"I miss her," I said sadly as I looked up at the statue of Faye. It was situated on one side of the lake that had grown in my city as a result of my bonding with her. We had made love on this spot, we had sat and talked and joked and lived - in a manner of speaking - on this spot, and now, in the place of all those cherished memories, was a statue of the girl who had literally saved my life in every way that mattered. The sun was high in the sky, shining its light and its warmth down onto the grass that surrounded the water, but whereas the bust of Becky's face seemed to fit with the hollow, haunting, lower light of her mournful monument, the sun seemed to refuse to leave Faye alone. It was like it was shining a light on her in celebration of everything she had become to me and the heroism of her second, final death. Or at least the second time I had lost her.

Charlotte's had curled into mine. "She was wonderful and so funny," she sighed, resting her head against the side of my shoulder. "She was always lovely to me."

"She was a woman of honor and integrity," Uri nodded from the other side of me. "She knew the right thing to do and just did it without hesitation. That is a rare quality in one so young. And..." a soft smile pulled at his lips. "... she had... spirit."

I huffed out a short laugh; trust Uri to be the master of understatement. She had spirit, she had heart, she had charisma, and fire, and passion, and determination, and more courage than anyone I had ever known. There was an energy and vitality about her; a tenacity, a mental fortitude that she hid behind humor, sexuality, and a general zest for life, despite hers having been cut tragically and criminally short. She had given her last full measure of devotion to a woman whom she had never met in her life, to someone whom I had known for less than a year; she had seen a way she could save Philippa from a lifetime of mental pain and anguish, and she had taken it. Uri was right; there had been no hesitation. It was an act of love, not for Philippa, but for me. It was pure, unquestioned selflessness, designed to ease my suffering and my guilt as much as it was to ease Philippa's pain. She gave up her home, her love, and possibly even her life just to save us both from the torment of what the Judge had done to her.

Part of me wanted to scream in fury to the heavens at the loss of her, part of me wanted to smile and honor her sacrifice, and another part of me wanted to sit and wallow in self-pity and despair at everything that had been taken from me. Yet succumbing to that, giving in to it, would have been the greatest disservice to Faye's memory that I could imagine. Her loss was the epitome of everything wrong with the world, and yet it was an act in keeping with the very best of what people could be. It was loss, and it was promise. It was a penance and a gift. It was darkness in the light and light in the darkness of this life and this war.

It was savagery and love in equal, overlapping measure.

And I missed her.

I missed her smile; I missed her laugh; I missed her humor and her wickedness. I missed that naughty glint in her eye; I missed the pride in her gaze when she looked at me; I missed the lilt of her accent and the love that was behind every word she spoke. I missed her flaming red hair and her endless emerald eyes. I missed the way she saw the best in the world and saw the best in me. I missed her faith. Faith that we would get through this, faith that we were in the right, and the unshakable faith that we would win.

I missed how much of a better person I was because of her. Not because her simple presence made me better but because she inspired me to be the better version of myself.

My eyes were locked on the statue of her. It showed her standing, slightly turned away but looking back over her shoulder at me, just as she had been on our very first visit to the mindscape together during the duel at the party. It was a perfect representation of how she had looked at the point that I realized that something was happening between us. It was the moment our bonding process started. There was that playful, mischievous, happy smile on her face, and her eyes - despite apparently being made of a shimmering white marble - seemed like they were dancing in time with the laughter that would forever be heard in that frozen moment in time. It was the perfect image, the perfect moment to memorialize, before the attack on the party, before her death, before the war, when life was still full of promise and potential.

I sighed heavily. Unlike Becky, I didn't feel like I was saying goodbye to my lost love, mainly because I didn't know with any sort of clarity that she had actually been lost. Her plan, in theory, could still work perfectly; she could have merged with Philippa's mind, healing it completely, and would live as long and healthy a life as Philippa would. She may even force something of an awakening in my nurse friend and rejoin the fight at my side, or she could have failed just as completely and be lost forever, trapped inside the same fractured mind as Philippa was. She may have been killed, lost, gone forever the moment she transferred herself out of my mind. I simply didn't know, and it was the not knowing that was torturing me. But at the same time, she was still gone. She still wasn't here, and my city felt hollow, empty, lifeless, and meaningless without her.

I missed her like the desert missed the rain. A deep, aching, yearning need for her. It was deeper than a longing; it was more profound than simply mourning her absence; it was an ache I felt in my bones, in my soul, in the very core of me, and it was excruciating.

Uri placed a hand on my shoulder, the opposite one to where Charlotte was resting her head, and nodded to me. He said nothing further; he didn't need to. He knew what I was feeling, and not only because he could feel what I felt. He had a wife still alive in the real world, a woman he loved with every fiber of himself, and he would never see her again. She wasn't dead; she hadn't been lost, and yet he would never see her again. He would never feel the warmth of her embrace or the softness of her lips. He would never feel the caress of her breath as she whispered those three cherished words into his ear at night. He would never watch the moonlight dance in her eyes, nor would he watch the sunrise kiss her sleeping face. He had lost her without losing her. He may not feel the exact same thing I was feeling, but his loss was close enough, and it was just as profound. He shared all of that with me in a single look and a single gesture.

Uri took a few steps away and then shimmered away into nothingness as he disappeared back to wherever it was he went when he wasn't around my conscious mind. I turned my gaze back toward the statue and squeezed Charlotte's hand a little. I missed Faye more than words would ever be able to adequately convey, but there was something different this time, different than it had been the first time she died or when Becky had been killed. I knew her; I knew the very core of her. She had done something wonderful, and that is how she would want to be remembered: for that, for the good times, for the laughter, the teasing, and the playfulness. She wouldn't want me wallowing in the pits of my own grief.

At least this time, I had gotten to tell her I loved her. I let the happier, cherished memories flow through my mind for a few more minutes. Time was short, and Faye - or at least the memory of her - would be with me forever. I already knew that I would be spending a lot of time basking in their warmth.

"C'mon," I said to Charlotte softly. "We'll be landing soon."

********

Reflecting on the wealth and the opulence I now found myself in, I couldn't help but feel like a stranger in a garishly splendid world. Rich people, through their material grandeur, lived on a different plane of existence -- one of abundance and silence, the latter bought by thick walls and expanses of privacy - no, secrecy - that would take too much effort for noise to cross. The concept of money had long been elusive to me, a shapeshifting entity that sometimes spoke of freedom but more often than not whispered the weighty tales of greed, abuses of power, and downright criminality.

For me, the only true desire I had for wealth lay in the potential that it presented--the reward at the end of an effort to build, to create, to foster something special. And if that something made me a lot of money, that would be fucking awesome, and I would indulge in every penny that hard work earned me. But I wouldn't cheat people to get it, I wouldn't rob people of their pensions, I wouldn't fuck with global economies, and I wouldn't make another person or another group of people poorer just to make myself richer. That was generally how it worked, right? Rich people either invented something that changed the world or they exploited a part of the world to make - and then keep - a quick buck... a lot of quick bucks. If I ever got to a position where I had the sort of money that would afford me my own private plane, I wanted to have earned it honestly, not through the misfortunes of others.

My aspirations didn't lie in the accumulation of assets; my goals were not to be knighted by riches. That distinction clung to me, even as I sat, surrounded by the trappings of a wealth that I had inadvertently stumbled upon--a wealth that felt both boundless and hollow.

Yes, okay, I could see the irony of me saying that, considering what I had done to my bank account. The wealth I wielded now was a banking anomaly, a digitized ledger with unlimited credits that dared to defy economics and ethics alike. It was a facade, a sleight of hand that provided all the benefits without any of the effort or consequences. Theoretically, I was the richest person on earth; I literally had limitless amounts of money. But that money wasn't at someone else's expense, nor had it been acquired through my own hard work; it was creating money out of thin air, and I had no plans to spend enough of it to start messing with currency exchange rates or the national GDP. More importantly - at least to me - that limitless amount of money didn't count. I had done it as a measure of convenience; I hadn't earned it, and it was perhaps for that reason that I couldn't quite bring myself to accept that I had it. I still felt as poor as I always had done. Maybe not Oliver Twist poor, I was never at risk of becoming destitute and homeless in the weeks and months leading up to the acquisition of my powers, but I was still pretty close to the bottom rung of the ladder. That is still how I felt.

Being able to fork out for a few drinks at a bar or a few items of new clothing, those were okay. I probably would have been able to pay for them anyway. But waking up from the visit to my city - Charlotte holding my hand in her place in the seat beside me - in the most lavish form of transportation I could imagine, I was still experiencing that very acute feeling of imposter syndrome. I felt like a charlatan! I had been on a private plane before, on my way to Ukraine, but I had been too preoccupied with everything else to really pay it much attention. I had no real idea if this was the same plane, although the stewardess from last time was nowhere to be found. Now, though, with my rage tempered by the successful purge of the Sect and with my friend by my side, I felt like I could take it in a little.

Opulence wasn't the word for it. It was sheer extravagance; it was like the whole aircraft had been furnished and decorated not to make the plane more comfortable for its passengers but to prove a point to the people riding in it. The person who owned it had some serious money to throw around, and everything about the interior of the aircraft seemed designed to make a statement. My eyes wandered across the endless stretch of luxury within the private jet--the fine grains of the cherry maple detailing like ancient scripts revealing depth, the supple cream leather seats - eleven of them in all, including a curved sofa along one side that currently contained the ever vigilant Fiona - inviting me to surrender, the exquisite silkiness of the carpet beneath my feet, even our meals had been served on actual fine china with real knives and forks, not that hellish plastic shit known the world over to contain an airline's closest attempt to approximate food, and our drinks were served in something that looked a lot like crystal tumblers--I grappled with a stark realization. I was careening through the stratosphere in a vessel more grandiose than my entire apartment, and it was unsettling. Every furnishing, every meticulously crafted element around me screamed of an excess I had not known--nor particularly longed for.

This, if I understood correctly, was Isabelle's private plane, as opposed to the ones owned by the Inquisition as an organization, and we were currently about half an hour away from landing at Oberpfaffenhofen Airport, a few miles outside the Bavarian city of Munich. Munich was a stunning city, complete with its culture, its history, and its cathedral with its awe-inspiring clock tower, but although I hoped to visit the city at some point during my time here, our destination was about seventy miles to the southwest: a tiny town, nestled on the German side of the Alps, called Einsiedl, overlooking the majestic Alpine lake of Walchensee.

More accurately, our destination was Isabelle's private estate - a somewhat muted term for the fact that she owned her very own fucking castle - on the hills above Einsiedl. No matter how extravagant the luxury around me, it was a whisper compared to the estate we were heading toward -- Isabelle's private castle. A fucking castle! No matter how many times I said it, the sheer scale of it was impossible for me to wrap my mind around. A castle was the stuff of fairy tales, stories that resonated through the ages, of kings and queens, knights and damsels--a timeless symbol of power and dominance etched into the landscapes of Europe.

The irony that a castle, a remnant of history, was now home to beings far more powerful than any ancient ruler was not lost on me. With the evolution of humanity into something more we had ushered in an era where such battlements were not only unnecessary, they were laughably obsolete. It was a longbow in the age of battleship-mounted Gatling guns and cruise missiles. Yet the grandeur still pulled at something primal, a recognition of the dominion one must have to command such a space. A castle wasn't merely a home--it was a stronghold, an empire contained within stone walls, and just like this plane, it was a statement...

I am important.

As I pondered the estates and riches of layers of value, both monetary and personal, I realized wealth was as much about appearances and expectations as it was about comfort. It made for an odd mentality--this expectation that one's surroundings should reflect their status, that others should see and instantly know the pecking order.

I shook my head clear and looked around the aircraft at the rest of its passengers.

Of course, it wasn't just Charlotte and I. Fiona was with us too; now that the security concerns associated with the Sect traitors had been dealt with, I trusted Agatha, Evie, and the others to keep Philippa safe. Jerry was due to meet us there. He had been here since Isabelle and Bob had relocated from The Hague. He and Bob were due to be waiting for us on the tarmac.

With us were the six traitors from the Collective.

Personally, I would have said that a private plane this luxurious was probably something they didn't deserve. Bolting them to the floor of a shipping container and mailing them to where we needed to go was more in line with what I had in mind, but Isabelle valued expediency over petty acts of vengeance. When put like that, I suppose there wasn't much of an argument to be made. Fiona, on the other hand, hadn't been convinced and had been watching them like a hawk from the moment they had sat in their seats. It was unlikely that she could defeat all of them if the prisoners decided to revolt at the same time, but she sure as shit could hold them until I came to her aid. They were under no illusions, though; any sort of problems would be dealt with by introducing them to several tens of thousand feet of thin air and gravity on the other side of the plane door. They didn't know enough to consider them valuable sources of information, so killing them wouldn't have hurt my cause in the slightest. In fact, there was a not-insignificant part of me that had considered dumping one of them out of the plane just to make a statement to the others.

My vote would have been for Rachael. The look of sorrow and regret on her face was almost enough to show her mercy, but the expression of pure devastation on Charlotte's every time she looked at the older woman was enough to stamp that mercy out in its infancy. Charlotte was crushed. I didn't have a family; the closest thing I had to that was Charlotte herself and Jimmy. I couldn't even imagine how broken I would be if either of them betrayed me, but like everything else in the life of an Evo, it was exaggerated. Their connection transcended everything I had ever known as a human. Charlotte was heartbroken in every meaningful way a person could be. That look alone was enough for me to consider her the top of my "fuck you" list.

Now that I thought about it, that list had become pretty big.

But that had been one of the reasons for disappearing into my city. It was, of course, partly to say goodbye to Faye, and to see the effects her absence was having on it. But another part was to get Charlotte out of the plane and away from the source of her own pain. I had suffered warfare and death, but the betrayal of Marco was nothing compared to the betrayal of Rachael. Her entire world had been shattered.

It never took long to regain my awareness after being in the mindscape. The very early days of exploring my city had often left me feeling a little disoriented when resuming my place in the real world, but it had been a long time since then. Still, though, my mind drifted back to those innocent days for a brief moment before I glanced out the window.

Well, maybe not so innocent. There was a lot of exploring and experimentation in those short weeks between leaving the hospital and the party with the nurses that seemed to have been the catalyst for my life taking this new path. There had been a lot of sex, too.

A lot of sex.

It had been a month or so, maybe a little longer, of pure, unabashed hedonism. I had been a guy who had been the romantic or sexual equivalent of a footnote, often overlooked and easily ignored. I had spent a lot of my adult life blaming my parents for my social awkwardness, and there was a part of me that still heaped the lion's share of responsibility onto them, but to say that it was all down to them wasn't just incorrect, it had been lazy. The confidence that came with knowing I could do what I wanted with almost no consequence was life-changing, and I vividly remembered the realization that I had started approaching women, talking to them, laughing, joking, and flirting with them, long before I snatched them up with my powers. I had grown immeasurably in those few weeks, not just in the use of my powers but in terms of my own self-worth. People hadn't been assholes for rejecting me. I had just never given them the chance to accept me in the first place. They didn't know me. Of course, there were the odd few people whose minds repulsed me with the sheer amount of vindictive and manipulative thoughts, and there were some genuinely ugly-minded people out there, but it hadn't taken long for me to change my assumption that it was most people who thought like that, to just the occasional one or two.

It had been before things became serious with Becky, it had been before Faye, it had been before my friendship with Charlotte, before my introduction to the Conclave and the war, and most of the other things that had dominated my life since then. It had been me and Jeeves against the world. And we won.

I would never regret my friendship with Charlotte, nor could I ever bring myself to consider that my life could have been better if I had never met Faye or never pursued Becky. They simply meant too much to me. They were literally a part of me now. But I sometimes found myself thinking back on those simpler times with an air of wistful nostalgia that seemed to be completely absent from any other memory of my life.

My thoughts were pulled back to the moment by Charlotte stretching in her seat beside me, her hand leaving mine for her to extend her arms up above her head and arch her back a little before she relaxed and dropped her hand back into mine. "Are we there yet?" She asked with a joking smile.

I turned and looked out the window. Staring out of the starboard side of the plane and off toward the south gifted me with an incredible view. "Oh wow," Charlotte gasped as she looked out over my shoulder. As our aircraft made its silent passage over the European landscape, the northern edge of the Alps loomed before us, a colossal testament to the earth's raw power and elegance. Formed over eons, they pierced the heavenly skies as if they were the jagged edges of the earth's very soul. From above, they unfolded in a multitude of serene whites and deep forest greens--a canvas where light and shadow played in a quiet, eternally frozen dance. The late afternoon sun, low in the sky, washed the scene in a soft, golden radiance that lit the snowy peaks like beacons against the encroaching dusk.

The mountains rose with such authority, their peaks adorned with snow that seemed to capture the essence of the clouds above, marrying sky to peak in a seamless, ethereal blend. Each mountain stood not alone but as part of a great family, siblings of stone and ice that shared the endless watch over the landscapes they had dominated for millennia. The summits shone with a brilliance that was not simply the reflection of sunlight but the inherent glow of a world untouched by man's ambition, a display of nature's purity and isolation.

Beneath the crowns of white, the slopes told stories of ages past. Dark lines of conifers clung to the craggy terrain, providing a stark contrast to the luminescence of the snow. Here and there, the grandfatherly trees yielded to meadows that awaited the spring thaw, brilliant patches of emerald anticipating the arrival of wildflowers that would soon dot their expanse with splashes of color.

And tinged with the hint of winter's end, some mountains appeared as sentinels shrouded in a shawl of mist, a delicate veil that only heightened their mystique. It was as though the mountains themselves were breathing, alive with the spirits of the natural realm, a sacred exhalation forming a gentle fog that caressed the rugged inclines.

Dotting the majestic slopes were quaint hamlets, handfuls of wooden chalets clustered together for warmth and companionship, their smoky chimneys painting faint traces against the clear, crisp sky. These age-old villages, interconnected by winding roads etched precariously into the mountainside, stood as a testament to humanity's resolve and reverence for these natural fortresses. The roads themselves ribboned through the landscape, narrow and curving, hugging the terrain, carved with care not to disturb the monumental beauty they traversed.

Nestled within the arms of these great behemoths were the alpine lakes--pristine, azure mirrors reflecting the grandeur above. The lakes were jeweled drops upon the earth, their waters ranging from the deepest of sapphire blues to the clearest turquoise, each one a unique eye peering back at the sky. The tranquility of their surfaces was deceptive, betraying nothing of the life teeming within, or of the untold secrets and stories they held in their silent depths.

The valleys between these titans wound gracefully, embracing streams and rivers that sprung from unseen sources. These waters carved through the land with a persistent, gentle force, flowing like life's blood through the very heart of the wilderness. They connected the lakes--one to another--in a network of liquid veins, sustaining the fertile soil and the species that called this place home. Where the waterways converged, they built rippling symphonies that sang of the alchemy between water and land, a testament to the enduring cycle of nature.

Here, the concept of time seemed softened, mellowed by the magnitude of nature's masterpiece. The elements conspired in perfect harmony to sculpt a world where the eternal and the ephemeral met, where the permanence of rock faced the transience of seasons. The currents of wind and water that had crafted these giants over the unfathomable past continued their work, unhurried and unyielding, nature's artisans at their most relentless.

Such an expanse, teeming with the breadth of life and the weight of history, could inspire a profound awe in any person fortunate enough to witness it. Each element, from the tiniest stone on the trail to the colossal mountain itself, was part of an intricate ballet choreographed by the forces of nature.

The light began to change, the sun dipping further behind the towering peaks, setting the stage for the evening's performance. Shadows grew longer, stretching out over the landscape like giant's fingers, while the snow-capped peaks held onto their luminosity, stubbornly alight against the dimming world. And as the sun's golden hue yielded to a cooler twilight, the mountains took on a softer aspect, no less grand but more subdued, as if giving way to the night with graceful reluctance.

It was then I understood that what lay before us was not merely a landscape but a profound work of art, millenia in its crafting, a manifestation of earth's boundless creativity. These mountains had stood long before we had taken to the skies, and they would endure long after our contrails had faded from the heavens.

To fly over the Alps was to move through a living tapestry, rich in texture, vibrant in color, and infinite in its ability to awaken the spirit. It was an experience both humbling and exalting, drawing forth a myriad of emotions that wove themselves into the fabric of memory. In this grand spectacle, we were but specks, transient guests permitted a glimpse into the eternal beauty and the relentless passage of time that the Alps so majestically represented. It was astonishingly beautiful, yes--but it was more. It was a silent promise that, behind the veil of daily life, wonder awaited, endless, and profound.

And ours for the taking.

To answer Charlotte's question, though, it did look like we were lowering our altitude in preparation for landing. Right on time, too, I thought as I checked my internal clock. I turned to look at Charlotte, ready to answer her, but the look on her face stopped me as she gazed out of the window. It was one of pure distracted awe. She was dazzled beyond the ability to speak by the sights through the tiny aircraft window. Charlotte, from what little I knew about her past before me, was a worldly, well-traveled woman, at least in terms of the UK. She had been all over the country, but with the constant fear - in her previous life - of the Inquisitor threat in the rest of the world, I had no idea if she had ever left our dank, damp, miserable little island. Or at least if she had left it since attaining adulthood. The look on her face suggested that she had never seen anything in her life as beautiful as what she was looking at now. Charlotte was a staggeringly gorgeous woman, but seeing that look on her face somehow managed to make her seem even more so. I just smiled at her, watching her watch the vista slide past the window.

"What?" she said after a few minutes, finally catching me watching her.

"Nothing," I smiled back, chuckling to myself. "It looks like it's time to get our seat belts on, though."

"Oh, right, yeah."

I turned to look over my shoulder and called out the same instructions to Fiona, who nodded back to me and started fiddling with the straps to connect them over her lap. Our prisoners have never been unfastened, to begin with, so I wasn't too bothered about them. They weren't restrained, but in the same vein as the way I had used my powers to put Charlotte on her knees and strip in my apartment, I had robbed the traitors of the ability to move their arms or legs until I said they could. I had no idea if they could break that compulsion, but none of them had moved for the duration of our journey from the Mansion nor during the three-hour flight. Whether that was because they couldn't move or just hadn't tried to was a question I couldn't answer nor cared enough to try.

Charlotte, her eyes still locked on the panorama beyond the window, fastened her belt without looking at it; I did up my own before sitting back into my seat, as much to relax as to not obstruct her view, then turned my head to watch the world grow larger as the obscenely expensive aircraft started slowly descending toward it.

********

It should be made clear here that the weather in the UK sucks! Yes, yes, I know we have spoken about this before, but it is a point that can never be over-emphasized. In the winter, it is cold and rainy; in the springtime, it is slightly less cold... and just as rainy. And oftentimes we only know that summer has come around when the rain warms up. We hadn't gotten that far into the year yet, so stepping onto the plane close to home, it had been - you guessed it - raining. It came as something of a jolt to the system to go somewhere else to find that the sky wasn't perpetually leaking and in desperate need of a plumber. Of course, we had all heard about the weather being different in different places, it was one of the few things that Brits universally agreed on, but to actually experience it was something else entirely. It should also be mentioned that aside from a quick jaunt to The Hague - where the weather is only marginally better than the UK - and to Ukraine - in the dead of winter where the weather could legitimately be said to be worse than in Britain - I had never left the country. My parents sure as hell were never going to take me on a sunny vacation, and I had never been able to afford to take myself.

I had done my research. Southern Germany's climate, at least on paper, for this time of the year, should have been close to the UK in terms of weather. The Alps caught the cold and moisture from the atmosphere, and, assuming you weren't at the peaks of one of the mountains, you could expect mild but wet weather... obviously, because the sun apparently hated me.

So it was something of a shock to step out of the plane and onto the tarmac on a day that would have passed for a pretty decent late summer's afternoon back home. The sky was clear and a stunning wash of purples, pinks, and vibrant oranges, punctuated by a few wisps of passing, wandering nimbus clouds. The air was pleasantly warm, a gentle breeze caressing a kiss at my neck as I stretched my body out at the bottom of the plane's access steps, and the sound of birdsong floated around the air. The airfield was much more modern and intact-looking than the abandoned-looking one we had landed at in Ukraine. There were a few other small, private aircraft dotted around in hangers off to one side of the glass and steel terminal building, and there were a few people wandering around in the distance. Some looked like pilots, others like engineers, and the odd one or two looked like customs officials.

My attention, however, was immediately drawn to the smiling, approaching visage of Bob.

"Pete!" he called out when he was still twenty feet away but closing that distance rapidly. Aside from Jimmy and Charlotte, I had never had a non-power-affected person look so genuinely happy to see me. He wrapped his arms around me in a friendly, relaxed, and relieved way and squeezed hard. "We never had time to talk properly after the compound," he said as he stepped back. "But, again, thank you so much for what you did for our people. I know they were found in a less-than-ideal manner, being broken and turned to the Praetorians and all, but it is still much better than nothing. I won't ever forget it."

"Don't mention it, Bob," I smiled back. "Just doing my part for the war effort."

"Yeah, a part in a war that we didn't even know we were fighting before you," he snorted. "Trust me, Pete. You have made more friends than you could ever imagine with that. You have done us a massive service. Don't undersell yourself on it."

"I'll try to keep that in mind," I laughed before turning to my strawberry-blonde, picturesque friend. "I'm sure you remember Charlotte."

"Charlotte, yes, of course," Bob said, taking her hand and bowing forward to kiss the back of it. It is very good to see you again. I hope you are keeping well."

"Thanks, Bob," Charlotte smiled before nodding over her shoulder at the prisoners being escorted off the plane by Fiona. "I'm as well as can be expected, all things considered."

"Hmmm," Bob's face soured as he watched the procession. He already knew their story. I had passed the information on to him and Isabelle when arranging this flight, so they had been expecting all of us and knew the circumstances of the traitors' capture, not to mention who one particular one was to Charlotte. "I don't know if it's my place to say, Charlotte," he said, returning his attention back to her. "But having experienced betrayal so recently myself, I can only imagine what you are feeling for having it come from one so close to you. I am sorry that you have had to go through this."

"Th... Thank you, Bob." Charlotte smiled, taken by surprise by the sincerity in Bob's voice.

"There are vehicles for us all over there," Bob tossed a thumb over his shoulder to a large SUV and a blacked-out panel van. Some of our people, trusted people, are waiting to guard the prisoners in the back of the van. The Escalade is for us, Fiona included. I'm sure she has been on guard duty this whole time."

"Hey Bob," Fiona smiled and waved, having heard her name. "Good to see you again."

"And you, Miss Fiona," Bob smiled and bowed back.

"Jerry not with you?" She asked as she herded the prisoners toward the van.

"He is still at the estate. He has..." Bob paused and frowned a little. "I suppose he would call it a surprise for you, although I don't think he is certain if you are going to like it or not. But it did prohibit him from joining me this afternoon. But he has requested I not say anything and let him show you himself."

Well, that's nothing if not cryptic.

Fiona frowned a little, not in concern, but in intrigue before she nodded and corralled the traitors the rest of the way to the panel van.

It was strange. There was no shortage of suspicion of Bob when he had first met Fiona and Charlotte back at the cottage at Christmas. He was an Inquisitor; they were Evos, and that, as far as anyone was concerned, was more than enough reason to be at least a little weary around each other... if not downright hostile. I had never had that mentality drummed into me, so although Bob and I hadn't gotten off to the very best of starts - hence my making up a name just to annoy him, which I now couldn't seem to shake - I had never had that ingrained mistrust of him. My friends, however, seemed to have taken Bob's part in Ukraine to heart, though. He'd had plenty of time to betray me, to stab me in the back, to do any manner of things that Fiona and Charlotte both assumed any Inquisitor would do to any Evo, yet he hadn't. Jerry had told them both about Bob's steadfast support, about his unwavering loyalty and dedication, and - most of all - he had told them how Bob had very nearly screwed the whole plan up in his burning desire to rescue me from Marco the day I had been captured. That seemed to have changed their minds dramatically, and now they saw Bob as a friend.

The possibility that they wouldn't see him as a friend or that any of the other Inquisitors in Isabelle's estate would be as hostile as Mr. Slappy had been at The Hague was a thought I probably should have had before now. But it was one that needed addressing.

"Err, Bob. I have a question." I said cautiously as he led the three of us toward the SUV.

"Sure, I will answer what I can."

"The guard, at the Hague..."

"The one whose arm you broke?"

"Um, yeah, him..." I turned to look over my shoulder. Charlotte was listening raptly, but Fiona was smirking seductively at me.

Oh, Right, yeah. Power kink in that one, and snapping the arm of an Inquisitor like it was nothing would just about qualify.

"...and not to mention your little... episode... in Donetsk at the sight of my using my powers," I went on. Bob tried valiantly to hide the grimace, remembering the hostility he felt toward me after I had incinerated our attackers. "I am just wondering how Inquisitors other than you and Isabelle are going to react to three Evos being in their midsts."

"Oh, that's easy," Bob grinned. "We have put them on guard duty."

I blinked. "You're gonna have to clear that one up for me."

Bob paused for a moment, seemingly in an attempt to choose his words. "Inquisitors are a passionate, volatile breed," he finally said. "But they are unerringly committed when set to a task. We have tasked every Inquisitor within fifty miles to your personal protection duty. You can do whatever you want, and they wouldn't blink simply because that hostility to you would be overridden by their compulsion to stick to their cause and protect you."

I squinted at Bob. "So why did you have such a reaction?"

"Because my job wasn't to protect you; it was to find our people."

"Ah, well, I guess that makes sense. So I shouldn't need to look out for unwelcome surprises, then."

"Nope," Bob shrugged as he opened the door to the SUV and allowed Charlotte to climb in first. "Besides, Isabelle keeps her circle small. There aren't actually that many Inquisitors on the estate."

I nodded. It was about as good an answer as I was going to get. I stepped aside to let Fiona climb in next. Her eyes were still locked on mine, and she slid herself past me, patting me on the crotch with a wink as she did. Bob didn't see a thing; he just carried on smiling as I climbed in behind Fiona and let him close the door behind us.

"So," I said, trying and failing to pull my eyes away from Fiona's heated gaze and Charlotte's knowing smirk. "How long is the drive to the estate?"

Bob, climbing into the driver's seat, glanced into the rearview mirror to answer, "It's about a two-hour drive. It's not far as the crow flies, but it has a lot of country lanes and circuitous roads. It's not designed to be an easy place to get to."

"Most castles aren't," I smirked back.

Bob laughed, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the prison van had started its engine and was ready to go before putting the SUV into gear and pulling off. "I'm sure you will all be tired after your journey, though. The Princess expects you will want to rest when we get there, and she has arranged for your meeting to happen tomorrow."

"It's okay, I can meet her tod..." A sharp squeeze of my thigh from Fiona silenced me. I looked at her. The message in her eyes was very, very clear, and even without the use of my powers, it was a message that even the old me would have had no trouble reading...

"Shut the hell up! You are going to get fucked when we get there!

I swallowed hard and cleared my throat. "Actually, I think the girls are pretty tired, and I suppose I could use some downtime. Meeting tomorrow would be a good idea."

Bob, oblivious to the looks and the heated atmosphere I was being subjected to behind him, just nodded and focused his attention on the road. Charlotte smiled mischievously, and Fiona sat back, looking between the two front seats and at the sights out the windscreen, but with her hand sliding up my thigh and into my lap.

********

My apartment back home was pretty impressive, at least it was to me. Including my parent's run-down little house, it was, by far, the nicest place I had ever lived in. But, of course, that was vastly more of a portrait of my personal experience rather than any sort of commentary about the comparative niceness of different places. Becky and Philippa's house, for example, was much nicer than even my apartment, and I remembered comparing their shared bathroom to an episode of cribs.

The producers of that show, however, would have thought that all their Christmases had come at once with a single look inside the suite Isabelle had set aside for the three of us.

For a start, it was fucking enormous. Taking up an entire wing of the castle's upper floors, it was at least twice the size of one of those penthouses that took up the entire floor of a New York highrise. I had no idea how many square feet, but it was easily in the high thousands, maybe into the early five digits. The main door led into a small hallway, which, after passing one of the bathrooms, opened up into a fucking massive living area. I could have fitted two or three of my apartments just into that room with space to spare. The entire floor was covered in white, decorative marble. The short hallway had two doors in it, one into a bathroom that could have come out of a royal palace and one into a coat cupboard before it opened up into a grand, luxurious lounge area. Light cream upholstered sofas, three of them, were arranged around a gold-inlaid coffee table, and each of them looked obscenely comfortable. Beneath them all was an ornate, ancient-looking rug that looked more like a tapestry than a carpet, golden chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and large windows looked out over the breathtaking countryside. The only thing missing was a kitchen, but it seemed to be assumed that we would be eating somewhere else.

Beyond the grandeur of the living area, the apartment extended its luxury into other functional spaces that displayed both sophistication and a clear reverence for the castle's historical architecture. The dining room was separate from the lounge, a space where time seemed to converge with modernity. An expertly carved wooden table, likely a relic from centuries past, stood magnificently at its center, surrounded by high-backed chairs upholstered in rich velvet. It was an odd addition to the room, considering the lack of cooking facilities. But as a meeting place, it made the conference tables of both the Sect and the Inquisition base look like poorly replicated knock-offs. Overhead, a contemporary crystal chandelier juxtaposed the old with the new, casting a myriad of dancing lights and reflections from the low, glorious afternoon sun along the walls, which were adorned with tapestries that told tales of the castle's legacy.

A study was tucked away to the side of the dining room, walls lined with mahogany bookshelves that reached toward the heights of the vaulted ceiling. A ladder on an ornate brass rail allowed for easy retrieval of volumes from the highest shelves. The center of the room was dominated by a sturdy antique desk, a testament to craftsmanship, its surface inlaid with leather, pens, and parchment inviting one to compose letters as if in a bygone era. The juxtaposition of a sleek, modern laptop against this backdrop spoke to the blending of worlds--medieval and digital, past and present.

Just off the study, a small conservatory offered a greenhouse sanctuary, brimming with lush greenery that flourished under the natural light spilling in from the glass ceiling. This on its own was more than a little impressive, considering we were four stories above the ground. The conservatory seemed to have been built atop one of the sturdier lower parts of the castle, essentially making it a glass-walled and ceilinged room in which to enjoy the simple pleasure of greenery. Exotic flowers and delicate ferns scented the air, and a small fountain bubbled in the corner, exuding tranquility. The glass walls provided uninterrupted views of the castle grounds, making it the perfect retreat for contemplation or to indulge in the morning's first cup of coffee. I mean, I didn't drink coffee, but if I did, I couldn't imagine a better place to do it.

The bedrooms, once their grand, ornate double doors were opened, were just as opulent, large, and airy, with canopied four-poster beds that commanded the space. Fine linens, the color of fresh cream, adorned the beds, complementing the rich tapestries and period paintings that graced the walls. Each room boasted its own en suite bathroom, rivaling the luxury of the one in the entrance hallway. These bathrooms were sanctuaries in their own right, with deep, freestanding bathtubs deserving of royalty and separate rain showers enclosed in frosted glass.

The extravagance of the suite was tied together with thoughtful, comfortable touches--a collection of plush throw pillows here, an inviting chaise lounge by a window there, and an assortment of candles and lamps that would provide soft lighting in the evening hours. It was clear that Isabelle had not only provided a space that was breathtakingly beautiful but one designed for genuine living and relaxation, an oasis amidst the demanding rigors of life as the head of one of the primary Inquisition Royal Families

All in all, the suite was a symphony of opulence and comfort, a fitting quarters for the esteemed guests or residents of the castle. Every item and fixture had been chosen with the utmost care to create an atmosphere befitting those who lived within its ancient and storied walls or at least to honored guests who needed to be impressed. I couldn't speak to the others, but 'impressed' was a vastly understated sentiment in my mind.

Of course, as nice as the apartment was, it was the frantic, hungry, almost frenzied Fiona literally throwing herself at me that grasped my attention first. The door to the halfway beyond had barely clicked closed behind us when she was on me. To be fair to her, Fiona had been stewing in tales of the supremacy of my power for months: From the trek through Ukraine and the dispatching of threats along the way, to the ruse put on during my captivity, to the self-admittedly awesome battle that had been the ultimate end to that episode, and finally, the purging of the Sect, bloodlessly, through the threat of force alone. Power really was an aphrodisiac to Evo women. Where human women were drawn to a man's height, or his earning potential, or to his ambition, or to his looks, or any other one of random nonsense they proclaimed - at least before falling for the man - Evo women were drawn to one thing and to one thing only, and they were refreshingly honest about it. Shrek himself would have been the most popular guy at an Evo party if he was the most powerful man in the room.

But I wasn't only the most powerful person in the room, nor was I only the most powerful man in Evo society, nor in the country, or even the most powerful man on earth. I was all of those things, but I was also the most powerful man known to have ever existed. Every time I used my powers, I made history. It was a daunting prospect when thought about in those terms, but the effect it had on people was undeniable. To Fiona, I was the closest thing to God that she could imagine, and she had been given an up-close and personal vantage point to see me work. There was no other way to say it: She was frothing at the lips, chomping at the bit, and - after the sexual door was opened in the cottage - she knew exactly what she wanted.

I was more than happy to oblige.

Or, more accurately, I was more than happy to let her have what she so very clearly wanted.

My back hit the door with a thud, and the bag I had been holding dropped to the floor next to my feet. Charlotte - a smirk on her lips and a teasing glint behind her eyes - had picked up Fiona's bag and wandered deeper into the apartment. That was all I saw of her for a few moments as my view was blocked by Fiona's face when she kissed me with the fire and passion of a thousand burning suns. I could almost hear Faye's encouraging giggle in my mind.

Faye's advice with the blonde girl from the Queen's head had been effective when it came to burning off tension, so why not now? I wrapped my arms around Fiona and grabbed her ass hard, lifting her and spreading her cheeks in my powerful grip through her skintight yoga pants. Whereas humans, like Becky or Philippa, had given me a roadmap in their heads to show me exactly what they wanted, Evos were different. It was more of an instinct. One that I was very much following when I landed a firm, sharp slap onto Fiona's ass, grabbing one of her cheeks and grinding her harder against me. She mewled and purred hungrily into my lips, deepening the kiss and melting into me as the crack echoed around the hallway.

I spun her around, crashing her back into the wall and causing her to let out a deep, carnal grunt from her panting, parted lips. Breaking a kiss for only a moment, her eyes rose up to meet mine. There was a heat and a passion behind them, the likes of which I had scarcely seen before; it was wanton, burning lust. Fiona didn't love me; it was hard to tell if she even found me attractive - either physically or personally, she just didn't know me well enough - but she was more than attracted to my strength, and she wanted to be taken by it.

She leaned forward to kiss me again, but I shoved her back to the door, using my free hand to grasp the hem of her top and drag it roughly upward and over her head. She purred, almost a growl, when her green lace demi-bra came into view, her handful-sized breasts swaying excitedly on her heaving chest. Fortunately, I had learned to undo bras from my human conquests... unfortunately for me, this was a front-opening one, and I was a bit stumped.

Fiona, either taking pity on me or simply being too frenziedly horny to wait for me to act, reached up and opened the clasp with a deft gesture with her fingers. I had fucked Fiona at the cottage, but it had been dark, it had been intimate - at least compared to this - and it had been up close and personal. I hadn't really got a chance to really appreciate her chest. She was what I would call proportional. Not too big, not too small, but standing proudly on her lithe, small frame. As pale as the rest of her complexion, capped with light pink, diamond-hard nipple, and rising and falling with every heavy breath. Her bottoms were next, a pair of those skin-tight yoga pants that looked like they had been painted onto her lithe, flushed body. They were off in seconds, and her panties joined them around her ankles only a couple of moments later. Her hands were on me almost instantly, fumbling with the belt on my jeans and trying to get the button fly undone. Pretty soon, though, I was stepping out of them and my boxers and peeling my shirt over my head. The moment I was naked, I crushed myself back against her, pinning her to the door and kissing her hard. Once again, she moaned hungrily and melted against me.

One of my hands reached down, hooking behind her thigh and lifting her leg to circle around my hip, and with a slight bend of my knees, I was able to slide my solid length between her legs and grind it over her molten core. Straightening my legs again lifted her up onto her tiptoes and pressed the head of my more-than-ready cock against her liquid pussy, and - before she had a chance to relish the feeling - I speared all of me into her in a single, hard, long thrust. She cried out, her nails dug into my shoulders, she threw her head back, and her entire sex clamped onto me like it was trying to break off my cock.

She had been so turned on that simply driving my dick into her had set off the first of her titanic orgasms. I'm not gonna lie; that did a damn good job of stroking my ego.

As I held Fiona against the door, her body trembling with pleasure, I couldn't help but feel a sense of satisfaction. It wasn't just the physical act of sex that was driving me, but the knowledge that I was the one in control, the one with the power. And Fiona, with her Evo instincts, was drawn to that power like a moth to a flame.

My hips began to move, a slow and rhythmic thrusting that matched the beat of my heart. Each movement was deliberate and precise, aimed at drawing out Fiona's orgasm for as long as possible. Her nails dug deeper into my shoulders, leaving marks of desire and pleasure. I could feel her pussy clenching around me, begging for more and unwilling to let go of the pleasure coursing through her body. The spasms continued, each one stronger than the last, as she battled against my enhanced levels of self-control. But I couldn't deny the primal urge within me, driven by her unbridled passion and need for me. Her ragged breaths filled the air as she hungrily humped back against me, lost in a state of absolute enthrallment. Every fiber of my being was unraveling in her grasp, succumbing to the intense intensity of our passion

Her attraction to me was based solely on my power. It was a primal, instinctual thing, and it was intoxicating. I felt like a god, a being of immense strength and authority, and Fiona was my willing worshiper, and that was exactly how she wanted to be taken. I picked up the pace, driving into her with renewed, almost savage levels of power, drilling into her with every animalistic thrust. Each one bounced her back against the door that probably cost more than my every possession and bounced her harder and faster up and down the slick, solid length of me. The loud, wet slaps got more pronounced as another flood of her juices located my cock, her screams got louder, and I fucked in even harder. I was determined to give her what she craved. This was instinct now, something buried deep. It was Evo on Evo; Charlotte had been a playful fumble, it had been fun, but this was anything but; it was heat, and need, and ancient desire, and I was losing myself to it much faster than I could have anticipated.

As I neared the peak of my pleasure, I gradually eased off my pace, prolonging the ecstasy that pulsed through my veins. Fiona's eyes fluttered open, and she gazed up at me with a look of pure, lustful adoration, her soft lips parting in a breathless gasp. In that moment, I felt a rush of pride and ownership, knowing that this beautiful woman was mine to possess. As the most powerful man in the world, this was what it meant to have everything at my fingertips..

As I continued to drive into Fiona, her screams grew louder, and her body began to tremble even more violently. I could feel her pussy clenching around me, milking every last drop of pleasure from my cock. Her nails tried to renew their pressure against my shoulders, but her arms had gone limp, just resting around my neck as she clung on for dear life, and her head thrashed back and forth, her eyes closed in ecstasy.

In one fluid movement, I pulled her away from the door and swept her up into my arms. She let out a surprised gasp as I carried her towards the nearest sofa, her body pressed tightly against mine. Her feet touched the floor with a soft thud as I lowered her onto the ornate marble. Without hesitation, I spun her around and slapped her ass in an ominous warning of what was to come before bending her over the armrest. Her hands gripped the fabric as she eagerly awaited what she so hungrily desired. With a primal desire, I positioned myself behind her and plunged my throbbing hardness balls deep into her, eliciting a loud moan of pure, unadulterated pleasure from her lips. The sound echoed through the room, mingling with our heavy breathing and creating an intoxicating rhythm filled with passion and ecstasy.

"Oh, God, yes! Fuck me harder! Show me your power!" she cried out, her voice hoarse from the intensity of her orgasms.

I couldn't resist - I mean, obviously, what else would a man in my position do but give her the fuck of a lifetime? My hips surged forward with a newfound ferocity, almost violently driving deep into her as our bodies collided and the sound of our skin slapping echoed through the room. Her screams grew in intensity, as did the grunts of the air being fucked out of her lungs, matching the rhythm of our movements. The tight grip of her molten pussy pulsated around me, coaxing out every last ounce of pleasure from my granite-hard cock as she was overcome by wave after wave of intense orgasms, each one more powerful than the last. There was no reprieve for her, just a relentless onslaught of pleasure that left her sobbing in euphoria and gasping for air.

"I feel it," she panted, her voice barely audible over the sound of our bodies slapping together. "I can feel your power. I've never felt anything like it. Oh God, fuck me!

A sudden shift to my left caught my eye, Charlotte gracefully settling onto the opposite side of the sofa. Her intense gaze held pure desire and arousal as she watched us, her hand discreetly moving beneath her tight jeans to rub at herself beneath her panties. Our eyes met and did not waver; there was no playful teasing like at the cottage, no seductive words whispered between us, no lustful encouragement or heated exchanges. Instead, there was just raw, carnal eroticism emanating from her gaze. She was watching us, and she was clearly reveling in it.

I fucked into Fiona harder, my eyes staying on Charlotte's as my cock pounded into her with a ferocity that bordered on the savage, maybe even violent. One loud, hard slap after another made her rippling asscheeks glow under the patchwork of handprints burning themselves onto her. My other hand was wrapped around her hair, yanking her head back to bow her spine and put her G spot completely at my mercy. A mercy that I was in no way inclined to show. I fucked her like I wanted to break her! Her screams grew louder, more intense, and I could feel her body trying feebly to fuck herself back against me, while fighting against her urge to just go limp and take it.

"I'm going to cum again, oh God, I'm going to cum again!" she screamed, her body arching back harder. "Make me cum, make me cum, makemecummakeme... fuuuckkk!"

The heat of her tight, pulsing walls squeezed around me with a fervor I never thought possible. My body was overcome with a primal urge to release, to give in to the incredible pleasure coursing through my veins. Every instinct pushed me to give in to her desires, to fill her with the seed she craved. It was marrow-deep; it was nature, it was primal, and it was - I suddenly realized - the driving force when it came to Evo procreation. I knew I didn't have to worry about knocking her up, even if it was something she wanted, and with no downside to the prospect, my resolve was crumbling at an astonishing pace. I drove into her one last time, and then I felt it - the rush of cum exploding from my cock.

Pulse after throbbing, spurting pulse cannoned into her, each rope setting off a detonation of pure orgasmic euphoria inside Fiona as her final orgasms exploded into one of biblical proportions. She somehow managed to thrash and go rigid at the same time, a silent scream flowing breathlessly out of her lips as she was given what she needed so badly. More and more of me pumped into her, filling her, flooding her, making her feel all of it, infusing her with a tiny, minuscule portion of my power, and sending every one of her senses into overdrive. A soft squeak and a deep guttural moan from beside us told me that Charlotte had joined us in our mutual high.

I couldn't even begin to guess how long we all rode that cresting wave of sexual release and pleasure.

Eventually, though, once her climax had finally subsided, I pulled out of her. Fiona collapsed onto the sofa, her body spent, her mind melted, and her chest heaving with exhaustion. I stood over her, my chest heaving with exertion, my cock still throbbing with pleasure.

For the longest moment, Fiona just lay there, her body and her hunger sated, her breathing slowly returning to normal. Then, she looked up at me, her eyes shining with a fierce, primal intensity.

"Thank you," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "I really fucking needed that," she finished with a grin.

I dropped down onto the sofa between the two women, shamelessly naked and completely sated, before both of them cuddled into me on either side and quickly drifted off to sleep. Faye would have been proud.