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It wasn’t until the fire began to dim that he realized how much, with Salas’ explanation, his anger had lessened. He believed the boy, and therefore believed that, like much else, it had not been his fault.
When he heard Salas breathing even out, his head, at some point, resting on the fur robe over Jareth’s pectoral muscles, he realized that the boy had fallen asleep against him. He had been sleeping a lot as of recently, but his body needed rest.
Jareth’s nose drifted down near the crown of Salas’ head, nuzzling the hair there just a bit, and breathed.
Chapter Ten
When Salas woke again, it was to a setting he was slowly becoming familiar with. For some reason that still went beyond him, he had been allowed to stay in the King’s bed as though he were its main occupant.
More notably, his head was still on his neck. There were no witches to antagonize him. No kings to leave him with more questions than answers.
Strange. It was the only word that could describe last night’s encounter with King Jareth, as they’d sat together before the fire after Salas had attempted to end himself, an act that now left him with a feeling of dread and uncertainty. He daresay, last night, the King had beenkind.
Again. Stange. Salas couldn’t place the man, and attempting to do so left him with a cloud of uncertainty: a swirl of memories that mixed with the others, horrifically vivid, until he wasn’t sure if the kindness the King had shown was somehow some bizarre extension to the cruelty. The witch had smiled too, after all.
The King was presently absent and Salas wondered where the man had slept. It couldn’t have possibly been beside Salas. Or could it have been?
Before Salas could further ponder the mystery, there was a knock on the door.
Salas frowned, looking around, as though there might be someone else within the chambers with more authority than him to answer the knocked greeting. Of course, there was no one. “Come in,” he called hoarsely, clearing his throat.
A slight figure walked into the room, bundled up like the rest of the Diagorians, yet too petite to be of this nation. The figure was male, and obviously Susconian. Salas recognized him immediately and sprang to his feet. Foot, he remembered hastily when painful pressure bore down clumsily to the injured limb.
It was Lio who had entered the King’s chambers, the palace bird carrying the air of someone with every right to lay claim to their freedom to be walking about the palace unattended. Obviously cleaned and suited up in furs his size, he looked refreshed, a startling contrast to Salas’ own appearance, he realized.
Salas was still naked from the wash from the night before, a fact that was made more obvious now that he’d tumbled out of bed without even a sheet to cover him.
Lio spotted him, his eyes lighting upon the discovery, and then they were embracing.
“Salas!” Lio crooned, jumping into the embrace with so much abandon, Salas nearly fell over. “I’m so happy you are safe!”
Salas held the young man back, an odd uncertainty growing within him. He was reminded of the birds’ faces when he had approached them after the Diagorian half-beasts had captured him, while they had sat, bound, in the Great Hall in Suscon. Their look of relief upon seeing him had made him feel the same way he did now. Why did they care for him so, when he had never given them much reason to? He felt like an imposter, as though their kindness should have been extended to someone else, and not to him, for he had done nothing to earn it.
Yet he wanted to do nothing but hold Lio back, leaching from the kindness extended to him, hoping that the other man would not step back, realizing his mistake, that Salas didn’t deserve him.
Finally, they parted. “We’ve all been so worried!” Lio said in a rush, glancing around the King’s chambers for the second time in obvious awe. “We’ve heard there was a terrible fight between Victoria and King Jareth. Are you staying here with him? This is the biggest room in the castle, I bet!”
Salas folded his arms, unshy about his nakedness. Lio and the other birds had helped him dress while they had been in Suscon, after all. “Exactly, that’s why it’s my room,” he lied grandly, never one to pass up a moment to raise his station in the face of admirers, despite the great statement being completely false. Salas had no idea which room ‘was his.’ He wasn’t entirely sure a cell was not, either.
He shuddered at the idea, picked up a handful of grapes from the side table, and began tossing them leisurely into his mouth.
“Oh!” Lio began with a start, seeming to realize, for the first time, that Salas was bare before him. His bronze cheeks tinted to an attractive shade of red. “I am here to help you dress! You’re to be taken to the kitchens to work.”
Salas frowned, the statement foreign to him. “Work in the kitchens?”
“Yes, you know! Peeling potatoes. Tasting soup, that’s the best part. Plucking hens, that’s the worst part. I’m to show you around the castle.”
Salas swallowed, a grape falling from his hand.
He tried to imagine himself, then, among the palace staff, using the day for hand-work and committing himself to proper tasks. He couldn’t picture it. Just as he could not imagine himself picking up a rag in scrubbing down the alabaster in the Great Hall of Suscon, he couldn’t see himself working somewhere within this palace, unseen, unknown,powerless. It wasn’t because the work was beneath him, no. It was because he did not believe, once placed there, he would beleftthere.
There was no one who could quite understand that sentiment aside from himself.
He thought of Suscon and felt a pang of longing for Emperor Eldron, who had often come to him, seeking advice. He remembered the power he felt when he gave it. Would he ever feel that again? Not if he was a kitchen worker.
A surge of panic swelled up in him and, before he knew what his body was doing, he was pressing himself upon Lio.
Lio gasped quickly when Salas’ lips fell upon his, bodies writhing together, torsos and groins pressing lewdly together. Hands wrapped around Salas’ form, and the body language was a high contrast to Lio’s next words. “Salas!” he squeaked, ripping his mouth away from the kiss. “We shouldn’t do this! Let’s stop.”
