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The King’s head snapped to him, eyes narrowing. “What’s ‘perfect’?”
“He wants me,” Salas explained. “He wants a boon, Your Grace.” Salas shook his head, nearly disappointed that the King had missed something so obvious, that he hadn’t been able to formulate the clear solution himself. “He asked for an offer. You can offer me to sleep with him for a night, so your terms will be met.”
A moment of silence passed, and finally the King moved to stand before Salas, his eyes dark and flat. “Sleep with you?” The King wondered, using the same dispassionate tone as before. “Is that how you think this war will be won? By spreading your legs?”
Salas swallowed, unable to find a response to the blatant questions. He found he suddenly doubted himself, as had the moment he had entered the room and seen the King’s expression. As he seemed to always doubt himself, now, under the King’s cold, hard judgment and he could never, ever anticipate correctly.
“A palace whore can’t sway politics,” the King said, in that same dead tone that Salas had come to hate.
Salas could take no more of it, and before he could utter something himself, like a shameful sob, and before the King could see his tears, or have the man see him break down entirely, he ran from the room.
Chapter Fourteen
Salas raced through the halls nearly blindly, taking the quieter corridors in his haste to escape, having no desire to have others react to his blatant distress.
It wasn’t until he reached the archway entrance to the library did he realize where his feet had taken him. He wasn’t sure why he had gravitated to a location the King frequented, as the man had been the perpetrator of his current distress. Yet there he was, within the folds of the towering shelves, flying onto the chair Jareth sometimes sat in.
He curled up there, wanting his mind to place itself anywhere out of the space it had been through the last ten minutes, yet unable to find another place for it.
To be honest, he didn’t know what he had been expecting from Jareth, yet deep down in a place he didn’t fully understand within himself, he had been expectingsomethingfrom the King. Something more. Something he hadn’t felt before that frightened, excited, and indulged him all at once.
To find out that in reality, King Jareth still thought so little of him, was a kind of devastation he was unprepared to house.
A palace whore can’t sway politics.
Perhaps he never could. Perhaps Jareth had been right. Perhaps all the swift instances where he felt powerful, intelligent, and in control back in Suscon had been some horrible illusion fabricated by the Emperor. Perhaps every time Salas had planned a festival or swayed a politician had been some sort of secret joke, and they had all been giggling at his ridiculousness behind cupped hands. He must have been such a joke to them all.
His tormented peace was disturbed by a great, looming figure approaching like a storm. It was the King, of course.
Salas turned away in the great armchair, shunning the new presence completely, willing it to go away. He understood that this was perhaps his default response to situations he did not know how to deal with, and yet he did not have the reserves of willpower to face it head-on.
The presence continued to persist.
When there was a shift of movement, Salas dared a glance over. The King had lowered himself to kneel before him.
“Salas,” he said gently, taking Salas’ limp hand and holding it between the two vast palms of his own, “forgive me.”
“For what?” Salas questioned mildly, with no inflection, his eyes anywhere but the King. “It was a fair assessment of my character. I’m a stupid little whore.”
“No,” the King said firmly. There was no desperation in his tone, only an absolute firmness that made the voices of negativity and disdain inside Salas waver. “That is not what you are, and that is not what I meant. You must know that, Salas.”
“I do not,” Salas retorted back, unable to resist turning his full attention now towards the King, who was still kneeling before him, cradling his hand as though he were begging some great divinity for a single blessing. And Salas did not pull away. “I constantly do things that you do not like, and you consistently…make me confused. I do not understand what you want, though I have tried. All I have done has been in an attempt to give you that!”
“I believe that,” the King sighed, with a heavy tiredness that made Salas believe he had come to more conclusions about Salas than he was letting on. “But I’ve told you that the Susconian birds are free, Salas, and I meant it. No more sexual favors. Not to anyone, even me. That is why I lost my temper when you made the offer. It is because you no longer have that burden, and I wish you could see that.”
Salas frowned at him, once more conflicted. “So you do not wish to be romantic with me.”
“I do wish to be romantic with you.”
Now it was Salas’ turn to sigh, shaking his head as though Jareth were a difficult child he did not know what to do with. “You are a strange man.”
“Maybe. Tell me. Why is it so important to you that you serve others? Do you miss your role in Suscon that much?”
“A little,” Salas answered truthfully. “Because I understood it. Here, I…I’m lost. Eldron, he…he gave me everything, when I had nothing. That is a moment that one does not easily forget.”
The King jostled his hand a bit, as though to keep him grounded. “You never did speak on that. You came from the Faeland Forest.” It was a statement, though Salas could hear the question behind it.
“Nothing to everything,” Salas simply repeated, his mind lost in the hazy, distant memories of dappled light through the canopies of forest trees shedding just enough light to make the sharp, bloodied teeth of the fae glisten. The cruelty. The nothingness that followed. “I did not belong there. And yet I endured it. I sat upon the stump of a great oak, believing that that was all there was, and time slipped by. I would still be sitting there today if Emperor Eldron had not passed by.” Salas paused to remove his hand from Jareth’s grip, wiping his eyes that had, at some point, moistened until they were overflowing. “A hundred years passed, Jareth. I’d never learned how to really speak, never to read or write, never had real experiences… There was just this emptiness inside of me. I was nothing, and like I said, Eldron came, and he fixed me.”
