Tybalt found himself in a black void.

  When did it get so dark? He couldn’t see a thing. He was vaguely aware of his own body, but his awareness was mostly pain, so he tried his best to ignore it. I was fighting, wasn’t I? Did I lose?

  The necromancer could hardly remember.

  The monotony of the void was disrupted as he felt a pair of soft, full lips lock onto his. Tybalt opened his mouth automatically and caressed the other pair of lips with his own. At least he would receive a kiss before dying, strange though that seemed.

  I must be dreaming.

  The other lips transferred a liquid from the kissing mouth into his, then quickly separated from him. A few seconds later, the lips locked onto his again.

  He permitted the transfer a second time, though the liquid tasted bitter. He guessed it was medicine of some sort.

  Was it just his imagination, or was the person administering the medicine taking just a few seconds longer with each transfer than she needed to? Like she wanted to be kissing him for real?

  Well, of course she is, he thought. It’s Vidalia. You little pervert, kissing my apparently unconscious body when we haven’t even been properly introduced…

  Distantly, he even heard a voice that he recognized as Vidalia’s, explaining that she needed to kiss him to transfer the medicine properly.

  If his everything didn’t hurt so much, and he wasn’t barely clinging to consciousness, he would have laughed.

  Sure you do.

  The foxgirl kept diligently transferring medicine into his mouth, although in the last kiss, he was pretty sure she brushed her tongue over his teeth and lips before she separated her mouth from his. Definitely not necessary for an efficient transfer of health elixir or whatever concoction the beastfolk used as a substitute—the stuff was too bitter to be the same blend of health elixir Tybalt remembered—but it wasn’t unwelcome.

  Anything to distract from the pain and keep him from the pull of the darkness.

  As the woman stopped kissing him and rose, the pain came rushing in hard and fast. Fortunately, almost as quickly, unconsciousness overtook him.

  Tybalt quickly fell into a troubled sleep. Ugly images and violent scenes, flashing through his mind. Everything was vague and unclear, shapeless fears and nameless monsters, but everything carried with it the feeling of despair and defeat.

  Then he felt a soothing presence.

  “It’s all right, darling,” came a familiar voice into his mind. “I’m here. You’ll be all right. You’re going to sleep for a while. Maybe a couple of weeks. It’s nothing to worry about. The elixir does that. We’ll feed you. And whenever you sleep, you’ll have me or Mariella there.”

  “Vidalia…” He didn’t know if he spoke her name aloud or into his own mind, and he couldn’t even tell if she heard him or not. She continued talking, telling him stories and seemingly keeping the pain almost entirely at bay.

  “I feel so cold, can you do anything about that?” he asked at one point. She didn’t break off talking, but he thought something must have happened on the outside, because he felt marginally less cold a few seconds later. From a distant place, he thought he might detect a small weight that had landed on his body.

  Is that a blanket? Does that mean she can hear me? Thank you. Thank you for taking care of me…

  Tybalt drifted deeper until he no longer knew anything about what might be going on around him. He still felt Vidalia’s presence, though. That never went away. It was like a tiny flame in the darkness.

  Time drifted without obvious indicators of how much was passing. There were dreams, but they slipped through his fingers like fine grains of sand. He saw Mariella and Vidalia, separately and together, and he sometimes thought he heard scraps of conversation. He saw a third woman, but he couldn’t keep her face straight in his mind. He kept mixing it with Vidalia’s.

  It took a long time before he actually felt himself coming out of the deep dark.

  There was a surge of strength. It was one of a few he’d experienced while he slept.

  But this latest gave him the power he needed.

  “Fuck…”

  The necromancer blinked his eyes open blearily, and his vision was instantly overwhelmed with a tumult of system notifications.

  There were others, some of which were essentially repeats of previous ones, some of which were not. The bright light of the alerts was almost blinding.

  At almost the same moment he’d opened his eyes, a cacophony of voices filled his head.

  Greetings, master, began someone whose voice Tybalt did not recognize at all.

  I have awakened, master, said one of the miners whose name Tybalt could not easily remember with his head pounding.

  I have regained my voice, master, sent another unknown.

  Glad you’re finally awake, master. That last one, Tybalt distantly recognized, was Baldwin, but it was too late for the knowledge of who was speaking to provide any consolation. His head was pounding, his abdomen still hurt, his hearing and vision were killing him, and he just wanted it all to go away for a while.

  But he couldn’t just let himself pass out again. He knew that. He had too much to do.

  And despite his feelings of pain and continued injury, there was also an absurd strength running through him, like he could fight the whole world with just his bare hands.

  He barked a single order through the telepathic channel at the same moment that he mentally swiped away all the notifications.

  “Silence!”

  A moment later, as he saw and felt motion in his periphery, he realized he had raised his voice and spoken out loud, not just telepathically. He rolled slightly to his side and saw a wave of blonde hair, topped with a pair of big, floppy fennec fox ears. The person the hair and ears belonged to moved and shifted until Tybalt found himself staring into the blue-gray eyes of his foxgirl.

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  He swallowed. “Vidalia?”

  She smiled in response and spoke in a low voice, “Darling. We finally meet in the flesh.”

  You’re really real. Not some god’s trick, not a fantasy…

  From the way she spoke and looked at him, he knew that the feelings she’d hinted at in the dreams were real, too.

  Tybalt wanted to kiss her almost instantly, but before he could move, a soft figure pressed close into his back. The feel of her voluptuous body against his bare skin—he wasn’t wearing a shirt—told him who it was before she could speak.

  Mariella whispered in his ear, “I’m here too. Um, I’ll keep quiet if sound hurts your head right now.”

  The necromancer found himself smiling. His abdomen—his liver?—hurt almost like he’d been stabbed just the day before, but everything was all right. He had everything he cared about.

  “Mariella, Vidalia.” Tybalt spoke in a low voice, semi-consciously matching Vidalia’s volume. “I’m glad you’re both here. Um, the ‘Silence’ wasn’t aimed at you two. I didn’t even realize I said that out loud. It seems that I have a number of new intelligent undead. They all noticed their master woke at once, and they wanted my attention. I told them to be silent and that I need a little time to process events.”

  As he spoke, he sent the actual words, Give me time to process my situation, and I will speak with all of you afterward. Don’t initiate contact with me until I communicate with you unless you have an emergency.

  “Hmm, master,” Mariella repeated quietly to herself. He could feel her shake her head lightly, her long dark hair tickling his ears. “That’s what they all call you… not just Baldwin.”

  She met Baldwin?

  “You woke up earlier than expected,” Vidalia said.

  “Tybalt is very strong,” Mariella said simply.

  “Oh, that reminds me, your human lady just won a little wager with me,” the foxgirl said, smiling. “She bet against a girl who predicts the future. And won. That’s how much she believes in your strength.”

  There’s no way you didn’t lose that bet on purpose.

  “I’m just glad you’re both—”

  “Vidalia? Um, Lady Mariella?” an older male voice called out from just outside the room. “Is everything all right?”

  “It’s all fine, Uncle!” Vidalia called back immediately, putting a finger to Tybalt’s lips. “Lord Necromancer just had a bad dream, so I came over to calm him. When you heard him call out in his sleep, that was the worst of it. I have it more or less under control, so I’ll leave the couple alone in a few minutes.”

  Lord Necromancer, huh? Interesting.

  “All right! That seemed, uh, worse than the other dreams, but you know your business better than I do. I’m heading off to our plot. Don’t do anything your sister wouldn’t do!” There was a note almost of laughter in his voice, but almost equally perceptible was a sincere note of warning.

  “I’m just going to take care of our guests,” Vidalia replied. She winked suggestively, and Tybalt had to suppress a chuckle.

  The foxgirl was a naughty one.

  “Mm hm,” the man said. “Well, thanks for leaving the porridge for us. It was good.”

  Vidalia nodded, then seemed to remember she was talking to someone in a separate room. “I’m happy to hear it!”

  “See you at lunch!”

  They heard the sounds of Vidalia’s uncle doing something with his dish and leaving, and the hut was quiet.

  “Are we hiding?” Tybalt asked after a long moment. “I mean, is there something we’re trying to hide from your family?” He looked at Vidalia, trying to focus on her for the moment and not the other woman whose breasts pressed themselves insistently into his back.

  “I want us to plan your entry into beastfolk society,” Vidalia replied. “You and I need to strategize. But if my uncle finds out that you woke up, as silly as it sounds, one of his first priorities will be that I not be left alone with you unsupervised. He’s… concerned about maintaining my maidenly virtue.”

  “That’s silly,” Tybalt said. “Not that you maintaining your, um, maidenhood is bad, but it’s not as if five minutes alone with me is going to end it.”

  He felt a sharp elbow in his back.

  “You’re definitely thinking about what you could do if you had five minutes alone with her,” Mariella said in a semi-mocking tone.

  “I—”

  “If you’re not,” Vidalia interrupted, “it’s because you haven’t noticed what we’re wearing yet.” She smiled seductively.

  Tybalt leaned slightly back, and she pulled a little away from him, so he could see her properly in the dim lighting of the room.

  “Oh…”

  The foxgirl lay there in nothing but her undergarments and a black ribbon wrapped around her neck, tied in a bow. Like she was a gift. The sheer, worn-thin fabric of her camisole left almost nothing to the imagination. He could see every detail of her small, perky breasts: the tan lines where her collarbone shifted into her bosom, the delicate round swell of them, the big, erect pink nipples.

  His eyes finally darted back up to Vidalia’s face. She averted her gaze, her expression proud but embarrassed at the same time, cheeks pink. Her lips were still curled in a smile, but less seductive, more shy.

  “You like what you see?” she asked after a second, obviously trying to conceal her nervousness.

  Again, he desperately wanted to kiss her in that moment. The unfeigned desire for his approval mixed with arousal and nervousness was intensely erotic.

  “Are you trying to test out whether I’m going to, um, damage your maidenly virtue?” he asked after a long moment.

  “You should look behind you,” said Mariella.

  Vidalia sucked in a breath and nodded for Tybalt to go ahead and turn away. He thought he detected a trace of a different kind of nervousness in the foxgirl’s expression. She was worried that when he looked at Mariella, he would like what he saw there better—perhaps even forget what Vidalia had just shown him.

  He pulled Vidalia’s hand to his mouth, kissed it, waggled an eyebrow suggestively, and—he thought—put her doubts to rest for a moment.

  Then the necromancer turned around and saw Mariella wearing the exact same thing as Vidalia. Even though he’d just seen another near naked woman, and he’d seen Mariella fully naked relatively recently, the sight still made his heart beat just a little bit faster. Vidalia had a reason to feel that slight bit of jealousy. Not that Tybalt would ever have to choose one of the two women, but on Mariella’s curvier figure, near nudity somehow seemed even lewder. Plus, she was wearing a camisole she seemed to have borrowed from Vidalia, and it was stretched to its limit.

  “Well…” he said. “This is quite a welcome from you two. I should save more villages. This is good motivation.”

  “We thought it would cheer you up,” Vidalia said into his ear. She leaned in so close that he could smell the strawberry scent of her hair. “Make you feel better. I would do just about anything to help with your difficult recovery. Thank you…” Her voice turned husky. “Thank you for keeping our village from being destroyed. My strong, violent hero.” She sucked his ear lobe into her mouth, gently nibbled it, and pressed her body close up against his back, then lifted her knee and placed it over his thigh, her delicate figure entwining with his.

  Despite his recent recovery and the remaining dull ache in his abdomen, Tybalt felt a fire rising inside him.

  I know she has no experience except in dreams, but it feels like she knows what she’s doing anyway.

  “Th-this was her idea, for the record,” Mariella said, blushing more furiously than Vidalia had as she watched the foxgirl lick Tybalt’s ear and run a hand possessively over his bicep.

  Are we about to all…?

  “Yet you’re the one who wanted to place a bet on how quickly he’d wake up,” Vidalia said quietly. “And you even chose the stakes…”

  Mariella started to rise, even more flushed but now looking a little annoyed.

  “This was a mistake,” she said quietly as she placed weight on one of her knees.

  Tybalt was going to say something, but Vidalia reached over and took the fire mage’s hand first.

  “Stay,” the foxgirl said. “Remember, you’re important to us. I won’t say anything else about the bet, all right? You just act on it… whenever you feel comfortable.”

  “That…” Mariella averted her eyes but laid back down in front of Tybalt, finally turning her head to look him directly in the eye. Vidalia was still gently kissing Tybalt’s ear and running one hand over his neck, shoulders, and chest. Mariella wore a complicated expression as she watched, but one of the components was certainly arousal.

  “What was—” Tybalt began.

  “Before we get into fun stuff, we should make a plan for after other people find out you’re awake,” Vidalia said in a tone of reluctance.

  Mariella nodded in agreement, looking somehow both disappointed and relieved.

  “All right,” Tybalt said. “Before we start, thank you both for taking such good care of me.”

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