AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Salas raised his brows. “Are you claiming you want to bed me, and you aren’t simply fulfilling your duties to oil and prepare me for the evening?” When the bird’s eyes widened and he seemed about to protest, Salas chuckled and stroked the youth’s cheek. “I don’t let you because…”Because I only lay with men whom I want power over.
Are you devoted?
Salas sighed. “Run along, now! Do as you’re told.”
The bird obediently rose and left the room, tugging another along to exit with him.
Salas rolled his shoulders, looked down at his forgotten, stiff cock with another small sigh, and went to sit by the mirror. He gestured for the bird by the window to come and help him with the cosmetics that were to follow.
The party later that evening would be a big celebration. Emperor Eldron would be turning seventy. It was an age, quite frankly, Salas had not expected to see the man reach. Normally, birthdays consisted of the retellings of favored tales that shimmered with the Emperor’s glory. The Emperor’s victories over various other kingdoms, of strong trade agreements that strengthened the land, of witty feats from his days of youth; these would all be focused topics for the evening, more so now with the dawn of a new decade.
There was one story, of course, that would be repeated more than others: Emperor Eldron’s victory that caused the downfall of the Northern Kingdom. It was the Kingdom of Diagor, the Southern Kingdom’s greatest enemy, that had received the consequences of Eldron’s reprisal. Diagor had passed through the northern Faelands to attack Suscon’s border, and in return, Eldron had ruthlessly infiltrated Diagor, then had the Northern King, King Malvock, killed. To make sure the North could never rise again, he’d gone to a jinx, a wish-granting fae creature, in order to obtain a wish. The Emperor had wished for a fatal curse to be placed over the northern land, affecting the people. Turned them into beasts. They’d lived as deranged animals until the curse, apparently, killed them. Not much news trailed in from the North, but the ruined kingdom would be talked about all the same tonight over wine and olives.
Salas was thinking about honey cakes once more when the birds returned with the plug he’d sent for. He’d already rouged his cheeks and lips, pinned gold trinkets into his hair, and the plug would be the last of his preparations.
It was a golden phallus, absurdly gaudy for what it was, and Salas liked the contrast between material and use. The small handle gleamed with a round, red stone that was far too decadent to belong on the illicit tool. It was the type of jewel that should be set into a chained necklace and to be worn on portrait day. It belonged on a crown.
Salas grinned when he grasped it.
He was about to work it inside himself, but then remembered his earlier encounter with the bird and glanced over thoughtfully. “Well?” he asked the servant, who was staring at him with wide, hopeful eyes. “Would you like to put it in me?”
Salas remembered the first time he stepped into the Palace of Suscon ten years ago, his eyes rounded in awe as he took in the sight of the endlessly high walls and the towering statues. A dwelling built for giants, he’d thought. The sand from the nearby shore had blown into the hall on salty breezes and dusted the cracks of the statuary marble floors. He had fallen in love with the smooth grittiness of those floors the moment he had made that first barefoot step inside, naked and with his shoulder weighed down by the Emperor’s guiding hand. He knew he would never want to wear shoes again.
Everything around him had been an absolute wonder. While before, there had been only a muddled fog where his memories should have been. If he reached into his recollections, there was only endless, consistent emptiness. Nothingness.
To go from nothing to everything had been both overwhelming and instructive. He had not known much at the time, but he knew there was work to be done to maintain it.
“Is this your new pet?” a middle-aged statesman had asked upon seeing Salas for the first time, stepping into the palace garden room in which Salas was being kept.
The man had been led in by Emperor Eldron, who had smiled proudly as he looked over Salas from head to toe, as though admiring an investment worth bragging over. “Isn’t he lovely? His fairness easily surpasses the head council member’s favorite bird, I think it is fair to say.”
“The head council’s favorite? The one that doesn’t blush? There is no need to say it when it’s blatantly obvious.” A chuckle.
Salas was painting in the room he was being ‘kept.’ It was a room he had come to know as his ‘place.’ A place in which he had not been allowed to leave, though he had been provided endless indoor entertainments with the promise he could one day venture into palace life once he ‘learns’ more, Eldron had always said, whatever that meant. ‘Once you understand more,’ he had been told.
‘I am to fuck you, Eldron,’ Salas had pouted, when he’d been reminded of his confines once more. ‘What more is there to understand?’
Salas had not responded to the mens’ approach, though he finished his work with a final stroke of his brush and stepped back from his canvas, beaming.
The two men had studied the painting, and they had not smiled.
“How abstract,” the statesman—Jovack, his name was—had said eventually.
“Abstract,” Salas had repeated. What did abstract mean again? “It is...the sun? My painting is the sun and flowers and marble floors. The ones in the Great Hall. Eldron says this floor crack,” he pointed to a shapely glob of blue paint, “is from when he dropped his wine cup.” He blinked, realizing he was meeting the statesman for the first time, and curtsied. “Nice to meet you, Your Majesty.”
Another pause. “Your Grace, is your new bird simple?” Jovack had murmured.
Eldron had sighed. “He...he’s had some type of internal injury.” The lie had been repeated so many times, and sounded so natural falling from the Emperor’s lips that even Salas could have believed it. “He hit his head before I took him in. Fell off an unsteady mare. He’s maintained language, though his understanding of his surroundings has slipped a bit, poor thing. He is regaining it, though.”
“Hmm,” Jovack had mused. “Well, I can see why you are choosing to hide him away. Wouldn’t want court gossip to run rampant with the idea that the Emperor is keeping a bird in his bed who’s soft in the head.”
“That,” Eldron said carefully, “among other topics of gossip that could arise.”
The statesman had shot Salas a look of alarm. “My Gods! Does he carry disease?”
“Wha-? No, Of course not,” Eldron shut down the accusation immediately.
“Well, Your Grace, you are acting increasingly peculiar and I’m smelling something cryptic in your evasive explanations. I thought you brought me here to break him in.”
