Chapter 4 #3
I ground my teeth, moving my hands to block my manhood and eyeing the guards for any instrument to suggest that they were planning on carrying out this sentence now. They didn’t seem to be holding any torture devices between them, so I had to hope the act wasn’t about to happen yet.
“I was only guessing,” I gritted out, not fool enough to start spilling my secrets or the identities of the other thieves. There wasn’t much in this world that would make me turn on my gang, but I’d be damned if I’d have my balls cut off for them.
“Well why don’t you think on it for now?
Your sentence is to be carried out in two days.
Unless you can think of anything to help us apprehend this imagined other suspect before then.
” Marik’s eyes slid to my crotch and he laughed cruelly before turning and heading for the door with the other guards following at his back.
“And what about breakfast?” I bellowed, regaining some of my composure before the door could close between us.
“Whistle for it,” Marik replied and the door swung shut, leaving me alone with Cassius once more.
“Arsehole,” I snarled as I paced to the rear wall of my cell and back a few times.
“And I thought I had it bad with a death sentence,” Cassius muttered, and I almost laughed. Almost.
“Well, if you’re really unlucky, the last thing you’ll see before they cut off your head will be them chopping off my cock.
And the biggest travesty of all is that I never even fucked her!
She’s so ugly she’d scare the shit out of a sewer.
I’ve no idea how Balthazar even summoned the motivation to do it. I’m certain I never could have.”
Cassius snorted a laugh, and I raised an eyebrow at him. I hadn’t expected the royal guard to have a sense of humour hiding beneath that macho, disciplined exterior but there it was, peeking out at me, all morbid laughter in the face of our sentences.
“I mean it, you should have seen her. You couldn’t drink enough ale to make her attractive – I don’t know if she had a goat Affinity or if her father was a straight up goat, but I’m telling you that woman is as ugly as sin itself.
Not just externally either – she has the sour and repulsive personality matched only by all the other over-entitled bastards who call themselves ‘upper Fae.’ I saw her beating a serving girl over a burnt loaf of bread while I was casing her oh-so-lovely home in preparation for this job, and she didn’t stop until the girl was sobbing and bleeding at her feet.
Balthazar had better come through for me tonight or I’ll be selling him out.
My loyalty has its limits, and they end way before a blade is coming anywhere near my balls. ”
“Who’s Balthazar?” Cassius asked curiously and I quit my rant sharpish.
I stilled as I looked at my companion and suspicion ran through me as I headed over to the bars which divided us to survey him more closely again.
Balthazar was almost as infamous as me, so I didn’t fear mentioning his name, but I was hardly going to start handing out information on The Forty to this stranger.
Our names may have littered the streets of Osaria and tales of the crimes we’d committed and riches we’d claimed might have been whispered between lower and upper Fae alike, but rumours and stories weren’t facts.
They couldn’t be used to find us, and I would never breathe a word of anything that could.
“What did a royal guard do to land himself a death sentence?” I asked seriously, the moment of comradery between us fading as I looked him over and remembered which side of the divide we both stood on.
It was very much a them and us kind of situation in this city and he was one hundred percent them .
Cassius’s lips twisted and I could tell he wasn’t sure whether to tell me, so it must have been bad. And yet something about him still screamed straightlaced, rule abiding royalist, so what the fuck could it have been?
“Did you murder someone?” I guessed, leaning forward eagerly as I grasped onto the distraction of solving this mystery. “Or call the emperor a pig-ugly nutsack? Or steal from the royal palace? Or fuck one of the royal maids in the emperor’s bed or-”
“I saw the princess’s face,” he growled, probably to shut me up more than anything, but I beamed at him as if he’d just confided in me like we were friends.
Which he’d probably start thinking we were any time now.
I had a damn likeable face. And a winning personality.
Everyone always fell for my charm in the end.
It had been said that I could charm a Priestess of the Lost right into my bed, despite her vows of celibacy, and have her praise me as a Fae of legend risen once more with an Affinity for sex come dawn.
I couldn’t help it, people just trusted me.
In fact, I was fairly certain that I had some kind of charisma Affinity or something of the sort, because no matter where I went or what I did, people just wanted to be my friend.
More fool them.
“You fucked her?” I guessed, smirking at the idea of that. The precious princess all alone in her ivory tower spreading her thighs for her personal guard’s unworthy cock.
“No,” Cassius snarled in outrage, looking damn close to taking a swing at me and I raised an eyebrow at him. Oh Cassius, the more you try to resist my beautiful face, the more it will beguile you.
“Kissed her then?” I guessed kissing her would have been bad enough, though it had a lot less sordid fantasy points to it than the thoughts of him making her scream in pleasure for him which I’d first imagined.
“I only saw her for a moment,” he insisted, seeming a little flustered now. By the gods, did the big, surly guard have a big, surly crush?
“You just looked at her? And they threw you in here for that alone?” I asked in disbelief.
“Everyone in the kingdom knows that it is a crime punishable by death to look on the beauty of the emperor’s daughter before her Unveiling on her twenty-first birthday. As far as I know, no man aside from me and the emperor have ever looked on her face before-”
“Sucks for you then,” I said with a snort of amusement.
What a fucking thing to die for. Hell, I’d seen some seriously fucked-up things in my life and I hadn’t died for witnessing them, and yet this poor bastard caught a glimpse of a pretty face and now he was going to hang for it?
That shit had to taste all kinds of bitter.
“If you had seen her then maybe you would understand-”
“I've seen plenty of pretty girls. Got most of them naked too,” I said dismissively. “If they’re hiding her face, I’d be more tempted to believe she’s ugly as all sin and the emperor is just hoping to trick some poor fool to part with a fortune for a marriage to a donkey-”
“I saw her myself!” he yelled in outrage. “And I won’t hear you besmirch her beauty as if it's nothing.”
Silence rang between us and I pursed my lips.
This guy seriously needs to get laid.
“Relax, mate. At least you aren’t about to get your cock cut off.”
Cassius stared at me for several long seconds, then started laughing. Yeah, we were best friends alright. Me and Cassy-boy, just two cunts swimming in a barrel of laughs. At least until my gang turned up and I left his arse here to swing from the gallows.