Through his downcast lashes, Esra watched Arturo thoughtfully swirl his wine. He sat motionless as Umbra’s hand clenched and unclenched in his hair, luxuriating in its texture, like how one might thumb through expensive silk. Esra could feel his satisfaction, something like triumph, in shocking his uninvited guest.
Knight’s Choice. What could it mean, if it was enough to silence even the likes of Arturo? Yet his thoughts, his numbly thudding fear, were drowned out by the soft slide of fingertips over his skull. He listened to the hypnotic crackle of the fire, lulled into a dangerous calm by Umbra’s touch.
“Please realise,” Arturo said at last into the darkness, “that I consider your happiness as my happiness. But as your senior, I would be remiss if I didn’t advise you.”
Overhead, Esra heard Umbra take a long sip of wine.
“You’ve always been so headstrong,” Arturo continued. “To the point where you still give me cause for worry. I fear you have not quite thought this through. You’ve only known the boy a few days. Would hate for you, in the heat of a victory, to make a mistake, and live in regret.”
Umbra did not answer immediately. Instead, he slowly drained the last of his wine. “I foresee no regrets,” he said, and placed his empty goblet on the table between them with heavy finality.
“Of course.” The elder knight shrugged. “And why would you? I remember well the thrill of my first victory. The intoxication that comes with asserting your rightful power. Yet, remember that nobody loses sleep over the fate of a heathen.”
Arturo’s dark gaze was fixed on Umbra. He spoke over Esra as though the youth were mere furniture. Gone was his smooth courtier’s voice from earlier; instead his tone was cold as steel. Even by the fireplace, and the heat from Umbra’s protective hand, Esra felt its sting.
“If it were some faithful peasant, perhaps you could consider installing it in a secure apartment in the city. I myself keep mistresses of no great birth here in the capital, the Westerlands and the Weald. But a traitor?” Arturo made a dismissive gesture, the flat of his palm slicing through the air. “He should kiss your feet that you’ve deigned to spare him the humiliation of a public execution.”
What manner of death awaited those who committed treason against Fomoria? Could be the hangman’s noose, but that seemed too merciful for the likes of a heathen. Esra thought of the slow horror of the last days in his village: bodies staked onto spiked poles, bonfires blazing the sky.
The fires had burned all night, consuming his father’s ships until only the black skeletons remained. What flame would do to human flesh…
The fire in the hearth crackled. Esra’s stomach churned, skin suddenly hot with a sickly sweat.
He’d heard the stories from the refugees. Leaders and loved ones hoisted up the pyres, lit up with torches, burned alive. Their brittle bones shattered by the officers, ashes to be swept up by the street cleaners, nothing left for burial. An end befitting a traitor, a blasphemer.
Just today, Esra had felt the heave of the crowd in Balor’s Throne, their many eyes upon him. The smiling mouths that had greeted his arrival. They’d look much the same upon his execution, hungry for his torment, drinking in the spectacle of his pain. Ushering their children forth to show them what happened to those steeped in sin–
Esra felt Umbra’s hand at the back of his neck, to stop his sudden trembling.
“He is grateful,” Umbra replied.
Strong fingers soothed a circle of warmth at the base of Esra’s neck. Esra let his eyes dip close as his knight’s deep voice washed over him.
“He shows me his gratitude endlessly,” Umbra continued. “The boy knows what fate he has avoided.”
Arturo’s nightfall eyes narrowed. “With each move you make, you shape your reputation. Softness with a heathen…” He gave a tiny shrug, and the firelight danced off of black leather. “One dreads to know what will be spoken of, when the whispers spread.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Ktja P tjnf ygbeuta j gfyfi ab tffi lr ab beg uibglolmjalbc,” rjlv Fwygj, lc wfjregfv abcfr. “Ktja tf ralii ilnfr vlrqijsr atf yfcfnbifcmf bo atf Xbv Blcu.”
“Tbe wfjc ab rqgfjv atlr rabgs?” Cgaegb rmboofv. “Olrafc. Bffq tlw rfmgfa. Pcveiuf sbeg ktlwr, lo sbe wera. Kjxf sbeg qifjregfr lc tlr ybvs ktfgf sbe olcv atfw. Coafgkjgvr, sbe wjs vfji klat tlw tbkfnfg sbe rff ola.”
Umbra bristled. “So you would advise me to do as you do.”
“Exactly,” Arturo said, pleased. “No need to go through such extreme measures to keep the boy by your side. Perhaps, in your youth, you do not yet realise. You will tire of him once this blush of infatuation has faded from the rose.”
Do you think you will somehow survive as his whore? He will use you and slit your throat once he has slaked his lusts with your body…
Esra tried not to react; he didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than he already had, though his cheeks stung as if he’d been slapped. Blood thudded in his ears, Arturo’s poetic wording of a cruel threat ringing in his head. He blinked hurriedly, feeling the wet warmth of unshed tears.
He had submitted himself completely to the knight’s whims, be they pleasurable, or painful. He had done everything he’d been told without hesitation, even if it bit at his soul, and so lived another day; though at the price of his dignity, his body.
His efforts meant so little. He was still something disposable. Eventually, inevitably, his captor would become bored with him.
Umbra’s deep voice cut through the roar in his head.
“You know how much I value your guidance, brother knight.” He sounded conciliatory. “But I will not change my course.”
His large hand stroked gently over the tender skin of Esra’s neck. If he closed his fingers, Esra thought, he might be able to encircle it whole.
Umbra made to close his point. “The God-King, in his wisdom, has shown me naught but approval. Have faith in the judgment of Balor’s all-seeing eye.”
Arturo looked at him a long while, with that unfathomable, unblinking stare. “Ah,” he sighed, and shook his head. “Your youth betrays you. Balor has only ever granted your wishes. You will find, in time, that there are many ways we must show our devotion. After all,” and his eyes went to Esra, briefly, “what good is faith that has never been tested?”
Umbra’s hand paused, and Esra felt him tense. He didn’t reply.
Arturo seemed to drink his silence in. “But I can see you have made up your mind,” he said at last. His voice lightened, as if taking pity upon the younger knight. “You are perhaps right to be so confident; the God King has once again smiled upon you with his favour.”
With a bright smile, he leaned forward and plucked the silver carafe from the table. Esra heard the slosh of the wine, and wished he hadn’t poured it so full.
“Come. Tonight is a night of celebration.” As Arturo spoke, he played the cheery host, and refilled the goblets. “Let us not dwell on troubles, be they real or imagined. Instead we toast–” he pushed a full goblet towards Umbra, “–to the good fortune and blessing of being Balor’s favoured.”
That dark gaze fell heavily on Esra, and Arturo’s smile widened. “And to you, Esraya. Your obedience is your virtue.”
* * *
Something of their unwanted guest stayed with Umbra, long after the door had been closed behind him.
When the knight slumped back into the couch by the fire, his figure was taut with stress. He was like a brooding prince, glowering restless into the flames. Silently, he brought Esra’s head to rest on his knee. Esra complied, resting his cheek against opulent black, and let out a soft breath when Umbra’s hand smoothed over his scalp. His knees had started to ache.
They stayed there in silence. He didn’t know for how long. Umbra did not stop stroking Esra’s hair, although the touches were absent-minded. His knight was no longer present, his mind stretched a thousand miles away. Arturo’s presence had shaken him in a way that Esra had never seen before.
He dreaded what he assumed would be the inevitable consequence of Umbra’s mood. He dreaded being hurt, by this man who held his life in his hands. He knew of such things – men who turned on the vulnerable, when they couldn’t lash out at the powerful. Beaten slaves, and battered wives.
Suddenly, he was so very tired, after the days on horseback, his infrequent meals, the blistering memory, more like a nightmare now, of slipping over bloodied ground, being shoved, and grabbed, and threatened by laughing men in steel. The images blurred in his mind as Umbra’s hand slid through his hair. Although his touch was gentle now, Esra knew what cruelty he could enact with that hand.
It had just taken the one, to hold him down.
At his village by the sea, the silent gathering of black clouds before a storm would never fail to hypnotise him. He’d await the winds that pushed the ocean into fierce waves, the whipping rain, the building roll of thunder. He felt much that way now. Sitting silently with the morose knight, Esra waited for him to snap into something ruthless.
There was a sudden knock at the door.
“Enter,” Umbra commanded.
* * *
The rumour in the city was that one of Balor’s knights had brought back a peasant maiden, or a youth, as a present for himself after one of his holy missions. Half the city, if they could be believed, claimed to have seen the peasant, although descriptions varied widely depending on who you asked.
Patrons of Boann, the grand bathhouse, were the more discerning gossips. For coin or a favour, they might tell their accounts of a knight taking a peasant boy to the bathhouse. Descriptions ranged from a pretty and curious youth, to a pitiful and terrified-looking thing in woolen rags who stared at all about him as if they were ghosts.
The castle servants whispered amongst themselves of Sir Umbra’s return. The knight had ordered a black carriage from Boann’s, and brought a peasant boy up to his quarters through the servants’ passages, not the front gate. The identity of the youth remained up to much speculation – few had caught more than a glimpse of him.
This news swiftly reached the noble ears of Wulther, an adjunct to the Order and personal chamberlain to Sir Umbra.
Dismissive of city gossip, Wulther was one of few who knew of the particulars of the knight’s mission. Sir Umbra had always seemed a bit of the brutish type, and so he suspected that his master had brought back a heathen captive to torture, for his own amusement.
But during the homecoming banquet, Sir Umbra had taken the time to summon his chamberlain to his side. Amidst the praise of his successful mission, and the celebratory performances by court musicians, the knight gave Wulther a direct order: to have a fine meal prepared, and brought up later, for the guest that awaited him in his quarters.
The word ‘guest’ intrigued Wulther. As it was the chamberlain’s duty to anticipate his knight’s needs, a guest was to be treated as an extension of Sir Umbra himself, to be attended to with the utmost honour and care.
It was not uncommon for a knight of the Order to bring back a beauty that caught his eye, be they noble or peasant. His Majesty, after all, allowed them free rein of his subjects.
Sir Umbra had never been seen indulging himself with such dalliances. The rumour in the castle was that this was due to his exacting nature. That he was notoriously difficult to please in the matter of bedpartners, tiny flaws magnified in his knightly eyes. Others said with confidence that, like Sir Ruegard, he had taken a vow of chastity, and meant to prove his piety with abstinence.
Wulther, who managed all of Sir Umbra’s affairs, knew these to be false. His knight simply had the wisdom of discretion, and chose not to parade his lovers about for all to see.
This, then, was different. Perhaps it was a mission of conversion. If Sir Umbra could convince a traitor to denounce his beliefs, and supplicate himself to the true God King, such a feat would be a boon for the young knight’s reputation.
Glory be to Balor, and all who serve in his name.
* * *
A delicious fragrance filled Sir Umbra’s quarters as dinner arrived, brought up by the chamberlain, with two servant boys in tow. All three of them were curious to peer upon the captive that Sir Umbra had brought back to his quarters, though they were too well-mannered to show it.
Wulther didn’t know what to expect. A hay-fed peasant, perhaps: brawny, sunburned, ignorant and uncouth. He almost didn’t see the boy at first, shadowed as he was by the towering knight; a small form kneeling on a cushion, his dark head resting against Sir Umbra’s knee.
As the servants entered, Sir Umbra stood, and reached down to help the heathen to his feet. The hand that clutched the knight’s was narrow, with delicately tapered fingers that betrayed the blood of the enemy.
The boy stumbled, but the knight caught him, kept him from falling. So he was brought out to the light: a smooth-faced youth, delicately proportioned, with inky black hair that spilled silken over his back. His large dark eyes glittered in the firelight. They seemed endless pools of sadness, despite his obvious youth.
He was beautiful enough to make a man’s breath hesitate, even in homespun.
This was not a boy for breaking, nor conversion, but for pleasure.
In the Vale, masters painted murals of obsidian knights, tall, fearless, gallant, capable of enormous power, but gentled by holy beauty. Wulther saw such a vision before him now, as Sir Umbra, dressed in his rich blacks, lent his strength to the tender youth, while the hearth glowed red behind them.
It was unusual to see Sir Umbra demonstrate such care to another; perhaps the youth’s tremulous fragility had awakened certain urges. Next to the knight, he seemed gentle as a lily was to a broad oak tree. The top of his head didn’t even reach Sir Umbra’s shoulder.
The two servants, well-connected young men, discreetly took in the sight. By the morrow, the entire castle would hear of what they had seen.
As Sir Umbra held the youth close, he ducked down to speak quietly into that pink shell of an ear. His words were private, meant only for the boy to hear, but Wulther caught the sound of his name: Esra, two whisper-soft syllables.
Esra paused for a moment, looking up at Sir Umbra with an unspoken question.
“Go on,” said the knight, and gave him a gentle push towards the high dining table. His eyes followed the hesitant grey figure through the dimly lit room. Then he turned his broad back, and sank back into his couch by the fire to rest his head on his hand.
Wulther, it seemed, would have to entertain the guest himself.
Esra is such a frightened little lamb and I love how he is described as something so fragile it brings the feelings of wanting to cherish him
Thanks for the chapter ❤❤ and also for the image, they are so good
English is not my native language so sorry if that is not understan dable.
Thanks so much for the chapter! I love the story very much, and your writing style is so interesting and nice + fun to read!! ( You are very talented!!) I will be waiting for the next one in Excitement!!
😊😊
This chapter is intense! I think I’m falling more in love with Esra as chapters pass ❤️ he is just so cute and fragile
I love the description of Esra’s eyes as endless pools of sadness. It really highlights how even though it seems like he’s super lucky and living well with a powerful backer and no need to worry about money, food, clothes, etc. it’s just the surface, and there’s a lot of tragedy and uncertainty underneath
Some scary flags planted there. That picture is incredible.
Thanks 😊
Thank you for the chapter! (｡’▽’｡)♡
Author hopefully your well! Here in Texas there’s a big mess going on, if you live in Texas I wish for your safety and well being! Love you ❤️
I’m so inlove with this story.