The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Rose Davion walked across the courtyard. Dawn was just a few moments away, the expanses empty and gray with mist, but Rose saw none of it. There was a powerful chill in the air, strong enough to bring gooseflesh on Rose’s bare arms, but Rose took no notice of it.

In her mind, Rose saw a beautiful spring day, the same weather it had been when she’d had her first kiss, with the page in the barracks. God, he’d been so handsome, and so respectful of her church-going chastity not to pursue her body further. The sun warmed her face, and a strong wind ruffled her hair. She was aware of the gooseflesh sensation, but she attributed it to the recent kiss, and not to the weather, which was completely perfect.

Rose saw the steps to the castle wall, and at that moment another strong gust of wind was at her back. She felt so light and comfortable that she could fly away on the wind, and she knew the perfect place to do so.

Rose began climbing the steps to the top of the wall. Each step caused the warm, peaceful feeling in her mind to double.

She did not think about the two women she had drugged the night before. If anyone had been present at that moment to ask, she would not have been able to remember what she had done the night before. It was unlikely that she would have been able to remember her own name.

At the top of the stairs, the two men posted at the gate saw her. “Oi!” one of the called out. “Servants aren’t allowed on the wall!”

Rose did not hear him. She did not remember the last words she had heard.

Another warm gust was at her back, and Rose ran for the wall. In two quick steps she was at the stone, and without another thought she leapt into the air, feeling the warm breeze carry her aloft, light as a feather.

The length of her flight is a question better asked of a philosopher. Or perhaps a member of the clergy. Or a mortician.

Gabrielle, who felt over the last few days that she had been sleeping deeper than she ever had before, spent the next morning climbing out of a dreamless and seemingly bottomless pit. She had no idea how long she simply lay there, aware that she was in her own bed and that sunlight was passing through the shutters, but without the strength to open her eyes.

At some point, she became aware that someone was pounding on her bedroom door. Heavy, rapid impacts. Angela would never be so impatient, and she didn’t have the weight to strike the door so forcefully.

Not Angela. Who else would pound? Must be an emergency.

The fog in her head began to clear. With a groan, Gabrielle pushed herself into a sitting position. She had to strain to open her eyes. She tried to remember what had happened last night. Everything after the dinner she’d had with Angela and Prudence had slipped behind a dark curtain.

Was I hypnotized? Must have been. Can’t remember.

For the first time since this affair began, she felt vaguely distressed that she couldn’t remember. She felt the sensation of ropes around her wrists, elbows, knees, ankles. She was floating through her trances like a puppet on strings, and it was not a positive feeling.

The pounding on her front door continued. “Coming!” Gabrielle called, and was immediately shocking by the guttural croak that issued from her mouth. Both her mouth and her throat had the consistency of sandpaper.

Gabrielle reached for the nightstand, intending to take her mother’s knife and strap it to her wrist. The knife wasn’t there. Only then did Gabrielle realize that she had not changed clothes in any way from the night before: she had slept in the same dress she had dinnered in. Usually she took the knife off before bed and put it on the nightstand, but it was still strapped to her left wrist, where the leather straps had chafed considerably while she’d slept.

What happened last night?

That sensation of vague distress again. She couldn’t even remember a blur, as she did from the show where she had met Prudence. Her recall of last night was blank.

Did she tell me to keep the knife on? Did she think I would need it?

“Your Majesty!” A man’s voice thundered from the other side of the door. Gabrielle was almost certain that it was the Captain of the Guard. “Please hurry!”

After sipping from the pitcher of drinking water supplied the night before, Gabrielle ran into her closet. There, a garment hung that her mother had requested specifically for situations like this, when she could be wakened from sleep in a situation so urgent that she would not have time to dress as befits a noblewoman.

The piece of clothing that Gabrielle thought of as the Emergency Robe was brown leather, with padding sewn into the chest and back thick enough to stop a dagger blade. It tied in three places, at neck, chest and waist, covering her from collar to ankles.

And, at last, Gabrielle took hold of a leather thong on the inside of the Emergency Robe’s left sleeve. As she tied the thong to her mother’s knife, she felt a creeping dread that this particular feature of the Emergency Robe would be needed today.

The man at the door was indeed the Captain of the Guard. He was alone. “Your Majesty,” he said in a businesslike tone, “we believe that the Crown may be in danger.”

“Danger,” Gabrielle echoed. “This can’t be the German tribes you were worried about.”

“No, m’lady,” the Captain said. “I believe this threat comes from within.”

Gabrielle was not shocked to hear this. Your first year will be the worst, her mother had said, as her final illness had worsened. There will be claims that you are too young, too callow, too female to wear the Crown. A man may move against you. “Where’s Angela?” she said, striving to keep her tone normal and businesslike. “Where’s Prudence?”

“Not sure, m’lady,” the Captain said. “You’re my first priority.”

“I am Angela’s first priority as well,” the queen said. “If she is not here, the problem may be worse than we fear. Find her at once.”

“Yes, my Queen,” the Captain said. “Join me in the search. ’Tis better if you do not leave my side in these trying times.”

Gabrielle closed the bedroom door behind her, and followed him down the hall.

Prudence came to suddenly, uncomfortably, and with awareness that she was in danger.

The cold air was sharp on her face and her cleavage. She started awake, then groaned in pain as the restraints caught her. She looked around a dark room. Distant firelight revealed the shadows of heavy bars nearby.

Locked in a dungeon for the first time, she thought with dismay.

She was tied to a simple dining chair. Her legs were tied to its legs at the ankle, her wrists were tied to the arms at the wrist and at the elbow, and she was also tied around her torso just under her breasts. The ropes were all thick and heavy, save the restraint across her chest, which was a thin cord that tried to cut through her dress and into her skin whenever she moved.

Prudence was achingly thirsty, her throat dry and an unspeakable taste in her mouth, as though something had died there. But worse than that was the cold. She had never before appreciated how warm the castle was kept during the day. The cold in the dungeon was not freezing, but it was close, raising gooseflesh on every inch of exposed skin. Even as she was thinking about the cold she shuddered with enough force to strain the ropes under her breasts, and she moaned with pain.

“I see you’re awake,” a voice said.

Prudence looked up. The silhouette of a man was just behind the bars. She’d missed him before, so faint was the firelight from the distant torches. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said.

He stepped forward. She still could not make out his face, but she could see that he was balding, and wearing a thick robe that made him look like a monk. “My name is Cian,” he said. “I am one of the Seers who advise the Vessian crown through trying times such as these.”

Seers, Prudence thought. Christ, they had Seers all along and I never knew. “I think you mean Deceivers,” she said. “I do like the sound of that one.”

“Well, you would know,” Cian said. “Or do you claim that you have never deceived any of your subjects?”

“You were here first,” Prudence said. “To have weaseled your way so deep into Gabby’s mind, your grift must have been on for years.”

“That’s Her Majesty, Queen Gabrielle de Vess, to you,” Cian said. “Such irreverence could get you imprisoned for treason.”

“If this was about treason, you wouldn’t have needed to drug me,” Prudence said. “Nor Angela.”

Cian took another step toward the bars, close enough to stick his hands through. She could see his face now, round and pleasantly smiling. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You want to know how I could, as you say, weasel my way into her mind without her knowing.”

Prudence bit her tongue, chagrined. She had been thinking exactly that.

One of his hands came through the bars. It was holding a vial of liquid, which appeared amber in color when seen in the dying firelight.

“I bought this in Constantinople,” he said. “Where the seller found it, I know not. It works quite a bit differently than the simple sleeping potion we gave to you and Angela. This doesn’t put you to sleep, but it relaxes you so deeply that the process of hypnosis becomes effortless. In truth I might not have needed the drug for Gabrielle — as you know, her trance is unique and unusual — but its soothing qualities also made it easy for her to forget that our sessions had ever happened.”

“I should have known,” Prudence said. “With those eyes and that voice, you couldn’t hypnotize a chicken without help.”

Cian’s mouth set in a straight line. Prudence could see that she had stung him. “I’m going to offer you a choice,” he said. “On one hand, I can pour this entire vial down your throat. To give you an idea of how strong that would be, I gave the servant girl three teaspoons, and she will never remember what she did to you.”

“And you’re proud of that, aren’t you?” Prudence said. She looked at the man on the other side of the bars as one might look at a painting of a mass execution.

“It’s possible that you could simply die on the spot,” Cian went on, ignoring her. “Fall asleep and never wake up, like an old drunk who finally had one too many. But if you live, I will send you from this castle with instructions to walk to Holland. At some point you may regain your memory, or you may wander the streets of Amsterdam forever, unable to recall what you did to end up there, or any skills to use in your benefit, and too relaxed to care.”

Prudence’s throat seemed to grow even more dry. How long had she been unconscious, to be this thirsty? Days? “Lovely,” she said. “And my other choice?”

“Leave of your own volition,” Cian said. “Never return. One thing you should understand is that I have already given Angela her first dose. She pays far more attention to my voice now, than she ever did before. In time she will be so convinced of your treason that she will eagerly follow you to the ends of the earth to deliver your punishment. Would you rather have full control of your faculties when she is pursuing you? Or would you prefer to be ambushed by a stranger whose quarrel you cannot even remember?”

Why would he offer me a choice? Prudence thought. He can come in this cell and pour that down my throat any time he wants. Hell, he could have done it already. But he didn’t. He wants me to leave of my own choice. Why?

He wants me to know Angela is chasing me, so that I can evade her, Prudence thought.

He wants Angela’s time to be wasted chasing me, Prudence thought.

He needs time to complete his plan at home, Prudence thought.

“You lost Gabby, didn’t you?” Prudence said. Seeing Cian’s mouth set in a line again, she grinned. “Your master plan of hypnosis and chemistry, hatched over the course of years, sent straight into the chamber pot because you lost track of the most powerful woman in the kingdom. Truly I am in awe of your mastery.”

Cian moved his other arm through the bars. In the weak torchlight, she saw him holding a cup. “I was intending to bring you this water,” he said. “But would you share such a valuable commodity with one so ungrateful? So insolent? So insulting?”

“I would share,” Prudence said. “But then, I don’t need to drug women to get them to listen to me.”

She saw a flicker of movement, then the entire cup of water splashed against her face and chest. The water was ice cold — she could feel shards of ice striking her skin — and the shock of its impact caused her to cry out.

“Consider my choice,” Cian said, his voice pleasant again. “Consider it when you desperately need to lick the water off your lips, but you cannot because your teeth are chattering so hard. Consider that I can place you in a stupor so deep that you would walk to Amsterdam wearing no coat.”

He leaned forward, eyes glittering in the firelight. “Consider this above all: You never had a chance. I learned my craft from my father, who learned it from his father, who learned it from his. We’ve fed ourselves and our families from our skills for generations, under threat of death if we were ever discovered. You are a hack. There’s no shame in being a hack; peasants have been entertained by hacks for centuries, and will be for centuries more. But a hack cannot stand against us. Best to escape with your life, and try your hackery elsewhere.”

He walked away, the sounds of his footfalls echoing off the walls until she could no longer distinguish them.

Gabrielle followed the Captain down a flight of stairs, from her bedroom level to the ground level.

“What is this threat, Captain?” the queen said. “What do we know?”

“One of the servants in the kitchen is dead,” the Captain said. “A young woman named Rose. She fell from the top of the castle wall.”

“God,” Gabrielle murmured. She hadn’t interacted with Rose very often, but could remember her eager smile. “Horrible. But it could have been an accident, yes? Or suicide?”

“She was last seen in the company of Prudence and Angela, and now neither of them can be found,” the Captain said. “Their beds are made, as though never touched last night. That’s too many coincidences for me.”

“Indeed,” Gabrielle said, trying to control the nervous feeling in her gut. Prudence and Angela both? One day after she had told the Captain that Angela was her best check on any dangerous behavior from Prudence? “Could they have left the castle?”

“My men on the gate say no,” the Captain said. “I have men looking for Percy Runier. He was in the castle yesterday, and was hostile with Angela. Maybe his failure to woo you caused him to cross a line.”

The Captain knew Percy was attempting to court her, and that the courting had failed, and that he’d had cross words with Angela, but he was clueless about Angela’s location? Was that even possible?

Or was he trying to deflect her curiosity onto Percy, and away from the real usurper?

In that moment, Gabrielle heard Prudence’s voice in her mind, clear as day. You are strong. You are loved. Confront him.

Gabrielle stopped still. The Captain made it one step further before he also stopped and looked back at her. Beyond him, she could see the end of the hall, empty and silent. Not a single servant to be seen or heard.

The Captain was the only person other than herself with the power to put the servants on their leave a second day in a row. The servants who could have been reliably trusted to side with the queen they had watched grow up.

“Are you the usurper, Captain?” she asked. “Or are you in league with someone?”

“My queen, what are you saying?” the Captain said. He was trying to feign surprise and innocence, but she already knew. He was a soldier, not an actor.

“Why did you evacuate the servants without asking me, Captain?” Gabrielle said. “I am not going anywhere until you explain yourself.”

The Captain dropped the surprised face that was surprising no one. He put a hand on the hilt of his sword, but did not draw it. “Fine,” he said. “There is a danger to this kingdom, Gabby. The danger is you.”

“Nonsense,” Gabrielle said. “I wear my Crown with all the—“

“Spare me,” the Captain spat. “This Prudence woman is twisting your mind. I saw it with my own eyes. The man I told you about, yesterday? The Guard at the Seers’ door who saw you leaving their tower, the man who you claimed was mistaken? That man was me.”

Gabrielle tried to think of something to say, until she realized that staring at the Captain, her mouth agape, would not convince him that she was in full control of her faculties.

“The Seers were concerned about your state of mind,” the Captain said. “They invited me to their tower to see for myself. You walked not five feet from me. I greeted you, and you neither spoke nor looked in my direction. And when I asked you about it, not a quarter-hour later, you denied that it had ever happened.”

Gabrielle’s mind raced. “The Seers were concerned?” What could she have said or done that they would be concerned about? All they did was harmless rubbish.

“Aye,” the Captain said. “And why would they not be? We had heard all of the same stories. You walking around in the kitchen in your unmentionables, pale as a ghost? Walking all about the castle grounds after dark, with your face as blank as a dead man? How can I possibly trust your judgment on the German border in light of these stories?”

Gabrielle had no idea what he was talking about with the latter incident, but in any case, she had resolved days ago that she would not debate the sleepwalking. “If the Seers are concerned about me, we should go see them,” she said. “Your concerns about the Germans can be heard as well. I’m sure this can be sorted out.”

“Yes,” the Captain said. “This will be sorted. The Seers will talk with you about your odd behavior, when you are safely placed in a cell, where you can endanger no one.”

“Captain,” Gabrielle said, trying to keep her voice calm. The prospect of facing the Seers alone in a cell unnerved her, for reasons that she could not explain. After all, they were just harmless rubbish. “Think about what you are doing. I am the last in the line of de Vess. If I am removed from the throne, we are no longer Vessia. We will be nothing more than a mass of squabbling nobles ready to be conquered by half a dozen of our neighbors.”

“You think I don’t know that?!” the Captain took a step toward her, and she could see that there were tears in his eyes. She almost acted in response to his movement, but forced herself to remain patient. The Captain went on, “You said to me, Our kingdom shall always require the efforts of the eternally vigilant. But vigilance is nothing without the will to act. What does this kingdom become, if I allow a madwoman to wear the crown? Will we no longer be Vessia if your mind falls apart in a moment of crisis?”

“This is not a debate, Captain,” Gabrielle said, trying to put as much steel in her voice as she could. “I am your queen, and I am in my right mind. Take off your sword and stand down. If you do not, you and I shall be at war.”

The Captain set his jaw, and sorrow welled deep in Gabrielle’s heart as she saw her remaining options run out. “Angela is not here, Gabby,” he said. “It shall be war, and it’s a war you’ve already lost.”

He reached for her.

The moment when his fingers began to curl around her right arm, but before his grip tightened, was the moment that she had been patient for. Gabrielle flung that arm into the air, as though greeting someone down at the end of the hall. As she did, her left thumb flicked the leather thong inside the Emergency Robe’s sleeve. Her mother’s knife was released from the straps that held it, and its hilt dropped into her hand.

Gabrielle spun on the balls of her feet, dancing close toward the Captain. Her hail-fellow-well-met maneuver had flung his arm upward right along with hers, exposing his left armpit. As she finished her spin, she let out a half-assed battle yell and drove her mother’s knife into the armpit with all of her strength.

The Captain grunted, but did not sound as pained as she had expected. Too late, she realized her error. The move was supposed to be a series of quick stabs, one-two-three, giving as many chances to hit vital organs as possible. That’s what Angela, with her years and years of additional training, would have done. Gabrielle had let her emotions get the better of her, had stabbed too hard.

When she tried to pull the knife free and correct her error, her hand slipped right off of the knife’s hilt. Gabrielle saw that her hand had slipped because it was slick to the wrist with blood. Either by luck or by skill, she’d needed only one strike to hit his heart.

“What?” the Captain said. His arms had dropped. She saw the fingers twitching as he tried to move them, but already he would be feeling the effects of blood loss. “What?”

“You goddamned stubborn fool,” Gabrielle said, her vision blurring as tears began to pour down her cheeks. “You knew that Angela was a killer, and you never bothered to ask who her sparring partner was?”

“Gabby, I’m fucking sorry,” the Captain said, and fell to his knees.

Gabrielle went to her knees beside him, so she could look in his eyes. “Who is the usurper, Captain? Who gave you the order to remove me?”

“Look I sad,” he said, his voice garbled by the blood filling his lungs and throat. “Sirs.” Then he pitched over onto his face and lay still.

Gabby stumbled backward until she sat on the floor, her back to the wall, crying uncontrollably. What he had said the day before was right: he wasn’t her father and hadn’t tried to be. But he had been a fixture in her life since she was a baby. If he was not a father, he was not unlike an uncle.

And she had killed him.

I had no choice, she thought.

She remembered him saying, You think I don’t know that, tears in his eyes.

He seemed so sure, she thought. So sure he was doing the right thing, for me and the kingdom both. How did he get so sure?

Look I sad, he had said. Sirs.She’d seen the blood in his mouth and throat. Like I said, he’d been trying to tell her. Seers.

The Seers were usurpers. But that was impossible. They were just—

“Rubbish,” she said aloud, through her tears.

But the Captain had been so sure. You walked not five feet from me. I greeted you, and you neither spoke nor looked in my direction.

She tried to think back. She’d talked with the Captain on the castle wall. Before that, she’d been walking in the courtyard, and before that—

“Rubbish,” she said aloud again, the word coming out almost like a sob.

She smell of blood, metallic and meaty at the same time, began to fill the hall. She couldn’t stay here. Someone was moving against her.

Like I said. Seers.

He’d been so fucking sure.

“Rubbish,” she sobbed aloud, completely unaware that she had done so.

You neither spoke nor looked in my direction.

Maybe he’d been lying, trying to spite her with his dying breaths. No, couldn’t be. She saw him go to his knees saying, Gabby I’m fucking sorry.

She managed to get her feet under her, and stand. The world seemed canted at an angle. She could barely walk.

Think about what you are doing.

What do we become if your mind falls apart in a moment of crisis?

He’d been so fucking SURE.

Like I said. Seers.

“Rubbish,” she said, her sobs drawing the word out to four or five syllables. She staggered down the hall. Her head pointed downward, she saw that she was trailing blood. The Captain’s blood.

Gabby I’m fucking sorry.

If you do not, you and I shall be at war.

It shall be war.

He’d been so FUCKING sure.

She staggered into a door at random, her mind reeling. A long rectangular room with linens everywhere. A laundry. No; there was not the smell of soap. A place for the servants to change clothes. She staggered down the length of the room, stripping off her clothes as she went.

You neither spoke nor looked in my direction.

She’d been on the wall with him, before that she’d been walking in the courtyard, and before that—

What do we become if your mind falls apart in a moment of crisis?

At the end of the room, a smaller room with a bath, as she’d hoped for. She staggered into the bath completely nude, flung the door closed, and threw the bar with the last of her strength. Her mind could not stop, the memories of the last half hour coming free and unbidden.

I am your queen, and I am in my right mind.

The danger is you.

How could he have been SO FUCKING SURE—

Like I said. Seers.

“RUBBISH!” she screamed, the word echoing off of the walls, coming back at her sounding like the ravings of a madwoman. Her own voice followed her down into unconsciousness as reality dissolved around her.