Bending the Unbreakable 🐾 🍌

Bending the Unbreakable

A bell was ringing, filling the streets of Tetharion with its heart-thrumming, clarion sounds. Each ring made Niro try to run faster, although he was already sprinting outright, out of breath, and out of options. There was no possible way to hide in broad daylight, not on a break day, and definitely not from the eyes and ears of the townsguard. They were following him with as much fervor as blood hounds were wont to show, and the sun-kissed heat of mid-summer made every step a hurdle. As he flew by an ox cart, a group of tinkers setting up shop next to one of the open smithies, and a horse trader who had to grab on to the reins of his animals hard as they shied away from the grimy, huffing streak passing them, he cursed himself between the gasps for air.
It had been such a stupid, high-handed idea to wait a few days before trying to get a recharge for his mimikry talisman. And for what? A pitcher of milk! He could have drunk water, but no, it had sounded like such a good idea back then. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Had he really thought the Fae invaders would ignore a human boy wandering around their commerce district, just three short weeks after they had taken over the city? Amidst a war against his race, and smack-dab in the middle of the frontier? He had been so sure of himself, with all that warm milk in his belly, and then the talisman had run out, and now there was nowhere to hide, no way to sneak back to that peddling Pander merchant and get it recharged.
It was too late.
It didn’t matter how well he knew the cobblestone clad streets, because by now, the Ailill, or Fae, or elves, whatever they were called, had learned all the hidden routes by heart. They were proficient at their jobs, much  better trained than the human townsguards had ever been. They had to be; there had been multiple attempts to take back the city in the last few weeks, and each and every one of them had been stopped before the attackers had even reached the main square. And now, Niro was using the exact same rat runs to flee.
Timber framed plaster walls raced by, as he tore through another carriage way and towards the east gate. Thick, sticky sweat burned on his back and arms, running down his spine in itching globs and drenching his torn linen pants with the smell of dread. He had been thirsty before, but by now his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth and every breath stung in his dry throat. He didn’t need to look back for his pursuers, though, he knew they were still on his tracks by the rhythmic clinking of their chain armor, and by the sounds of their whistles and shouts. They hadn’t managed to gain ground but they were able to keep up with him, and they definitely could out-endure him in this chase. He was already flagging.
The cobblestones beneath his naked feet rubbed his soles raw, as he skittered around another corner, trying his best to minimize the distance to his destination. There it was, the east gate, still laying in waste and broken, and therefor never closed. It was well guarded on the outside, but nobody would expect a dirty, young street urchin trying to break out by simply hopping the broken boulders. He had done it once before, and right now it was his only chance to escape.
Nearly there, only a few more seconds…

Twenty feet from the gate, a shadow stepped out of a side street just as Niro ran past.
Something hard slapped against his chest, slamming him onto the ground hard enough to steal his breath and paralyze him for a few seconds. When he finally could, he screamed with frustration and panic, only to be silenced by a ruthless kick from the elven woman who had brought him down with one arm and a well placed step. The Fae in guard uniform didn’t gloat or wait for him to catch himself though; she was on him before he could make another move. He only just caught a glimpse of her shiny, scaled armor, brimmed with silver and gold and some other, duller, turquoise colored alloy, then she was out of sight and the sun took the last of his vision, blinding him with its brightness.
Her weight ground him into the dirt-laden plaster stones beneath him, and he gasped for air, breathing in the stink of days-old dung, ash and straw. It only made him struggle more, and this time the sheen of sweat came to his help. The guard’s grip slipped again and again as she tried to turn him and wrench his arms behind his back, accompanied by his breathless, wheezing screams.
“Stop struggling, you filthy maggot,” she finally bellowed, and slammed the boy’s head against the stone hard enough to make him black out for a few seconds. He could feel her shackle his arms tightly behind his back, then she kicked him and let him lie there as she turned around to wait for the guards still running towards them. Niro still gasped for air, trying to breathe through the pounding in his head and the sick feeling of panic in his stomach. He could feel a trickle of blood slowly make its way down his face, but the pain in his ribs made everything else feel almost numb. It would have been the perfect moment to run on any other day, but not this time. As much as he wanted to use her negligence for a quick escape, the world was spinning too much to even think of moving without spilling his guts onto the floor.
He lay still, panting in the summer heat as the other guards stopped next to his captor. “Quick little rabbit, isn’t he?” Niro could hear one of them say. That elven bastard didn’t even sound breathless.
“They are always this agile when they are young. But then they grow up and get slow and fat,” the female guard huffed dismissively, and Niro felt her gaze wander over his body. “I can’t even guess what age this one is, he’s so filthy and emaciated. Screamed like a piglet, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just send him north and be done with him. Nobody needs a starving  boy in times like these.” The other guards laughed that low, amused, callous chuckle of people unaffected by the fate of one.
A fearful whine crawled out of Niro’s throat before he could contain it. To be sent north meant to be sent into the mines of Northvale, and that was tantamount to a death sentence. The guards laughed again, as if in response to his fear, happy and uncaring enough to match the moniker humanity had bestowed on them: ‘Alb’, nightmares in the flesh.
“Well, that’s that, then. Get him upright and take him to the reeve, he’ll know what the House will want to do with the boy,” one of the male Fae said, then he raised a hand and waved at the bell tower three times.
The female guard bent down and pulled Niro up by the nape of his neck, but it was too fast and too harsh a movement for his spinning head. The last thing he heard over the sounds of him retching was the ring of the warning bell, telling everyone that the danger was over. Then he thankfully blacked out.

***

Niro knelt on the granite floor in an otherwise pompous and almost empty vault, shackled to an over-sized ring bolted into the stone beneath his legs. The air was cool and soothing, almost cold after the heat he had endured outside, but the company outmatched the temperature. He didn’t know how much time had passed since the moment he had passed out on the street. The few moments he had been conscious on the way to the reeve’s house were nothing but a confused blur of pain, heat, thirst and roiling street views. Only when his captor— that Fae bitch— had dropped him onto the stone floor and chained his shackles to that ring, his mind had started working again.
He didn’t like what he saw. The reeve was a nondescript looking Fae with brown hair, light brown eyes and a broad chin that didn’t do his bloodline any honors. Niro had always thought all Fae were supposed to be ethereal, beautiful creatures who never got old, bald or fat, but this one definitely didn’t fit his preconceptions. Well, he wasn’t fat per se, but heavy-set and pasty. Only his clothes gave his high rank away, a mixture of deep turquoise, burgundy red, and silver, the layers carefully chosen to give glimpses and flashes of jewelry. ‘Reeve Firon Wilmoor of Nancarrow’ he was called, which meant he was some kind of nobility in Fae society. And at this moment, the noble reeve Wilmoor was interestedly rummaging through Niro’s meager belongings.
“A mimiky talisman? How did a young miscreant like you ever manage to steal something as precious as this?” A long wisp of brown hair fell into his aristocratic and still somehow mediocre face, as he held up the small trinket by its leather band. He had the same hair color as Niro, but on the Fae it looked more like smeared horse dung.
The first time Niro had said something, it had been a string of swear words and curses. The guard had kicked him twice. His kidneys still pulsed with electric pain now and then, so he had done his best to shut up from then on. Now that he was being asked a question though, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to answer. His whole body hurt, from the bloody soles of his feet to the crusted laceration cutting through his right brow, and his head was still spinning from thirst. The ever-increasing, dry burn in his veins probably was also the reason why he felt numb and distant, strangely fearless and disconnected.  He was simply too tired and exhausted to keep that level of fear going any longer. After all, even panic needed energy.
The guard suddenly grabbed his hair and tugged his head back sharply. “You were asked a question, maggot. Answer the reeve or I will make you wish you had.”
Niro gasped through clenched teeth. The pull on his hair made him contract muscles in his back that sent new shock waves of pain through his body, strong enough to shake him out of his numbness for a few moments. There was no way he could tell them the truth, not if he wanted to survive. He had seen already what the Fae did to human nobility, and he could very well imagine what they would do to royalty, no matter their age. At the same time he had to say something, anything to stop them from hurting him. He wasn’t used to pain, not even after four months on the street, and he didn’t want them to break him. He would spill the truth if they did, and then he’d be dead.
“I—, I stole it from a dead nobleman, sir,” Niro finally stuttered, trying to keep his breaths shallow, “He lay in the bushes near the east gate, six weeks ago. I didn’t even know what it was called, I swear!” He actually had seen a dead man in the king’s colors lying in the bushes outside the gates, but he hadn’t gone anywhere near the cadaver. It had been night and the moon had been hidden behind clouds, and every child knew you didn’t stroll around at such nights, or the Nightgigers would eat you. A corpse was a feast for those dark creatures, and a sure place to end up as a dessert for them.
Wilmoor gawked at him in the way only the Fae could: one eyebrow raised, one eye slitted, one corner of his mouth pulled towards the ear in an impossible angle, like a monumental smirk to hide his surprise in. He set the talisman back onto the table carefully, then he leaned back into his cushioned seat and folded his hands. It was all very carefully orchestrated, like everything the Fae did. “Are you telling me you have been creeping around here for six weeks, alone, without being detected?” he asked incredulously, almost laughing at the idea.
Niro bit his trembling lower lip. “Four months,” he corrected hesitantly, confused by the reeve’s reaction.
Wilmoor’s barking laugh made him jump and hiss with pain, but at least the guard let go of his hair. “You untruthful little braggart, you! I would have believed six weeks, but you had to go over the top!” he jeered, slapping the table in his mirth. He looked almost handsome when he smiled, but there was a nasty glitter in his brown eyes that ruined everything.
“But it’s the truth! I’ve been on the streets since the crown prince of Tetharion was thrown from the tower of the sun,” Niro protested, although he was unsure why he felt the need to make them buy into his story. It felt somehow important, incredibly significant to make them believe what he was saying. He’d had a front row seat to the death of his cousin, and there was no way he’d ever forget any detail from that day, be it small or big. It had been the day his mother had died, the day his father had helped the Earl of Trimeadows flee the city, the day the great exodus of humans from Tetharion had started, and the day he’d been forced to live on the streets as an orphan, or die like the rest of his family.
Why would that gods-be-damned Fae question his words?
“Well then, let’s inspect your words for the truth within, shall we?” Wilmoor sneered, leaning forward with a dark expression on his face. There was no humor left, no good will, no mirth, only cold calculation and disgust. It made his face mediocre again, but slightly more horrible than before. “Have you heard the tales of the Ailill oaths and what happens to oathbreakers?”
Niro nodded, although shakily. He had heard tales about the horrific magic banes that killed those who broke the word they had given a Fae, but he was only a child who didn’t understand the whole magnitude of such things. To his young human mind, lies were only bad if they hurt someone, and if you were caught at it. Gods, he even had trouble understanding that ‘Ailill’ was the Fae word for their own people, and magic was a concept he only knew from trinkets like the mimikry talisman. It simply was beyond his grasp.
“Good,” the reeve said, sneering at him. “You will now speak an oath before the Lord and Lady, professing how long you have hidden in the city, so the magic of the land may lay its bane on your lying tongue. Then we will be done with this charade, and I will be able to go back to my business.”
The guard behind Niro hissed in surprise and tensed up enough to make her armor clink softly.
Niro himself kept his gaze fixed on the Fae behind the desk. He didn’t miss the cruel glee dancing through the eyes of the man, as he waited for Niro’s reaction to what amounted to a cruel, vindictive trap he had no way to avoid.
Silence settled.
When the young boy’s voice broke it, even the guard jumped a bit. “So, how do I do this oath thing?” he asked, chewing his lip steadily.
“Sire, don’t—” the guard interceded, but fell silent under the threatening stare and booming voice of the reeve.
“Hold your tongue, woman. He will speak his oath of his own free will, without being coerced or threatened into it, just like the codex requires it. Won’t you?” Those last words were directed at the cowering boy.
Niro shrank under the icy glare of the reeve, although the movement tugged at his wounds enough to regret it instantly. “Yes, sir. I want to prove I’m telling the truth,” he whispered, swallowing dryly. Gods, he was so thirsty! “So how do I speak an oath?”
Wilmoor seemed to have found pleasure in his little game. “You profess to the Lord and Lady what you want to speak the oath over, that is all,” he explained with a wicked grin, settling deeper into his seat.
That sounds easy enough. Licking his dry lips, Niro thought about how to best say what he wanted to say, then he cleared his throat harshly. Maybe they would finally give him some clean water if he was done with this. “In the name of the Lord and the Lady,”- whoever those people are,- “I swear that I have been in the city the last four months, and I only left it a few times to walk the battlefields nearby for plunder. This is the truth.”
Again, thick silence settled. The air seemed to become heavier, colder, and a soft breeze brushed through the flames of the chandelier above them, but nothing else happened.
Well, nothing except for the increasing paleness on the reeve’s face, and his look of utter shock. “That can’t be true. It mustn’t be, how can it? Four months… Look how scrawny you are, what did you live off, rat corpses? And what did you— what did he drink? We poisoned all the wells except the ones we secured for ourselves,” he rambled, and all the calm and triumph were blown away.
Niro didn’t answer, and this time, nobody expected him to. The guard left his side to walk closer to the reeve’s table, and moments later they were immersed in a hushed, but nonetheless excited conversation.
Only bits and pieces of it drifted over to Niro, who by this point felt dizzy, tired and hollow. The world around his line of sight started to become gray and blurry, and the need to sleep slowly took over his mind as the two Fae kept talking. He didn’t hear the resolution the reeve came to in the end, at that point he was already passed out and in a dreamless sleep.

***

A bird woke Niro to inappropriately bright sunshine and steel bars, rousing him from a bed that was unreasonably comfortable, if small. The room he was in was of a strange design, obviously renovated,  the rock still pale and fresh where the Ailill had re-purposed the higher ranked servant quarters. It had to be the servant quarters, as the birdsong was that of a blue morngale in full courtship, pointing to the wee hours of the morning, and the sun was burning straight into the small chamber. Since the servant quarters were on the outer east wing of the king’s castle, where it was hot in summer and freezing cold in the winter, there wasn’t any other place to have this kind of sonata as a wake up call.
As for the steel bars, they had been sunk right into the thick outer stone of the window sills. Three steel rods, almost as wide as Niro’s arm, huddled together like lonely trees. The door had been modified in much the same way. A big window had been cut into the elm wood, then criss-crossed with a sprinkle of iron, steel and what looked like copper. Enough space to look through, enough metal to keep anyone from reaching in or out. An eight by six foot prison for a high prized pony. Why they had put Niro of all people in such a nice cage, he couldn’t fathom.
There was nothing in the room to make a weapon from, only a rickety side table with an earthen pitcher of water, a small wooden bowl with bread in it, and a chamber pot. Oh, there was a stool next to the window, but it was made out of woven willow branches. Comfy, but not prone to splintering.
At first, Niro just sat at the foot of the bed, blinking into the sunlight and pondering. He didn’t feel thirsty anymore, so they probably had force-fed him water while he had been out. He was still dirty, but not as much as he had been when he had fainted, so someone had put a wet cloth to him, too. And lastly, he wore new clothes. Well, pants, at least, and they were of a light, soft, tough, woolen fabric. Better than what he had worn in the last weeks, and better than what he had seen on the servants in his father’s household.
So he had survived. He had not an inkling of an idea why he was still alive, but the room, the pants, the watering, it all was a sure sign the Fae bastards didn’t want him dead, and didn’t plan to kill him any time soon. He just didn’t know why.
Adding to that, the Ailill made him wait for an answer. Waiting was a torture on itself for a twelve-year-old, but since he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for weeks, even the mid-day heat couldn’t stop Niro from taking advantage of the bed.

The next time he was woken, it wasn’t a bird, but the door squeaking on its new hinges. Niro jumped at the new sound, slapping his back against the rough hewn stone behind the bed as an Ailill with almost white hair and a crippled ear stepped into the small chamber. Had he been full-blooded, he should have been hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, judging by the wrinkles around his eyes and the sagging in his cheeks. The pointy canines gave his mixed heritage away, though, and the leather armor on his body told its own story. Not a good one at that.
“I see, you recognize the crest, then?” the cross-breed asked, lisping away on the words in his fight against the pointy Lamia canines.
Niro ripped his gaze away from the blackened grooves in the hardened leather, his eyes twitching over his visitor’s face like irritated flies. “You’re a trade guard, aren’t you?” he asked, trying not to think of the stories he’d heard about those who wore the howling dog on their armor. Trade guards were held in the same regard as mercenaries, ruffians with no home and— as the stories depicted it— no morals to plead to.
The man nodded once, then twice, almost as if unsure himself. He kept to the door, blocking it in a thoughtful, awkward way, taking his time to look through the clean, smallish cell, watching dust drift through the last rays of sun playing against the south wall. Finally, he looked back to the boy cowering on the bed like a startled cat.
“I am to take you under my tutelage, manling. Had I known you have no possessions to speak of, I wouldn’t have bothered looking for a ride on one of the ox carts.” He paused, staring at Niro’s naked chest until the boy squirmed. “Do you at least have a shirt?”

***

Cyril, as the trade guard called himself, did not waste time. As soon as one of the servants brought two more shirts for Niro, a warm felt cloak and a travel bag to fit everything in, they were out of the cells and on their way through the castle. There had been no further talk, no explanations, no reasoning as to why Niro should stick with him or who had sent him, but Niro didn’t press his luck by asking childish questions. Somehow, Cyril’s presence opened all the doors between him and freedom, and he didn’t plan to miss this opportunity. The loss of his mimikry talisman still irked him, but trade guards didn’t stick to the cities and they knew the roads better than most bandits. There would be enough chances to run without the aid of magic, once they left the gates of Tetharion behind them.
Passers-by shot them a few curious glances, as if both a human boy and a trade guard were an exotic enough sight to stop and watch for a moment, but nobody bothered them. Not even the guards at the gate, which opened groaning and creaking as they approached. They walked through unmolested. The chatter of city voices, the steady groan of carriages, the clattering of armor, all those sounds faded as they made their way into the sunshine and the wilderness of Tetharion. A sparrow chirped its incessant territorial song, fluttering away as they approached its nesting site. Cyril kept quiet.
Niro held out for another half hour before his patience finally crumbled. One moment he was walking a bit to the side behind Cyril, the next he was sprinting through the hedges on the side of the road, jumping over toppled logs, dodging brambles, and snaking his way through young trees already conquering the acres of land left barren by the war. His breath and his heartbeat both roared so loudly, he was unable to listen for sounds of pursuit, but he didn’t fall for the urge to turn around. It would only slow him down or let him run head first into a tree, and then he’d be either dead or in chains again.
The trees grew taller and taller, the longer he ran. The ground sloped up and down, although what he could see of the horizon told him he was heading more down than up, and a few times he almost tumbled over a root or a branch and had to slow down just enough to see where he was going. When the hill finally became so steep that he had to catch himself on trees to slow down, he finally stopped his flight, scrambled behind a group of rocks littering the hillside and tried to calm his breath and heart. Niro had to fight against the urge to rub the bloody scratches on his face and arms, where branches or tree bark had casually slapped him in his headless flight. But delving into that pain would take his mind off his pursuer, something he couldn’t risk. Not if he wanted to get away and stay free.
Gusts of wind whispered through the sun kissed foliage, complimented by lovesick forest birds. Niro could hear his heavy breath, his galloping heartbeat, the incessant crunching of old leaves beneath his naked feet, the rustle of mice and other small creatures scurrying about, but nothing else. Instinctively, he pressed closer to the big granite blocks, putting his cheek against the soft, dark moss growing in every crevice. It can’t be that easy, he thought.
Only the way his muscles cramped and hardened told of the passing of time, begging him to sit down or stand up straight, anything but staying as he was. Niro held out as long as he possibly could, motionless, reining in his breathing, calming his heartbeat, straining to listen for sounds of pursuit. He held for all but two hours.
The sun shone almost horizontal through the trees when he finally sagged to the ground, just as breathless as when he had run. This time around, it was the urge to cry with pain that had him sweating, trying his hardest not to let those sounds escape his mouth as his muscles gave, one after another, each one sending a dagger-like thread of hurt through his bones.
Cyril obviously hadn’t followed him, probably thinking he wasn’t worth the trouble. There were so many dangers lurking about in this wilderness, the trade guard most likely assumed he wouldn’t survive the night, and who would cry over another dead human? The landscape was littered with their carcasses, left where they had been felled, gnawed on by scavengers and slowly, ever so slowly, sinking into the unforgiving earth.
Nobody would be looking for him. The thought made Niro sniff and rub his eyes furiously as the tears threatened to fall again. This wasn’t any different from his life in the city. He was just as alone as he had been then and he wouldn’t give in, become weak like his family, because weakness meant death. These woods were known to swallow people whole, without a trace or a body to cry over. Niro didn’t plan to be one of the stories Tetharians told their children to frighten them.
Still sniffing, he started to clear away the leaves, branches and insects from the small depression at the foot of the rocks, then collected moss to pad it and settle down for the night. Tomorrow, he would try to get his bearings and start his travel further south, where humans still reigned and the war was still brewing.

They came at night, ripping Niro out of his exhausted dozing with the dry, muffled sound of leathery wings. The ghostly sound made Niro sit up with a jerk. The darkness had settled thick and oily beneath the old trees, sheltered against the moon by their foliage and impenetrable by human eyes. There was only one creature with wings that big. Niro shuddered and crawled closer to the rocks behind him, pressing his back against their bumpy surfaces as he nervously scanned the pitch black before him.
Nightgigers.
Niro’s wet nurse had told him stories about those creatures and their taste for children’s flesh, but he had always dismissed them as the rantings of an old hag. Now he wasn’t as sure anymore. He strained his ears, trying to penetrate the soft rustling of the night wind by sheer will and failing. He couldn’t even remember what else his wet nurse had told him about those creatures, except that they only came out at night and that no human had ever laid eyes on them, except in death.
They usually acted more like Panders, picking out weak and frail victims who weren’t able to put up much resistance, but contrary to Panders, the Nightgigers didn’t eat dead flesh. No, their prey had to be able to struggle and scream as they ate.
Niro shuddered, biting his fist to keep from making small fear sounds. He huddled closer to the rocks, jerking and twitching each time he heard those wings flapping, praying to all gods to protect him as fear settled deep in his bones and the cold night air started to seep into his shivering body. If he survived this night, he would listen to his elders. If he survived, he would light a candle for his wet nurse and he would pray at the graves of his family. If the gods let him see dawn, he’d stop his selfish ways and try to be a better person.
That night, Niro didn’t sleep and he didn’t move. He prayed until his mind was exhausted and his body stiff, and then prayed some more.
When the sun finally rose and those first rays of sunshine tinted the sky pink, the flapping of wings stopped, making way for birdsong and deer calls… And a voice, coming from the rocks right above Niro.
“So, are you done demonstrating your displeasure?” Cyril asked, calmly sitting on top of the biggest boulder, his right arm propped up by a battered war axe. “I already knew that you don’t want to be here. Neither do I. What am I supposed to do with a young buck like you? You won’t survive a week without help.”
Niro’s cheeks turned pink with anger. Had he been there the whole night, watching over him? Letting him stew in his own fear? “I can take care of myself,” he snarled with a shaky voice and stood up.
“I can see that,” Cyril said. “Now, how about I teach you how to do more than that?”
He waited for a reply for a few moments, then hopped off the rock and sheathed his weapon. “Come on. We’ve got a long road ahead of us and you have much to learn.”
Niro stared after Cyril’s retreating back, trying to decide if he should follow or not. Cyril wanted to teach him not only to survive, but to fight. It was a skill he sorely needed. It was a way to fight the Ailill.
“Wait for me,” he cried and ran after the trade guard, falling into step next to him.

***

- Fifteen years later -

“Ten Ailill soldiers dead, thirty horses lost, and you damaged the duke’s statue!”
Niro was kneeling in a most awkward posture. His shins were crossed, his thighs bent just enough to have his leather clad behind hover above the heels of his soft, black leather boots, his arms hanging down easily. Tension sang through the muscles of his legs, screaming with the strain this unnatural position put on them. He could have simply sat down on his heels, but it would only have increased the punishment he was already getting. Kneeling like that wasn’t meant to be comfortable, it was meant to hurt, and it worked.
The guards had taken his rapier, the daggers from his thigh sheaths, the throwing knifes from his back holster, and they had even found the garrote he wore like a pendant around his own neck. His ‘master’, or rather the man who thought himself to be in that position, had meant to humiliate Niro by taking away the tools of his trade, but it had only poured oil into the fire of his hate for the man.
It was a hate groomed and fed by years of captivity, ruthless training and cruel schooling, and it had brewed down to one big problem for the Earl Firon Wilmoor of Nancarrow; what to do with an assassin he couldn’t trust or control?
The answer was simple: Nothing. Thousands of shillings would be lost if he got rid of his human servant, but at least he wouldn’t have to chafe at that little shit’s behavior anymore. And he wouldn’t have to be afraid to fall asleep any longer, which was increasingly hard to manage each time he looked into that human’s eyes. He saw his death there, and they both knew it.
Still, the earl held on to the idea that he had some kind of power over the kneeling man. Had to have. Everything else was unthinkable.
“This time you went too far. This time, there won’t be any lenience for you, you hear me?” he sneered, slamming his fist down onto the armrest of his throne in what he hoped looked appropriately angry. “I will let the soldiers whip you to the bone if I have to, but you will obey me!”
It was like it had always been; as soon as the earl demanded obedience, it seemed to trigger some innate reflex to disobey anything and everything he had asked in the same sentence.
The sneer on the young, kneeling man’s face rivaled that of the earl himself. “Never,” he hissed, pushing himself to his feet through the pain of his abused leg muscles, screaming with rage and frustration when the guards standing next to him sent him back to the ground with swift kicks to his knees and a sequence of punches to his back, stomach and arms. They looked bored and tense, but the strikes with which they kept the human ball of rage in check were methodical and proficient. It was a dance they all had been dancing for years, too well known to give any of them a trickle of excitement anymore.
Three times more Niro tried to stand up through the rain of bludgeon hits, and three times the stronger, bigger Fae guards brought him back down, finally resorting to twisting his arms into unhealthy angles behind his back to stop this farce. The victory wasn’t a victory and the dull pain of the many new bruises and cuts tasted ashen on his tongue; but still the captive man stared up through his unruly mop of bronze brown hair to defy the earl.
What he saw, though, was a new nuance on the Ailill’s all too familiar face: indifference. The earl looked tired and disinterested, all but anxious for the moment he’d be done with the troublesome pet and able to attend other matters.
Niro forgot to breathe under the sudden rush of adrenaline and fear. Was this going to be the day he’d finally be killed, put down like the inbred mongrel they saw in him? The thought alone brought a rush of ferocious triumph to his heart. It would be his last, most glorious victory, a last parade of his ability to withstand anything, everything, the Ailill might throw at him.
It was the earl’s apathetic voice that tugged him out of his euphoric thoughts.
“I see joy on your face, my dog, and I  am left perplexed,” he said and for a moment, Niro could see the eons pass over the Fae’s face. He looked old and ageless at the same time, and beautiful in his coldness. He had never been beautiful before and for just a heartbeat’s length, Niro’s soul wept over the cruelty of a fate that condemned him to only see beauty in his tormentor when he was finally doomed to die. “You rejoice for your path to death, and yet you are proficient in the art of survival, one of those scholars that are praised for their unshakable will to live above all else. Does it delight you this much to have the last word? If so, you can have it. There was always so much potential in your lithe little body, such capability for greatness, and you wasted it on the one talent I never had any need for: absolute, all-encompassing obstinacy. You are an insurgent, a seditionist, a rabble-rouser, and I have grown tired of servicing your martyrdom.”
The earl raised one hand to one of the side alcoves and two extra guards carrying sets of manacles and chains stepped into the reception room. With a start, Niro realized that this moment had been planned. The chains had been laying in wait, ready for the day the earl finally would have enough.
This time he didn’t struggle when they put him in chains. It was a means to an end he had waited for a long time, so what was the use of prolonging the foreplay?
The Earl of Tetharion seemed to share his opinion on this. “Take him to the main court with first light, chain him to the poles and whip him until he experiences mortality. Give each soldier who asks a chance to revenge their comrades,” he ordered. His voice was as cold and uncaring as his eyes as he turned away from the kneeling, chained man.
Niro closed his eyes and let himself be dragged away willingly for the first time. Finally, the end was near.

***

The public whipping didn’t start that same day, as such occasions were always used to organize a fair for the townsfolk and have as many people as possible watch the punishment of a lesser being. The delinquent human was put into one of the many cells in the dungeon, chained to a wall and left there, unable to lower his arms or raise his head. It wasn’t so much a cruel whim, but a protocol made necessary by the manling’s own actions in the past. Niro had broken free from his shackles on many occasions, and no amount of preliminary searching had ever stopped him from escaping. The only way to keep him where he was supposed to be was by a measure of discomfort other species would have called torture.
The Fae didn’t have such limited views of right and wrong, but even they didn’t make it a habit to torture their peers without at least gaining some entertainment from it. Had anyone known beforehand how creative, deadly and vindictive that gaunt boy would get one day, they would never have schooled him in the arts of war. But thoughts like that were now moot. What had been done, was done, and in two more days the house guard known as Niro would be dead.
The pain in his contorted, shackled limbs came quickly, following the thinning blood supply to his arms. Pin pricks and needle stings soon became dull, painful throbbing, and only after an hour of pain-filled restlessness his arms finally went numb. The chains on his arms were keeping him upright, another chain was attached to a steel collar around his neck, pulling his head down. The posture made it hard to breathe, but the pain following the constant tension in his limbs was worse than anything else.
Alone in the dark, the young man finally could admit his defeat. Pain had always been a revelation to him, an epiphany that opened his mind to the universe, the connection of things living and dead. He had been about twelve years old when the Ailill captured him, nothing but a little spud overwhelmed by the power, the force, the charisma his Fae teachers had exuded. Back then, pain had been something to revere, something that had made him shiver with fear, sweat with adrenaline, that had made him feel alive and strong. When he had been in pain, he had forgotten all about the things he had seen in the war, forgotten about his dead parents, the way his cousin had slammed into the stone streets from more than a hundred feet height, forgotten that he was all alone in a city full of Fae. The pain of the whip, the cane and the paddle had set his world right, calmed him down, filled him with euphoria.
Unfortunately, he had been willful enough to warrant many, many punishments, and those responsible for his behavior seemed to think that a lowly beast such as him needed some additional discipline. The beatings weren’t so much designed with intent or comprehension for his reactions to it, they were nothing more than beatings executed by brutes for every small infraction. The feeling of weightlessness, the reverence and the euphoria following Niro’s will to submit were beaten out of him just as quick as his respect, demureness and his instinct of self preservation. To those wielding the whip, it didn’t matter if he begged, screamed, laughed or kept quiet, as long as the lash count was met.
In the end, all that he had learned from those punishments was the cold certainty that it didn’t matter what reasoning he had, or if he repented for his sins and misconducts. The pain had dulled to an unpleasant but inevitable side-effect of life and at the end of his apprenticeship he had been jaded enough to meet the mind-set of his punishers with his indifference.
There were only few things left in his life he felt any kind of emotion for, other than rage. He regretted the loss of his father, who had never come back for him and was presumed dead just like the rest of his family, and he regretted having never tried to run away, to flee the city, his teachers. He didn’t regret being a virgin, though, as he had never understood how anyone would want to get in such close proximity to another being. Intimacy gave strangers too much access to a helpless body, and therefor had to be dodged at all cost.
His body was a thing to behold, but it was also a thing of terror. Niro had never braved the insecurity of showing himself to anyone he might have a romantic interest in and he had never accepted any advances from those who had seen him bare. The fear of their reactions to the multitude of scars he wore on his skin had always been too dominant to overcome and since he had never experienced love, romance or the eroticism of another being’s touch, he didn’t miss it.
Tomorrow at sunset, all his regrets would be forever lost. The path he had chosen would end with his death, and he would be judged by the gods of mankind. Free of the Ailill and their cruel games. Free.
With a harsh sigh, Niro Ravenkin, nephew twice removed to the dead king of Tetharion, sagged into his chains. One more day, then I’ll be home.

***

Over the weeks following the end of war, the Ailill had opened the city of Tetharion to a wide range of species other than their own, even to a select few humans. The Fae still held an iron grip on those alien beings, keeping them away from military, politics and any other highly respected posts, but there was enough menial work to go around and enough mortal and immortal immigrants to fill the center square with the thunder of chattering voices.
Everyone was waiting for the main attraction of the evening; the fatal punishment of a house guard of House Nancarrow, rulers of the city of Tetharion. Niro’s face was not unknown to the people of Tetharion, after all he had been the last human to stay in the city and the only one present for the whole change of government. The voices in his favor were still few, though. Stories of his mercurial temper, his disregard for anyone’s safety, his violent outbursts and his defiance against those who had saved him and kept him alive were known to everyone. He was a mascot to the city, but one everyone wanted to watch falling, hurting, breaking, just as much as they had enjoyed watching him grow up and play tricks on his masters. To the humans he was a traitor, to the Fae he was an unruly pet, and the few Panders standing to one side probably just thought about how his dead flesh would taste, once he was no more.
The guards opened the barred metal doors quickly, not wasting time. One of them had a swollen, bloodied nose from a moment of negligence, and the pain and lameness the captive had acquired by hanging from chains throughout the night was already fading. Who knew what last grand gestures the crazed human beast might try to make, if they gave him the chance.  And so they hurried.
Niro stumbled forward and out into the increasing light of day, accompanied by the harsh rattle of his chains. As soon as the onlookers saw him, they started to yell, to whistle and to call out obscenities, stepping closer and tightening the ring of living flesh around him and his guards. It was a strange kind of aggression, a distant, impersonal one, that could easily fade and just as easily turn into a frenzy, given the right trigger. Luckily for him, he wasn’t one of the religious pariahs who sometimes ended up at the gallows. It wasn’t uncommon for those people to get ripped into shreds by the common folk before the deathsman even had the chance to swing his axe.
He probably looked strangely unblemished to the watching eye, although the guard he had bloodied with his forehead had had his revenge already. A reddish bruise was building on the center of his rump where a fist had bent him in half with the force of the blow, but nothing more had been done to him. The guards knew how useless it was to hit him, how it only riled him up, and they took comfort in the knowledge he’d be maimed soon enough, anyway.
The young human male was a sight to behold as the guards dragged him onto the gallows and chained his arms to two posts. He wasn’t as tall as the Ailill guards, some six feet to their typical seven feet of height, but what they had in height he matched with contoured, rippling muscles. Not the muscles the strongmen at the fair displayed, since they were obscenely built and endowed with mountains of fat and thick thews, but the kind of brawn that gave away his limber grace, his endurance.
The scars on his body sent another wave of excitement through the waiting throngs, showcasing how many times the fair and good earl had already tried to correct the behavior of his slave by the means of corporal punishment. There were whispers all around the gallows, chatter of the many things the human might have done to enrage his master like this, but in the end none of it mattered.

At the left side of the gallows, a group of Ailill soldiers were insulating a man and a woman from the mob. Niro usually knew all the important people in the city by sight. His position as a house guard at the earl’s estate required him to know how to act in front of them, but those two, he had never seen before. It was the man who caught his attention more than the woman, because he stood out like a sore thumb. He had the palest skin Niro had ever seen on a Fae— and that was definitely what he was—, and it had a gray tint to it, almost like a bloodless corpse. Only the pointed tips of his ears held a faint blue hue, tinting them more white than gray, like jewelry in his raven-black hair. Something about the way that nobleman stood there commanded attention. Something in the way he stared at Niro made his insides flutter with anxiety. That man was probably a guest of the earl and by the way he was holding himself he was a high ranking noble.
The guards were tightening the chains until Niro had to balance on the balls of his feet, causing him to take a deep, calming breath through the renewed pain of being stretched to his limit. It took away his concentration from the new faces and he told himself that it didn’t matter who they were anyway. He’d be dead soon. Not much longer now.
The deathsman stepped forward, walking the rim of the gallows again and again as he spoke with a booming voice.
“For his impertinence, his disobedience and the reckless endangerment of fifty Ailill souls, the manslaughter of ten soldiers of the noble House Errea, the willful wasting of thirty purebred horses, and the damaging of the statue of the noble Duke Galdril of Yahir, ancestor of House Malach and great-grandfather of the Duchess Ilydra Gladfall of Yahir, the here presented human slave Niro, part of the estate of the noble Earl Firun Wilmoor of Tetharion, will be whipped to death by the hands of those who he robbed of their comrades!”
With a flourish, the hooded deathsman produced a bull-whip and swung it once, cracking it into the air over the heads of the onlookers. The sound made the people flinch and a thick silence settled over the main square.
“May his punishment be a lesson for all those who oppose our generous ruler!” the deathsman thundered and turned around.
For a moment, everyone seemed to be frozen to the spot, shaken by the promise of pain that one crack of the whip had given. Then one of the guards who had escorted Niro out stepped forward, raising his hand to grab the whip. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the one Niro had head-butted earlier, but his colleague.
He stepped in front of the shackled man, staring into Niro’s eyes just long enough to let him see the pent-up disdain for his existence, then the guard turned around and raised both hands to the cheer of the masses. “I will be the first, but others will follow!” he yelled, smiling to the frenzy of the onlookers. Then he turned and rounded the poles, letting the long, thick whip trail behind him like the tail of a snake.
Niro closed his eyes, trying to calm the frantic beating of his heart, the fluttering feeling of panic bubbling up through his guts. It made his manhood throb and thicken in misguided excitement, but this was a reaction easily ignored. His body always did this in the beginning, reveling in the first few lashes like other men reveled in the feel of a woman’s flesh in their hands, but it would go down soon enough. It was calming to know he wouldn’t die with a bulging hard-on in his pants. His tormentors hadn’t earned this chance to degrade him further.
  The whistle of leather through the air was the only warning Niro got. The bite of the whip came soon after, leaving a trail of surprising, burning pain across his back, making him buck and hiss and strain against the chains keeping him where he was. He didn’t cry out, of course, but he would at some point. Niro didn’t give himself over to illusions anymore. Sooner or later he would scream and cry, and then he would fall silent and limp, dying whilst hanging there like a piece of discarded meat. And all through that, the Fae would keep beating him relentlessly like they had always done, with no way to stop them, no way to earn their forgiveness, and therefor no need to try.
The pause after the first whiplash wasn’t repeated. As soon as the second blow came, the wielding guard fell into an unsteady rhythm, slower than Niro’s heartbeat and therefor impossible to predict or ride. It felt like a torment inside the punishment itself, to keep him from falling into a trance, to keep him from floating outside of his body and die in peace.
It didn’t take long for the whiplashes turn his whole back into a throbbing, burning mass. Luckily, the guard didn’t use enough force to break his skin and after ten lashes he gave the whip away. Another guard stepped forward to take over, putting a little more force into his lashes, but still containing himself. They were very proficient in the art of wielding a whip, never before having to kill someone with it, and they seemed unwilling to use their full strength and actually bleed him. Did they harbor soft feelings for him? Were they trying to soothe the rage in the soldiers dotting the crowd by lengthening his punishment, so those brutes wouldn’t try to actually shred him into ribbons?
The thought alone made Niro laugh. They had to know that there was no way he’d leave this place alive!
At that one sound, everyone seemed to freeze, gaping at the audacity of it. The whip fell silent, followed by a frustrated snarl from the guard holding it. “You stupid little cunt, I was trying to help you,” he hissed and only turned away when the dull sounds of heavy steps at the back of the gallows made the presence of the next interested party known. The guard and the newcomer started a low but heated discussion, but Niro didn’t try to listen in on what they were arguing about.
Instead, he let his tear-streaked gaze wander back to that ashen-pale Fae.
Their eyes met for the briefest of moments and the noble smirked at him, pointedly looking down at Niro’s crotch, then back up at his face. That indication alone made Niro’s face run hot with shame and turn away his own gaze, something he had never done before. On the other hand, nobody had ever acknowledged any of his reactions to a punishment. Interest in the way he fared with pain was new and confusing, something he definitely couldn’t accept in his dying moments.
The newcomer behind him seemed to have won the argument with the guard. Suddenly, the whip whistled through the air again. The hiss alone was enough of a warning that this blow wouldn’t be like the ones before, but the force with which it hit Niro’s back surprised even him enough to make him yell out. There was a definitive difference to the first few lashes because it didn’t sting as much, but left the area numb for a few heartbeats. Niro felt a rush of liquid start to drip down his back just as the whip hissed again, and he knew that his skin had been broken.

***

“This isn’t quite what I envisioned for a public whipping,” Ilydra Gladfall of Yahir purred, shifting her weight from the left foot to the right. “Whipping someone to death is unpleasant, don’t you think? The screams last forever, even though he’d probably die over night, anyway, if they stopped now.”
The tall nobleman next to her tensed even more at her words. He had gotten that distracted look ever since the human whipping boy had started to scream and bleed, and Ilydra could only guess what went on in his head. She did know his tastes ran into erotic whippings, and maybe seeing what usually went on in his bedroom be used as a means of killing was just too tasteless for him. Or maybe he was fighting a whole different kind of feeling? Who knew what paid murderers like him found pleasing.
Still, she decided to be blunt. “Do you want to leave, Rhysling? You look unwell,” she whispered, leaning over so the guarding soldiers wouldn’t be able to listen in.
“You know I don’t like it when you call me by that name,” Rhysling Greyfell of House Nancarrow, Count of Yahir and soon-to-be appointed reeve of Tetharion, replied, but his words had a distracted tone to them. “But no, dear. This is something I didn’t expect, but will handle it.”
It was a strange reply to her question, but then, Rhys had always been a man of quirks and secrecy. Smiling amusedly, Ilydra watched him lean slightly towards his lieutenant of arms, an Ailill soldier by the name of Tyell, who was in some way related to the Earl of Tetharion. Ilydra had never been interested enough to find out in which way that strapping lad had blood bonds to the local regent, but she was quite sure that those bonds had something to do with Rys’s appointment in Tetharion.
Since it was improper to listen in when two people were obviously trying to speak privately, Ilydra tore her gaze away from Rhys’s profile and looked back to the raised gallows. The whipping had been going on for nearly half an hour and the third soldier was already flagging in his relentless beating. The human’s screams were hoarse and low by now, his clothes ripped to shreds and drenched in blood, and he looked to be on the verge of passing out. Not pleasant at all, Ilyrdra mused.
Rhys straightened himself and Tyell took off, waving another soldier with him as he walked briskly towards the gallows. This, Ilydra could watch without being improper, although it didn’t fully sate her curiosity. Tyell and his escort stopped next to the steps leading up to the whipping post, and Ilydra could see him give instructions to the burly man, then turn away and run towards the earl’s residence. The soldier meanwhile stepped onto the gallows, talked to the panting, whip-wielding man and then took the instrument from his hands.
Ilydra was puzzled. “Isn’t that your court marshal up there?” she asked Rhys, who seemed much more intent on watching the human than the ones bleeding him. What was a man proficient in the art of corporal punishment doing at an event explicitly meant to kill someone?
“Yes, that is him,” Rhys mumbled distractedly, taking a half-step forward. He didn’t offer any more explanation than that, but Ilydra knew him well enough to see the wheels clicking behind his oh-so-calm facade. He was planning something, and whatever it was had already been set in motion.
A loud, deafening crack sounded from the gallows and the whip bit into the delirious, moaning man. The crowd cheered with admiration, pressing forward to watch the newcomer’s proficiency up close, gushing over the way he could make the whip crack louder than any of the men before him.
A small smile trailed over Rhysling’s lips. “I had to send him, he knows how to capture the crowd,” he explained softly to his escort, pulling her hand onto his courteously bent arm to indicate he wanted to walk with her.
“But I can see in your face you don’t want the human to die today, do you?” she inquired, keeping up effortlessly with his controlled, calm pace.
This time, Rhys smiled wide, rocking his head from one side to the other. “That is the other reason for sending that man,” he purred, then stopped their pace, discreetly pointing at the gallows. The court marshal just performed another lash and from this angle, Ilydra could see what probably neither the crowd, nor the guards noticed: The cracking sound didn’t come from the whip hitting flesh, but from the tip cracking against its own body closely to the human, right before it scraped almost harmlessly against the torn up, bloody skin.
What a perfidious mind he has! Ilydra pondered, smiling again. It explained the presence of the court marshal on the gallows, but Tyell was still gone and nowhere to be found.
“I can see you keep an eye out for my confidant and I bid you to stop. You will draw attention to my little charade,” Rhys whispered right next to her ear, leaning into her frame like a courtier begging for her affections. It was another game of his, trying to hide his true intentions from onlookers, and this particular one was all too well known to Ilydra. Ailill nobles had been wondering for years which way the young count bent for pleasure, and Rhys himself did everything in his power to keep them guessing. Well, all except for her, his almost constant companion to social functions. Ilydra knew she’d never grace his bed with her presence and she was content with this. Rhysling’s tastes in foreplay were not of the kind she’d ever enjoy.
“Fine, as you please. But you will have to tell me what game you are playing later. You know how much I hate to be blindsided,” she chided him with a smile. Eons of life might be boring, but consorting with this young Ailill noble usually tided her over many drawn-out social gatherings. Rhys’s life was never dull.
The human had fallen silent and lifeless at this point, rocking softly in his chains as the whip kept on cracking. Even the people watching were quiet now, unhappy with the increase of violence, unhappy with their obligation to stay there until the punishment was finished, and distraught with the sight of so much blood and pain.
When the earl stepped onto the balcony of his residence overlooking the main square, the chatter of voices picked up and stopped once more. Even the whip fell silent as the court marshal looked up to the ruler of Tetharion, standing proudly next to a younger, blond Tyell.
The Earl Wilmoor of Tetharion raised his hands to call for attention he already had, and Rhys snorted softly. “Pompous ass,” he mumbled for Ilydra’s ears only, causing her to bite down a laugh.
“Hear, people of our fair city!” the earl thundered, pointing at the hanging, bleeding human. “I hereby declare this man punished, and order his body to the hands of my nephew to dispose of in any way he pleases. You may now go back to the pleasures of the fair, sing, dance to the music of the bards, and gorge yourself on wine and roast. Remember this day, as this will be the fate of everyone who dares to oppose my orders!”
As soon as the words had been spoken, the court marshal on the gallows handed the whip over to the waiting deathsman and gave a whistle that called two more soldiers away from Rhysling’s side. They made quick work of the chains, catching the falling man clumsily in their attempts to steer clear of the many deep wounds on his back.
“So your lieutenant is the earl’s nephew,” Ilydra whispered with mirth, “and you are using his influence to have your wicked way with a dying man? That is depraved, even for you.”
She had meant it as a joke, but the look Rhys gave her for those words was one of contained fury, hot enough to make her miss a step.
“That was a tasteless thing to say, even for you,” he growled in return, then he took a deep breath to contain his disgust and patted her hand. “No, I plan to nurture him back to health and keep him,” he explained with a hushed voice, smiling happily.
“The earl wants him dead. You are risking your life, your career on this,” Ilydra blurted out. Tightening her grip on his arm, she tugged at him and hissed, “don’t do this, not for a piece of dirt like that human!”
Instead of the fury he had shown before, Rhys just sighed and patted her hand calmingly again. “Don’t worry, dear. I know what I’m doing.”
And he knew what he would get out of this risky game. His prize was carried away quickly, disappearing into the dungeon he had come out of, accompanied by three of Rhys’s men. They would take good care of him and they would see to having him transported into Rhys’s residence safely.
All he had to do was out-maneuver the earl and find a way to persuade him that the human was worth more to House Nancarrow alive than dead.

***

Earl Firun Wilmoor of Tetharion was nervously fumbling with a small canape, trying to make a pleasant smile stick to his tense face. He was used to guests of Ailill nobility, but not to those as high up the social ladder as lady Ilydra Gladfall of Yahir, Duchess of Yahir, home land to every Ailill ever spawned. As member of House Malach, the ‘witching well’ of Ailill society, only the duke of House Ardis and the Prince of House Errea trumped her influence and power, but still… Here she lounged, completely at ease with the company of two lowly members of House Nancarrow’s nobility as it seemed, and obviously enjoying herself.
Maybe it wasn’t so much his company the high lady relished so much. The man at her side, although only a count in the ranks of Nancarrow, had been seen at her side for years; rumor had it he even came and went to her estate as he pleased. Ailill nobles didn’t see the use of a marriage just for love, and premarital sex wasn’t shunned. The only reasons to marry were securing one’s own legacy, pregnancy or political connections, and none of those seemed to sway Count Greyfell and Duchess Gladfall at this point of time.
“So, what did you think of the public punishment you saw today?” the earl asked, trying to make light of a heavy conversation topic. Talking to women of high status had always been a bit of a problem for him, seeing as how most of the topics he usually preferred were taboo in polite conversation.
The duchess smiled tightly, and he instantly knew that he had chosen the wrong topic. The count, a young looking, ashen-skinned man with an aura Firun could only describe as ‘creepily lewd’, seemed to like his choice, though.
“I must admit, as much as I enjoy a well done public punishment, I’m a bit bemused as to how that human could have survived so long. For all intents and purposes, he was useless to you, required constant beating to keep a minimum level of order, and went so far as to laugh at the whipping meant for his execution,” the count observed, filling the room with his satiny, dark voice.
The earl shuddered slightly, trying to ban a vision of the count naked next to the duchess from his touch-depraved brain. With a voice like that, how might his groans sound, what would he whisper with that sultry sing-song of his in the middle of pleasure?
“Ah, well, you see,” he rambled, blinking through the lusty haze his own thoughts had awoken, “it’s a shame to lose him at all, to be honest. His talents with weapons are amazing, his senses sharper than those of some of my Ailill guard, and sometimes I dare believe he might be immortal, taking into consideration all the things he survives on a near-daily basis. But…” he sighed, looking at the small slices of raw fish and pink roe decorating his cracker, and shrugged.
“But?” the duchess pressed politely, raising one eyebrow in question.
“But I think he broke at some point during training, and now there is nothing I could do to him that would still impress or frighten him. He is fearless, stubborn and suicidally mad,” he finished his sentence with a note of regret in his voice, and finally ate the small dish.
This time it was the black-haired count who raised an eyebrow. “I mean no disrespect, good earl, but the only thing broken on him that I could see today was his body. I honestly thought the reason you let him be whipped like this was because he wouldn’t give in to your will.”
A few pieces of roe nearly ended up in the earl’s lungs as he tried to breathe in, swallow and protest at the same time. He coughed a bit, then waved the servant patting his back away with an impatient gesture and stared at the impertinent man.
“Good sir, I assure you that he has been trained by the best of my guard, to our noble House’s highest standards, and with the best intentions. He is not too strong, he is broken, and nobody could fix him. Believe me, I didn’t want to accept that for a long time, but no matter whom I invited to have a look at him, none of them could break him of his defiant, self-destructive ways!”
The count didn’t look too impressed. “I could do it in a hundred days,” he said dryly, almost condescending.
The duchess giggled at that, and quickly hid her lips behind her silver goblet.
The earl looked from the count to the duchess, trying to decide if he was being made fun of, set up, or still a part of this conversation at all. Only the presence of the fine lady made him keep his temper in check, but he couldn’t let those words sit on his pride without rising to the occasion.
“Could you, now? And next you’ll tell me you can walk on water without the aid of magic, right?” he grunted, laughing at his own words. The count didn’t flinch though; he just swung his glass a bit, breathing in the nuances of the ruby red wine, and never took his eyes of the earl’s face.
“You seem to want to be rid of him anyway, so why don’t you try my word? Your nephew informed me that he will be dead in the morning, if nobody tends to his wounds, so you wouldn’t lose anything.” Taking a sip of the expensive wine, the count even smiled. “We could make a bet out of it.”
This might be interesting, the earl thought to himself. That young brat of a noble looked very self-assured, but Wilmoor had spent the last fifteen years worrying about his human pet, to no avail. If he played his cards right, he would not only get rid of his irritating slave without having to live with the humiliation of having been beaten by that mortal cur, but he might even gain a bit of public standing with House Malach. After all, the witnesses to any and all bets would have to speak the final judgment at the end of the bet, and having the Duchess of Yahir around for a month might do wonders for his reputation.
“A bet, you say? How would you assess the results on the human? After all, in all the years he has been with me, there were more than enough phases in which he acted like he was supposed to, but only out of sheer circumstance. He would have to be tested by something that would require total obedience,” the earl mused, picking up another canape.
The count swirled his wine again, staring bemusedly at the blood red ripples on its surface. “That, I have to admit, is a hard thing to verify,” he replied thoughtfully, then hummed and looked up. “How about the Day of Remembrance? Would it be enough of a demonstration if he took on the soul of an ancestor for the ceremony?”
A sudden blush crept over the face of the earl. The Day of Remembrance was the one day of the year where the Houses called their most honored ancestors back from the afterlife to walk amongst them. It was an honor to serve as a vessel for their souls, but it was also a most frightening experience to lose control over one’s own body like that. The earl knew instantly that Niro would never agree to such a thing. It was perfect.
“Those are high stakes, my friend. What would you ask for if you win?” he asked, already smiling gleefully.
The count licked his lips. “If I win, I want to keep the human as my own to do with as I please.”
“And if you lose, count?” the earl went on, frowning by now. What would a count want with a defiant slave?
“If I lose, I will give you what you want the most,” the count replied smoothly, smiling. “Your Nephew as your new chief of staff.”
The earl pondered this. He had actually tried to persuade Tyell to come work for him for quite some time, but the stubborn boy had denied him outright, saying that his oath to the count was solid and would be canceled by the noble, and only him. With this bet, he would lose nothing, and win everything, be it peace of mind or a new, very capable officer.
“I agree to your bet, count,” he said, and stood up to offer his hand.
The count also got up, put his wine glass on the table and grasped his hand in symbolic unity. “Under the eyes of the Lord and the Lady, and with the Duchess Gladfall of Yahir to witness this act, I seal this bet,” he said, invoking every power possible. Although the earl had been gleefully happy with the idea moments ago, he suddenly felt caught.
What in all worlds had he just agreed to?

***

The world was numb and strangely colorless. Niro didn’t know where he was or how he had gotten there, and he had no inkling of an idea why he was still alive. Maybe he wasn’t? Maybe this was death, the vale of souls, a slightly cold, humid, dark place that smelled of burnt out torches, herbs and blood. The bloody shirt was gone and he was lying on his stomach, his hands having been tied to the bed posts over his head. The need to fight, the need to resist was gone, replaced by a disconnected high and the inability to move. Not that he wanted to move, that was. The strange, bitter taste on his lips gave him enough of a clue to know he had been drugged by someone who knew their trade. There was a nutty note in the bitterness, distinctive for the resin of a tree that ate anything warm-blooded by ensnaring its victims with poisonous, thorned tentacles.
An ounce of that resin was worth more than a guard made in a year. Luckily, a good healer only needed a few grains of it to make everything better for a dying man. Niro qualified for that.
Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift through the folds of weightless intoxication. It was a reassuring thing to know he wouldn’t spend his last moments knowing only pain, and as long as those pesky guards let him lie there in peace—
“You shouldn’t be awake,” a voice said, followed by the clack of a closing door, and footsteps closing in on him.
So much for peace and quiet.
“Which either means you are almost resistant to opiates, or I used the wrong dosage. That didn’t happen to me in the last 350 years, so I’m guessing you like to frequent the dragon baths?”
It was a pleasant voice, one that sounded like an old, wizened woman wearing her white hair proudly and comforting her grandchildren with soft, wrinkled hands. It had a sharp edge to it, almost a hissing, but it was very mild. Niro carefully opened one of his eyes to look at the owner of the voice. She was not old, at least she didn’t look like it. There were crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes, and her cheeks looked a little bit saggy, but had she been human and not Lamia, she would have been in her forties, fifties at the most.
“Who are you?” he whispered through numb lips, dragging out the words like a drunkard. Secretly, he didn’t care who she was. The numbing resin had taken all of his worries and fears away, but it didn’t kill the mild curiosity he felt for that exotic woman.
The Lamia didn’t answer his question at first, and for a little while he thought that maybe he hadn’t spoken at all, only thought about it. She walked closer, carrying an earthen bowl with her, and sat down on a small stool next to the hard bed he was lying on.
Finally she spoke, once again surprising him with her aged voice. “I am Gusmerja, your healer,” she explained patiently, setting the bowl on the small table next to his head. It contained a few strings of thick, black thread, wicked looking, hook-like needles, a few rolls of bandages and a handful of small clay pots. Gusmerja picked up one of the clay pots, opened it and sniffed the contents.
“I am not allowed to talk to you, youngling, and I do not care for the sounds of your pain. I will give you more of the wiggleroot to send you back to sleep,” she then explained, pulled out a spoon from underneath the bandages, and filled it with a viscous, brownish liquid from the pot.
Not allowed to talk to me? Niro wondered idly. Who would give such a strange order concerning someone who was dying? On the other hand, why would anyone send him a healer who obviously planned to stitch him up again? His drugged mind grappled with the clues like a drunk with a door grip, and when he finally opened his mouth to speak, Gusmerja shoved the spoonful of sticky goo into his gullet before he could ask anything.
It tasted horrible, burning all the way down his throat and in his stomach, and the tingling sensation followed soon after. He tried to form the next question, but his lips only twitched and no sound came out. Then the world blacked out once more.

Gusmerja sighed, put the spoon away, and poked her finger against Niro’s closed eyelids to make sure he was out. “You younglings and your games, I will never understand,” she huffed at the shadow creeping in the doorway and shaking her head. “At least tell me this isn’t your work.” She pointed at the ghastly wounds criss-crossing all of the human’s back.
Rhysling leaned against the wooden door frame and shook his head, smiling. “No, Nan, but you should know that. This is a brute’s work on a fine peace of art, and I can only hope you’ll be able to work your magic and keep the damage minimal.”
“So you can mark him yourself?” Her wise eyes glittered knowingly.
Rhys smiled like a boy caught with one hand in the cookie jar, then pulled a satchel from his belt and threw it carefully at the lower end of the small bed with the unconscious man on it. A soft, metallic sound came from the contents as it landed. “Maybe,” he purred, and turned away. There was no-one more capable than his old nanny, and nobody else he would have trusted with the care of his newest charge. By tomorrow, most of the damage would be taken care of, and he would finally be able to meet the boy he had bet on. He could only hope he had been right about him.

***

Inside the small cell there was no way of telling the time. Niro woke up with a thundering headache and prickling, uncomfortable tightness all across his back, still shackled to the bed in a spread-out fashion. He had no inkling of an idea how long he had been out, or why he still wasn’t dead, but the itching around his chest and stomach hinted that somebody had stitched him up and bandaged him with a vengeance while he had been out. The room was still the same, filled with the scent of torches and processed herbs, but additionally, there now was a note of stale male sweat.
Somebody had put a wool-knit, checkered blanket over his feet, legs and backside, keeping him warm and covered in his dreamless sleep. The scratchy wool also hinted to his nakedness beneath it.
It was a distressing idea to think that someone- probably Gusmerja- had taken off his clothes while he had been totally helpless. They had seen him naked, and he hadn’t been able to shield himself from their glances as they examined him inch by inch. The thought made him shudder violently. The movement triggered a series of painful, tight tugs all across his back, reminding him that all those stitches needed care and minding. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from tugging at the shackles keeping his arms stretched to the top end of the bed. They were cast iron, but mercifully wrapped with thick linen to keep them from rubbing his wrists raw.
Niro frowned and turned his head just enough to look at the contraptions. His master wouldn’t do such a merciful thing, as he firmly believed that those who deserved being shackled, also deserved being in pain to remind them of the errors of their ways. And the earl had a well-known dislike for Lamias, talking often about the depravity and beastliness of those blood-sucking creatures. One such as the earl would never pay a healer like Gusmerja to take care of a slave, he’d find it distasteful.
But then, who else would give a horse’s shit about a broken human man and his well-being?
Niro pondered this for a while, feeling the calming effects of the wiggleroot drift through him. Maybe his master had finally relented and sold him to a gladiator’s school or some other business where he’d do manual labor, far away and unable to screw important things up. The thought of having been sold hurt his heart, which was strange, for he had never loved his master or the estate. He had loved having a home, though, and knowing how things worked there. Everything would change with a new master, and change was not something Niro embraced easily.
As he lay there, he got restless and disheartened. The healing woman, Gusmerja, seemed nice enough despite the things Niro had heard about her race, so maybe her master— and through that, his master— would be as likable. If he was Lamia too, Niro would have to cope with that. Maybe he had been bought as a light snack. For all he knew about the blood drinking snakepeople, they liked the taste of pain, or fear, or hatred like some people preferred special brands of wine.
The Ailill, on the other hand, liked him for being human. They didn’t like the whole species of humans, they actually looked down on them quite blatantly, but they liked humanity’s disconnection from the earth and the circle of life. As Ailill, Fae people, they were tightly bound to the rules of life and death, to powerful, overwhelming magic that affected their life quite strongly in a multitude of ways. Humans were not so influenced by the forces of fate and earth, and they could murder and lie and infiltrate to their heart’s content, making them prime candidates for any dirty work a nobleman might think of.
The Pander wouldn’t have fixed him up. They were as gruesome as the Lamia were bloodthirsty, living off the dead flesh of living things like ghouls, but calm, wise and even-tempered with a strength to be revered. Still, a Pander master would have simply eaten his rotting body, no healing required.
And lastly, the were the Nightgigers. No, there was no possible way a Nightgiger had bought him, not even the Ailill had ever been able to truly contact them, let alone find out who ruled them. There was still some uproar about the idea of Nightgigers even being sentient, intelligent higher life forms, and in some parts of the world they were still called animals. On the surface, they actually acted like animals, like an ancient cross between the Pander and the Lamia, only much more terrifying. They were said to hunt for children reckless enough to leave their homes at night, but in truth they took any warm flesh, any blood available, as long as it was that of a humanoid creature. They didn’t like the taste of the Pander people, and they usually went after weak, frail, hurt, dying or freshly dead victims, always outside, never inside a building. All of this made them bogeymen for every defiant or nagging child, a natural threat for travelers, and in the end, not much of an enemy for the war-wise peoples.
‘An Ailill noble, or a Lamian noble,’ Niro decided. The stitches on his back itched a bit, so he tried to wiggle on the bed in hopes the bandages would help ease it. This was how he found out that another strap of leather fixed his hips and behind to the bed, making it impossible for him to move from his resting site.
Against his better knowledge, Niro had to smile. Whoever had bought him, they weren’t stupid. Shackling him like this could only mean they knew how capable he was when it came to breaking out, and this in turn meant they had talked to the earl earnestly enough to get him to admit to all the shenanigans Niro had played on him in the years. The earl hadn’t sold him as a pig in a poke, which surprised him a little, mostly because he wouldn’t have believed anyone would want to buy someone so troubled as him. It didn’t bode well for his future, too. Troublemakers weren’t bought to keep for long.
The door opened and Niro instinctively tugged at the shackles and straps, but to no avail.
“Stop squirming, little one. If you tear your stitches I will be mad,” the wizened voice of Gusmerja scolded as she shuffled into the room. She came to his side, leaned over his back and prodded at the bandages, looking for signs of blood at the white cloth, but found none.
With a satisfied click of her tongue, she turned away and walked over to the side table, where a few dozen trinkets, flasks, stacks of paper and bags sat. Picking up a brownish, wooden quill with no feathers, she unplugged a small, earthen firkin and dabbed the tip of the quill into blackish ink, writing down this and that on the top layer of one of the paper stacks. “I will give Count Greyfell a list of medicines and salves  to cure your back and keep the fever at bay, but I will tell you this, too,” she explained, her voice trudging behind as she concentrated on writing. “If he offers you medicine, and if he tries to apply a salve, you are to obey. Not only because he says so, but because I do, and I, my dear boy, do not care for politics, just for your health.”
Niro’s instinct was to resist the order, just as he had resisted almost any other order of those who treated him like an unruly child. He thought better of it, though. The Lamia healer had no interest in controlling him, no gain from his obedience other than his health. There was no small triumph to score by ignoring her words, and now that he was not on death’s door anymore, the old need to survive flared to life. Medicine, salves, those things he could cope with. A count on the other hand…
“Who is this Count Greyfell, Gusmerja?” he asked with a low voice, still unsure what to make of her.
She halted her writing at the sound of his voice, turned her wizened head and smiled broadly, showing her long, pointed canines blatantly. “So you remembered my name, very good. Not everyone could resist the effects of the root like this, impressive.” Then she turned back to her writing, once more ignoring his question until she was finished.
At last, she cleaned the quill with a small wad of cloth, put it away and rolled the finished paper together. It went straight into a leather sheath and was put away, but her hands kept busy. This time, she grabbed one of the satchels sitting at the back of the table, put it in front of her and opened it to examine the contents. Whatever was inside that satchel, made her face look worried, but only slightly.
“You must be one bag of trouble for the count to be restrained with instruments like these,” she huffed after a moment of shock, then put her hand inside the satchel and pulled out four rings of some kind of metal. It had a blueish tint to it, not shiny like a polished armor, but dull and glittering like the front of a storm cloud. Niro could make out small blackish bands of what looked to be writing. Runes maybe, or just decorative symbols, one could never know.
“What are those?” he asked, worried by her worry, more than by his own knowledge. Those rings were too big to be meant for fingers or ears, or toes at that. They were wide enough to fit around his wrists and ankles, though.
His question seemed to be inside of the range of topics Gusmerja was ready to answer. “Those are Mithril spell bracelets, very rare, very expensive,” she explained as she stepped closer. “And since I have strict orders to put those on you before I hand you over to the count, you’d better be wary of what you say in his company. He is known for his effective handling of unruly children, and with those magic trinkets he won’t need to touch you.”
Suddenly, Niro didn’t want those things anywhere near him. Tugging at the shackles and straps, he gasped for air, growling, “don’t you put that spellwork on me, woman! I will hurt you if you do!” The movement made his back hurt, but this time he didn’t stop.
Unfortunately, neither did Gusmerja. Clicking her tongue in disapproval, she first gave him a slap on the back of his head. “Stop your struggling, I will do as I was told, and so will you,” she growled, and then proceeded to speak soft words of magic to the metal bracelets. They opened to her bidding like flowers to the sun, breaking on one side as the other side just bent to the force of her will.
“Don’t do this!” It was all Niro could do, beg of her, hiss at her, order her, but none of it worked.
One after the other, the Lamia put the bracelets first around his wrists above the shackles, then around his ankles where they tightened just above the protruding bones.
“See,” she finally said, stretching her back until her old bones popped, “it didn’t hurt the least. And as soon as you have calmed down enough, I will untie you and bring you to your new master.”
“I am calm!” Niro roared, only to realize this wouldn’t get him free anytime sooner. He tried again, this time with a calmer voice. “I am calm, really.”
Gusmerja just laughed with that kind of humor only the wizened folk had, and turned away. “Sure, sure. Calm as the River Dauntess at spring,” she scoffed, and turned to leave.
Once more, Niro couldn’t do anything but lay there and wait.

***

The terrace was shrouded in nightly darkness that was only broken by a few braziers along the carpeted walkway. Another half dozen sat near the oval marble table near the banister. A blood fly was circling Rhys’ goblet of wine, confused by the iron-heavy stench of the black flintwine sloshing around inside it. He had accompanied the Duchess Ilydra to her residence an hour ago, fully expecting Gusmerja to be done with the human servant by then, ready to take charge over the man he had risked his lieutenant for.
He had been waiting ever since, and still there was no sign of the old Lamia. It irked him greatly, this waiting game, but his impatience was enough of a shameful weakness for the noble to keep quiet about. He was too young to be taken seriously anyway, there was no reason to feed into the mirth of the other Ailill nobles. Most of them had two-hundred or more years on his young 168 years of age, and as each and everyone of them, he had spent the first 120 years on education, schooling and training in any and every craft beneficial to his rank and status.
At last, the door on the other side of the big terrace opened. The human’s bandages stood out like signaling lights in the dark night, but his skin was just as fair and easy to spot. As much as the earl had proclaimed his human slave to be an assassin, a dog to be sicced on those who displeased its master, there was not much true skill to mortal… yet. Of course, had the earl’s little human been able to surpass Rhysling’s training as an assassin, he would have lost his faith in himself and the Lord and Lady.
Rhys watched on silently as the human walked across the open space, his face a mask of defiance and anger. Gusmerja didn’t bother coming with him and turned at the door to close it silently behind her as she went back inside.
They were alone, at last.
The human stopped five feet away from the table and eyed him with suspicious, flinty glances. He wore the spell-bracelets, just as Rhys had ordered, but by the way he held himself, the Ailill already knew how little the mortal liked the adornments. He would like them even less in a few moments. That thought made Rhys smile.
“I will spare you pompous introductions,” he said, “because for now you will call me either ‘master’ or ‘sire’, nothing more, nothing less. You do not need to burden yourself with titles, my full name, why you are here or why you are still alive, those are things we will talk about at a later point in time.”
With those words, Rhys put down the goblet, pulling himself more upright. He could see the anger flare in Niro’s face and he could almost taste his need to defy him. But not yet, the time had not come and there weren’t that many chances to break the vicious cycle the human had kept going with his last master. This was one of those chances, and Rhys wasn’t going to let it slide past.
“Before you speak, I will finish,” he said, holding up a hand to ask for silence. “You have already noticed those bands of mithril ore I had my healer put around your arms and legs. I also know you have no control over magic whatsoever, which means you won’t be able to resist them or to break the hold I have on them, and through them on you. They are imbued with a series of spells that will use your life force against you at my command, and at the command of the person who made them. I will use them to control and punish you when I see fit.”
By now, the human was agitated, his hands constricted into tight, angry, white fists, his teeth grinding with the force of his rage, the muscles in his thighs tense with restraint. He looked positively livid, ready for a demonstration, a test.
“I have no use for a guard I have to constantly supervise, and I definitely have no use for a servant who defies my orders,” he finished, smiling suddenly. “Will you obey me?”
The answer was bit out with a growl of triumph, a sparkle of fiery hate in those honey-colored eyes. Just one word, filled with all the impotent rage, a dozen years worth of abuse to no avail, and all the heartfelt, pure hate a single mortal being could summon.
“Never.”
Rhys closed his eyes as tumultuous joy flooded his system. How the earl could have misinterpreted this much power, this much force of will, he would never understand. No mistreatment, no ill-usage of punishment had broken that one boy, and now Rhys had him for himself to bend what could not be broken, to make him into something breathtaking.
Lifting one ashen hand from the table, he made a simple gesture, uttering words of magic. ‘Constrict,’ he said, and through his will and power the bracelets around Niro’s arms pulled his limbs to the back until both lower arms lay hands to elbow against each other. Then the metal bands wound themselves around both of his arms, fixing them together tightly.
Niro’s face went pale, then red as he tried to pull against the immovable metal, then pale again as the newly formed shackles around his arms started to pull downward, towards the bands around his ankles. A glimpse of fear shone through the helpless rage tearing across his face, but it was quickly hidden as he stumbled to his knees in order to not fall onto his face. Moments later he fought so stay upright and on his knees, kept down and controlled by the bindings the spell-bands formed. He still struggled for quite some time against the unyielding force of magic, only ceasing his fight when he was out of breath and covered by a sheen of sweat.
Rhys watched this with a placid smile, taking a sip from the flintwine as the human still tried to gather his wits from the unexpected experience.
“What have you done to me!” Niro yelled, his voice shivering with rage.
Carefully placing the goblet on the stone table, Rhys shifted his pose into one of casual alertness.
“I told you what I expect of a servant, and I asked you if you were willing to comply. You told me in no uncertain terms that you wouldn’t, and thusly won’t be of any use to me as a slave,” he explained, straightened his deep-black vest and stood up to walk around the table, towards the kneeling, huffing human. “Nevertheless, you will be of use as my pet, since this is the only other rank I could bestow on you, except for ordering your death. A pet, you see, does not need to roam free or to have an opinion. A pet just has to amuse its owner, who I am.”
Rhys gathered the folds of his wide, flowing linen pants and crouched next to Niro’s twitching, kneeling form. He was close enough to touch if he decided to do so, but not close enough to get bitten or hit by Niro’s head, careful to keep enough distance between them so the rage wouldn’t spill over and enfold him too. His eyes shone like quicksilver, impenetrable, cold and sharp as a blade as he examined Niro’s face with a pondering glance and a small smirk.
“Right now, I want you immobile and calm, and I want to touch my purchase. Since there is no need for you to want this, I made sure you won’t be able to stop me from doing that, just like I will force anything else I might want to do on you.”
It was a beautiful sight to see the young man blanch, to hear how his breath quickened and sharpened, to smell how fear floated through his veins and into the sweat still escaping his skin. Rhys wondered idly how much Niro had learned of Ailill society in his time at the earl’s court. Judging by the way he reacted to those last words, it couldn’t be all that much. It was common knowledge that the Ailill as a people viewed rape as heresy, something never to be done, never to be condoned. Torture of any kind was common and due to their ability to heal easily and quickly and live to a very old age, they tended to get very, very creative at it, but rape was unheard of.
Rhys didn’t plan to explain this anytime soon, though, because having his new pet off-kilter and afraid was part of the way to turn him around. For Niro not to know this, he would have to be untouched, a virgin to the craving of the body for touch. That thought made his blood roar through his head.
With a deep breath to calm himself, Rhys raised a hand. It hung in the air for a moment, then he slowly, calmly, reached for Niro’s face.
“Don’t touch me!” the human screamed. His voice was still shaking with fear and tension. Only the Lord and the Lady could fathom what kind of horrors he was envisioning at this moment, but none of them would match with what Rhys actually planned.
His fingertips touched Niro’s hair. The human flinched hard enough to bounce his knees against the flat granite floor of the terrace, expecting a hit that never came. Rhys didn’t stop his foray at this though, he had already seen it coming. Instead, he buried his hand into the dirt brown, unkempt hair with deliberate care, rubbing his fingers over the skin of his head in slow circles.
The brown strands of hair did not reflect the lights of the braziers like they should have, and Rhys found the reason for that in the waxy feel beneath his fingertips. He was unclean, his mane unwashed for probably several days. Not dirty, although the smell of soot stuck to it, but not fresh enough to shimmer with those highlights he had seen when he had first noticed the youngling being led the gallows.
It was not a big inconvenience and Rhys knew the gashes on Niro’s back made it hard for him to bathe himself, or be bathed by another, but the knowledge awoke a hunger in him to see his pet clean, warm from the heated water, with hair shimmering like bronze.
The lean, muscular body kneeling before him shivered with anxiety, and for a while, Rhys watched the play of light glittering over his sweat soaked arms. His pet was on the small side of what he had seen in human males so far, but not too small. Standing, he would probably fit beneath Rhyslings chin. He was a perfect size for the Ailill’s preferences in a companion, but not too tiny to make him unfit for serving the more grim purpose Rhys intended for him.
It took a little while for the human to calm down enough for those little twitches and the shivering to die down. Rhys never wavered in his slow, affectionate caresses, and he never moved his hand away from his head. The neck-ruffling stench of fear and sweat permeated from the cowering figure, but at least he didn’t look ready to fight for his life anymore.
When Rhys finally removed his hand, the human had a dazed expression on his face, too confused to struggle for longer.
“We will see how trainable you are, pet,” he hummed, smiling at the wide-eyed expression on Niro’s face.

***

The clash with his new owner had left Niro shaken and quivery and with the urge to snarl at something and nothing at the same time. Had he been offered the chance, he would have crawled into a nook and curled up like a beaten dog, but that would have been a weakness too easily perceptible. It would have invited trouble and teasing that he could not bear, which left him with the only other choice: guarded silence and utter vigilance. Maybe those cursed metal cuffs could make him obey right now, right here, but they had to have their own weaknesses. Every trap had its weak spot and Niro had mastered the art of finding and exploiting those.
Niro was following the Ailill bastard through the maze of hallways that his family had once called their summer home, glowering at the slender, well-dressed back with all the bloodlust he could summon. As much as that man had commanded him to call him ‘master’, Niro’s feelings for him were anything but subservient. Just another Fae bastard with delusions of grandeur, a small hitch with no consequence whatsoever for Niro’s life or plans, nothing a stealthy dagger or wild arrow shot couldn’t fix. And then he finally would be free to take his revenge, to take revenge for the injustices done to his family and leave this makerforsaken city for good. The thought made him smile.
Although the home of his new liege had originally been of human design, traces of Ailill culture now were everywhere. Some of the flag stones seaming the more popular corridors had been ripped out and replaced with gleaming, colorful stone mosaics and the stone walls had been plastered and painted to repel the omnipresent gloom of the fortress. Statues depicting human gods, rulers and former inhabitants were still there, but the Fae had added little stone plaques explaining the depicted persons and scenes like a zoo exhibit. Some of the bigger pieces had lost their prominent places to Ailill art, displaced into galleries at the back of the palais.
The few servants passing the duo on their way towards the north wing were all Pander, going through their routines with sedate calmness and little interest in Niro’s presence. Guards were only posted at the doors leading to the outside, but those were Ailill in the colors of House Nancarrow, a crest well known to Niro. They ignored his snarls with stoic expressions, but nodded polite greetings at his owner as he led Niro up the stairs and into the residential wing of the estate.
The bandages chafed a little, but they survived the silent, chilly trip up the stairs and towards the master suites where once Niro’s parents had spent their evenings. Obviously, even the Ailill recognized the favorable bearing towards the sunrise; the Ailill opened the familiar door for him and ordered himinside with a silent glare.
The room had changed just as much and as little as the rest of the estate. The wooden floor wasn’t covered in wood shavings and reed anymore, but brushed and washed and lacquered. Carpets swallowed most of the gleaming wood, burying it beneath soft greens, browns and yellows, complimenting the new wall tapestries. The furniture stood in stark, dark contrast to those natural colors. It was wood, almost black but dull with the lack of protective coating, and made from a wood that Niro didn’t know and had never seen before. The grain was almost invisible, giving it a most powdery look, the carving of the pieces of furniture elegant and simple. A table with three cushioned chairs, a vanity and a small side table with flasks and decanters were scattered about the sitting room, a smaller part of the chambers intended for entertaining guests. A rather giant bed with white and sunflower-yellow sheets, a circular, curved wash trough, three commodes and a whole gathering of surfaces installed into the plaster dominated the bedroom, but the servant’s room was gone. Where once had been a door, there was now wall covered by pompous tapestry that Niro eyed with disdain and quiet fury.
Niro hesitantly walked through the rooms, staying away from the earthen oil lamps offering just enough light to get around. Except for the windows, nothing was as he remembered it from his youth. Gone were the light oak furnitures, the paintings of ancestors and the smell of his mother’s soap. The wall where she had marked their children’s growth, much to the chagrin of the serving folk, had been painted over, the sword dent in the door frame smoothened out, the blood soaking the wooden floor panels in her death sanded away. He might as well have walked into a stranger’s inner sanctum, for all he cared. Adding to that, this particular stranger was intent on making him a plaything to be toyed with.
The quiet fury brewing in Niro’s chest was exquisite.
“Have you been here before?” The Ailill was leaning casually against the door frame connecting the bedroom with the sitting room and eying Niro with what he could only assume to be a lazy smirk. Inside these friendly quarters, the dark garment on his ashen body looked out of place and improper.
“A long time ago,” Niro allowed with a forced casualty he didn’t feel. Lying to Ailill never went well, but bending or holding back the truth worked well enough. And since too personal questions were seen as brutish and rude, they had a tendency to not press, even where it might have been acceptable.
The ruse did its work. The Ailill nodded and pushed off the door frame, joining Niro in the bedroom and crowding him towards the bed by simply closing in on him. After what had happened on the balcony and the shame of letting someone pet him like a dog, Niro stepped back instantly. The Ailill prowled after him like a djinn, with movements smooth as silk in a breeze and a play of lights and shadows flitting over his flowing garments, his ashen skin and his black hair. The Fae’s lips still held that small, lazy smile, but his eyes gave away the predator instincts, the joy of having his prey cornered.
“I’m not your pet,” Niro hissed, twitching as his calves hit the edge of the giant bed.
At an arm’s length, the Ailill slowed down, not only in speed, but in movement. He took that last step like he was trapped in a different stream of time, carefully, oh so carefully extending one hand to frame Niro’s cheek with cool, soft fingers as he leaned forward.
“Yes, you are,” he whispered, leaning in as if to kiss Niro, his cat-like eyes small and lascivious.
Their bodies touched. A cold, hateful grin flashed through Niro’s face.
Then he grabbed the dagger dangling at the Ailill’s belt.

~*~

The dagger lay heavy and reassuring in Niro’s fingers, a familiar weight and friend to his hatred. He didn’t stop to marvel at his luck, though; his arm made an elegant swipe towards the Ailill’s midsection, only hindered by their close proximity. Stitches across his back twinged with pain in answer to the sudden exertion, but Niro didn’t pay them any attention.
He should have still caught something, if only the cloth billowing around the Ailill’s chest, but he didn’t. The ashen man didn’t so much jump out of the blade’s path, he simply wasn’t there when the slightly curved edge whistled through the air. He hadn’t fled, either, he was standing just out of Niro’s reach, head cocked sideways and smiling.
“Want to try again, pet?” he purred in a softer voice, turning his face slightly to bare his pulse; a lascivious and infuriating invitation that Niro just couldn’t pass up. He switched his grip on the dagger, aligning the blade’s edge to lay parallel to his forearm, and jumped forward with two quick, diagonal steps, feinting to the right and to the left as he worked his way closer to his target. Only when he closed in on the Ailill did he finally go for the Ailill’s right thigh, waiting for the last possible moment to show his cards.
This time, the blade caught cloth, hissing through the fine weave with a melodious sound as the Ailill dodged back once more. Niro followed the moves this time, trying his best to catch a glimpse of the minute, lightning-fast movements and failing. At least he managed to stay on his heels, driving him across his bedroom like a snarling, blade-wielding fury.
Still, the Ailill dodged each swing, each strike or stab, offering enticing glimpses of pale, smooth, ash-gray skin as he weaved through the obstacle course that was his furniture. And he did it backwards, keeping his eyes on Niro— his face, not his arm, feet, or shoulders— smiling infuriatingly through it all.
It was his expression, that glint in Master’s eye, that finally pushed Niro over the edge of the ever-brewing rage in his heart. A blink of fury, a second of not concentrating on following the creature’s wraith-like, dancing moves and Niro was lost, crashing into the table and sending the chairs flying as he fell to the ground. The impact drove the air out of his lungs and left him battered and dazed. Had he actually moved that fast? And if so, how had he done that? How had that Fae bastard managed to be even faster?
Niro lay sprawled between the seats, staring up at the smiling nightmare that was his captor. The gaping slash in his jerkin sleeve aside, he was unfazed, not even breathing hard, not a slice of worry or anger in his inhuman eyes. That look, that too wide, too calm, too intimate expression tightened Niro’s chest, made it hard to breathe. The innate stillness in that creature’s face filled him with fear until it was all he could think of. When the Ailill finally spoke again, the smooth sound of his voice made Niro’s hairs stand on end.
“Would you like to try a third time, pet?” he purred throatily, gliding closer. “It will be your last chance to sow your wild oats, mind you. Three is the arcane number of certainty, and to let you try more than thrice and not render opposition would be sacrilege against the Lord and Lady, as much as I enjoy this little game.”
Game, he said. He actually thought this to be a game! Niro shuddered, tightening his grip on the dagger to the point of pain. Then he let it clatter to the ground, shaking his head in defeat. Two direct attacks had already failed miserably, no use in trying a third time and disgrace himself further. What he had learned so far was enough to keep him busy with planning for a few days, just long enough to fill the days of recovery after whatever punishment his new keeper would likely hand out to him.
Buying time to plan, yes, that was the reason he gave in; at least that was what Niro tried to tell his screaming mind.
The Ailill stepped closer, doing a kind of half-nod towards the side and shooing him with one hand. “Out of my sitting arrangement, little pet. And no sudden motions, we wouldn’t want you to get hurt by accident.”
He wasn’t stupid, Niro had to give him that. As he fought his body, grinding his teeth though the showers of pain on his way back to his feet, the Ailill moved closer and carefully set overthrown chairs back on their feet, tutting at the splintered table. “I would like to allege I hate having to punish you this soon,” he said, unperturbed by Niro’s careful shuffle away from the furniture, and picked up the table cloth. He shook it out, draped it over the broken table, and finally turned, eying Niro’s battered body with that too-intimate, too-hot look of his.
“But that would be a lie. I, oh, so look forward to punishing you,” he finally added with a purr. Then he smiled, and moved. Faster than before, inhumanly quick as he reached for Niro and grabbed his throat to silence the scream about to break out of his mouth.

~*~

The decision to run had come too late. The Ailill’s steel grip on his throat was unbreakable, his strength shocking as the lithe elf dangled him inches above the floor with one arm and no sign of exertion. Niro flailed, trying his luck at kicking his captor, but all that got him was a rough shake and a slap. None of that helped with his increasing need to breathe, or the panic bubbling up in his chest.
Niro knew this game. It was meant to break the spirit, to prove superiority, to crush resistance. It had almost cost him his life as a boy, and the only reason he was still here had been old Cyril. The halfbreed had pulled away the Ailill drillmaster in the last possible moment, just inches from drowning the young human who wouldn’t stop bucking and struggling, no matter what. And after saving Niro from suffocation, Cyril had beaten him up so badly, he hadn’t been able to walk straight for a week. That had taught Niro to at least act the part of the subdued scholar, if only to escape Cyril’s bull whip, and he had gotten good in it.
With a cut-off snarl, Niro let his body slump, reined in his instincts to fight for his life and waited. If he stopped struggling, the Ailill would let go, this was how the game was played. Any moment now. Just a little longer. Colors bled out of the world as his sight started to weaken with lack of oxygen. His heart beat faster and faster, jumping against his ribs with the increase of panic. The Ailill smiled broader, his bone-white teeth glittering in the lamplight. His fingers tightened like murderous stone around Niro’s neck, casually crushing his windpipe, his arteries, his nerves. Niro’s mind started screaming, don’t trust him, this is not a game, he will not let go, save yourself, kill him, and finally his will gave beneath the growing pressure of self-preservation.
Niro threw his remaining strength against the Ailill’s grip, gargling through the pressure against his larynx as he struggled, tugged and kicked, but it was too late. He had waited too long and risked too much. His body was already growing faint, his sight turning darker, his fingers getting numb and hard to move as he slapped and kicked against the immovable body in front of him. At least he would go down fighting, instead of dying bound to a pole and surrounded by cheering people. Being strangled was a honorable way to die, was it not?
Niro didn’t feel the impact of his body on the ground when the Ailill finally let go. The colorful carpet burned his back as he was dragged over to the bed, but his body still didn’t obey his frantic orders. The only thing he could do was cough and gasp as he was heaved onto the bedsheets, and groan as he was lifted to close the shackles dangling from the bedposts around his wrists. The stitches holding his back together twinged and burned enough to make him groan even in his half-conscious state, but it took a little longer for him to come to his senses.
The harsh grip on his hair helped with that. The Ailill pulled his head back in a dangerous angle, staring down at his face with that intimate smile. “Be silent,” he ordered.
Niro snarled, then opened his mouth to say what he thought of his master’s orders, but the second his lips parted, the Ailill poured a honey-colored liquid into his mouth. Coughing and gasping, Niro tried to spit it out, but the angle made it all but impossible and all the coughing only forced him to swallow faster. It tasted bitter, fruity with a hint of cinnamon, like an expensive Yahirian tea. It also prickled through his throat, numbed his tongue and rushed to his head faster than it should.
With his deed done, the Ailill let his head go and stepped back, putting the stopper back into the little flask he had emptied into Niro’s mouth.
“This healing potion is quite strong, so don’t be alarmed if your wounds start itching soon,” he explained, still smiling. “I also overdosed you, which means you will have to endure a few side effects. Probably a little vertigo, increased salivating, certainly heightened libido, which is why I shackled your arms. We don’t want you to get carried away and play with yourself, now, do we?”
As much as Niro would have loved to yell at the pointy-eared bastard, the prickling in his throat had increased so much, he had a hard time doing anything else but swallowing convulsively. Worse, he could feel the first tingles on his back, a promise of things to come that he didn’t want to experience. His whole body felt warmer, thicker somehow, and all that warmth was just starting to slowly creep down his chest and towards his crotch. It felt eerily familiar, although he had never felt it in this intensity.
“Dragon’s Tail,” he hissed, tugging at the shackles wide-eyed. “You gave me Dragon’s Tail? Are you trying to kill me after all?”
The Ailill huffed and rolled his eyes. “Don’t be melodramatic, pet. This was hardly enough to kill someone who frequents the dragon baths as much as you.  Now, just ride the waves and be calm, I have a guest to tend to.” And with that statement, the Ailill turned and walked towards the door.
“Wait! Come back!”
The door fell shut. Niro couldn’t do anything but stare at it dismayed, left alone in the lavish bedroom. His heart was beating so loud, he could hear it jump against his ribcage in the sudden silence. Then the itching on his back started, and he hissed through clenched teeth. “Good-for-nothing loiter-sack, snivelling, stinking wandought, if I get my hands around your neck,—” The itching spread all over his back and no amount of twitching or twisting bore any relief. The lone thought of having to hang there and endure this for any amount of time was unfathomable, but then the heat creeping down his belly reached his crotch, filling his length until it strained against the linen pants he was wearing. The vertigo hit him almost simultaneously, intermingling the opposing sensations until one bled into the other and his whole body was on fire.
A groan forced its way out of his throat, shivering through the empty room like a call for help. Niro closed his eyes, gasping as he started to sweat. If this was the penalty for attacking his master, it was an effective one, if unusual. But would he come if Niro called for help? Would anyone come?
Fear settled in his stomach like a stone. He wouldn’t call for help. He didn’t need help, he could endure this, he would endure this. After all, with this, he already knew what he was in for. Better than to call out and then realize that nobody would come to help. They never came, they never helped. He wouldn’t humiliate himself, not again, not anymore.
Another wave of tingling lust rushed through his body and into his cock, sending twitches through the hard length. A wet patch appeared on the cloth of his pants, another moan crept out of his throat. Niro closed his eyes harder, frowning with self-restraint. Hold on as long as you can. They never outlast you, you just need to hold on.

~*~

“We don’t meet here often,” Ilydra quipped, casually looking through the front parlor of the regent’s palace. “Has something happened to your private quarters? Or have you accommodated private company there you don’t want me to see?”
Her gown was beautiful, albeit of a simple cut; a dark, autumn-orange dress with knotted, wide-cut bell sleeves offering glimpses of her creamy arms, tight below her bosom and around her hips, but spreading and flowing down her legs like falling leaves. A sparse smattering of jewels adorned the upper hem and enticed the eye to look at her womanly features, but still didn’t make a point of the expensive decoration. A lesser Ailill woman would have used a dress like that for a high feast, maybe even a handfasting, but for Ilydra, this was casual evening wear. Any Ailill noble would have been lucky to court her, rich, beautiful and powerful as she was, but in spite of that, she still chose to spend most of her time with the one unavailable suitor she had ever met.
Rhysling lounged across the sitting arrangement, filling the settee with his limber form, a smoky, dark blotch next to her sunny form. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t appreciate the special honor her constant companionship bestowed on him, because he did. The reason why he chose and enjoyed to spend so much time with a fae woman was simply her mind. There was and always would be more to life than fucking or rallying more power, and where other nobles just saw a beautiful woman ready to be claimed, Rhysling saw a powerful woman ready to savor all of life’s offerings. Adding to that, there was an art to a good verbal spit that only a chosen few people had mastered. Ilydra was the only one in Rhysling’s select circle, who managed to survive the fights with him unfettered and unperturbed, and still wanted to associate with him.
He threw her a lazy smile. “I might have indulged myself, indeed. There is nothing wrong with sampling wares I procured, is there?” he purred, fighting against the vision of his human pet bound and twitching beneath the effects of the healing salve. Had he been younger, or less experienced, he wouldn’t have been able to withstand the delicious draw to go back and secretly spy on the boy’s torture. But still, no matter how many times he had played games like this with other suitors, his body still shivered and twitched with lust, urging him to throw away all caution and composure.
And Ilydra knew, saw it on the way he was sprawled, noticed all the little signs he tried to hide so valiantly. “I don’t begrudge you this little infatuation, you know this,” she said, then frowned softly. “But aren’t there more important tasks you are to fulfill? I do seem to remember hearing my uncle uttering something of an order, concerning you and that Lamia bitch, Seryth Tasden. Why are we here, wasting time on political banter and rutting, broken humans?”
Rhysling stilled. As much as he loved dear Ilydra, her eaves-dropping on the Ailill king of Yahir and actually knowing about his assignment, if only in part, was shocking and dangerous beyond reason. Not reacting further to her revelation was all he could do, but even that wasn’t enough to discourage her.
“I am right, am I not?” she squealed in a burst of youthful glee, clapping her gloved hands softly. “Oh, don’t look so dismayed, I have known about your profession for decades. Did you actually think I wouldn’t catch on to your travel routes coinciding with the sudden deaths of important royals? I’m not a simpleton, you know.”
“That you aren’t,” Rhys agreed, sighing. This complicated matters. Where the surprising find of that human had been a happy coincident he intended to use for his own benefit, Ilydra’s knowledge didn’t make her any more useful in reaching his goals and fulfilling his task. Under different circumstances, he would have killed whoever stuck their nose into his business, but that was not an option with his sponsor’s niece, his best friend and companion. No, he’d have to find another way to work around her, without hurting her feelings.
“You are already plotting to keep me out of your way, like a little, lost pup, aren’t you?”
Rhys smiled. There was no use in trying to hide his feelings from her. “Yes.”
“Well, stop it right now. I am not a little pup. I don’t intend to botch at your trade and I don’t cherish the illusion of being able to do an assassin’s work as some kind of holiday distraction. You know me better than that— I know better than that!” Ilydra took a deep, calming breath and picked up her glass of wine, if only to busy her fluttering hands. She only gestured when she was upset, thinking it a peasant thing to do, but it told Rhys how his fears stung her. “All I am saying is, you have a magician at your side. If you need something more than a pack of puny spell bracelets, please don’t hesitate. I trust you enough— more than you trust me, obviously— to not ask questions if you order weirder items from me.”
Weirder items, she said. Rhys couldn’t hold back the grin threatening to split his face. He knew exactly what she was talking about. There were items imbued with forbidden magicks, things that would split a person in two, right through the middle, or turn them inside out, at the wielder’s wish. Artifacts and relics so dangerous, only the highest of mages even knew about them. And Ilydra had fought hard to find herself in those ranks, high up amongst those of notorious renown.
“I don’t plan on using ‘weird’ items, but it is encouraging to know I could, should the need arise. I am sorry I didn’t trust you, my dear, but I am not used to having civilians in on my plans, or work. I’d rather keep you on the sidelines for as long as possible, but I won’t treat you like a helpless pup anymore, I promise.”
“So you won’t spill your plans to me for crooning over? A shame,” she sighed, then winked at him. “Now, tell me more about your guest in your private parlor. I want gory details.”

***

Luckily, the talk with Ilydra had ended on a positive note. Her delight over Rhysling’s plans for his human pet had made her giggle and swoon, and the boisterous chat had almost made Rhys forget the time.
He felt invigorated, a mood only strengthened by the soft sighs and moans welcoming him to his private quarters. Rhys may have been able to move like spider’s silk in a breeze, quick like lightning on a cold spring night, but creeping towards the bound, helpless, lustful man still felt like a child’s game of hide and seek. He felt clumsy and giddy, with prickling fingertips and reddening cheeks.
Stopping in the shade of the doorway, he took a moment to let his eyes wander over the human’s body. The Dragon’s Tail in the wound salve had set his body on fire to such an extent that not even the cool breeze of the room could keep him from sweating. The wounds had closed beautifully, if probably painfully, leaving the stitches as cruel, dark reminders of past torture, and a healthy, rosy color had bled all through his pale body. Niro was hanging in the shackles like so much dead weight at this moment, but Rhys had no illusions about the inner turmoil he was still going through; Dragon’s Tail was like a whip to that hot knot deep inside each living being, slapping their lust and need to screaming life, just to let it fade and then repeat the cycle.
Rhysling stepped into the bed chamber with a resolute sigh and walked towards the bound man. Niro’s reaction was slow, but when he finally raised his head to stare at his master, there was still fire in his eyes. Oh, the things that human probably wished on Rhys!
The Ailill slowly circled around the splayed and bound body, smiling at the sight of his hard, dripping manhood, and trailed over to his commode nonchalantly. As he opened the drawers and rummaged through his private garments, he could feel his pet’s angry look burn into the back of his head, but for now, both of them kept their quiet, visually stalking each other.
Rhys carefully took off his tunic, folded it and set it on top of the commode. This broke the spell and the human couldn’t stay quiet any longer.
He snarled, trying his best not to sound as breathless as he probably was. “Let me go, you bastard.”
“Your erection looks painful,” Rhys pointed out, taking a flask of oil and a pair of clamps out of the drawer before closing it.
The human twitched, blushed and started tugging on the chains. “That’s none of your business, elf,” he hissed angrily. The heated flushes were racing over his taut body, almost as if following Rhys’ gaze to wherever his eyes wandered, but his eyes settled on those rosy, perky nipples. Rhys wandered closer, sliding onto the bed in front of Niro in nothing but his dark linen pants, just close enough to be able to touch him, but with enough distance to enjoy the whole sight.
“I plan on making it my business,” he purred, adjusted the first clamp in his fingers to a rather soft setting, and held it up. “Do you know what this is?”
Niro frowned. “No.”
Rhys smiled a slow smile. This was going better than anticipated. Reactions to the Dragon’s Tail weren’t always a true indicator for a person’s sexual desires, but he had seen the human’s reaction to the first stages of whipping. It had been promising, very much so, and today he would find out if he had been right in his judgement of the bound man. With a quick, agile movement, he slipped the first clamp over Niro’s right nipple, letting it snap closed and retreating before the first gasp wafted out of Niro’s mouth.
It wasn’t the tightest or strongest clamp Rhys had, but the human shuddered and hissed anyway. His eyes widened with the sudden, increasing burn, then a shiver ran through his body and right into his manhood, making it twitch and throb and drip clear fluids. His face was a mask of surprised pain, but the rest of his body spoke a different, lewder language.
“Let me go, you damned bastard! No, don’t—”
Rhys had to fight down his own excited shiver when the second clamp bit into Niro’s left nipple, cutting off his curses and sending his body into short, tempered convulsions as he fought his twitching body for air. Sweat rolled down the male’s prone body, slithering down the grooves and dimples between his prominent muscles and finally disappearing either into the bush of pubic hair, or dripping down into the bedding. The air was filled with the tangy aroma of arousal and fear, sweet, cloying and heady. The sight was almost too much, too inviting, too decadent to stand, but Rhys kept his prickling fingers in check.
“Say you want me to touch you,” he demanded, outwardly calm where inside, he was anything but serene. His teeth itched with the need to leave a mark on the already scarred body, and with a lust for other, darker things. The hunger that was unique to his kind reared its ugly head, tempering his giddy desire with a thread of fear. The knowledge of what would happen if he lost control was enough to rein in his appetite. For now.
The human tugged on his chains, snarling at him, even though his cock jumped in beat with his pulse, dripping a steady stream of pre-come. “Never!” he barked.
Rhys flicked one of the clamps with a hand gesture quick as a striking snake, his fingers pulling back just as fast as they had thrust forward, sending a ripple of burning pain through the sensitive nub. Niro bucked in agony, groaning loudly as the waves of pain and pleasure rushed through his tense body, blushing even deeper when his lance dribbled another line of excited liquid.
“Say it. You know you want it,” Rhys said, leaning closer as he flared his nostrils against the stink of human excitement. Such crude creatures they were, those humans, but there was something about that raw, violent energy that was simply too attractive to turn away from.
The question sent another shiver through Niro. His face clearly stated how close he was to spilling himself, how desperately he wanted to, and how alien the concept of being touched really was to him. His face didn’t so much look like the expression of someone trying to withstand lust, but rather someone who didn’t connect touching with desire. And he desperately didn’t want to come like this, shackled and tortured and watched by a stranger.
His usual game wouldn’t work on that one, Rhys saw that. “You are a virgin, are you not?” he purred, and flicked the other clamp with just as careful a force as the first one, humming happily when Niro bucked and groaned through gnashed teeth and goosebumps. But this time, instead of waiting for an answer, Rhys didn’t let him come down. The Ailill wrapped his long fingers around the weeping length and gave it an experienced tug from root to tip, just once.
Niro shouted, more out of surprised euphoria than with pain, and exploded violently. The orgasm raced through his body like a wave of stinging heat, tightening muscles in his stomach and crotch that he hadn’t known he possessed until now, cut off his air, and made him thrust into the tight, hot-wet grip around his length before he knew what he was doing. Little stars danced through his sight as he sagged into the chains, gasping for air and groaning at the same time, all but boneless with ecstasy.
Rhys lifted his soiled hand and watched the globs of white semen thread a  web between his fingers, fighting down another wave of hunger that came with the beautiful sight. And to think, that human would be his for however long he wanted him…
“Now you understand, don’t you? We will try this again, but no free rides for you anymore. The next time, you will have to ask for it,” he said and watched Niro’s eyes widen as he raised his hand again, towards his nipple, just as promised. This would be a long night, Rhys promised himself.