Chapter 3
Bayaden leaves for a meeting with his father and I use the opportunity to tidy up his chambers. Problem is, without Bayaden to distract me, I’m alone with my thoughts and things creep back, like the doubts I’ve shoved away.
Diekin. Did he really make it out? Or was he taken away and killed? I didn’t demand any sort of proof; I took Andothair’s word for it.
Further back, I remember my beautiful hair, lifeless on the ground, my wrists and ankles shackled as Diekin was taken away to the prison for the first time. I stared at it and while I hated that it was gone, I felt another feeling I didn’t like.
Freedom.
It’s odd for a slave to feel free at the time of their imprisonment. I buried that feeling first, but it manifested anyway.
“You have no intention of returning to Mortouge, Warlord. I know this,” Diekin had said.
He was right. Eventually I’d bartered for Diekin’s release, but I didn’t even try to barter for my own.
I told myself there was no hope for my release and I wasn’t wrong, but that I didn’t even try to, said something about me I had to think about.
“No. I already told you,” I’d said to Diekin. “I can never face Corrik or Mortouge again. I can only hope I can save Mortouge and that they will still hold alliance with Markaytia.”
Ha! If I had a noble cause, then my actions were still good by my old morals. But I was only fooling myself. I know Diekin didn’t believe me, even if he tried reasoning with me. I acted selfishly. I was not thinking of my homeland, or the kingdom I was meant to serve, only myself.
My heart chose for me, even if it was heavy with betrayal.
I betrayed everyone for this slice of happiness. That I am a prisoner seems to make up for everything, at least it did, but when I remember—something I choose not to do—it makes less sense to me.
But when I look at Bayaden, it all makes sense again.
When he returns, he knows something’s up. “What’s wrong with you?”
The Elf is as rough as they come. Even being pressed up against him can be a callous experience, but so is sandpaper and what’s beneath it comes out smooth—that’s what Bayaden does to me, smoothens me with his roughness. “Do you remember what you first said to your brother about me?”
He smirks, remembering.
I try my best at an impression of his deep voice when it’s most irritated and I use Markaytian like he did that day so I would hear him insulting me. “What is this creature? It’s absolutely hideous. He looks like something the sea washed in.”
“To be fair, the sea had just washed you in. Hadn’t you come from a boat my brother destroyed?”
“I’ll not stick my cock anywhere near that thing,” I continue. “It’s probably riddled with fleas.”
He still won’t admit to his treachery. “You were a scraggly ragamuffin. I had every right to exercise caution.”
He moves closer to me and takes over. Bayaden has a wide frame like you’d expect an Elven Warlord to have.
He’s dark-haired with coppery skin, more like mine.
Andothair has a sandy hue of brown to his skin, but he’s not tanned like Baya.
It’s testament to the long days Baya’s spent out in sun, much like I had once upon a time and so he’s several shades darker than Andothair with a pink hue.
His skin isn’t weathered of course, seeing as he’s an Elf—their skin forever remains youthful-perfection and not even the sun can age it before its time.
But his eyes are what always get me, they are primal, dark menaces.
“I had you bathed and unsheathed your glorious beauty quickly if I remember.”
“Not before your guards imprisoned me and whipped me nearly to death.”
“You were not whipped nearly to death.” No, I wasn’t, but still. “I came to retrieve you, didn’t I?”
I laugh. “You weren’t happy about it.”
When he set his black eyes on me that day, I wanted to run back into the cold cell and stay there. I was sure he would finish the job the guard began.
“No, but would you have been in my position? Andothair was breathing down my neck more that day than usual and then I was called to fetch my unwanted, disobedient manservant.”
“Your fault. If you’d have just given me this in the first place, all of that could have been avoided.”
I rest my hand on the collar at my throat.
It’s thick, black leather and has a tag with Bayaden’s Warlord’s insignia and a pendant from the house Tar Jian.
I’d tried to convince the guard that I belonged to Baya in a desperate attempt to get out of the dank place—the smell of rotting flesh and the sound of painful moans get to anyone after a time—but the guard didn’t believe me.
“Right, and I’m king of the ninth realm,” the guard had said because it was unbelievable. I didn’t know it at the time, but Bayaden had never had a manservant before me and telling the guard he suddenly had one, was as believable as talking frogs.
Even when I had the pendant, not everyone cared about it at first, but once they knew I was Bayaden’s manservant, they eventually left me alone.
Never stopped looking upon me with contempt, but they didn’t apprehend me.
Before that, there were a few times Baya was forced to retrieve me from the Aldrien dungeons and I was grateful for my father’s harsh ways, preparing me for such an experience.
“Tell me, what fun would that have been? Besides, you would have learned nothing. You, my little human, need a firm hand.”
I can’t deny it. “So, are you going to tell me why you were a jealous idiot earlier?”
He hardens. “No.”
I look at the ground.
“Tristan, I’m sorry. Please don’t do that. I don’t want to talk about it because I don’t want to say his name.”
His name is already on my tongue, so I do it for him. Only now there’s a discussion, which brings him sentience. “Corrik.”
“Yes.”
“Corrik is an ex-boyfriend. The past. You said so yourself that in time he will be but a memory.”
“I was wrong. When Elves are connected to someone, like in the way you and I are—”
“—the loyalty bond?”
“No Tristan, I mean through here,” he says putting his hand over my heart. “We can sense the other. Your heart still reaches out to him, even if your head does not. It’s subconscious. I don’t think you realize it’s happening.”
I tear up. “No. But I love you.”
He smiles all the way to his eyes. “You do. It’s possible to have more than one love. I know this. Your love for him does not change your love for me.”
Elves are this way. More are polyamorous than not, but it is not something that I as a Markaytian am used to even though I suspect more and more that I too am this way.
I love the way Bayaden’s so sure. Would Corrik say the same though? I recall how possessive he was. I’m not sure he could understand my love for Bayaden, despite what Diekin’s said, despite the usual nature of Elves.
Because I don’t think Corrik falls into any of the usual boxes.
He’s different from them all and sometimes I wonder if it was his mysteriousness I loved more than him—I was always a sucker for adventure, especially dangerous adventure and it didn’t take long to figure out Corrik was both those things.
“Then why can’t you say his name?”
“I told you, idiotic jealousy. We Elves can’t help it from time to time.”
They can’t. It’s irrational. It’s also not the first time this has come up; it’s just that the last time was a long time ago.
Bayaden spins me around and smacks my arse. “Hey!”
“Get back to work. I won’t have you shirking your duties.”
“But I thought we were talking.” In other words, I thought we were leading our way up to sex. He knows. I glare at him.
“Pout all you want. Get to work.”
I try to stay mad and it should be easy for me, but it’s hard when his authoritative voice soothes me so damn much. “Yes, your liege.” I’m a sarcastic little fuck.
“You can do it with a sore bottom, and if I get anymore lip from you, that’s what’s going to happen.” His right ear rises in time with his brow.
That only relaxes me further and I have the choice at this point, continue my snark and definitely get spanked, or be a good boy and maybe get spanked. “I’ll behave myself, sir.”
And I do, for now.
Ioften marvel at Baya when he’s asleep. His lids close sweetly, his breathing peaceful, none of the heaviness of his Warlord’s day to mar him. Even in sleep he exudes magnificence. How can something so rough be so smooth at the same time?
Corrik wasn’t rough at all. Corrik was sharp and nothing sharp can be rough.
Sharpness exacts, it carves and polishes.
Corrik had his vision of me and he thought he could bring me into his life and carve me into what he foresaw.
He didn’t expect to have to do any work, Gods forbid he had to understand me.
Perhaps it’s Elven sex magic and I don’t love him at all. Maybe that’s what Bayaden feels when he says my heart reaches out?
I move to climb off the bed, but a large hand snatches me back. “Go to sleep, Tristan,” he says in his booming voice that is extra-loud against the quiet of the night.
“But I—”
“—okay that’s it. I knew I should have done this earlier.”
He uses his arm as a vice to hold me against him and spanks my bare arse with his mammoth hand. I can’t move, at least not to go anywhere, and can only kick my legs and brace myself against him. “Owww! Baya, please.”
“No. You’ll take it, Tristan.” As he talks, he spanks never missing a beat, while I grimace and pant, my backside throbs. “C’mon let go and take it. You’ve needed this all day.”
I try. But it hurts. That’s why pain—odd as it might seem from the outside—gets a spankee like myself to a new place.
Pain is something you cannot overcome. It’s an experience, and it’s there and you have to deal with it.
You have to surrender to the pain and let go to free your body of what it’s holding onto.
You do this with your mind.