slightly and moaned and turned her head. Sarah bent down and lightly kissed Charlie’s forehead. When she straightened up, Charlie’s eyes were open and were looking straight at her.

Charlie was coming out of her deep daze slowly, and Sarah shushed her before she could make a sound. Charlie frowned and turned her head to let the fogs of her unnatural sleep dissipate. Sarah saw Charlie’s eyes struggle to focus, shifting left and right and try to fixate on something, anything, and Sarah, after some hesitation, leaned forward so that her face was closest to Charlie.

It took a few minutes, during which Charlie’s movement grew less sluggish, and her eyes fixed on Sarah’s face. She struggled to move her lips and form words.

“Sssh,” Sarah whispered, keeping her voice as low as possible. Unable to resist any longer, she ran a gently hand over Charlie’s cheek.

Charlie shivered at the touch, then sighed and closed her eyes.

“You’re okay,” Sarah whispered. “Everything’s okay.”

“Where...?” Charlie’s voice was low and weak.

Sarah had never witnessed Charlie coming out of her draught-induced torpor—Gertrude had always done it, alone, before the blood gatherings.

“Please, keep your voice down. Do you... do you remember me?”

Charlie’s eyes had grown clearer but still remained mostly clouded. Sarah prayed that the dose was weak enough to manage to give some sense to Charlie, but still have enough bite so that the knight would not lose control and surrender to her blood fever.

“Help...” Charlie groaned.

“That’s right. You asked me to help. My name is Sarah.”

“Sarah...”

The way Charlie said her name made Sarah grow warm all over. Charlie’s eyes were on her. Sarah nodded, and broke into a smile that she could no longer subdue. She longed to kiss those lips that struggled to form words.

“What’s your name?” Sarah asked.

There was a long pause as Charlie simply looked at Sarah. “Charlie,” she whispered finally.

“Charlie.” Sarah rolled the name over her tongue, feeling it, tasting it. She had not known what to expect, but it fit well.

“Listen to me, Charlie,” Sarah whispered as she leaned down closer to the knight. “I have to go now, but I will be back tonight, after everyone has gone to sleep. Until then, it is important that you not make a sound, that you not move. Very important. To the rest of the world, it has to look like you’re sleeping deeply. Do you understand?”

“No sound... no movement... sleeping...”

“Exactly. Until I come back later tonight. No matter what happens. Can you do that for me, Charlie?”

“Sleep...”

Sarah nodded and caressed Charlie’s face again. Then, giving in to her impulse, she leaned down and kissed Charlie on the lips, a soft fleeting kiss that promised so much more.

Charlie shivered and responded to the kiss, and Sarah wished she could have simply stayed there to forget the world and its Lord Charnias and Gertrudes and Di Virolis and simply live for a soft loving pair of lips.

Sarah sneaked back from behind the sheet after making sure her heart had returned to beating at a more or less normal pace, and that she had composed herself back to equanimity as befitted a novice of the Covenant of Whispered Inspiration. As far as she could tell, no one had noticed anything strange.

It took surprisingly little work for Sarah to arrange a schedule change and ensure that she would be the novice in charge of the night shift that same night.

To allay any possible suspicions—the night shift was hardly popular and too much eagerness would have been unusual and anything unusual would have found its way back to Gertrude—she showed further craftiness. The sisters had often a need of novices on a volunteer basis for various small tasks, and she volunteered for vegetable harvest duty three days in the future, at a time where she had ward duty. She then approached Novice Viola, and begged her to take her morning ward duty that day. In exchange, offered Sarah, she would be happy to shoulder Viola’s ward duty that very night. Novice Viola, as Sarah had known, accepted with barely contained glee, even if it meant a double shift three days hence.

All that was left for Sarah to do was attend to her duties and try to contain her nervousness as the afternoon and then the evening crawled by slowly. She stayed away from Charlie’s end of the ward, resisting the temptation to go and see her. She prayed that Charlie had understood her and would keep quiet.

Sarah should not have worried, for Charlie had not only heard her, but once more of her lucidity had returned, she had recognized the wisdom of the advice. After all, Charlie had enough wits to realize that she had been kept deeply sedated, and that there must have been a reason for it, and until she knew exactly what that reason was, she was not willing to take any chances.

Charlie, left alone all afternoon but for a short period early in the evening for her clothes and her bedding to get changed, tried to put together her thoughts and her memories. She had no sense of how long she had been here, most of her memories one of blissful floating and a deep sense of peace like a long never-ending dream. Other memories intruded, odd memories, memories that felt as though they belonged to someone else, some Daemon that had sought residence within her breast.

Had Charlie been different, she might have believed and in fact latched on to possession as a convenient and pleasant explanation for these memories but she knew better. She remember crisply the time before her flight from King Altobar’s castle—the time when she was under the thrall of Rochefort, who had first given her the magical philtre that had subdued her mind and turned her into his private pleasure girl, unable to resist the vilest of his orders, appallingly submissive, shamelessly depraved.

She remembered how it felt to be a passenger in her own body, unable to affect it, able merely to feel, to think, to fret uselessly.

When Rochefort was killed, his control over her vanished, but the Dark Mage who had prepared the philtre in the first place—a philtre meant for then Princess Helena before being stolen by Rochefort—had revealed to Charlie that she would feel the bite of a magical blood fever as a side effect from the philtre.

And thus, Charlie knew exactly what was happening to her, and for the first time, thanks to the small dose of the quieting draught was able to control her urges enough to think somewhat clearly and ponder her fate and her future.

She did not know how the world had changed after the assassination of the king, and what had become of her friends, and what had become of her lover, Count Oliver of Athia. All she knew was the she had to be careful.

Sarah slipped through the sheet less than an hour after the end of the midnight prayers, which Charlie could hear as a gently drone in the quiet darkness of the night.

“Charlie?” whispered the fair-haired novice. “Are you awake?”

“I am.”

Sarah sat on the side of the bed, looking tired and excited and embarrassed. “How are you feeling?” Almost reflexively, she put the back of her hand on the knight’s forehead.

“I feel fine. A bit groggy. Slow. Like I’m swimming in pea soup.”

“That’s the quieting draught. Your dose is not large enough to knock you out, but it’s still affecting you. How... how about your... desires?” Sarah blushed, and wanted to kick herself for appearing so nubile, and was grateful for the enveloping darkness of the ward.

“They are manageable.” Charlie had spent a good part of the day in a fascinated watch of her own body, feeling the cravings clawing at her loins, longing for satisfaction, for release. She felt everything but as though it was a scream through a thick stone wall, a disconnection between her body and her mind. But not a disconnection of the kind she had experienced with Rochefort, not as a passenger in her own body, but rather as a disconnection that enabled her to ignore the needs of her own body, not unlike in her warrior’s training where one learned to ignore physical discomfort and pain and keep on fighting. On the other hand, she had lost some amount of fine control over her body, everything happening as though she was but half awake, still wrapped with the fog of sleep.

Charlie looked at Sarah, her savior, and could now see her clearly. In one quick look, she assessed and analyzed the fair-haired novice, the way she had been trained, whether as a threat or ally. All that Charlie saw in the youth was fear, expectation, and love. Love. That took Charlie by surprise. Lust, she would have unexpected, as she was keenly aware of the attraction that Sarah felt for her, and the desire that gushed out of the novice to simply lean over and surrender herself to Charlie.

For Charlie remembered. Not everything, of course. Her times under the influence of the quieting draught were a black hole of memories, but there were flashes where she was awake, aware of her actions, if utterly unable to stop herself, the Daemon of lust within her breast a wild beast seeking only to satiate itself.

She remembered a series of men taking her, or more often than not, being taken by her, as she often overpowered them win her effort to seek satisfaction for that craving between her legs, in a hot a deep room hewn out of rock and equipped with a cot, a table, and a torch. She remembered the man calling himself Di Viroli, a man of noble birth and of perverse drives, who seemed unable to get enough of her. The look in his eyes told her the tale that his words did not—that he enjoyed her struggles, that he relished subduing her, that he got off on hearing her beg for his cock to pound her into oblivion, into blissful release.

And she remembered Sarah, though she did not know her name at the time. Sweet Sarah. Innocent Sarah. Led like a sacrificial lamb to slaughter by the older woman calling herself Gertrude, she who directed access to Charlie’s release. Scared but horny Sarah, who had opened herself up, like a flower, and welcomed Charlie’s crazed assaults and milked them for all they were worth.

Sarah, whom in a moment of lucidity and control, in that short flash of time after Gertrude had fed her the bitter draught that swallowed up Charlie’s memories, Charlie had beseeched silently for help, reading in the young novice’s eyes something that gave her hope.

She knew what that something was now.

Love.

“Thank you,” whispered Charlie.

“What for?”

“For helping me. For being there. For being kind.”

Charlie raised a hand and laid it on Sarah’s knee. The novice shivered.

“Don’t mention it,” she replied in a voice that caught in her throat. “Anybody would have done the same.”

“That’s not true, and you know that even more than I do.”

Sarah blushed, and looked down to the tapped earth floor, unable to ignore Charlie’s hand still on her knee, the warmth of the warrior conveying through her robe to infuse her suddenly cold skin.

Charlie was not sure exactly what drove her to her next actions. It may have been an understanding that it would cement Sarah as an ally. It may have been that despite the quieting draught coursing through her veins the Daemon inside her still affected her mind despite only having a hold on her body. It may have been an unconscious craving for warmth and affection. Whatever the cause, it did not matter.

Charlie straightened up on the bed as Sarah watched quietly, waiting to see what the knight would do, unwilling to let go of her hand. She should not have feared, for Charlie leaned in and slowly brought her face closer to the fair-haired novice’s face.

Sarah’s breath was short, her lips were parted, and her eyes were half-closed. She was prey once again, and her heart beat so fast and so hard she worried the other blood sinners on the ward would hear and waken.

As much as the kisses they had shared when trapped in that room in the caves far underneath the cloister when Charlie stank of stale semen were wild and harsh and owed more to a warrior’s training than to a courtesan’s education, the kiss they shared in the darkness of the blood sinners’ ward was slow and light and consumed Sarah more thoroughly.

Charlie’s lips were soft, barely caressing Sarah’s own, teasing, hovering, there but not, Charlie’s breath almost more pressing than her flesh, and Sarah, who had always been the passive vessel of Charlie’s overflowing lust, found herself seeking contact—her tongue at first shyly and then more decisively sought out Charlie’s, and her hands caressed up and down the knight’s thighs, which Charlie parted encouragingly.

Sarah’s breath grew even shorter as Charlie tilted her head and bared her throat and Sarah, without thinking, trailed her lips down that exposed skin and licked and kissed down the dip of Charlie’s neck.

Sarah, who had never initiated a sexual encounter before that night, who had only just come around to accepting the feelings she harbored for the knight, was lost in a world of her own, following instincts she never suspected she had.

Soon, without quite knowing how she found herself in such a position, Sarah had her head between Charlie’s exposed breasts, kissing and sucking, her hands pressing the fleshy mounds while Charlie moaned in pleasure and pulled Sarah’s head against her chest.

Sarah had played with the dark-haired woman’s breasts before in the aftermath of the blood gatherings, but usually only managing to sneak a hand or a tongue in between two assaults from the warrior while she was in the full throes of her blood fever. This time, though, she had unfettered access, and took full advantage of the opportunity, exploring with her fingers, her lips, her tongue.

The reduced dose of quieting draught that Charlie had ingested did not eliminate her blood fever, but merely lessened the impact of its demands—her body still felt the pull and the cravings of release, and with the stimulation of her breasts, Charlie’s pussy responded in kind, opening itself up and readying itself for lovemaking. The Daemon lurking beneath her skin was ensconced in the folds of her pussy lips and cradled deep in her ass, and laughed heartily at her feeble attempts at resisting Him.

Charlie shivered all over, and Sarah, her chin damp with saliva, interrupted herself and let go of the knight’s breasts and looked at Charlie, certain she had done something wrong. The expression on her face was so forlorn and so caught between delight and fear, as if this was all a dream that the fair-haired novice dreaded would dissipate at a moment’s notice, that Charlie had to smile, despite her predicament, despite the abuse she had been subjected to, despite everything—Sarah was even more of an innocent than Charlie was, caught in the midst of a situation that she did not understand, but still willing to take huge risks.

Sarah looked on curiously as Charlie continued to smile, even as Charlie took Sarah’s face in her hands and pulled her up. Sarah wanted to ask something—she did not even know what exactly—but Charlie never gave her a chance.

“You got me all wet, you little devil. I’m drenched through and through.”

Sarah’s fear gave way to a smile, a shy smile, the smile of a kid asking for her parent’s approval, afraid to but unable to live without it.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Charlie asked, looking deep into Sarah’s eyes.

To make sure the fair-haired novice did not misunderstand her meaning, Charlie lay back on the bed, tossed the sheets off, and spread her long legs wide. She ran her hands down her body and pulled her underthings to the side, baring her wet and by now fragrant pussy.

“Lick me,” she said softly to the hypnotized novice.

And as Sarah, with a growing smile, dove between the knight’s legs, Charlie gave up a shred of control and surrendered the smallest part of herself to the Daemon, who writhed in delight under Sarah’s ministrations.

It was difficult, but Charlie managed to remain quiet as Sarah, shy Sarah, nubile Sarah, discovered previously unknown abilities deep within herself and guided Charlie through a number of orgasms that had the knight’s humping the novice’s face and almost snapping her invading fingers at the root so powerfully was her pussy clenching the pleasure-inducing digits.

Bathed in sweat, her body satiated, the Daemon within her dulled by the repeated highs, Charlie curled up on the bed into Sarah as the novice lay down next to the warrior.

Sarah was breathing hard, and Charlie could feel her heartbeat against her back. The fair-haired novice held Charlie tight, but did not say a word, nor did she move. Charlie, meanwhile, basked in the warmth, the closeness, the feeling of being her own self, of being Charlie the woman, and not Charlie the warrior.

“Sarah,” she asked softly. The blood sinners’ ward was still quiet but for the sound of the wind through the open windows. “Why are you here?”

Sarah did not answer immediately. There were so many questions in that own question. She was there because she had no choice. She was there because it was her best hope. She was there because she owed it to Fawn.

“I am here because it is the will of the One God.”

And she believed that. Everything happened for a reason. Whether you called it Fate, the River of Life, or the One God, or any other gods from the pantheon of Deities that littered the Kingdom and others beyond, it all came down to the same thing. Everything happened for a reason. That was the only way any of it made sense.

“I am here because it is the will of the One God, just like you are here because it is the will of the One God. He put you on my path.” To save me, Sarah added within herself.

Charlie bit her lip. Maybe my being here is the will of the One God, she thought, but my blood fever is the will of Rochefort.

“I have to leave,” Charlie said, matter of fact.

“Leave? You cannot leave—you are ill.”

“The longer I remain here, the more dangerous things become, for me, for everyone. I have to leave. As for my blood fever, if you get me some of this potion that they give us, that should let me hang out there for long enough to find a way to cure this.”

Sarah shook her head. “Even if I were to give you some of the quieting draught, the sisters would not let you go. No one leaves the Covenant. You would be stopped at the gate.”

“I can fight.”

“But you are one, while they are many. And you are unarmed, while they have weapons to spare. And you are weakened by your illness and the draught. The sisters guarding the gate are trained warriors. You would be slaughtered before you can touch the metal of the front gate.” I just found you, Sarah wanted to say. I don’t want to lose you now that I just found you.

Charlie said nothing. Her mind was running through plans, possibilities of escape, running quickly into the problem of not having enough information. She fought the rising frustration.

Sarah remained silent for a long time as well. Leave. No, escape. The word kept bouncing around in her mind. She was terrified and elated. Escape. Her aroused body felt alive, and that life wanted to escape and be free. And Charlie was the root and the reason, the source and the target. Everything happens for a reason, she thought.

“There may be a way,” she said, softly, finally.

“A way?”

“To escape.” Sarah fell silent. Charlie turned around to face the novice. Before she could ask, Sarah took a deep breath. “But there is one condition.”

“Name it.”

“Take me with you.”

Charlie looked at Sarah, looked her deep in the eyes, and read all the emotions repressed behind the watery blue eyes—fear, happiness, helplessness, resolve. And lust. And love.

Charlie nodded. “Deal.”

She did not linger to watch the look of relief and sheer gratitude that crossed Sarah’s face, because the warrior was shifting down Sarah’s body to repay the novice for the bliss she had given her earlier. And within Charlie’s breast, the Daemon wallowed in the anticipation of more sexual release.