AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What is your name?” I said to the unfortunate wretch.
The Titan didn’t look at me and only stared at the floor.
“Why did you come here?” I said.
Again, he wouldn’t respond.
Zes leaned in close to the man’s ear.
“Your lord is asking you a question,” he said. “Answer him.”
The man still wouldn’t respond.
Strange, I thought, considering the energy he had entered the room with. Or maybe he’d only been defending himself. Zes did have a history of pushing prisoners too hard.
Could he be the maid’s little boy we used to play with at a young age? The little one that disappeared the moment we were sent to the capital to continue our studies?
I often thought of him when I was alone and without friends in the emperor’s palace. He was the only member of the townsfolk I knew. The others I only saw from a distance. When I returned home a young man, I looked for the maid’s son but found the entire family had moved on.
The only person I knew in the area and he was no longer there.
That was when I began to build my little model town—to feel a part of them, to the men and women I was meant to help rule over.
If he was the maid’s boy, time had not been kind to him. He was a regular little boy when we played, with no scars or marks on his body. Looking at him now, I couldn’t reconcile the little boy I had known with the full-grown man I saw before my eyes.
There was no telling how a man might grow up when he came of age. Fate had a funny way of tossing unexpected events in the way, forcing us down avenues we never would have chosen for ourselves.
He might be the maid’s little boy. But then again, he might not. But if he was…
“Was there a message?” I said. “Contained in a handmade envelope?”
“No,” Zes said. “Only this.”
He reached into his pocket and extracted a simple stiletto blade—not dissimilar to the one I now held in my hand.
So, he really had intended on murdering me in my sleep. After my dishonorable decision to call off the Titan army, I thought someone might make the attempt.
“Do you deny it?” I said evenly to the man.
He continued to stare at the floor.
Had he lost his mind? Had he listened to the voices in his head? Or was the voice a real one, whispered in a tavern somewhere?
So many questions, but no answers.
“Take him to the cells,” I said. “Give him bread and water. Don’t harm him. We’re not his enemy.”
Zes said, “Sir, if we act fast and question him now, we could learn about others like him—”
“I won’t repeat myself,” I said. “Double the guards on duty until we figure out what’s going on here.”
And that was that.
Zes didn’t like the order, but I didn’t care. He nodded and seized the man by the arm. He led him roughly out the door.
The prisoner paused for a fraction of a second over the threshold and peered up at me through the hair that hung limp and straggling over his face. His eyes burned with the intensity of someone who knew what he wished to achieve—to upend the world and make a real change.
It sent chills up my spine.
