Chapter 1 #5
I eyed the guard holding Pip, cocking my head to the side and raising the crossbow to let him know I wasn’t fucking about, and he released him with a growl of rage.
The boy stumbled towards me, his eyes glimmering with gratitude as he tried to wipe the blood from his nose. I tossed him the hunk of bread I hadn’t managed to finish and he caught it as he moved to my side.
“Tell Balthazar I hid it and if they want it, they’re gonna have to get me out,” I muttered, low enough for my words to stay between the two of us alone.
I could see which way this was going to go down.
I liked to think I held enough value to Egos and the rest of The Forty for them to come get me without the need for me to use the loot as a bargaining chip, but I wasn’t a man to take stupid risks with my own life.
Sure, I’d gamble with other people’s lives, but not my own.
I happened to like living, no matter how shit I had it, there was always a fight to be had or a woman to steal pleasure with, something to bring a spark of brightness into the hard reality of being born lower in Osaria, and I had big plans to claim a whole lot more than that one of these days.
“I’m not leaving you here-” Pip began, but I cut him off.
“Get out of here, you idiot. The Forty will come for me, but they’d leave you to rot. Just tell Balthazar I hid it all,” I insisted, knowing our time here was running short.
The guards were still eyeing us angrily and it was clear we wouldn’t both be able to escape them. And if reinforcements showed up then that really would be the end of it. He had to go now.
“But-”
I aimed a kick at Pip’s arse and he yelped as he gave in and finally darted away from me.
“What now, low life?” the captain growled as he closed ranks with the other two guards.
I could see my death in his eyes, and I knew he was just looking for an excuse to strike.
I’d heard plenty of tales about the brutality of the Captain of the Royal Guard to know that he would take great pleasure in gutting me if he could, and I was pretty attached to my intestines so I didn’t want them making their way outside of my body.
The city bells were still ringing and reinforcements would be here at any moment.
I looked left and right, trying to figure out a way to get out of this which didn’t end with me being tossed in the dungeons, but the prospect seemed fairly bleak.
I was fucked. I knew it. The arsehole guards knew it.
Hell, even pretty Perdu with her lips still buzzing from my kiss knew it.
But it just wasn’t in me to go down easy.
“Well,” I hedged as I started backing up. “We could put this down to a big misunderstanding and you could let me go?”
I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that Pip had made it out onto the street and my heart settled a little as he disappeared into the shadows. This city was like a rabbit warren of roads, alleyways and forgotten passages, and that was before you even got close to the slums.
By the time he hit the shanty towns and ramshackle maze of buildings and lean-tos out there, they’d never find him.
He’d make it back to The Den. And if I couldn’t get myself out of this shit then I knew the others would come for me.
Balthazar had seen those jewels. And I was worth the effort even without adding them to the deal.
But I’d rather not get caught if I could avoid it.
Egos was gonna be mad enough with me as it was.
He wouldn’t see my protection of the kid as anything other than weakness, and I was not so secretly hoping that Pip would fail to mention my dumbass heroics to anyone.
Heroes weren’t something to aspire to where I came from.
Only villains prospered among the dirt and dregs of the lower Fae, and I was the most villainous of them all.
“How about you surrender and we won’t kill you?” Captain Marik snarled in response, his thick jaw grinding as he worked to contain himself while I kept the crossbow aimed firmly at him.
“I want him dead!” the count interrupted, pointing at me from the position he’d taken up hiding behind the guards. For all of his pomp and bluster, he looked like he might shit himself if I so much as gnashed my teeth at him. “This man defiled my wife! My beautiful flower! He forced her to-”
“That wasn’t me,” I said firmly, repressing a shudder at the idea and refusing to have my name tarred with that less than desirable brush. “Have you taken a good look at me? I could do a lot better than her - she should need a licence to be that ugly.”
The count shrieked in outrage, making a show of raising his fists at me, but he made no real attempt to pass the guards and his pathetic show only made me sneer in contempt.
“You’re pretty full of yourself for a common criminal,” Captain Marik growled, taking a step towards me.
I lined the crossbow up with his heart, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to shoot. Stealing some jewels and beating on a guard would get me thrown in the dungeons, but killing the Captain of the Royal Guard? I’d be lucky if they didn’t execute me here and now.
“There’s nothing common about me and I can’t help the way I look.
I’m just insanely attractive,” I said, grinning at him in a way that I could tell was only pissing him off more.
And I guessed with a face like his, jealousy was probably rearing its ugly head too.
“It’s really just my face though. And my body. And my personality-”
The captain roared a challenge as he launched himself at me and I fired the crossbow over his shoulder, an arrow slamming into the door behind him and making him flinch. He threw himself aside like I’d hoped he would and I turned to flee.
But before I could take two steps, the guard I thought I’d knocked out cold lurched forward and snared my legs in his beefy arms.
I swore loudly as I collided with the ground and the taste of blood filled my mouth as I bit my tongue on impact.
The arsehole threw his weight on top of me while I was still recovering from the takedown and I instantly started struggling, kicking, biting, punching, going for his fucking balls too, because there was nothing I wouldn’t do to get out of this.
But in the few moments I had to spend fighting for my freedom, all four guards landed on me and crushed me to the cobblestones with brute force and more than a little mocking laughter.
They yanked my arms behind my back and I cursed as heavy manacles encircled my wrists, snapping closed and making bile rise in my throat as the iron made contact with my skin.
I felt the effects of the metal on my body almost instantly, a weight seeming to grow in the pit of my stomach and my limbs feeling leaden as the foul metal sapped the strength right out of me.
The guards dragged me to my knees while I fought off the urge to puke and I scowled up at Captain Marik as he looked down at me with a triumphant grin and a flash of cruelty in his eyes which said he was going to enjoy every moment he could with me beneath his heel like this.
He really was abnormally tall, like a scarrion beast had had a night of passion with a tree and gave birth to this ridiculously huge specimen.
“I guess you’re about to find out what happens to pretty boys in the dungeons.
I hear that men with faces like yours are all kinds of popular.
Perhaps I’ll stay after my shift and listen for your screams to colour the night air,” he taunted as the other guards began to drag me away and I spat a wad of blood from my mouth while I struggled to get to my feet.
I tried to fight against the iron manacles which held me, but with the taint of the iron infecting every drop of Fae blood running in my veins, it was no use.
I huffed out a breath as I was forced to accept my situation, rolling my shoulders back and preparing for my next move as I let them tow me along between them.
It looked like I’d be heading straight to the royal dungeons to await rescue from Balthazar and the rest of The Forty Thieves.
No doubt they’d let me rot a while out of spite before coming too.
Egos was going to be as angry as a cat in a vat of piss, and I only had to hope that the mean old bastard wouldn’t take his rage out on me for too long.
I could kiss goodbye to any cut I should have gained from this job for a start, and no doubt he’d be forcing me to fight in the pit repeatedly over the coming weeks.
If I was really unlucky, he might even nail me to the wall with iron spikes for the night and let the others hurl insults and shit my way to teach me a lesson.
Fuck that. But I’d seen him do it to others before and I couldn’t count it out.
I just had to hope that the value of those jewels I’d lifted would be enough to save me from the worst of it.
That’s what I got for trying to be the good guy for once.
Anger at myself, my situation, my life and Pip ate into me as I walked, and I forced myself not to think too much about the reality of being locked in a small space for the foreseeable future or the memories that reality was sure to stir in me.
It wasn’t like that. Nothing compared to the hell of what I’d once survived.
But as I was dragged towards incarceration in payment for my attempts to help another Fae out of trouble, I was reminded of precisely why I’d sworn never to do anything that fucking idiotic for anyone other than myself.
And I sure as fuck wouldn’t be making that mistake again.