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Salas heard a breathy laugh. “Perfect. I knew it would be you.” The man pulled back, enough to stare down into Salas’ face as he distanced himself. “Jovack, the future King of Suscon, asked me to look for you. He said to look for the prettiest bird with poppy-red hair. There could only be one.” He paused, his grin widening. “Jovack has a message for you, Salas.”
Chapter Sixteen
With his laboring breath wheezing out onto the Malthenian’s shoulder, Salas felt his spine stiffen and his stomach twist into that dreaded, painful knot that he had been feeling more and more frequently, this time brought about by hearing the name of the man that he had left in Suscon. ‘Jovack’ was the name that did it again.
But this dark magic in him had spread, now, branching out to reach places beyond just the core of his stomach. With dead fingertips, the magic brushed his beating heart, and it stopped.
Salas clenched his chest, gasping, as the delicate organs inside of him gave out. His vision blurred, creating a dark vignette around the face of the Malthenian man who was here, it seemed, to ruin Salas.
The name repeated in his head.Jovack.
But then the music in the air picked up pace, the bodies around him swaying in time, and time went on. The magic in him, holding Salas hostage, retreated to a faint, numbing pain. The pain was in the background of his thoughts, now, but it was here to stay.
Heart beating again, Salas straightened, wiping his watered eyes and turning to retreat from not just the man, but the entire party. He didn’t want to be approached and his poor state questioned. He didn’t want the King to notice something was wrong.
The Malthenian, of course, followed him out of the grand mess hall and into the lonely corridor just beyond.
Salas turned, once blocked by stone walls from prying ears, to the man. “Alright. What did Jovack have to say?”
The man leveled a gaze down at him, surprisingly tall for someone who was not of Diagor. The Malthenian yellow tunic he wore was so soiled it appeared brown in the dim light. Unshaven, his hair was slick and unkempt, as though he had known that a party would be thrown to entertain him, yet wanted to insult it by presenting a poor appearance. Luckily, no one seemed to notice the man enough to care.
When the man took a step forward, Salas didn’t mean to take a step back, yet his traitorous body was determined to prove him a coward when his back pressed against the wall. With the man so close, he had to crane his head up to make sure their eyes met.
“Now that won’t do,” the man said slowly, shaking his head as though Salas had disappointed him. “I come all this way to see you, and I can’t even get a proper thanks?” His breath was sour on Salas’ face.. “With the praise I’ve heard about what you keep between your legs, I was thinking you’d want to live up to the hype and let me have a look at you, sweetheart.” His low voice had turned into a dark grumble that made the hair’s on Salas neck stand up and ignited his fight or flight response.
But Salas did neither. Instead, he could only stand frozen as he shook his head, the vision of King Jareth appearing in his mind.
A while ago, he would have done his duty in doing what this man asked of him, offering himself up as though he were a menu item, a form of entertainment with a single purpose. But then he remembered the night in the lower dungeon in which the guard had visited him, and how odd and off it had felt, even though his inner voice had tried to reason with him at the time that what he was doing was the appropriate course of action, having the guard’s cock down his throat.
But then he remembered his conversation with the King, and the way that Jareth had tried to press upon him something very important:You don’t have to do that anymore, he had said.
Two parts of him were at war with one another, his old self, and the one King Jareth thought he could be. He felt the strangeoff-nessnow, but he remembered Jareth’s promise. He wouldn’t be allowing sexual favors.
The moment he internally included this, a strange relief fell over him, and finally, he managed to step further back, placing distance between himself and the Malthenian. “What I have between my legs is very pretty, I assure you,” Salas said with a small smile. “But you won’t be seeing it.”
The man’s lip curled and he seemed ready to advance towards him, but when voices drifted in from the hall behind him, he seemed to think better of it.
Salas crossed his arms. “Say what you came to say.”
“You’ve been in Diagor for too long,” the man said softly. “Forget how to loosen up, did you?”
“Not loose at all. Quite tight, actually,” Salas purred. It was decidedly unwise to taunt the obviously pent-up man in front of him, like dangling peppered steak in front of a ravenous wolf, yet wisdom was perhaps not his strong suit. Before the man could retort, he asked once more, “Say what you came to say.” Louder, this time.
The man spat against the stone hall, as though he were in a hay field and not the confines of a castle. He finally stepped back, rolling his eyes. “Fine. It’s not like I won’t get a taste, later.”
Salas swallowed. “What do you mean?”
“When you return to Suscon.”
Salas stilled, his eyes widening as he took in these ludicrous assumptions that he couldn’t puzzle the origins for. “I’m not returning to Suscon.”
The man chuckled darkly, giving a low shrug. “That’s what I came here to tell you, sweetheart. There’s your words from Jovack.”
“...I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. Just like everyone has everything to say about your tight little hole, they also have everything to say about that empty head of yours.” He paused, speaking mockingly slower as to appear to assist with Salas comprehension. “Jovack brings word that you’re to come to him in Suscon like a good little bird. Otherwise, the next country Malthens takes over will be Diagor.”
Heart hammering, Salas shook his head rapidly, denying this request in full. “Malthenians…they don’t want Diagor! And you won’t win the battle in Suscon! You don’t know how strong the Diagorian beasts are, they—”
