The Price of Freedom (Heirs of the Empire #2)

31. Elric

31

ELRIC

T he White Watch is on a course to Attar. It would only be a few days’ journey by sea from Lunatum if they went along the straits between Pluma-Ferris and Azuria, but Opeth declares they should take a longer route, through the South Mortingale sea. For safety and also because there is much to discuss and plan before they arrive.

This suits Elric fine. He is in no rush to return to Attar. The irony that after all his efforts to escape the Jewel of the Empire he has found himself on a ship travelling back there, is not lost on him.

But it’s of little concern most of the time. Lukas and Elric have a small cabin towards the back of the ship. Not a fine one, but the ship is quite small and the better ones were already occupied.

Elric doesn’t mind it at all. The cabin is big enough and has a bed that he shares with Lukas. For the first few days of the voyage, that is where they spend most of their time.

Not only buried in pleasure, although there is plenty of that. They also lie together sweetly. Elric holds Lukas, cooing soft things in his ear as he stares open-eyed at the cabin’s polished wood ceiling, letting his mind catch up with all that has happened.

Lukas spends time with Damon too. Learning to use his sword in his left hand. His skills with it are already surprising everyone. He has even come close to beating Damon once or twice. Something that Lukas tells Elric, he was never able to do before the Blue Blade, even with his right hand.

On the day Lukas bests Damon for the first time, the sun is blisteringly hot. Elric is sitting with Lyr on deck, watching the fight, cheering and laughing. When Lukas gets Damon on his back foot, driving him across the deck with slash after slash, Elric grabs Lyr’s hand in excitement. Lyr gasps and Elric says, “My bastard is going to beat your bastard.”

Which makes Lyr laugh with delight.

Trysta, watching on Lyr’s other side says, “I think you are right, son of Lord Harwin Underlia.”

A moment later it happens. Lukas’s blade is at Damon’s throat.

“Yield?” Lukas says.

“I yield,” Damon replies, bluntly.

Lukas turns and grins at Elric. Elric jumps up and runs over, runs into Lukas’s arms and Lukas kisses him. “You bring me luck, Lordling,” Lukas says against Elric’s cheek. He looks at Damon. “I’ve never bested you before,” he says.

Damon picks up his sword. “Of course. I am a weaker fighter since I took that lashing. My back has never been as strong.”

“Oh, really?” says Lukas. “Did you suffer an injury that affected your ability to fight? Whatever could that be like?”

All of them sit in the galley for hours in the evenings. Damon and Lukas, Elric and Lyr, Trysta and Opeth and Razelii, discussing all they know. Talking of Vindar and of the Rose Court and of Perl and Ur-Durik. Trying to unravel the truth of the strange events they are all caught up in.

The evening after the fight where Lukas bested Damon, Lyr asks Elric if he can read what it says on his chest and when he admits that he can, Lyr says, “How about my back?”

As Lyr turns to show Elric the tiny runes that cover his back from his shoulders down to the top of his ass, Lukas slides closer on Elric’s other side. He touches Elric’s shoulder lightly with the point of his hook, tracing it across until it rests on the sensitive skin where Elric’s neck and shoulder join. Cool and sharp.

“I don’t know much, but I can sound the letters out,” Elric says as he looks at Lyr’s back. There are so many tiny, intricate runes. He traces a finger across Lyr’s shoulder, aware of Damon watching him jealously. Elric is sure Damon would prefer that no one but him touch Lyr’s skin.

As Elric touches Lyr, Damon puts his big hands on Lyr’s waist. The passion that burns between them is clear every time they touch. Lyr is so slight and delicate, but he clearly owns the heart of his Master, Damon Darekul, a beautiful giant of a man.

Elric glances at Damon over Lyr’s shoulder and he nods that he ought to continue. Elric looks back at the runes. “If they had flogged you instead of Damon,” Elric says, “They would have destroyed all that was written here.”

Seeing Damon and Lyr together makes Elric feel differently about that day he saw Damon whipped on the punishment scaffold in Attar. When he watched it happen, he didn’t know what he was truly seeing. Although he finds it hard to believe he didn’t understand it before. Damon gave his skin for Lyr, risked his life. It’s impossible now for Elric not to see it as anything other than the greatest gesture of pure love. Something that the Darek Bastards seem to be prone to.

Lyr looks back at Elric over his shoulder. There is a strange light in his eyes that suggests he too is remembering the sight of Damon on that punishment scaffold. But when he speaks his voice is level. “We need to discover what they mean,” Lyr says. “What messages her Gods sent her. We know they are about Damon. Perhaps they are about the five fae princes.”

Despite Damon’s heavy gaze on him, Elric leans closer to peer at the tiny runes. They seem to blur into each other in places. He wrinkles his brow. “I do not think I have the skill but…” He pauses. “This, here, cel and elm . It might say, Selim. Would Selim be written here?”

“I was told once that it said Selim somewhere,” Lyr says.

Elric peers closer. The shapes are tiny. They seem to shiver on Lyr’s skin. This is magic, Elric thinks, real magic. The only way these marks could have been placed here is by magic. “And here,” he points. “Ur-Durik, like the statue in the luxoli house, although,” he glances at Lukas then back to Lyr and Damon. “Ur-Durik and Darekul are very similar in Ur-Ambolk. The flick for Ur and the one for Ul are almost the same.”

“What does that mean?” says Damon. His voice sounds heavy.

“The Darekuls are demons,” says Lukas, lightly behind Elric. Elric looks around at him. He has a bright grin on his face, suggesting that he thinks Elric would enjoy the idea of a demon in his bed.

As Elric looks at Lukas, he hears laughter behind him. He turns to see it’s Damon. Damon Darekul. The One Man Army. Laughing.

Elric has been doing his best not to be overwhelmed by being on a ship with Damon Darekul. Being on Damon’s ship. When they first met, Damon had generously behaved as if he remembered Elric from the Rose Palace. But Elric is sure he doesn’t. Not really. Elric made one suggestive remark to Damon about how he’d begged his father to offer Damon his services for bed-warming. And Damon had simply said something about being away at war. It had probably not been the right thing to say. But Lukas had found it, and Damon’s measured reaction, hilarious.

Ever since then, Elric has been a bit wary of Damon. Worried he has somehow offended the greatest warrior the Azurian Empire had ever seen. But now, seeing Damon laughing, Elric says, “I never thought I’d see you laugh.”

Damon looks at Elric with his green eyes still dancing. “When you knew of me at the Rose Palace, I didn’t laugh. Not often. But now, with my lover and my brother and my friends. I laugh.” He leans in and kisses Lyr on the neck.

Lyr pushes Damon back. He’s laughing too now and turns to look at Elric over his shoulder. “Darekul and Ur-Durik. What is that connection?”

Elric nods. “I wonder if it has something to do with the statue.” He looks around at Lukas. “Remember the statue you showed me in the luxoli house? It said, below it Ur-Durik. In Ur-Ambolk.”

Lukas nods. “I remember, Lordling.”

Elric turns to look at Lyr’s back again. “I was sure it said Ur-Durik. I suppose it could have said Darekul.”

“What did this statue look like?” says Damon.

“It looked like… Have you been in Selim’s private shrine at the Rose Palace?”

“I have,” Damon nods.

“It looked like the statues Selim has in there. The War Gods of Zai.”

Lyr is looking back at Elric again, frowning. “The statues of Zai look like a statue you saw that was called Ur-Durik?”

Elric nods.

“You know something?” Damon says to Lyr. “Something the witch told you.”

But all Lyr says is, “Perhaps. But we need to read the rest. You need to tell me what it all says.”

Elric looks back at the tiny runes, but it is impossible. “I do not have the skills to understand this. But the man who taught me these letters, he is in Attar. He is an acolyte of Zai. He is called the Hare. He taught me the letter sounds but he knows the language and much more besides. He could read this.”

“So we do need the Hare,” Lyr says to Damon.

“He knew a great deal about the History of Azuria,” says Damon. “When we reach Attar, we will find him.”

“Oh good,” says Trysta, who is feeding Marko scraps of yellow cheese from her plate. “I like the Hare.”

When they return to their cabin, Lukas says, “There’s something I want to show you?”

“I hope you don’t have some strange marks etched onto your body that you want me to try and translate,” says Elric, his eyes still ache a little from peering at Lyr’s back in the candlelit galley.

Lukas closes the cabin door. “You don’t think you might have noticed if I had.”

Elric stands in the middle of the cabin. Lukas crosses to him, as Elric says, “Perhaps I should check anyway. Perhaps you should strip yourself bare in case you have some Old Magaar somewhere.” As he speaks the thought of what he is suggesting makes Elric burn. He will never tire of seeing Lukas naked.

“What I have to show you, Lordling,” Lukas says, reaching into his belt pouch, “is of far less importance than the runes on Lyr’s body. But I think you will like to see it nonetheless. It’s this.” He draws something out. A piece of white leather curled on his palm.

Elric takes it. “What is this?”

“Don’t you know?” Lukas smiles. “It was in my room in the luxoli house.”

Elric realises what Lukas holds with a gasp. A strip of white leather. “It’s a cuff for pillow working at the Exiled Emperor.” Elric holds it by one end and it unfurls. A simple strip with a string to tie it.

Lukas kisses Elric behind the ear. “I thought perhaps you’d like to put it on? My concubine.”

“You want me to play the whore for you?” Elric says, a little breathless as he presses close to Lukas, his cock stirring in his breeches.

“Thought you might miss your old ways,” says Lukas sweetly.

Elric turns the band over in his fingers. “Perhaps, but, this is yours. You were the whore in the Exiled Emperor, not me. They turned me down, remember?” Elric holds the cuff out to Lukas. “How about you be the whore and I be the fine lord?”

Lukas takes the cuff, but he says, “Aren’t you the finest sly concubine in the Rose Palace?”

“I am that, Bastard, but I still think I’d rather see you wear this. I just can’t imagine you as a whore. I’d like to see it.”

“If you wish, Underlia.” Lukas holds out his left wrist. “I will need your help to put it on, however.”

Elric takes back the cuff and fastens the leather around Lukas’s warm wrist. When it’s done, Lukas draws his arm back and says, “You really can’t imagine it? You can’t imagine me coming up to your table in the Exiled Emperor and saying,” Lukas’s voice drops low and sultry. “So, my Lord, how may I please you tonight to earn my copper penny?”

It’s only play, simple pretend, but the way Lukas says that, with his head tipped down, looking up at Elric through his messy dark hair, makes Elric’s cock twitch in his breeches. Heat builds there, so fast it makes him breathless. “Zai,” he says.

“Well?” Lukas gives Elric a teasing look, “You have to tell me your pleasure. If I am to be your whore.”

Lukas is still the least likely whore Elric has ever met, but the idea still makes him burn. “My pleasure?” Elric thinks. “What did you sell?”

“I told you once. I sold everything I had but that mirror. I sold my mouth, my hole, my cock.”

Lukas’s cock, Elric thinks with a great shiver of pleasure. “Would you think me strange if all I wanted was for you to fuck me hard like an outlaw with his kidnapped prize?”

“Not at all,” says Lukas. “I’d think you a man who knows his desires. Lie back, Underlia, let me give you what you wish.”

Elric wastes no time in stripping out of his breeches and shirt and spreading himself on the cabin’s small bed. It's a narrow wooden cot, but truly Elric enjoys the way it forces them to sleep entwined together.

Lukas looks down at Elric on the bed. He’s removed his shirt, revealing the straps of his harness. “Zai’s hole, the sight of you, Lordling,” he says, breathily as he pulls off his breeches.

Elric tips his head back against the bed’s small firm pillow. He squirms with delight. “Then fuck me, my bastard whore,” he says.

Lukas grins as he climbs onto the bed, crouching between Elric’s spread legs. He curls down, dropping kisses on Elric’s thighs, before he drops lower.

Elric squeals out in shock as he feels Lukas’s tongue dragging soft and wet over his hole. Between his legs, Lukas chuckles, as he does it again. His laughter vibrates against Elric’s skin. It feels like pure pleasure. Lukas lifts his head, “I must prepare you, Sire. So you can delight in your whore’s cock fucking you so hard you scream and spend without a hand on you.” Lukas’s voice is cracking with desire as he finishes speaking. He drops a kiss right on Elric’s hole.

Elric groans as Lukas licks, again and again, each lick laying pleasure on top of pleasure. Elric writhes. His mind is blank whiteness. He is coasting on sweet sensation, as Lukas licks him, licks him to screaming.

But he struggles to remember how to speak, because he must, “Bastard,” he moans out, “Bastard Prince, please, I would have you inside me.”

Lukas lifts his head. “So soon, Lordling,” he says, playing an oiled finger over Elric’s greedy hole. “For I could wind my tongue inside you until sunrise.”

“No,” Elric says, choking out the word as Lukas slides his finger inside. “Now, if you please. You are truly terrible at obeying orders. I don’t know how you survived as a whore with so little desire to please.”

Lukas moves, laughing, over Elric. He lifts his hook and strokes it over the side of Elric’s face. “I’m sorry, my Lord. Let me make amends.”

He uses his hand to guide his cock, first to nudge bluntly at Elric’s eager hole and then to slip into it, gliding inside with a long stretch.

Elric moans with wild pleasure. Lukas seats himself deep and pulls back, fucking in and out, gazing at Elric, “I love you, Lordling,” he says in a dark husky tone, rolling his hips in a delicious tease.

Elric finds the breath to say back, “I love you too, Bastard Prince. Now would you please fuck me harder?”

Lukas laughs as he moves. Elric braces himself against the head of the bed as Lukas drives in, fucking Elric long and deep. Hard and merciless.

Like an outlaw with his kidnapped prize.