The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter One Hundred and Twelve

[A/N] Please be patient with Belem's part for now, I know some people are just like 'aaah, Belem get outta the way!'  (∩ ⌣̀ ‸ ⌣́)

Elpis's situation will return in a bit.  ᕕ( ' ⌣ ' )ᕗ

[Belem's POV]

It was easier to write than I thought. A quiet sense of serenity sat noiselessly in my lap as I scribbled away, looking up once or twice to see the possibly curious gaze of Cigol watching me. It made no sense to address them to him, so simply addressed it as a letter to the King, the man who it would most likely end up with in the end. 

After some time of attempting to watch and follow and learn his habits, draw a map of this place, I began to get the idea that the way this place was run, in all its similarities, was still somehow completely different than home. 

Still cold and quiet and unwelcoming, but in Rhazmus, the place that had been ostensibly my home all my life, it switched so quickly between the two states of either being comfortable and calm and being hostile, bitter and dark. 

Still now, I looked back and thought to myself with a bitter tug of pain, why couldn't he have let me stay beside him?

Why couldn't he have let me wait by his side, where I could have accepted his harsh hand and done so with a level of happiness that after that torturous night with Cigol, I would never feel the same way.

Instead he had sent me here, forced me to stay until I had formed a map of such intricacy that it would have taken me a year with all of the servant gangways and lower levels, not spoken of, not mentioned or explored. This entire section of the palace was unknown to me, I knew of it, had sent small drawings of its entrance and basic layout of the first level, but below that I had no opportunity nor want to search.

Now I felt forced to betray him, that the Fates had directed me into a corner. And to what end? What result?

I looked at the place where Cigol had been sitting before he had silently slipped from the room, as noiselessly as ever, calm and dark as usual.

I started writing the poem I promised, that was my excuse for the paper he had kindly granted me.

Was it because it was tall and handsome? Features slanted and narrow, a perfect depiction of a cruel and quiet man. Broad shoulders but a narrow frame and strength that surprised me. Who must have seen blood spill between the very walls I was sequestered between.

Somehow, although he did not remind me of my master, of the King Sabbas, he was similar enough to cause remorse to squeeze my chest.

A man that punished me, but felt no affection for me, who I wanted to look at, understand better. Cut off and drawing me in. I knew him but for a few days and already I felt that sway. Tried to convince myself that it was not what motivated me to betray my country.

My stomach panged, I had not eaten much in this place, but hunger was easily defeated when a man was facing the ground from his fall from a cliff.

I swallowed back my own self hatred and finished the poem with a small grimace. I was no poet after all, even my level of writing was limited, and at least a line or two was probably stolen from something else. But what did it matter if he found this and mocked me quietly, as I was sure he would, only my pride would be hurt. I was about to die, what use was pride?

Leaves brushed light green, with silver edges,
Roots buried in grassy beds lined with hedges,
Slanting slopes with coiling rivers,
And above,
The breathing wind, smiles as it quivers.