My Taboo Harem!

Phei stared at the Witness Bind notification for a long, contemplative moment.

Then, quietly, into the private theatre of his mind where the System resided:

‘System, explain…’

The notification rearranged itself with the smooth efficiency of a servant who had been waiting for precisely this cue.

[Ability operates on Witness State rather than Witness Presence.

[A subject is considered to have Witnessed an act if and only if their conscious awareness registers, in real time or in review, that the Host is engaged in intimate actions with a specific woman.]

[Acceptable triggers include — but are not limited to:

• Direct physical presence within the room.]

• Observation through a one-way mirror, window, or similar optical pass-through.]

• Live video feed. Resolution and clarity are irrelevant. What matters is the subject’s cognitive acceptance that he is watching, in real time, what he is watching.]

• Recorded video playback, provided the subject knows the identities of the participants.]

• Audio recording, provided the subject knows the identities and can mentally reconstruct the scene.]

• Detailed verbal or written description, provided the subject’s imagination constructs the scene with sufficient specificity to satisfy the Witness State threshold.]

[The trigger is cognitive and the body is incidental.]

Phei read the final line twice.

The body is incidental.

His throat performed a small, unpleasant contraction at that. He was, by this point in his glittering career of cucking men, extremely uncomfortable with the notion that his enemies would be able to witness a great many things he did between sheets… most especially his women’s body.

Jonathan had watched Roxanne from six feet away; he had accepted that particular cost as the price of the game. But the notification now in his possession transformed every future scene into a potential broadcast, and the uncomfortable question had appeared before he had even finished formulating it.

‘…And the woman? Her body? Does she have to be visible?’

The System replied almost immediately, with the crisp efficiency of a librarian like it had already prepared the answer.

[Negative. The Witness State requires only subject awareness. The woman’s body is not a required input.]

[Should the Host wish to protect the privacy of a given partner from the witness’s view, any method of visual obstruction is acceptable. The Witness State persists regardless of what the witness cannot see, provided he retains awareness that the act is occurring.]

[Example solutions include:

• Opaque barriers — screens, curtains, bedding, darkness, framing.]

[• Distortion — blurring, pixelation, obscured camera angles.

• Audio-only transmission.

• Verbal confirmation, communicated through any channel the witness trusts.

The ability scales to the Host’s intent. If you do not wish the witness to see her, he will not see her. The Witness Bind will still trigger on him.]

Phei exhaled.

Something tight behind his chest — tight enough that he had not noticed its presence until it released — loosened with a silent, grateful pop.

‘Good.

…Very good.’

He could work with that. He could work exceedingly well with that. Every woman he already possessed and every woman he might yet claim could be shielded from the gaze of whatever unfortunate patriarch he chose to brand. A curtain. A sheet. A closed door with only a voice on the other side.

Anything would suffice.

The ability scaled to his intent.

The universe, it seemed, truly did love a cruel and creative mind.

He tapped his chin thoughtfully and ran the new power through a few swift mental scenarios — the way a man might test a freshly sharpened blade against his thumb before trusting it with anything vital.

Then, carefully not raising the question in any manner that might tip his hand, he spoke aloud:

“Hypothetical for you, little Eira.”

Her wings fluttered once, intrigued.

“I’m curious about something. Say — purely as a thought experiment — a man wished to humiliate another man by making him aware that something was happening with his woman or their crushes. Without the first man ever actually seeing the woman body while it’s happening. Could it be done cleanly?”

Eira’s tiny brow furrowed as she considered the question with the gravity of an ancient scholar presented with an interesting moral puzzle.

“Mm. Trivially. The enemy’s presence in the same bedroom, behind a canopy heavy enough that he hears and registers but sees nothing of her body — that is one elegant solution. A curtained four-poster. A sheet tented up like a private theatre. A folding screen. All ancient methods of theatrical voyeurism.

“The brain is strange, Master… it completes the picture the eye is denied to see, and the humiliation lands with exquisite precision. He would know. He would know very precisely.”

“Mm.”

“Or the enemy could be in the next room entirely, hearing it through the wall but unable to see. Voices and the rhythmic music of bedsprings and a woman gasping a name that is not his are, historically, more than sufficient to achieve the desired effect.”

“Mm… I love this Eira, stimulates my cruel cucking fantasies. Go on.”

“Or a video feed pixelated or shadow-filtered to preserve the woman’s dignity — a tall and ancient technique of showing the act without the flesh. The enemy watches a silhouette. Knows exactly who it is because he can hear her voice, can see the shape of her, can hear what the man above her is saying to her, can watch the rhythm even if the detail is mercifully obscured.

“Just as effective as the clearest footage, and considerably cleaner in — ” Her eyes flicked to him with knowing amusement ” — what one might call the dignity preservation department.”

“Dignity preservation.”

“Don’t pretend you weren’t asking about that. I know you, Master.”

He did not smile.

He did, internally, smile with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had just been handed a perfectly tailored weapon.

“It was a thought experiment.”

“Of course it was.”

She crossed her arms, radiantly unbothered, the very picture of her not being surprised by the depths of her Master’s creative cruelty.

He made a quiet, noncommittal noise, nodded as though he had received a perfectly technical answer to a completely abstract curiosity, and said nothing more on the matter.

He did not tell her about Witness Bind.

He wasn’t entirely sure why. He simply had not yet decided whether that particular piece of information would help her to possess, or whether it sat more comfortably inside his own skull for the present.

The ring she had just identified as an Original Tongue artefact was already pressing against the limits of what one fairy and one teenager could usefully debrief in a single evening.

He would give her the runes.

He picked the ring back up.

Turned it between his thumb and forefinger. The faint internal hum settled into his skin as though the ring had recognised whose hand now claimed it.

“Remind me what you said this language was called again.”

“The Original Tongue.”

“Right. The Original Tongue. Tell me more about that.”