Duke, meanwhile, has as blinking his eyes open.

Everything hurt. Everything. It felt like he might have managed to pull his eyelid muscles trying to fight the compulsion.

Which, thankfully, was gone.

“Fuck,” he groaned. Then started to take stock. He was in one of the bedrooms in the mansion. The light out the window was about what it had been before — everything.

And he was alone.

“Fuck,” he said again with feeling. Then shouted it. “Fuck!”