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Salas sobbed, clawing pathetically at the unyielding hand around his neck, his legs scrambling for purchase.
“Attacking my daughter after attempting to escape.” The King shook his head in disgust as he listed what he thought to be Salas’ wrongdoings.
“No!” Salas cried woefully.
“But none of that compares,” the King continued, as though Salas had not spoken, “to what youare. What you have done tomy kingdom.” Though the man spoke calmly enough, his eyes glinted, containing a storm of unmasked fury that, left unchecked, could so easily be released. “I should gut you where you stand.”
Salas sobbed harder, unable, this time, to formulate speech.
“You’re a jinx. I saw what you did back in my room with the snake, though I was too far gone to comprehend what had happened. Now I understand. Answer me this, forest beast, are you the being that cursed my kingdom?” the King asked, his tone ever the lullaby that could lull one to death.
Even if Salas wanted to answer, it was the fear that clammed him up even more effectively than the grip at his neck. Still, he knew that the Northern King’s patience was nearing non-existent, and something had to break. Before he knew it, he was nodding, confirming every suspicion against him.
He found his voice. It was an unsteady, small, broken thing. “Please...You don’t understand.”
“And what is there not to understand? Were you unaware that you had doomed an entire nation when you had released your freakish magic? Did you not know what was to happen?” The questions were disgustingly mocking.
“Yes!”
The King squeezed until Salas’ windpipe collapsed and he began choking in earnest, sniveling and gasping for the smallest of breaths. This was it. He would see no more days.
The King made a gesture with his lower body. It was a kick that met Salas’ leg, the bone snapping effortlessly under the brutal jab.
The pain of his broken leg was shocking, yet he had no breath to scream.
The King leaned forward, his head moving over the tender curve where Salas’ neck met shoulder, and said softly. “I had my revenge on Eldron. I never thought that I would also get it on you: the creature that...” For some unknown reason, his speech gave pause. When he stopped speaking, a silence hung in the air awkwardly, the strange moment leaving Salas only with confusion.
Suddenly, the King inhaled deeply, the cold tip of his nose caressing just the smallest bit of Salas’ skin. Salas almost ignored it—all his focus was on breathing.
Still, he registered that for some reason, the King was sniffing him, sourcing a scent that went beyond Salas' understanding. Was there something on Salas that he himself couldn’t smell? Yet the motion was familiar. He realized he recognized it from the beasts’ behavior towards him twice before. Once, when the first beast he had ever laid eyes on pulled him out from underneath the bed of his garden room in Suscon. He was sure it would kill him on the spot, but instead, it hadn’t. It had scented him.
The second was a similar action when the guard from the other day had used him. Salas had found it strange that the man had taken so much time to inhale Salas’ nape as he had pressed into Salas, as though the act of smelling brought a greater delight than his body’s release.
The mimic of that action now was something that he didn’t understand.
But before he could find answers, the edges of the world darkened as air escaped him.
The last thing he understood was the press of the King’s face against his jawline before the world went black.
The ground was cold and harshly familiar now. Salas knew he was on the ground by his aching muscles, its rigidness no friend.
He was in pain. So not dead, then. Just nearly so.
Salas blinked awake to the discomfort, feeling a hollowness grow inside of him as he recognized where he was. On the floor of a cell.Hiscell. Waiting for this kingdom to pass judgment on him yet again.
His leg must have stirred him awake. When he felt the excruciating pain of his limp, broken limb, he closed his eyes once more, praying that he would slip beneath consciousness, the minimal comfort life right now could bring him.
The pain, however, proved to be too unbearable for sleep to find him once more. Through the dark, he could make out the abnormal purple swell of his left calf and shin, bulging up to twice the normal size. It was then that he noticed that all of his toes had swollen, as well, round bulbous like jellyfish, and disturbingly dark in color. He had never seen such a reaction before, but he surmised that this bodily reaction could have escalated from the cold conditions.
When he heard the patter of footsteps approaching his cell, Salas’ breath caught. Weakly, he crawled over to a corner of the cell that was mostly clean and curled in on himself, as though to make himself disappear.
“Hello?” The voice that rang through the bars of the iron door was not what he had expected. Youthful and melodic, albeit hesitant, it was Susconian that the speaker used to communicate with him. “You there! Hello?”
Salas raised his head to find himself in the company of someone he had not anticipated to see, or, quite frankly, thought much of since their first encounter. The light from a small iron lamp brushed around her round, gentle face, bright with curiosity. She blinked with doe eyes, set in a face that was haloed with hair so much like her father’s, Salas couldn’t help the twist of apprehension that made a knot in him, despite the little threat she brought with her.
It was the young Princess of Diagor, the King’s daughter, and the girl he had attempted to quiet the other day by the river that had ended so disastrously.
After a moment’s hesitation, minding his leg, Salas crawled a bit forward to greet his odd visitor. “Hello? You speak Susconian?”
