The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter Seventeen

I felt strange in my costume, naked, I must say for honesty's sake.

My pace was unhurried as I walked away from the bathhouse, I wasn't confident enough to walk without hesitation.

Natham trailed behind me, he was still slightly winded from having run back and forth to collect my clothes, I could hear him breathing even as I walked ahead of him and it was oddly comforting just to know he was there.

I could my disturbingly distorted reflection in the inky black diamond cut windows of the palace. Even in the reflection's messy collection of my pieces, I found the new costume to be a pleasing improvement.

Truly, it fit better than the former, as though it were stitched together on my body. Made my form, though still clearly masculine, more lithe and pleasant to the eye.

It, however, left me feeling a little more vulnerable than the original. My skin would always be hidden by the paint but the shape of my body was very available to the eye. I could see my muscles through the fabric, see the way they stretched and formed.

I looked like a man off to seduce a newly widowed Lady.

"Keep away from the dirt road Elpis," Natham advised me, "Your shoes are white, we won't have time to polish them."

So we moved to the cobbled road.

I noted the pleasant tap the shoes made as I moved across the stone, cork soles making for a soft bounce. They were less like shoes and more like slippers but I couldn't think of any style of wear more fitting for dancing.

Before I dared upon the palace I pulled my friend aside with gentle grip and placed us in a square patch of ground together, the torchlight from several yards away throwing long shadows eerily across the cobbled courtyard.

Natham appeared concerned. "What's the matter?" He asked me.

"Nothing," I assured him, "I have to stretch, my friend, a good wash does half the job but my muscles will give way if I don't test them."

With a little smile, I called upon him to wait for me as tried for the shadows. I held my body in the more uncomfortable positions, those I could think of. My body screamed at me, lack of exercise had spoiled my body, I pressed harder.

I wanted to feel the burn, that delicious feeling of knowing your muscles were being forced to keep up. The pain felt like the goddess of reality brushing her hair over my limbs just to remind me she was still there.

Natham watched wordlessly and did not move either, I worried that I was boring him and moved on swiftly. He stood for a while after I gestured for us to go and just stared at me and I returned the stare with some confusion and then he looked away.

We started moving.

****

When finally we approached the palace I was pulled to the side by guards, I expected them to attack me with questions but instead, they just gestured for me to follow them.

Natham was ordered to stay behind which he had fully expected. He wished me luck and drew, with cold fingers, a trident on my chest.

This time I did not enter the palace the same way I did the first night I came here, through the front door, instead we went to a holding somewhere on the left side of a tower that presumably lead, eventually, into the palace dining room.

I was lead down a short few stairs along the outside and in through a door. It was so badly lit that the shadows in my mind were making ever more compelling arguments to convince me I was in the process of being kidnapped.

It was cold and I ground my teeth to stop them from chattering.

Said door led in through an empty dining room which, I assumed, was for the servants.

Wooden tables and lopsided benches that must have, in its youth, been varnished. Simple but comfortable. I supposed, through the gloom, that when the fireplace was adequately filled and lit it might have a pleasant effect on the room.

I imagined the chatter and the warmth of company and strong spirits. It all felt like ghosts in the silence of the room.

We carried on through and into the next room, a more lively one, this.

For whatever reason, the tables were piled with neat stacks of candles and bits of the wicks spread out across it, lazily pushed into a sort-of pile. A fireplace in the corner had the last red sparks from a fire that was giving in to time.

Again, we moved on.

Up the stairs, through the corridor, up more stairs, through another corridor, turn right, through another room, through another corridor and through what must have been the most unimpressive door the palace had to offer and I was there.

Without warning I stood waiting outside the doors from which I could hear the sweet gentle chimes of music, a set of three glass basks, I assumed from a keen ear, they were beautiful.

I wished, vaguely, that I could have sat somewhere in that hall of His, the floor would do, and listen to what was no doubt a delightful performance.

Yet time skipped on, it's pace ever quickening when the situation would beg it not to. I was very quickly ushered in.

My legs felt heavier than they did the night I arrived, clumsier.

I felt strangely oppressed as I entered the room, my footsteps were loud.

I could feel, rather than see, Demosthenes eyes on me as I moved. There was some kind of thrill that slipped in my mind like a drug when I felt sure his attention was on me. Why I would probably never know. But when I finally pushed myself to look at the man his eyes were not on mine but rather on me, the whole of me.

I thought there was something almost sexual in the way his eyes followed me and traced the outline of my body, something that made me almost breathless before I had even begun.

And then the music began and I felt determined not to make a genuine fool of myself.

I pictured myself in the streets, the men and women watching me just as insignificant as I. The strange cobbled terrace in my mind reached no further than the actual space did. I pictured the sound of running water from a fountain somewhere in the distance and perhaps the chatter of the early morning crowd.

Laughter.

Footsteps.

A babe wailing somewhere in the distance.

Smell of spices and morning dew.

The fading icy bite of the night a welcome challenge.

Uneven ground beneath my feet.

Unwelcome eyes.

A breeze, to send my melody far.

My mind felt clearer, a little of the calm I required was slipping back into my tense muscles.

But the scene in my mind altered itself somehow, the crowds turned away and from them all a pair of eyes peered at me through them all, cold and calculating eyes with a gaze as sharp as his blade. I tried to push them from my mind but found I could not, they would forever be there, watching and judging and some part of me was found almost wanting that.

So I pulled from my head a tune and began to sing, slow, as always, the dance only really beginning when I felt the thrum of energy, filling me and pushing to move.

Those eyes in my mind slowly join hands and feet that moved me in some kind of sordid embrace. Not kind but not yet unkind, bruising yet somehow not punishing. Their grip welcome shackles on my wrists as I played their tune.

[A/N] I'm baaaaaaack.