The King's Whisper

by T. S. Cleveland

  Felix squirmed in his arms, trying to make space between himself and the muscular bundle of arrogance holding him. “Will you put me down now?”

  “No,” Torsten replied tersely.

  “No?”

  “For several reasons.”

  “Several reasons?”

  “Your ankle, for starters,” Torsten answered. “Isn’t it injured?"

  “I can walk on my own,” Felix argued, even as his ankle throbbed, aching with every pulse through his foot.

  Torsten ignored him and continued. “Also, you might try to run again.”

  “But you just said my ankle was injured,” Felix argued. “How could I run?”

  “You couldn’t,” Torsten agreed. “But you could try to hobble away and make your ankle even worse.”

  Felix sagged in Torsten’s arms, his legs dangling helplessly.

  “And you’re cold. Too cold,” Torsten added, sounding unfairly cross. Felix was the one who should be cross. It was his escape plan that had just been ruined. “You need my body heat.”

  The words put a bad taste in Felix’s mouth. “I don’t need your body heat. I don’t need anything from you. I’d rather you leave me to the wolves.” That was a lie.

  “These woods are dangerous,” Torsten said, angling his body so they could slip through a thick grouping of trees.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed,” Felix mumbled. “It’s full of wolves and you.”

  Torsten just shook his head. “There are far worse threats in these parts.”

  “Like what?” asked Felix, curiosity spiking now that he was regaining feeling in his hands.

  “Nothing you need to worry about now,” Torsten declared.

  There was something about the surreal nature of the moment, being carried to the questionable safety of a bandit camp that made Felix bold. “I’ve no need to worry?” he asked, letting his increasingly useful tone of feistiness coat his words. “Are you suggesting I should feel safe with you?”

  Torsten grunted.

  “I’m sorry, but you do realize you’re a bandit, yes? My friend is dead because of you, and I’m a prisoner because of you. I don’t feel safe, because I’m not. I won’t feel safe until I’m a thousand miles away from you.” The familiar pinprick of tears dotted the corners of his eyes, and he hid his face in the fur of Torsten’s pelt.

  “How did you get away?” Torsten’s voice lacked any sympathy, and Felix felt very strange using his chest as a pillow. “Tell me.”

  He lifted his head and glared up at Torsten, who was looking straight ahead, his eyes squinting in the darkness. Oddly, he didn’t feel compelled to lie. It must have been the strangeness of the woods again, and the unusual sensation deep in his belly, urging him to tell the truth. “You fell asleep. All of you.”

  It was dark, but Felix was pretty sure Torsten rolled his eyes. “I figured that much when I woke up. What did you do? Did you slip something into the food? You helped Dot prepare dinner, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t slip anything into your food,” Felix said, more unwarranted honesty bubbling up from the depths. “But I would have, if I’d had the means.”

  That made Torsten look down at him. His eyes didn’t reflect in the darkness like the wolves, but Felix could still imagine them shining, weirdly bright and hazel, outlined in charcoal. “Are you sure you’re just a flautist?”

  Felix kicked out a leg aimlessly, feeling jittery beneath Torsten’s gaze. “I’m not a nobleman.”

  “I know you’re not. That much is obvious,” Torsten snarked, and Felix didn’t appreciate the dry delivery.

  “I’m not someone with a head for slipping sleeping potions into stews either,” he said. “Unfortunately.”

  They were both silent after that, Torsten concentrating on winding his way back through the woods and Felix busy thinking about the flute in his satchel. Instruments that made bandits sleep, and then a pack of tattletale wolves. He hardly knew which was cause for more concern.

  They made it back to camp much faster than he’d anticipated. When he saw the lights of the campfire through the trees, he lifted his head from Torsten’s shoulder. “That can’t be right,” he said. “We haven’t been walking long enough. I ran farther than that!”

  “Ran in circles,” Torsten mumbled as he broke through the trees, and the noises of the camp returned to Felix’s ears.

  He blinked at the brightness of the fires as the jabbering bandits encircled Torsten. They were all awake now, asking him for details of what happened and whether his flautist was harmed. Torsten tutted them off and carried Felix straight to his tent, where he promptly set him down on the pallet and started rummaging through his clothes crate.

  “Take off your clothes,” he ordered, his back turned as he searched.

  “What?” Felix asked, pulling a blanket up to his chest. “No.”

  Torsten glanced over his shoulder with a frown. “Your clothes are wet from falling in the snow. Strip down. Now.”

  Felix looked down at himself. It was true that he was wet from his fall in the woods. The snow had soaked the front of his pelt, and his breeches were damp. But he didn’t want to take his clothes off in Torsten’s tent. Not in front of him. There was no way.

  When Torsten turned back around, he held a fresh bundle of clothes in his arms and a stern expression on his face. “Get undressed.”

  Felix shook his head defiantly and pulled more of the blanket around himself. “No.”

  Torsten let out an aggravated grunt before he rushed forward and dropped to his knees. Felix tried to scamper back, to get away, but large hands grabbed him before he could fling himself to freedom, ripping off his pelt. “Keep still,” Torsten ordered, taking hold of Felix’s shirt and pulling it over his head.

  Felix struggled, bare-chested, as Torsten pushed him back on the blankets and reached to untie the sash around his breeches. He had them pulled down in seconds, and Felix covered his face with his hands.

  “Here. Put this on,” Torsten said, and a fresh, oversized shirt landed on his chest. “Or do you need me to do that for you, as well?”

  “I can dress myself,” Felix spat, sitting up and hurriedly pulling the shirt on. It was so big that it hung off one shoulder, but he was glad for it all the same.

  Torsten was unexpectedly gentle as he continued with his mission of easing the wet breeches from around his twisted ankle. Felix gasped when hot hands folded around his foot and smoothed up his ankle, rolling down his socks and brushing over his bare shin. He snuck a glance at Torsten and was surprised to see no lechery reflected in his eyes, only cold assessment. Felix was torn between wanting to pull fresh trousers on immediately and wanting to keep the heat of Torsten’s hands on his freezing skin forever.

  “I need to wrap this,” Torsten decided after a series of light touches and frowns.

  “Can you wrap it after I finish getting dressed?” Felix asked, eyeing the dry trousers sitting in Torsten’s lap.

  “I’ll be right back.” Torsten stood, tossed the fresh trousers into Felix’s waiting arms, and left the tent.

  Felix stared at the space where he’d disappeared through the flaps before shaking his head and finagling the trousers on over his legs. They were made of soft leather, meant for someone with thighs twice as big as his own. It was difficult work pulling them on, especially as Felix’s hands were scraped bloody from his tree climbing, and by the time he had the sash retied around his waist, Torsten was re-entering the tent. His timing was so perfect that Felix had to wonder whether he’d been waiting outside for him to finish struggling into decency.

  Torsten wasted no time returning to his knees before him, one hand filled with a roll of sturdy bandages—the nice kind the queen’s physician had used—and his other hand holding a mug, which he quickly passed over to Felix.

  “What is this?” he asked, even though he knew what it was as soon as it was near enough to smell. He held the mug carefully in his hands, trying not to make contact with the scrapes on his palms
.

  “Guild-brewed whiskey,” Torsten answered, unwinding the roll of bandages. “I had Dot save you some.”

  Felix stared at the amber liquid swishing in the mug and then stared up at the man kneeling at his feet. “You saved me some,” he said softly.

  “Yes.” Torsten arched an eyebrow and grasped a firm hand around his hurt ankle, propping it up into his lap. “Lucky for you. Drink it. It will help with the pain and warm you.”

  Felix sniffed at it suspiciously.

  “I didn’t slip anything in it,” Torsten said, guessing at his hesitation. “Drink.”

  “I’ll drink it if I feel like it, not because you tell me to,” Felix announced, frustrated. “And my name isn’t Flautist. It’s Felix, since you’ve never bothered to ask.”

  Torsten spent half a second glaring at him before he started wrapping his ankle. The pressure made him bite down on a pained curse, and an instant later, he was knocking back the mug of whiskey. It burned his throat and he coughed into his fist.

  Torsten made no comment, just finished wrapping. When he was done, he rolled fresh, thick, woolen socks over Felix’s feet and pulled down the hem of his trousers. “Give me your hands,” he said, but before Felix could extend them, Torsten was grabbing his wrists and turning his hands for inspection, palm sides up.

  Felix hissed in discomfort as his scrapes were nudged with a clean cloth, but Torsten ignored him. He cleaned the blood away, dabbed a bit of salve onto the shallow wounds, and wrapped Felix’s hands in a light layer of bandages, all while managing to stare at him with a look of extreme displeasure. When he was finished, he startled Felix by pulling off his boots, collapsing down beside him on the pallet, and rolling to his side with a groan.

  “Get some sleep,” he bossed, his voice muffled where his face was buried in blankets. “If you try to hobble away in the night, so be it.”

  Felix exhaled fussily, but pulled the blankets to cover himself all the same. He lay down next to the bandit king and tried not to notice their feet were touching.

  His escape hadn’t been a success by any means, but at least he wasn’t currently being gnawed on by a pack of ravenous wolves, and he wasn’t lying in the snow, freezing to death. He was alive and he was warm—almost too warm. Heat radiated from the man lying beside him, already breathing steadily in his sleep, and Felix let his eyes close. He would try to hobble away tomorrow, but for now, the warmth was too good to resist.

  6 - Twisted

  Torsten was already gone when Felix woke the next morning. For the first few bleary moments of consciousness, he didn’t remember the excitement of the night before, but when he glimpsed the bandages on his hands, it came tumbling back all at once, stacking up in his mind: the woods, the wolves, the bandit king carrying him to camp, stripping off his clothes, wrapping his ankle.

  His injury throbbed as soon as he recalled its presence, and he lifted up from the pallet with a groan. He was bending forward to touch a finger to his ankle when his eyes fell on the discarded satchel lying in the corner. Within the satchel was the flute, the flute he had played when, one by one, all the bandits had fallen asleep. The flute he had played while wishing with all his heart that he would be allowed to live. The flute Queen Bellamy had claimed was old and special. How special, he wondered, pushing tendrils of messy curls from his eyes.

  He rolled from the bed, aiming to examine the instrument anew in the light of day, but when he stood, too much weight on his twisted ankle caused a shooting pain to run up his leg. He cried out and crumpled to the ground, unbidden tears making his surroundings blurry.

  At the noise, Torsten—who must have been lingering outside—rushed through the tent flaps, sweeping to the ground on one knee to peer judgmentally at Felix, his hands finding his ankle. His scowl was as intense as after he’d plucked him from the tree the night before. “You need to stay off your injury, Flautist,” he cautioned, and Felix laughed, for he had only a few days ago given Merric similar advice. “Are you well?” Torsten asked, confused by the laughter.

  Felix swallowed his bittersweet amusement and nodded, the pain still shooting through his foot. He wasn’t well, not in the least. His foot hurt and his heart ached, and his attempted escape had gone so horribly wrong he’d ended up relieved when his captor appeared. And it was all very funny, in a dark and terrible way, but he could hardly explain any of that to Torsten, especially not when he was looking so sour.

  “Here,” Torsten said, picking the satchel off the ground and handing it over. Then, without preamble, he lifted Felix bodily from the ground.

  “What are you doing?” he squeaked, having no choice but to wrap an arm around Torsten’s neck in order to hang on. His other hand clutched the satchel to his chest. In the night, when Torsten had been carrying him through the woods, Felix had been numb with cold and adrenaline, and it had been dark, too dark to be embarrassed. But now, as they stepped from the tent and into the morning light, the world was too bright to be held in the bandit king’s arms. Everyone was staring. “Put me down, please,” he whispered.

  “If you hadn’t run away last night and hurt yourself, I wouldn’t have to carry you,” replied Torsten, ignoring Felix’s struggle as he walked toward Dot’s cook fire.

  Being so close to Torsten in the relentless stream of sunshine, Felix was becoming better acquainted with the delicacies of his face than he’d ever wished to be. He could see every hair in his beard, and the smooth skin of his cheekbones, and the curve of his ears, which stuck out a bit from his head and probably should have looked silly, but somehow only added to the charm of his face as a whole. Felix could see his pores, and the bob of his Adam’s apple, and it was too much, way too much. He was about to throw himself madly from his captor’s obscenely fit arms when Torsten arrived at the cook fire and set him down gingerly on a stump.

  As soon as he was free, Felix wrapped his arms around himself and tried to will the blush from his cheeks. Torsten mistakenly took the action as a sign of cold sensitivity, and being as Felix’s usual pelt—along with the rest of his clothing from yesterday—was hanging on a clothesline to dry, the king hurriedly rid himself of his own black pelt and placed it over Felix’s shoulders. He did it as if it was nothing, but Felix stared up at him in astonishment.

  The fur was warm against his bare skin, where the oversized shirt had slipped past his shoulder. Worse, the pelt had a scent to it, and Felix disliked the fact that he could instantly identify the scent as Torsten. Their proximity had been too close and too frequent since his arrival in camp, and the fact that he was draped in Torsten’s scent and wasn’t nauseated by it was definitely a bad sign. Wasn’t it?

  He was busy harrumphing the intricacies of this when a mug of tea was placed in his hands and a bowl of hot porridge was placed beside him. Torsten looked odd when Felix glanced up at him, not only because he was without the bulk of his usual pelt, but because he wasn’t frowning or smirking. Rather, his mouth was in the middle of doing something Felix had not yet seen and could barely describe. It was an unsure parting of his lips, accompanied by a softness to his eyes, which were not at present lined in charcoal.

  “Why are you staring at me?” Torsten asked, crossing his arms across his chest and shattering the softness that had found its way to his face.

  “Because you’re staring at me,” Felix countered. Then he lowered his eyes, because yes, he had indeed been staring, and what was wrong with him? He tried to hide his face in the pelt, but when his senses were bombarded with the musk of pine and peppermint, he hid his face in his mug instead, which was, ironically, also peppermint. He breathed in the steam while his heart pounded, and waited for Torsten to leave him for something more interesting.

  But he didn’t leave. He took his own tea and porridge and sat beside Felix to eat it. Felix met Dot’s eyes, and he must have looked as panicked as he felt, because the cook coughed a laugh, pushed the spectacles up the bridge of his nose, and turned back to his pot with an unhelpful shrug. Felix didn’t know why he�
�d turned to the cook for assistance in the first place. Dot was the enemy. He was surrounded by enemies and now he was breakfasting with the king of them.

  He remained absurdly self-conscious as he ate, scarfing down the meal as quickly as he could. But when he was done, his attention was free to wander to the man beside him. He watched Torsten sip at his tea, lick the flavor from his lips, and shovel a scoop of porridge into his mouth. He watched his jaw work, and his throat flex as he swallowed. It was maddening, the way he wrapped his mouth around his spoon and closed his eyes after every bite. By the time he finally finished eating, Felix released a sigh of relief, hoping to gain some much needed distance at last.

  Torsten stood, handed their used bowls and mugs to Dot, and Felix waited for him to storm off as he usually did. Instead, he crushed Felix’s hopes by sweeping him up into his arms. Felix groaned loudly, voicing his disapproval, and Torsten sighed in return with equal disdain. He handled Felix’s weight effortlessly, directing them towards the tent in the center of camp.

  “Jossy, get up,” Torsten told the lone bandit already inside the tent. He was lounging in a cushioned chair that had absolutely not been there the day before, the chair from the dais.

  Jossy stood up with a lazy stretch and gave Torsten a little bow. “Of course, King.” He didn’t look at all upset, or surprised, to be kicked out of the chair.

  And then, shockingly—though perhaps, at that point, it should not have been—Torsten placed Felix on the cushiony seat. “Some music, Flautist,” he ordered.

  Felix nodded, carding through his satchel until his hands wrapped around the cool silver of the flute. He eyed it suspiciously, rolling it in his hands. It certainly looked like an ordinary flute. Fancy, but ordinary. It didn’t look like the kind of flute that could lull a camp full of bandits to sleep. He brought the instrument to his lips. More bandits filed into the tent as he played, mostly the same group as the previous day, but now Selon was there, too, her curls bouncing as she sauntered arrogantly to the table. She smiled when she spotted him, and he wished he wasn’t the only one sitting; it made him feel silly. But he felt even sillier wearing the king’s pelt, which every eye took mark of upon entry. He held back the grimace their knowing glances incited and continued to play though his humiliation, but not without a stream of unwelcome thoughts barraging his brain. How truly kept he must have looked to them, sitting in a plush chair, draped in the furs of his keeper. He had only been there a few days and already he was being toted around like Torsten’s prissy pet.