It's time for another chapter!
Things are looking pretty bleak for the boys right now, but don't worry! Things are gonna take a turn shortly! There is plenty of angst to go around, but by God, the boys are gonna have a well-deserved break in a bit!
Thank you to everyone who's supported me through writing this fic! I'm a bit emotional because a year ago on the 1st of September, I finally got out of a seven-year cycle of emotional and mental abuse from someone I thought was my friend. I started writing this fic when I was living with that person, and at the time, I was so mentally exhausted that I never actually felt like I'd get this far with it. So, it really means a lot to me that all of you have supported me and helped me get this fic to where it is today! You all rock!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Unseelie King watched with sinister amusement as the rat and the sacrifice walked into the throne room with Scorpia stalking behind them. Excitement rumbled in his cold, dead heart, and in an instant, the Unseelie King knew this would be the most memorable Equinox he'd ever experienced in his four-hundred and fifty years of life.
Though midnight still drifted a few hours away from them, the Court had already begun to celebrate. Raspy music echoed from the reed flutes a gaggle of nervous satyrs had woven together earlier that day. The Unseelie King had thought it comical to have his Knights smash their flutes as soon as they were completed, forcing them to repeat the task with rising desperation as time became scarce. He'd dismissed his Knights at quarter to sundown, tasking them instead with terrorizing the cooks.
The satyrs were given no time to rehearse their performance, instead relying on raw talent. The Unseelie King looked forward to their concert—and, subsequently, the bones he'd be breaking in their fingers when they failed to impress him with their songs.
His black eyes clicked to each corner of the room, where the beginnings of the revelry unfurled. In the far corner, by the exists leading into the tunnels, a collection of ogres toyed with a bwbach who'd foolishly crossed paths with them. The spindly-armed creature squawked furiously as the ogres pulled the contents of his leather bag out and scrutinized his wares, pocketing those they desired without offering payment.
In another, a Lull with beautiful golden hair chastised a solar who'd wandered into the heart of the revelry. The Unseelie King knew them well, for the Lull was acquaintances with the rat, and the solar had once been a member of the Seelie Court who'd abandoned the grandeur of the lush green fields in exchange for a life of challenge and battle. The solar spent much of his time on the outskirts of the Court, incapable of thriving beneath the sun-devoid caverns of the Unseelie mountain.
The Unseelie Court was alive with the sound of misery and excitement. Smaller Folk whimpered as their fingers and toes were crushed beneath those much stronger than themselves. In the Dark Court, power thrived. Showing weakness meant revealing a part of one's soul that would allow them to be slaughtered.
The King grinned, his painted-black lips stretching painfully over his pristine teeth as Scorpia herded the rat and the sacrifice toward the throne.
He reclined regally, his ruined wings fitting through the slots in the worm-eaten wood and obsidian. The iron cords he'd commissioned to hold his broken wings together centuries ago—despite the arachne healer informing him that his wings should likely be amputated based on the extent of their damage—couldn't brush against the bare skin on his back if he kept them held aloft.
Iron burned the Fair Folk, but the strongest ones wore charms to prove their strength. The Unseelie King's two elder brothers back in the swamps, Danai the Destructive and Mava the Murderous, had once worn iron rings to tattoo burn marks on their skin. The Unseelie King had left them behind, grateful to be rid of their pathetic band of swamp-thriving fools. His brothers had formed a tiny parliament they referred to as the Swamp Court nearly half a century ago after refusing to join the Seelie or Unseelie Courts, though the Unseelie King would never recognize them as such.
Iron rings were pathetic compared to what the King had done. As soon as he'd slaughtered the former Queen and stolen her throne from her, he'd demanded a dwarf to craft him iron links that could bind around his wings and keep the eternally broken bones secure. The links weren't strong enough to grant the King the opportunity to fly again—the skies had been stolen from him by a greedy human—but the burn of the iron made for a powerful barrier from some of the lesser Folk.
If the mood struck him, the King could shift his shoulder forward and swat at those who dared to approach with his iron-wrapped wings. He'd burned plenty of courtiers foolish enough to entice his wrath, and the constant sting of the iron between the ash-black feathers proved to him that he'd survived the torment the human hunters had put him through.
Scorpia guided the rat and the sacrifice to the base of the throne, and the Unseelie King looked down on them all.
The rat's expression was drawn and carefully calculated to show no emotion. The King thought it amusing that the boy believed he could hide his feelings behind a blank mask when his blade-silver irises revealed more than shouted words ever could. The rat had shifted to stand half in front of the sacrifice, as if he could shield him from the King's eye. The sentiment was almost endearing.
The sacrifice looked at the floor, hands folded neatly in front of his stomach. He seemed far more educated than most of the human pigs the Unseelie Court had pulled into their midst. He followed orders without question. The King hadn't needed to give him more than a single command for the boy to blend in seamlessly with their Court. Sometimes the sacrifices strayed from their desired path, desperate for a taste of faerie life before the blade ripped their throat open. It was amusing, for a time, but quickly grew frustrating.
This human, however, seemed eager to please. He kept his head down and his tone calm, but the King had no doubt that if he were to demand it, the human would throw himself wholeheartedly into the revelry and drink himself into a mad stupor, only to return to quiet obedience at a single whispered command. It would be amusing to see.
The King waved his hand toward Scorpia, the silver links of the jointed finger-ring he'd covered his index finger with glinting in the pale light. "Begone with you," he said fondly, sending a silent message through his eyes to the Wretched Knight.
Scorpia's golden eyes locked with his, and with a wink, the Knight melted into the assembled crowd. The King knew he would remain close, manifesting when the King summoned him back. Out of all the King's Knights, Scorpia was the most reliable.
With Scorpia gone, the King crooked his finger and silently summoned the rat and the sacrifice forward.
A muscle in the rat's jaw twitched, but he stepped forward all the same, the human sacrifice in tow. The arachne had picked out a pretty lilac fabric to craft his clothing from. The King might not have chosen that particular color, but it suited the human well. He hadn't been specific about the color, so he supposed what he received was suitable enough for tonight's purposes.
The Unseelie King waved his hand toward the rat. "Go," he said. "I would speak with our guest alone."
As expected, a brief moment of concern flashed in the rat's silver eyes. He risked a glance at the human lurking in his periphery, and the Unseelie King's heart pulsed with excitement. If it were this easy to get a reaction, then these next two nights were going to be the most fun he'd ever had toying with the rat's emotions.
The rat hesitated for a moment before realizing that lingering even a second longer might put him at risk of the King discovering something he wished to keep hidden. He turned and stepped down the stairs, his spine straight as an arrow as the crowd of courtiers swallowed him up. The King watched the solid black of his leather jacket bleed into the assembled group of faeries, tracking his movements without difficulty.
The sacrifice lingered before him, swaying on his feet as if he were doomed to collapse. His knuckles turned white as he gripped his hands in front of his stomach, uncertain of what to do with them. Tremors rippled up his spine, the desire to move raging against a command he must have been given.
"Look at me," the Unseelie King ordered.
The human lifted his head instantly, his dull brown eyes finding the King's. No fear dwelled there, and the King felt more amused by it than furious. Once upon a time, the lack of concern in the mortal's face might have made the King fly into a rage, ripping and tearing the human's hair out until fear overpowered all other emotions in his body. But the King had been a weaker man back then, uncertain of how to run a kingdom and properly manage his courtiers. Now he knew the key to keeping his citizens terrified wasn't to fly into a rage. It was to laugh at their misery and inflict pain without warning, both emotional and physical, to keep them perpetually on their toes, constantly in terror of what he might do next.
The Unseelie King brushed his hand through the air, watching the mute reflection of his fingertips in the human's eyes. Human eyes always fascinated him. The King's own were piercing and solid black, hollow in a way that seemed to swallow the light even from his sclera. From a distance, he knew his irises seemed like bullet holes in his skull, and up close, they swelled with dark purples and grays, an abyss that threatened to consume those who dared to look too intently.
Human eyes, however, were beautiful in a way the Folk could never obtain. The King had been jealous of that beauty in his youth, when he'd been forced to streak mud over his skin just to stay alive, but he'd hence learned to appreciate it. Human eyes were weak and dull by comparison, but it was that weakness that made them so beautiful. Humans aged at a rapid pace, burning out so brightly it was mesmerizing to watch.
The King had lived for four and a half centuries, and he had many more ahead of him. Not a wrinkle would touch his skin, even without the aid of fancy creams and spells, but the speed at which old age claimed humanity was strangely beautiful. The King had captured humans and locked them in prison cells just to watch them rot away, simply because the process in which their corpses rotted intrigued him.
The sacrifice looked as though he wished to speak, the muscles in his lower jaw twitching against the urge. His dull eyes darted around the King's face, especially fascinated by his painted lips and the curve of his cheekbones.
"You may speak freely," the Unseelie King said.
Something like relief passed over the sacrifice's pale face. He regarded the Unseelie King as if he were a star in the sky that had descended to the mortal plane. "You're very beautiful," the sacrifice murmured.
"I know," the Unseelie King purred. It's taken months to scrape off the remnants of the swamp muck from his skin, plucking each of the minuscule pebbles from his pores and smoothing them down so that there were no imperfections on his moon-pale flesh. Bogs used swamp muck to prevent the sunshine from burning their skin, but the King had always felt he was destined for a better life than toiling in the mud. His appearance was a work of art, and it took time and effort to remain this flawlessly beautiful.
"I've never seen a faerie like you before," the sacrifice mused. He pressed his lips together as he thought back to the variety of Folks he'd seen throughout the course of his short life. "I've seen a lot of faeries on the streets, but none of them looked like you."
The Unseelie King's lips drew back in a sinister grin. "My kind are called bogs. Though, your kind might know us better as bogeymen."
"The Bogeyman?" The sacrifice's sleep-drunk face twisted with confusion as he wracked his memory for the source of the name. "But... you don't look like a bogeyman."
"And how would you know what one looks like?" The Unseelie King cocked his head to the side, grinning as the mortal's face shifted into a look of mute panic, trying to figure out a proper reply.
Tales of the Bogeyman radiated around the world, in a variety of human cultures. The Unseelie King knew each of them well. His kind had contributed to the legend of the nighttime stalker by lurking in the shadows of human nightmares, plaguing them with horrid dreams whenever they drifted into a new town. Their feathered wings brushed through human minds and reminded them that there were far worse things dwelling in the shadows than the inevitable approach of death.
"You... kind of look like Nezumi."
The Unseelie King's lips twitched into a frown, but only for a moment. The human's tone was light and sleepy, a clear sign that no offense had been intended.
The King knew he and the rat shared similar features, and it was to be expected, as they shared a bloodline. A drunken fling with the Seelie Queen's messenger had led to the birth of a strange boy in the Seelie Court-a child with ash-black wings and raven-sharp features. The Unseelie King dismissed the announcement of the boy's birth because it hadn't mattered to him. The throne of the Unseelie Court couldn't be passed through bloodlines, only through murder. And the Unseelie King had never met a faerie powerful enough to rip his metaphoric crown away from him and leave him bleeding out in the dirt.
The day the Seelie Queen deposited the trembling boy in his midst, the Unseelie King had almost laughed himself silly. This pathetic creature was his offspring? The terror in the boy's silver eyes outweighed anything else about him. The way his knees knocked together as the King approached erased any concerns the King might have had about his child one day usurping him.
The rat might have been a bit more powerful than most Folk due to his dark bloodline, but there was no chance that he would steal the Unseelie King's throne from him.
"Hmm, indeed." The Unseelie King brushed his hand through the air toward the human sacrifice. He was growing bored with the human's undivided attention, and his heart cried out for something more entertaining. Like throwing the boy into a den of vipers. "Well, child, go and enjoy the celebration. It's in your honor, after all."
Something like admiration flashed across the human's face. "I'm allowed?"
"Of course." The Unseelie King cocked his head and grinned wide. "Take part in our revelry. This is your Court now, too. It's yours for the rest of your life."
The human's expression lit up with drunken joy, and with a grateful nod to the Unseelie King, he turned and hurried down the stairs. The movement alerted a group of hobgoblins dancing near the foot of the dais. Their hungry purple eyes raked the boy's long legs as he stepped down on the stones.
The Unseelie King reclined in his throne and chuckled.
The Unseelie Court had grown dull over the past century. The rat's arrival had shaken things enough to be interesting for a time, but even that had begun to lose its grandeur.
But to realize that something as simple as a human boy had managed to capture the rat's heart—well, that was the most fun the Unseelie King had in a while. Watching the rat wriggle like a worm on a hook filled the King's cold, dead heart with joyous mirth.
He would revel in it while he had the opportunity.
In twenty-four hours the mortal would be dead, but the echo of his demise would linger.
From the crowd, the Unseelie King watched as the rat slowly began to make his way toward the spot where the mortal walked. The mortal's head swiveled around as if on a stick, taking in the grotesque beauty of the Court and the wild party going on in his midst. He didn't notice the hungry gazes from the Folk lurking around him, unaware of the den of wolves he'd waltzed into.
The Unseelie King sat back and watched the chaos unfold.
To Be Continued...