AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Emperor had let out a breath, exasperated. “You may not.”
Though Salas didn’t press further, his eyes remained fixed on the Emperor in question.
Another sigh. “Listen well, Salas, as this is a lesson you will learn consistently,” the Emperor started. “Your role is to offer yourself for gain. What we gain by indulging the border lord is a happy north. Have I not offered you everything? Have you not gained?”
“I have, Your Grace,” Salas had said earnestly.
“Then forget about what you want. You want nothing. Your purpose is to only remember what you can gain. Remember this tonight while you plump up the lord’s cock.”
“Water?” the guard asked, pulling Salas to focus.
Water. Water is enough. Water is a gain,Salas thought, soothing his doubt with what he hoped was control and clarity.
The guard unclipped a flask from his belt and tossed it over to Salas.
He grabbed it and opened it, sniffing at it suspiciously, hoping it wasn’t wine.
It wasn’t. Salas chugged thoroughly until the flask was empty. When he was done, he lowered it and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, watching the guard warily.
It was horrible, but despite all of his mental preparation, his trepidation crept up once more.
The guard was staring at him, at his lower half, where the skirt had been pulled away.
Salas couldn’t explain what happened, why his body reacted the way it did, but suddenly, he was running to the dungeon door. There had been no prior thought. No decision. The ritual he had tried so hard to commence, broken with some primordial, instinctive motion to flee.
But the door was locked, and the guard was everywhere, pulling him further into the confines of the cell. Salas fought for the very first time.
And lost for the first time as well.
It was the longest hour of Salas’ life. But eventually, it was over.
Later, the guard was tying his pants back up while Salas lay on a heap on the floor, his muscles straining, shivering, broken.
Unable to raise his head, nor wanting to, Salas only watched as the boots before him scraped over stone as the man twisted to him once more.
Salas cringed away as the guard made to squat in front of him, the cruel smile making his features seem lopsided. He reached out a finger, the worn nail tracing a line from Salas’ naked neck down to his sweaty navel. Suddenly, he pulled Salas forward by a hand at his nape, lurching him forward to bury his nose into Salas’ neck. As though he couldn’t resist breathing Salas in one last time.
Then he dropped Salas, as though discarding a used rag, and stood up. “Tomorrow,” said the guard, perhaps thinking that Salas did not understand, perhaps knowing that he did, “You die.”
The guard shook his head, as though now disgusted by something helpless and pathetic that could not be fixed. He made his way to the cell door, grabbed the torch, and left Salas alone in the dark.
Salas couldn’t remember a time in his life where he had wanted to wear shoes, but as his frozen fingers wrapped around his toes in an attempt to bring warmth to them, he cursed himself for ever objecting to footwear. Though, of course, he’d never had reason to want to adorn his feet before.
But now he imagined himself baking on the beach, piles of salty sand dusting his feet and lending warmth. Not on the floor of a cell in an enemy kingdom, where the cold made his skin tighten to feel utterly too small for him.
After the guard had left, Salas re-wrapped his skirt, pulling the bulk of the fabric to cover his legs. When he’d finished the loaf of bread he’d been given, he used the burlap sack as a sock for both feet, pulling the drawstring close and pulling his legs to his chest.
Because sleep was not an option, the only thing left to do was sit in his shivering and wait until morning.
The guard’s parting words, spoken cruelly in Diagorian, repeated like an endless mantra in Salas’ head until his thoughts around the declaration were his only cognitive processing.Tomorrow, you die.
His tears only served to chill his face.
Salas assumed it was the next day when shadows moved with firelight and approached his cell. Several of the Diagorian guards opened the iron door, led by a more feminine figure that Salas recognized. Tall and pale, with ice blonde hair. It was one of the witches that had opened the portal to Diagor from the Great Hall in Suscon.
In thick, rich robes that left Salas envious, she led the procession into the stone entrapment, invading Salas’ enclosure. Much like the first time, Salas was surprised by her height that contrasted with her reedy limbs.
She asked something to the attending guards, her eyes raking over Salas without expression. Salas couldn’t determine her age with scrutiny. Though objectively beautiful, she had one of those faces that could range from twenties to fifties. Ageless.
