The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter Eighty

[A/N] Oh my, so many chapters already... (๑♡⌓♡๑) ᶜᵒⁿᶠᵘˢᵉᵈ 

[Elpis's POV]

"Don't be so wooden Helga. Too many apples and you won't be able to flirt with the horses." I said, trying to pull her back into the stall where she was settling for the day until the stable hand was back from attending to the horses belonging to the royal visitors.

Helga made an unhappy sound and tried to stick her snout in between the cracks of the stall door. There was a basket of old apples sitting in the walkway, waiting to be collected and dispersed, but I had already given Helga her fair share.

I gave a gentle push that did nothing but push me back a centimetre. "You're too stubborn, really. If you didn't have such a sweet tooth I could feed you all the apples you wanted today and know you wouldn't expect them tomorrow."

She eyed me up from the side and I frowned. "Well, not all the apples..." She turned back to the stall door.

I rolled my eyes, patting her back and sitting down on the floor. She too eventually joined me on settling down. The stall was dirty and I'd just bathed in the morning but I wasn't worried. The stall was cosy in many ways. The smell of damp rotting wood was sweet in the air, and Helga made for good company when she wasn't complaining about something or other.

I hadn't known before that her fur was capable of producing such a nice sheen to it, she looked so healthy, like she was years younger. Her belly was still big naturally, from being a mother, but she was actually only a little overweight.

I vowed that I would take better care of her now. When we were finally forced to flee from this place I would make sure to take all the information I could siphon off of the stablemen and use it as best I could.

As she lay beside me I ran a brush through her fur and she grunted, as if allowing me the honours, before nibbling at the barley straw laying on the ground for her. She liked it well enough, she just always wanted more.

I ran my hand through her mane affectionately, watching from her side as those big eyes focussed on the urgent matter at hand, eating.

I'd always liked her better than our other animals, but recently I'd begun to notice her character come out more and sometimes I even wondered if she could understand me better than I thought. The little looks she gave made me think she even had expressions, unless it was all in my head.

We were silent, sitting together for a good time, me watching her graze as I nursed the lasting ache in my thighs.

There was a gentle light that flowed into stables, the door was open and a breeze drifted through.

I stretched my legs out as I lay back against the wall, toying with a strand of hay as I continued petting Helga with my other hand.

It was nice, I didn't need to hide here. I could relax as much as I liked.

Glancing at Helga, who seemed relaxed too, I had the random urge to do something stupid. I wanted to take Demosthenes to meet her. Although I wasn't really very sure why, I really did want to see them meet. Maybe I wanted to know exactly what he would do, how he would behave around her, it was odd but it might just let me see another dimension to his character.

I remembered the way he's privately passed his son a sweet, as though he might be scolded for doing so in public.

There was more to him then meets the eye, all the fierceness, the intimidating form and the strange grip he had on me, it was compounded with another kind of Demosthenes that I hadn't met yet. That all of a sudden I wanted nothing more than to see. The kind Demosthenes that only rarely paused to blink at me before wandering away.