A crossbow bolts doesn't make a very good dagger, but they're easy to draw from storage, and it serves fine. I wait and watch until he fully commits: Orders Charles out of her clothes and onto the bed. I watch as Charles resists the fire from the tattoo for a good face seconds before crumbling, begging him not to do this. I watch as he strips off his robe, shirt, slacks, and undergarments.

When he orders my friend to spread her legs and gets on the bed himself… he freezes, the point of the point of the bolt touching his neck, whispering, “My guards are right outside. You'd never escape alive.”

“If they're so good, how'd I get in to begin with?” I chuckle.

He relaxes, “Oh, Dan. You can't hurt me, you'd burn forever. In fact, I order you to back off.”

I feel that mild burning sensation again, and I smile, “Nope,” drawing another bolt, I cut the King's skin, and he stiffens up again, and starts sweating despite the cool room, “Turns out there's a limit to how far you can push a person, no matter what leverage you have over them… decided by the person you're pushing. We found that out the hard way at home nearly two centuries ago. Me? I kill you, and I'm going to burn for the rest of my life… which I imagine will be pretty short, given the regicide. You? You'll burn in the Abyss for eternity. Fine trade from here.”

“What do you want,” the gravity of this appears to have hit him, now.

“First, countermand all orders you've given Charles there, and let HIM get dressed and leave,” I smile, figuring this is going fairly well.

“Discard any orders you're under,” the sad sack of meat in my arms whimpers out.

“You realize he, or his successor, is just going to have you killed after this,” Charles speaks up as he hastily dons the clothes he came in wearing. “He's the King. They won't care that he's a bastard ****.”

“I am not a…” the king shuts up again as I press the very literal point a little closer to regicide.

“I can live with that,” I smile, not that anyone can see, “it's time for this rat to dance to the piper's tune. Run screaming, please: It's best if the guards see it happen.”

“BURN!” The rat shouts, and Charles goes down screaming in pain as his tattoo flares up, “You don't care about yourself, maybe… but you clearly care about HER. Few can countermand my order. Let. Me. Go.”

Again, ‘few’, not ‘none’. Hmm… need intel… later. “You're going to just keep doing this sort of thing until you're dead. I can kill you, put HIM out of his misery, and call it a draw when your guards take me down. Or… maybe we can come to an accord.” I can speak in a normal-ish voice, but only because my mouth is right at his ear.

“If I stop her pain, you'll just kill me so I can't start it up again,” the **** shouts over the screaming.

“I keep to my word…” ah man, I'm not going to get to kill this punk, am I?

“You doubt the word of a king?” Again with the shouting to be heard over the screaming, “...but I think I can do something insurance while we talk… Charles: You're under orders to keep me alive. Stop burning.”

Charles lies still, gasping on the ground, and the King continues, “There. Now if I perish - for any reason - she goes back to being a ball of pain.”

Hmm. “There is a limit to how far anyone can be pushed…”

“Yeah, yeah, I'll seek my entertainment elsewhere,” the painfully canny old man rolls his eyes, “Plenty of whores in the bordello.”

“You will treat us with respect: You will make requests, you will not give orders. Because now you know we can get past these stupid things when we really want,” and I have an idea for getting rid of the things for good, which I'm going to attempt as soon as I level, “and we are the Heroes, it's not a great idea to minimize us.”

“Fine, Lady Dan, agreed,” he rolls his eyes, “half the treaties I'm involved in have me showing more respect to folks for whom I feel less.”

“Great…” I consider, “Charles, get out now. I'll follow in a moment.”

As my friend leaves, hastily dressed, the King raises an eyebrow, “So what, exactly, did you want to say while she wasn't here?”

“I know very well I'm playing with fire here,” I whisper in his ear, “There's no way you're going to forget or forgive, it's simply not the way of kings. So at some point you're going to have me killed. Know this: I am looking forward to that day… because the day you break our treaty is the day I start engineering exactly how much pain you die in.”

And he can tell I'm not lying.

He swallows, and I leave quietly. After all, I've said my piece, and we both know very well my bond is stronger than his.