Chapter 77: Volume 1- [ - 78 ]
Mirra knelt. Her hands found Renna’s wrist, her neck, her forehead. The healer’s examination was quick, practiced, the routine of a woman who had done this dozens of times on adventurers who had been beaten by monsters.
“She is stable. The healing worked. She will sleep until morning.” Mirra looked up at me. “Her pulse is strong. She is just — exhausted. And scared.”
“Good.” I sat at the bar. The stool creaked under my weight. I looked at the shelves — the bottles of wine, the casks of ale, the glasses hanging from their hooks. “Pour me something.”
Mirra hesitated. “I do not drink—”
“Not you. The other one.” I looked toward the back room, where the second bartender — the one who had called Renna’s name — had retreated. “Come out. I know you are there.”
Silence. Then, slowly, the door opened. The second bartender — identical to Renna, the same face, the same hair, the same mole, the same tattoo — stepped into the room. Her eyes were wide, her hands trembling, her apron clutched in front of her like a shield.
“You — you killed those men,” she whispered. “The ones who took Renna. I saw — from the window—”
“They were raping her,” I said. “I stopped them.”
“You — you killed them. In the alley. I heard the screams. I—”
“Would you prefer I had let them finish?”
She flinched. The question was a blade — not cruel, but sharp, the kind of question that did not allow a comfortable answer.
“No,” she whispered. “No. I — thank you. For saving her.”
“Then pour me a wine. And sit down.”
She poured. The wine was red, local, the kind of country vintage that was more alcohol than grape. I drank. It was terrible. I drank again.
Mirra sat across from me, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes moving between me and the bartender and Renna’s sleeping form. Her internal voice was a quiet, cautious murmur:
‘He killed three men. Without hesitation. Without remorse. And then he carried the woman here and asked for wine. What kind of man — what kind of lord — is he? He is not like the nobles I have heard about. He is not like the adventurers. He is—’
“Mirra,” I said.
She blinked. “Yes?”
“Are you and the blonde woman — Seraphine — are you in love? With him?”
The question was so direct, so devoid of preamble, that it took me a moment to realize she was asking about me. About Seraphine. About the scene she had walked in on.
“In love?” I repeated, and the word was a tool I could shape. “No. It is — Mirra, I have a disease.”
Her eyes widened. The healer’s instinct surged — the professional concern, the reach for knowledge. “A disease? What kind? Let me examine you—”
“Not that kind.” I took another drink of wine. Let the silence build. “It is — a rare condition. Vitalic overload. My body produces excess seed. If I do not empty my balls regularly — if the pressure builds — they will burst.”
Mirra’s face went through seven expressions in three seconds. Confusion. Disbelief. Confusion again. Horror. Confusion. The faintest, barely visible flicker of academic curiosity. And then — confusion.
“What?” she said. “Empty — empty them? How?”
“Women,” I said. “The treatment is women. Their bodies absorb the excess. It is — a biological necessity. Not a choice. If I do not — if I cannot find a woman to help — the pressure builds, and—”
“That is not — I have never heard of such a condition. The texts at the Academy do not—”
“You are a healer,” I said, and the redirect was smooth, the pivot from the medical argument to the personal one. “Have you read every text? Have you studied every condition? There are diseases that the Academy does not catalog — rare, inherited conditions that affect noble bloodlines. The Durren family carried it. My mother—”
The name. His mother’s name. Her name. The word landed, and Mirra’s face softened, the confusion giving way to the warmth that the mother-connection always generated.
“Your mother,” she whispered. “She had this condition too?”
“No. She carried the gene. She passed it to me. It is — it is not her fault. It is not my fault. It is just — what it is.”
Mirra’s internal voice was a cascade of concern and uncertainty:
‘A genetic condition. Vitalic overload. I have not heard of it — but the Academy’s library is not complete, and the Durren family was ancient, and ancient bloodlines carry ancient diseases. If he is telling the truth — if his balls really will — burst—’
“How — how often do you need to — empty?” she asked, and the question was clinical, professional, the question of a healer assessing a patient.
“Daily. At least once. Ideally more.”
“And if you do not?”
“Pain. Then damage. Then — rupture. And a ruptured testicle is fatal, Mirra. The infection alone—”
She paled. “That is — that is very serious. You need — you need treatment. Regularly. But — the women — they—”
“They help me,” I said. “The sisters. Seraphine. They — they know. They understand. It is not — it is not about love or desire or pleasure. It is about survival.”
‘Survival,’ her internal voice echoed. ‘He is not doing it for pleasure. He is doing it to survive. That is — that is different. That is not — that is not perverse. That is medical. That is—’
The lie was complete. The fortress was breached. Not through the gates — through the sewers, through the underground, through the path that a healer’s mind could not resist: the path of medical necessity.
I looked at her. At her pink hair, her brown eyes, the round face that was soft with concern. I reached out. My hand found the back of her neck — the skin warm, the muscles tense. I pulled her toward me.
And kissed her.
Her lips — small, soft, the lips of a woman who had never been kissed — parted in a gasp of surprise. My tongue found hers. The Tongue Mastery activated — every muscle, every movement, every millimeter of contact controlled with conscious precision. I sucked her lower lip, pulled it between mine, the suction firm, the texture warm.
She pushed. Her hands found my chest, her palms flat against the blood-stained fabric. The push was weak — the resistance of a woman whose body was responding to the Pheromone Aura and the Dirty Whisper and the Touch Amplification and every other skill I had purchased, and whose mind was trying to override the response and failing.
I broke the kiss. She gasped. Saliva — a thin, glistening strand — connected our lips before breaking.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, her voice breathless, her eyes wide.
I took her hand. Placed it on my crotch. Unzipped.
My cock emerged — not hard, not yet, but thick, heavy, the shaft lying against my thigh. Her hand — small, trembling — rested on it. The weight of it, the heat of it, the size of it.
“Feel them,” I said, guiding her hand down to my balls. “Feel how full they are. How heavy. This is — this is what happens when I do not empty them. This is the pressure.”
Her fingers wrapped around the sac. The testicles — large, swollen, the Infinite Torrent keeping them perpetually full — filled her palm. Her fingers — small, healer’s fingers, the fingers that had cast buffs and healed wounds — could not close around them.
“They are — big,” she whispered, and the observation was clinical, but her voice was not. “I have not — I have never examined testicles this—”
“They need to be emptied,” I said. “Can you help me?”