The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Angela slept in. Though it was her job to be several steps ahead of the queen, after seeing how spent Gabrielle was last night, she assumed that the queen’s first several steps that morning would be spent in bed.

Even so, Angela was surprised at how little activity was taking place in the castle when she left her room. She saw not a single servant until she arrived in the kitchen, at just after eight in the morning according to the sundial in the courtyard that was visible from the kitchen windows. Even then, in the kitchen just one person was working, the girl who had drawn Angela’s attention to the sleepwalking queen a few days before. Lily? Rose? Oh, pick a bloody name and stick with it, Angela thought.

“Rose,” she said, and was gratified to see the girl react as though the correct name had been spoken. “Where is everyone?”

“Her Majesty gave us our leave for the day, Miss Angela,” Rose said. “She asked me to clean up just until I saw you and delivered the news.”

“Very well,” Angela said. She was unsurprised about the queen’s decision; giving the servants their leave once in a while was a good policy, as angry servants could easily be turned into traitors. However, she was surprised that Gabrielle — a notorious late riser, even before considering how she had worn herself out yesterday — had made such a decision so early. “Do you know where Her Majesty has gone?”

“Needed some time to herself,” Rose said. “She told me to tell you.”

This, too, was not unusual. Gabrielle needed to be alone as much as any grown woman. Yet Angela, who had sworn over the Lady Catherine’s grave that she would give her final breath before Gabrielle came to any harm, was always nervous whenever it happened. “Well, off with you, then,” she told Rose. “Enjoy yourself. The castle will still be here tomorrow.”

Rose gave a small curtsy, and exited through the kitchen’s back door, leaving Angela to decide what to do.

“You’re doing so well, Gabrielle,” Cian said.

Gabrielle said nothing, rapt at the beauty of Cassiopeia. If asked, she would not have been able to tell the questioner that she was sitting in the Seers’ chamber.

Cian smiled. The queen came to them straight after waking and dressing, and had told no one about her decision to do so. Neither of those things had ever happened before. It was a good sign in the progression of his plan. “What would you like to talk about, Gabrielle?”

“Dream,” Gabrielle said.

“Did you have a troubling dream last night, Gabrielle?”

“Yes.”

“I can help you if you tell me about the dream. Tell me about the dream, Gabrielle.”

(She was back in the hallway, again nude. She looked over her shoulder to see the reinforced door. There was a single crack in the wooden bar that held it closed. That she could see the crack from this distance was disturbing, in the vague way that anything in our dreams can disturb us.)

(She looked around, knowing the cat would be there, and it was. Again, Morphelia the cat was gigantic, filling the entire hallway until its ears folded against the ceiling.. “Don’t be afraid of me,” the cat said, just as it had said last time.)

I’m not afraid. Not as long as you’re here.

(If Gabrielle had been fully conscious, she would have seen all three Seers meet each other’s gaze, and roll their eyes as one.)

(Whatever great Thing was locked in the room behind her, slammed itself against the door as it always did. Gabrielle had expected it, somehow, and did not jump at the impact.)

(“You should be afraid of Him,” the cat said. “That door’s not going to hold Him forever.”)

Can’t you stop Him? You know who He is.

(“I can’t stop Him,” the cat said.)

Why? Who is He? WHAT is He?!

(Before the cat could answer, the Thing impacted the door with such force that Gabrielle heard the heavy door crack, and the restraining log splinter. She turned around and—)

“Sleep,” Cian said.

Gabrielle slumped forward, her head landing forehead-first in the crook of her left arm.

Cian consider his next question carefully before saying, “Have you talked to Prudence about this dream?”

“Yes,” the queen said, her voice muffled by her arm and the fact that she was facing down toward the table. “But...”

Cian waited, perplexed. It was odd that she would try to form any thought other than Yes or No while in trance; odder still that she would be unable to finish that thought. “But what?”

“I thought the dream would go away after we made love,” Gabrielle said, her voice slow and thick.

All three Seers raised their eyebrows at the same time. “Tell me about how you made love,” Cian said.

Gabrielle told them everything. Years and years of trance in this room had deeply suppressed any shyness she might have felt about doing so.

“You’re doing so well, Gabrielle,” Cian said, when she was done. “On the count of three, you will find the strength to lift your head and open your eyes. You will find your stars and let them guide you into deepest peace. One. Two. Three.”

Gabrielle slowly picked herself up off the table, and soon the gray eyes were aimed at the crystal. Cian rose from the table and went to meet the other two Seers, in a small huddle across the room from where the queen sat.

“Well, I would say that worked,” Cu said.

“Indeed,” Cian said. “Now I need to undermine them.”

“What are you talking about?” Cethe said plaintively. “I thought planting distrust in her mind was a mistake the first time you did it.”

“We need to speed up,” Cian said. Cu nodded, immediately understanding.

They had always intended to move gradually. They would plant more and more doubt in Gabrielle’s mind over time, undermining any confidence that she could properly perform as queen. After months and months of these suggestions, Gabrielle’s doubts would become certainty, and the certainty would become depression. At some point her megrims would become so powerful that her will would be broken. Cian had had several intensely sexual dreams about the arrival of that day, when he would give her the suggestion Only we can help you now, and the gray eyes would remain blank as she answered, Yes, please.

The Lady Catherine’s death had moved their timetable up somewhat, but they had still planned to move slowly. The day Cian had dreamed about was not expected to arrive this winter.

“This Prudence woman can probe her mind too easily,” Cian said. “No matter how well we try to cover ourselves and make her forget, she could give something away. So we have to move faster.”

“We never had a faster plan,” Cethe protested. “What are you going to do?”

“Destroy her will more directly,” Cian said. “Like breaking a piece of wood that already has a crack in it. You wiggle it back and forth, from one extreme to the other, until the crack gives way.”

“This is so dangerous,” Cethe complained. “We could be signing our own death warrants.”

“No plan works perfectly, brothers,” Cian said, looking at them both. “We must improvise. But remember, we still have the upper hand. This is what we have to do to keep it.”

Angela spent the morning exercising, and practicing the fighting techniques which she had been taught. She could have performed chores; as Handmaiden, she was responsible for changing the queen’s linens, preparing her baths, and the like. However, Angela was not eager to do such things today, especially if the queen’s dalliance with the hypnotist had continued into the night. She would wait to change those sheets, thank you very much.

Angela had a private courtyard for her practice. She had trained in the art of death in this same spot since the age of six, and she felt that she knew every stone in the walls and every blade of grass under her feet. Various woodworks were set up all about the space, some of them for acrobatics training and some built in the shape of a man, to simulate the body of an attacker. She preferred the chill autumn air for exercising; if you learn to love the cold, her trainer had liked to say, you’ll have an edge over all the sane people who hate it.

There were no sundials in the yard, and thus Angela could start a practice at dawn, end it at noon, and feel that barely any time had passed at all. In an amount of time so short that it seemed the blink of an eye, there was a knock on the door. Angela realized that the sun was high in the sky and she was sweating through the tunic she wore to exercise. She wondered if this was how the hypnosis felt for Gabby.

Angela slid open the door’s privacy hatch. Most of the servants knew she was a fanatic for exercise, but very few knew the full truth. The person on the other side of the hatch would see little but her face.

As it turned out, that person was Percy Runier. “Begging your pardon, Miss Angela,” he said. “I would have sent word, but there seem to be no servants to send it. The Captain said I might find you here.”

Angela had to give him credit for effort. He was so far above her station that he hardly needed to beg her pardon, but he also knew that she was the queen’s best friend and that her favor could be important.

“M’lady gave the servants the day off,” Angela said, mopping her face and hair with a towel. “I’ve been exercising. I’m not sure where she’s gone to.”

“Actually, I was hoping to speak to you,” Percy said.

“Give me a moment,” Angela said. She closed the hatch, changed into a robe (wouldn’t do to stay too long in the sweaty tunic; that was a fine way to catch a brutal case of the grippe), and stepped into the antechamber, still toweling her hair off.

“Again, I beg—“ Percy began, but Angela cut him off with her customary bluntness.

“My pardon, you have,” Angela said. “As well as my curiosity.”

Angela’s straightforwardness seemed to encourage Percy. “Tell me true, Angela,” he said. “Am I making a fool of myself, here? It’s a good match with her, isn’t it?”

Angela shrugged. “Love is not mathematics,” she said. “Adding yourself to her life is not guaranteed to produce a tidy sum.”

His face fell slightly. “There is no foolishness in your efforts,” Angela added quickly. “You’ve brought no shame on yourself or your house. But just because your efforts are honorable, does not mean that they must succeed.”

“Perhaps,” Percy said, “but she and I have been in the same social circle since we were children. I know that no other women in that circle are my equal. What other man in that circle is her equal, if not I?”

Angela said, “‘Her equal?’ You’re attempting math again, not romance.”

His eyes flashed with anger. Real anger, and more of it than Angela had seen since the one time she’d killed a man in the queen’s defense. With instincts born from more than a decade of training, she sized him up, looking for weaknesses. Slight, bony shoulders, a voice in her mind advised her. His collarbone would shatter under a proper strike.

But then the anger dissipated, and he looked at her sheepishly. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “And even if you weren’t, I should not expect to argue my way into her good graces, or yours. Forgive me.”

“No sin committed,” Angela said. “You’ve invested time and emotion for little in return. I understand how frustrating that can be.”

Percy nodded once, a rueful look in his eye, and left the room. After giving him enough time that she thought she would not encounter him in the hallway, Angela went to draw herself a bath.

As Angela was having her tense conversation with Percy Runier, Gabrielle walked across the castle’s main courtyard.

The queen had never realized how empty the castle could seem when the servants were given their leave. She’d always kept herself at a remove from them, mostly giving commands through Angela, but even the least among them had access to her intimate spaces: her food, her bath, her closet. And they’d earned her trust to be in those spaces; the oldest servants had been in the castle since before she’d learned to walk, and the youngest among them came from families who had served the Vessian crown for generations.

All of those decades of loyalty, and Prudence was the one to touch her in the most intimate way? Prudence, whose life was so rootless that she cared not where she spent the winter, so long as it had a warm bed? How could such a nomad earn such confidences so quickly?

Lost in these thoughts, the queen did not notice the Captain of the Guard until he was just a few yards away. He strode up to her with purpose, and Gabrielle knew that he had been looking for her. He arrived in her personal space and stood at attention. “My Queen,” he said stiffly.

“Stand easy, Captain,” she said. “How does the day find you?”

His posture loosened as he said, “I’m well, my Queen. How was your council with the Seers?”

“Seers?” Gabrielle frowned. That didn’t sound right. “Apologies, but I wasn’t speaking with the Seers.”

“Perhaps I should apologize, my Queen,” the Captain said. “My man on their door told me that was where I could find you.”

“Well, I have been walking in the courtyard,” Gabrielle said. “I almost surely passed your man by, more than once. He must have misunderstood my motives. No harm done.”

“Indeed,” the Captain said, in a tone she could not recall ever having heard from him. “Will you walk with me, my Lady?”

“Of course, Captain,” Gabrielle said. “Anywhere you like. I have no pressing business today.”

The Captain walked to the stairs that led to the top of the castle’s outer walls. The soldiers at the top of the castle gate responded shyly; the presence of their Queen intimidated them. The Captain gestured away from the soldiers, and they walked along the top of the wall, side by side.

“My Queen,” he began, awkwardly. “May I ask you about this woman who is living in the guest quarters? This Prudence?”

Gabrielle had not previously talked about Prudence with the Captain, hadn’t even mentioned her name, but she wasn’t surprised that he might already know quite a bit. It was his business to know such things, and she knew he had sources among the servants who would tell him. “What do you wish to know, Captain?”

“I’m worried, my lady,” he said bluntly. Any other man in the castle would have asked for her pardon, saying such a thing, but such was not his way and they both knew it. “I’m worried that a common circus performer has wormed her way into the confidence of the Crown.”

Gabrielle considered her answer. He did not know about Prudence finding her way into the undergarments of the Crown; if he did, blunt talker that he was, he would have said so. But if he knew that Prudence had been a member of the traveling players, then surely he had heard the same sort of rumors about her skill set that Angela had.

“When my mother passed, I was in a very unique sort of pain,” she said. “Prudence’s skills are equally unique, for the purpose of helping me.”

“Horseshit,” the Captain said. “I don’t see how forgetting your name or barking like a dog can help you with the Lady Catherine’s passing.”

There were no guards on this part of the wall, which was just as well. If any person in the castle (save Angela) had heard him speak to her that way, she would have been forced to punish him, just to save face. Instead, she let her voice go frosty as she said, “The show is not the end of her skills, Captain. It is but the beginning. And from that beginning we have gone to places quite helpful indeed.”

The Captain stopped, put one hand on her shoulder, and turned her to face him. Again, Angela was the only other person in the castle who would have been permitted to do so. “My Queen,” he said. “I am not your father, and I don’t want to be. But since his death, there are few men in this kingdom with as much opportunity to advise you as I have. And my advice is, send this woman from the castle. Be done with her.”

“I understand your concerns, Captain,” Gabrielle said. “At times, I share them. That is why Angela watches our sessions closely.”

The Captain was one of very few people in the entire kingdom who understood Angela’s skills enough to know what that sentence truly meant. Still, he said, “Angela doesn’t have the skills this Prudence woman has. She will not sense danger until it’s too late.”

The Captain looked at her, saying nothing. Gabrielle stared him down, though inside she began to feel uncomfortable. In truth, she did not know exactly why she was defending Prudence. She could not deny that she’d been having thoughts quite similar to what the Captain was saying, right before he had asked her permission to say it.

Under the Captain’s withering gaze, her own doubts yammering away in the back of her mind, the passion she had shared with Prudence in the hayloft seemed far, far away.

Finally the Captain said, “As you say, my Lady.”

His tone still seemed too stiff, so Gabrielle felt the need to add more. “You may not believe this, Captain,” she said, “But I appreciate your suspicion. It is a dangerous world. Our kingdom shall always require the efforts of the eternally vigilant.”

“Aye,” the Captain said. They walked back into the courtyard in silence, with Gabrielle thinking that his last word had still been too stiff, and that she might yet need a better answer to his suspicion.

A few hours later, Angela had finally summoned the will to change the queen’s sheets and otherwise put the royal bedroom into order. As she was finishing these duties, Gabrielle came into the room.

“Gabby,” Angela said, sounding surprised to see her. “You missed Percy Runier, earlier.”

“Did I?” Gabrielle said. She sounded preoccupied, her voice distant. “What did he want?”

Angela told her about the odd conversation with Percy, having to repeat a couple of the details twice to keep the queen’s attention. “I swear before God, Gabby,” Angela finished, “there was a moment where I thought I was going to have to maim him.”

“Mmmm,” Gabrielle said, looking away.

Angela thought she had been quite patient so far — royalty could be expected to have a lot on their minds — but at last she put a sharp edge in her voice. “Gabby,” she said, and the queen finally looked at her with full attention. “What’s wrong with you? You haven’t heard half of what I’ve said.”

“Have I made a horrible mistake?” Gabrielle said. “With Prudence?”

Angela raised her eyebrows. “Last night, you were telling me to trust you.”

“I just had a conversation with the Captain,” Gabrielle said. “He told me to send Prudence away.”

Angela’s eyebrows went up still further. “Does he know that—“

“I don’t think so,” Gabrielle said. “He didn’t tell me what his sources had revealed, but it seemed like he was merely distrustful of her profession.”

“No doubt he saw her make commoners do all sorts of foolishness during her show,” Angela said.

“I defended her, but... she has such power over me... maybe too much power...” Gabrielle pressed a knuckle under her nose, absently, as if trying to remember something important.

“I’m watching her,” Angela said. “Whenever I can watch...” and here Angela’s brief pause carried the unspoken reminder, I can’t watch you in bed, “...I’m watching. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Gabrielle broke from her reverie and hugged her friend tightly. Angela could feel the tension in her shoulders.

Prudence Savigne often talked to herself. These were conversations that she could have kept within her own head — making plans, weighing the consequences of her decisions, and so on — and when other people were around, she always did so. But, she liked to speak her thoughts aloud whenever she was alone. As her mother had liked to say, it was one way to guarantee you were talking to someone who understood you.

Thus Prudence had slept poorly the night after she had made love to the queen. During the night, she talked to herself about all manner of things: Had she moved too quickly? Had she not moved fast enough by choosing to leave the queen alone tonight? How would their intimacy change the hypnosis? By sleeping with someone she was hypnotizing, was she making the same mistake she had made before?

She kept circling back to one topic above all. What did the queen’s trances during their lovemaking signify? She hadn’t wanted Gabrielle to go under, because it was the queen’s first time and Prudence wanted the memories to be strong. Gabrielle had done it all on her own. Twice!

From time to time, in these conversations with herself, Prudence would simply murmur aloud two of the things Gabrielle had said: Her sleepy request Don’t want to forget, and the post-coital claim, I couldn’t care less. She was contradicting herself, it didn’t make sense, and it didn’t feel right.

Neither situation was one where Prudence expected the queen to lie, but if one of the two statements had been more true than the other, it would have been Don’t want to forget, which Gabby had said when she was at least half in trance (and maybe all the way down). She would have been feeling far too peaceful to lie. But if she had been at her most honest when asking to remember, what did it mean when she had said she didn’t care?

Throughout her fitful sleep that night, Prudence muttered those two phrases to herself, over and over. She woke up constantly, trying to grasp the answer that was just beyond her reach. She was haunted by dreams of a chair with its back torn out.

And she slept until nearly noon, not waking until just about the same time that Angela was calculating how she might have to injure Percy Runier.

Prudence picked herself up out of bed, drew her own bath and bathed slowly, and when she finally emerged from the guest quarters she knew what she had to do.