Chapter 4 #2
“You didn’t tell me your name,” I said, reaching through the bars and offering him my hand while giving him the kind of smile which made virgins drop their undergarments for me.
He frowned at me for a moment, and I wondered if I should scale it back. But I hadn’t met many people who couldn’t be won over by my dimples, male or female. Most people who knew me for long enough eventually fell in love with me, this one wouldn’t be any different.
“Cassius,” he grunted, removing his hand from a burn on his side so that he could shake mine.
He looked me right in the eye as he tried to crush my fingers and I barked a laugh.
Tough guy, huh? Well, I’ve met bastards with far bigger balls than you and lived to tell the tale.
“No need to try and show me who’s boss,” I said, dropping his hand. “We’re equally screwed if we’re in here anyway.”
At least until tonight when my gang came for me. Sucked to be him, I guessed.
“There’s truth in that,” he agreed.
“So, Cassius, how many guards work the palace at any one time? Do you follow a regular routine, or do they change it up a lot?” I asked casually, wondering if I might have been in luck and found myself a man willing to give me the information I’d need to pull off the job of my dreams.
I was fairly sure the look he was giving me could be interpreted as a solid ‘fuck you’, but I couldn’t help myself.
I wanted to know every damn detail about that place and he held that knowledge locked up within his uncooperative mind.
Surely with the right kind of motivation he’d wanna spill the beans, get some revenge on the arseholes who had turned their backs on him, and tell little old me the best way to sneak into their fortress and steal the treasures…
“You’re really still loyal to them?” I asked, a note of irritation to my voice as he failed to answer. “Even after that?” I indicated his battered body and a frown pulled at his brow, telling me his pride was wounded at least as thoroughly as his flesh.
“I would never betray my emperor, no matter what my own situation may be,” Cassius said stoically.
He really did look like a kicked dog, all sad and forlorn that his master had turned on him. But even a kicked dog had a bite to it given the right encouragement, I just had to figure out what kind of meaty morsel this one needed to send him rabid.
“Oh, go on, enlighten me. We’re both stuck in here anyway, so it’s not like I can use the information,” I pushed. “And I promise you it would feel good to betray them in payment for your suffering.”
“I don’t blame the emperor for my situation,” he growled. “I blame Magdor.”
“Magdor? The empress?” I laughed.
I’d heard tales of the mysterious beauty who’d won the emperor’s love with her foreign looks and unearthly appeal, but it didn’t mean much to me.
The palace might as well have been on the other side of the world as far as I was concerned.
My life with The Forty was about the furthest from royalty that you could get.
I had to wonder what he’d gone and done to upset the empress though, had he spied on her while she was changing?
Or farted in her presence? Maybe he’d lost his mind entirely and run stark naked around the palace corridors while screaming his love for her to the heavens?
“She is more than just a-”
The door at the end of the hallway opened, and I moved away from Cassius’s cell as I drew closer to the opening, curious over the way things were done in here.
I released a slow breath as I was finally relieved of the feeling of the iron pressing to my flesh, the strength returning to my limbs with every moment that I spent free of it.
I’d never been caught before, so this whole endeavour was something of a mystery to me. I’d heard tales of the brutality of the royal prison, but I’d also heard that the emperor took solid gold shits, so I didn’t tend to base my knowledge on the rumour mill.
“Is this breakfast at last?” I called as three guards approached us.
I recognised the one in the middle as the captain who had captured me and gave him the kind of smile which I imagined would make him want to punch me.
Sure enough, the turgid veins beneath his skin seemed to bulge all around his thick neck as he stomped towards me, and I was almost certain his eye was ticking with rage.
“We don’t waste food on dead men,” Captain Marik snarled as he came to a halt before my cell, and I arched a brow at him without even bothering to straighten my spine.
Fae like him fed on fear, but he wouldn’t claim a taste of that from me.
I lived my own personal horror show day in and day out where I came from.
There was always someone bigger and uglier than me waiting to try and cut my throat or stab me in the back, but quick reflexes and the skills of my Affinities had kept me ahead of that end.
A big man with a point to prove was never going to break my spirit.
“Dead men? I only stole a loaf of bread. Is death the punishment for that these days? I know the kingdom is falling to shit, but that seems a little extreme,” I said, chuckling at my own joke and enjoying the way his eye ticked harder.
He was so trussed up in that tight guard’s uniform with its dark leather jerkin plated with black metal spikes, that it almost looked as if his round head might pop right off like a cork from the head of a bottle.
“Silence, scum. I’m here to read you your charges and inform you of your punishment,” he snapped, violence flickering in his eyes and making it clear to me that he was hungry for it.
I held my tongue as I leaned against the bars again, pretending the iron did nothing at all to affect me while battling the sense of nausea which was pooling in my gut.
I made sure he could see that such simple horrors meant nothing at all to me and waited to hear what allegations had been made against me.
Marik turned his gaze to my new friend and his scowl deepened.
“Good to see you're getting the treatment you deserve, traitor,” he snarled. “I will happily see you stripped of your flesh as well as your number in my ranks for your crime. Your lawlessness insults me and the years I wasted training you.” He spat through the bars at the offending guard, but it didn’t quite reach him and he didn’t even flinch.
Cassius only responded with a glower, though he looked positively offended by the accusation, almost as if the captain had just called his mother a whore and taken a shit in his morning oatmeal all at once.
“Well? Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” Marik demanded.
“Only that every single one of my actions has been taken to protect the royal blood of Osaria,” Cassius said, raising his chin.
Marik snorted in disgust before dismissing him and he returned his attention to me.
“You have been charged with illegal entry to the property of a higher Fae, burglary of several highly priced gems and jewels, heirlooms and a sizeable bag of food,” he rattled off, earning himself an exaggerated yawn from me.
But instead of the irritated bark of command I expected to receive for my insolence, all I was gifted was a hateful little smile as Marik went on, making my gut twist as my instincts told me he was just building up to the final point on his list, though I had no idea what he had to be so smug about.
“Vandalization of the count’s personal property, and the rape of the Countess of Nore. ”
“The what?” I hissed, my nose wrinkling with disgust at that accusation, but Marik went on as if I hadn’t even spoken.
“The punishment for your crime is three years in the dungeon.” The captain leaned closer, lowering his voice with a wicked smile on his face as he prepared to deliver the final blow. “And castration .”
I shifted back from the bars, my hand automatically moving to shield my dick from him as if I expected him to produce a blade and come at me here and now.
“What?” I croaked before clearing my throat and forcing myself to ask again more calmly. “What do you mean castration?”
Marik smirked at me, clearly getting off on the fact that he’d gotten a rise from me at last, but I couldn’t even be mad at myself for that – this was my fucking dick we were talking about.
It was tied in first place for my best feature alongside my face.
It was fucking criminal to even joke about taking a damned knife to it.
“You should have thought about that before you raped a countess, scum. I don’t imagine your pretty face will be enough to make up for a lack of manhood with the ladies if you’re ever released.”
“I never touched that goat,” I growled. “Ask her! Get her to come down here and identify me. She’ll tell you it wasn’t me!”
“A fiend attacked the countess while she was sleeping and took her from behind. She didn’t see his face.
We caught you in the vicinity and can only presume you are the perpetrator,” Marik replied coldly, his eyes gleaming with excitement over the reality he was painting for me.
I swear the arsehole was hoping to be the one wielding the blade when it was done too.
No doubt an ugly fucker like him would take great joy in destroying a cock as beautiful as mine.
The other guards chuckled at my predicament and I scowled at them, wishing them all shrivelled cocks and warts in their arseholes for good measure.
I wasn’t going to give up though, I wasn’t just going to let them cut my dick off over a lie which had fallen from the lips of an unfaithful bitch who cared more about covering for her infidelity than she did for the removal of my fucking manhood.
“That whore met him in the market yesterday and let him into her house with the full intention of fucking him bl-”
“Are you saying you know who the culprit is?” Marik asked, a glimmer in his eye which said this had been his plan all along, to make me turn, make me squeal. “If you want to make a statement and tell us where to find him...”