The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter One Hundred and Forty Two

[A/N] Past few chapters I kept forgetting to add the artwork in that I had. So there's a little backlog I think. But enjoy this amazing picture of Demos! Artwork is by Teakubz  (∿°○°)∿ ✧

I ran back as the sun was dangerously high in the sky, shadows becoming shorter in the street, the remaining safety of grey quickly depleting. I returned to the brothel in clothes I later realised were dotted with blood, and little of it my own.

One cursory check saw scraped elbows and knees, bruised knuckles, cut about the fingers, and a minor cut to the face. Feeling worse for wear I actively turned to face away from passer-by's in the hallway, then hid inside my room and shut the door.

I collapsed on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

Once more my legs and arms were aching from the kind of exercise I was not used to. Still my lungs seemed to be burning, my face flushed, my skin cold from the sweat that lay on me then like a chilled blanket.

I had lost them, I had surely lost them, they would not have let me get this far. But I dragged myself about the place just to be sure, to lead them off my trail just in case. It meant a dangerous walk that took a great deal longer than simply running back.

It was hard to objectively consider events that were still in continuance, however there was the slow forming realisation, now, that someone had hired these men.

Suddenly, sitting there damp in my bed, shivering, arms wrapped around myself laying horizontal, facing the ceiling, I realised everything all at once quite clearly.

Previously I thought perhaps the men had seen me pay in joules and gotten ideas, remembered my face and sought to rob me. But it was very clear now, they had been sent to kill me, they were hanging about day and night, watching the exit, waiting for me. Each one waited with a blade, each one knew my face somehow, knew where I was attempting to go.

It was almost as though they were trying to get to me before the soldiers spotted me.

It was burned well and truly into my mind's gallery...

"Her Ladyship doesn't like you." 

The ruffian spoke before swinging the blade with a heavyset arm, each thick digit wrapped around the hilt dusted with hair that matched the greasy mop on his head.

There were so few people that could be. Demosthenes' mother, or Lady Thera, or perhaps even Verius's wife, she could have seen me as the reason her husband was reduced to confined to a single room, unable to move for risk of certain death while he was healing. 

Only I knew it was Lady Thera. 

Was it possible that from the very beginning that had been her goal? She had taken me to the Mitter to have me killed?

Replaying my entrance into the Mitter I remembered the odd way we started moving through the central market without stopping or so much as slowing down for a look. Even when I begged to stop at risk of being sick otherwise she was unwilling to. 

It wasn't as though I ever necessarily trusted Thera, I needed to save the men sentenced to death and would have taken my opportunity to regardless. But it was looking back in retrospect, remembering the strange way they all looked at each other. The coachman out front driving the horses strangely flanked on either side with additional male servants.

Lady Thera smiling at me, a sweet little smile that seemed so friendly.

My blood was cold with fear.

There was a slight noise in the corner and I saw that the raven that belonged to, or was on good terms with, Demosthenes, perched quietly in the window.