Chapter 3 #4
I knew he did. Every man in the kingdom wanted to know. Even this worthless, sun-baked turd. And the glint in his eyes might just have been my salvation. At least for a few moments longer.
“I...” He cleared his throat. “Of course not.”
“Seems a shame not to share it. They're going to kill me tomorrow, that secret will die with me.” I glanced towards the closed wooden door across the dark and filthy space, lowering my voice. “No one will know.”
“That's treason,” he snarled.
“I'm a royal guard, I know what treason is and describing her face isn't it. Nowhere in the rulebook does it say a man who looks upon the face of the princess is not allowed to describe it.”
I was lying. And he was lapping it up. It actually did say that in the rulebook. Which I knew as I'd read it back to front during my training more times than I could count. And it wasn't even a book, it was fifty golden scriptures in the royal archives.
“It doesn't?” he breathed and that disgustingly rancid breath of his floated over my face.
“No, it doesn't.” My lips stretched into a smile even though my wounds were screaming, setting off alarm bells in my head.
Maybe I have sepsis. I am definitely going to get some sort of an infection from this man and his unwashed tools of pain and death if I haven’t already.
What does it matter? I’ll be dead tomorrow morning.
Fuck.
“Go on then,” he whispered and there it was.
My bargaining chip. Men were fickle. Especially when it came to women.
Not me. The only thing I cared about enough to betray all of my morals for was the kingdom itself.
Moment of madness or not, I would never truly have acted on those carnal urges in me the second I’d seen her.
The princess wasn’t for me for endless reasons, even if she hadn’t been royalty and the most coveted girl in the land, she was also far too young for me and held a thousand times my worth.
I may have formed something of a fixation on her, but so had most of the men in Osaria.
So what really made me any different from them?
The fact that I’d gut every one of them who dared lay a finger on her.
“She has eyes like the deepest, darkest night you ever saw.” She actually had amber eyes which were so big I'd spent most of that stolen moment not looking at anything else. “Her lips are as small and as delicate as a summer rose.” Lie. They were full and wide, and fuck had they made me want to know what they felt like on my flesh. I’d have died a happy man if I could have had just one raw, indecent kiss from that mouth.
But this creep was not getting that truth to drool over.
He didn't deserve the truth. He'd shoved a hot poker into my flesh a minute ago and whatever version of the princess he was conjuring in his mind was not going to be anything close to reality. “Her skin is utterly unblemished and soft as silk, with not a single mark upon it.” I didn’t mention the long eyelashes which seemed to have been individually painted on by the lost gods themselves – he wasn’t getting a single one of them.
But when you're told your entire life that you're not allowed to know what someone looks like, no matter how much training you’ve had, or how deep the rules have been beaten into you, your mind jumps into top gear committing that face to memory when you see it.
So I almost counted them. I reached six before Magdor had ordered my fellow guardsmen to arrest me.
“Go on,” he begged, lowering the spoon-knife in his hand.
“Her nose!” I lamented. “Her nose was the smoothest, straightest nose you ever saw. Like...” I struggled for more words – how do I describe a fucking nose? “Like the slope of a mountain peak, a glistening jewel adorning a perfect face.”
Maybe the iron against my skin was making me delirious because my training had ensured my mind never snagged on a woman for long.
But this one - the damn princess herself - was branded into my skull.
She represented the kingdom, so maybe that was why I couldn’t get her out of my head.
I’d come all over a royal flag once because I was just that much of a royalist – what could I say?
I didn’t get out much. The kingdom was my life and I wasn’t entirely straight edged.
The torturer sighed in satisfaction and I grimaced, sensing I was turning this cretin on, and that disgusted me on so many levels it was unreal.
He lifted the tool again, his eyes darkening to deepest pitch. “At least you have one sweet vision to take with you.” He leaned forward, slamming his palm to my forehead to hold me in place.
I swore through my teeth, thrashing against my shackles as he brought that rusty, blood-crusted spoon-knife up to my face. I was actually more worried about the diseases I was going to get off of that thing when he gouged my eyes out than the act itself.
The door flew open and the torturer halted, turning to see who had entered. I shook my head hard, but he didn't remove his sweaty palm from where it was stamped to my face.
“Back down, Farooq,” a woman called and my bones chilled as I recognised that voice.
Magdor .
The torturer extracted his hand from my forehead and she appeared beyond him, her straight, black hair spilling around her shoulders beneath the silver crown she rarely took off.
She was my empress, but I’d never looked on her as such.
Her deep blue dress hugged her feminine curves, revealing more flesh than was appropriate for a royal, but she didn’t seem to care much for propriety and the emperor was so bewitched by her that he had never stopped her from flaunting her body.
She was flanked by guards wearing the fine blue and white robes of the palace; my own had been torn off of me the moment I'd been taken here. Stripped down and stripped of my rank as a royal guard.
I am made of steel.
Not anymore. I’m just flesh and bone. A man with one last night on earth and nothing to show for it.
I guessed this witch had come to mock me for that fact, though why one criminal was of any interest to her was a mystery to me.
She indicated for her guards and the torturer to leave and they did so without a moment’s hesitation.
Couldn’t they see what she was? Was I the only man in the whole of Osaria with my eyes open to the truth?
I could practically feel the power exuding from her, and it made my spine prickle with hatred.
The door clicked shut as Farooq exited, and Magdor eyed the filthy room distastefully as she made her way towards me.
“Cassius Lazar,” she said, eyeing me coldly.
“Yes, Your Highness?” I asked in my formal tone, pretending we weren't in a blood-stained torture chamber the night before I was going to be executed for my crime.
“Do you know why your eyes are still intact?” she asked, her voice honey sweet.
“No,” I replied, frowning curiously.
“Because I have something to tell you,” she said, a grin pulling at her mouth.
Well get on with it then, you insufferable wench.
Her icy gaze ignited with whatever was on her mind and I waited for her to go on, but she left me hanging, clearly wanting me to ask.
“And what's that?” I prompted.
“You're a dead man,” she whispered. “A ghost. As of tomorrow, you no longer exist.”
Oh joy, she came here to brighten up my day.
“And?” I pressed. The so-called empress sure knew how to talk. She'd spend a whole day circling around the point and never get to it.
“What does a dead man have to lose?” she asked, keeping up the game I was already done with.
“Nothing,” I grit out.
“Precisely,” she said keenly, shifting closer and toying with the neck of her dress. “How do you feel now that you've gazed upon the famed face of the princess?”
I eyed her closely, trying to work out her angle here. She wouldn't have taken a trip from the palace just to rub my worthless face in the fact that I was going to die tomorrow. So it had to be more than that, and I sensed it was time to play the good little repenting guard.
“Remorseful,” I said as fiercely as I could manage.
I’m not remorseful, Magdor. Not even a little bit. Because I know what you're up to, you venomous bitch, and I almost caught you at it. My only regret is that I didn’t accomplish what I started and gain proof of what you are.
“I've tried to think of ways to forget her face. I've tried to burn the image from my mind,” I said powerfully. In truth, I would hold onto it until the moment I died.“But still she remains, my empress. So if I am to die for that one mistake, then I shall.”
She pursed her lips, nodding her approval of that. “So you looked at a girl's face, who cares?” she said lightly and I frowned at the change in her tone. “She's hardly worth the veil, don't you agree?”
My eyes narrowed and I remained silent, unsure what the best form of tactic was here.
She was playing some trick on me, I was sure of it, so I had to be careful of my words.
Not that I could see how my situation could get any worse, but when it came to this woman, I had no doubt she would find a way to paint my fate blacker.
She slid a finger under my chin, her sharp nail scraping against my Adam’s apple. “No need to die over a teeny tiny mistake, is there Cassius? Not when there is another option.”
“Another option, Your Highness?” I asked, hope crawling through me and daring to raise its head.
Yes, let me out of here, Magdor. Make any deal with me you like because whatever it is will end up with my sword in your back and the whole kingdom knowing what a deceptive rat you are.