The King's Whisper

by T. S. Cleveland

  “Some music, Flautist,” came Torsten’s voice from behind him, and Felix whipped around. How long he’d been standing there, Felix had no idea, but before he could open his mouth to comment on the discourtesy of lurking, Torsten was already moving away, his broad shoulders shedding their fur covering and tossing the pelt on a stump by the fire. It was monstrously unfair that a man as depraved as Torsten was allowed to look the way he did, in a way that made Felix fumble with his flute as he pulled it from his satchel.

  In the tales, villains were usually hideous, their outsides matching the vileness within. It should have been the same way in real life. But there was Torsten, strutting across camp, slapping his fellow bandits on the back, playfully shoving Jossy, looking all the while like the hero of a story, not the villain. His eyes were too striking, his voice was too pleasant, his jaw was too square.

  No, Felix thought—growing increasingly upset with the onslaught of revelations—despite his words of condemnation earlier, Torsten was no storybook villain, not even in action. Villains did not give their loot away to the poor, and they did not wrap their cold flautists in furs. They did not keep flautists at all. If Felix was truly the captive of a villain, he would have remained in chains after that first night and wouldn’t have been allowed to roam freely around camp. Felix was possibly the victim of the tamest captivity in the history of Viridor. But he was still being held captive, no matter how gentle his captor was, so Torsten was the villain. Wasn’t he?

  He grunted in frustration before lifting his flute to his mouth, and then all his angst was unfairly interrupted when, across the camp, Torsten removed his shirt.

  Felix’s thoughts screeched to a halt and his lips froze above his flute. Laughter drifted from across the camp, where an impromptu sparring match had popped up. Torsten was roughhousing with Jossy, and apparently that required the removal of shirts, and okay, fine, that was fine. Felix was totally fine with that.

  Dot’s subtle cough reminded him he was meant to be playing, not staring at a man whose shoulders were really, stupidly broad, and whose body, in general, was—well, it was inappropriate, honestly, for a leader to be so revealed in front of so many spectators. The man clearly lacked the decency to cover up.

  When Felix returned to playing, he blew a might too hard into the hole and startled himself into a small jump. Despite their distance, he locked eyes with Torsten while his fingers fumbled over the keys. Torsten held his gaze for a moment, and then, with a curious tilt of his head, that damnable smirk returned to his face. Felix hated that smirk. He loathed it. Embarrassed rage fueled him to turn away from the shirtless sparring and commit more attention to the flute in his hands, trying to play with more skill than that of a clumsy mountain bear.

  So he played. He played a boisterous tavern song, one that was usually requested before quick-footed dancing broke out across the floor on a busy night. The notes soared high and swift as Felix let himself loose within the music. Emboldened by the force of his tune, he was able to turn back around and watch the display across camp through the veil of curls that had fallen over his eyes.

  Merric had always looked pleasing without a shirt, and he tried to keep that image in his head, hoping it would somehow replace the one in front of him, which seemed more real and more enticing than the guardian apprentice had ever been. Felix gawked at himself, at his own heinous thoughts, because it wasn’t fair to Merric. Merric was handsome and brave and looked great without a shirt. He was writing a song for Merric, after all, because he had hair that sparkled like rubies, and had a comely midsection, and was a hero.

  Torsten was not a hero. He was a bandit. And he was throwing his head back with laughter, and striking out at Jossy playfully, and his stomach was flexing, and his eyes were squinted in amusement, and he was the King of Bandits! It was not for Felix to find the shape of him pleasing. One should not study the shape of one’s captor unless to decide the best portion for stabbing, let alone start comparing it to the shape of one’s friend, one’s lover, one’s presumably very much alive Merric.

  But, Gods, had Torsten been so attractive when they’d first met? Had Felix been too shocked and upset to notice? He’d been terrified of him before, and now he was ogling him. His cheeks heated as his flute trilled, and that’s when Torsten glanced at him again, not with a smirk this time, but with one of his soft, unusual looks.

  Felix forced himself to keep playing as if nothing was amiss. He could not let Torsten know that his attention hampered his ability to play a flute. He matched him, look for look, stare for stare, despite his mounting desire to shut his eyes and scream. Eventually, his effort worked, Torsten turned his attention back to Jossy, and Felix could breathe again. But when he found himself the subject of Torsten’s steady gaze only a few moments later, he dropped his eyes and drew the flute away from his mouth, considering the silver instrument skeptically.

  It was an outlandish thought to consider seriously yet again, that this flute had anything more special about it than the power to produce music. But he couldn’t help but wonder, with the way Torsten was openly staring at him, if he could sense Felix’s shameful thoughts through the music he played. It was a ludicrous idea, and he laughed at himself for dreaming it up.

  When Felix braved another glance, Torsten was no longer watching him and had turned back to Jossy. They had stopped fighting and were now speaking to one another, their heads close together. Felix studied the flute in his hand, and an idea came to him. In an attempt to thwart his own suspicions of flute magic, he would purposefully imagine an obscenity while he played. He pursed his lips and began a new tune. If the flute was somehow responsible for Torsten’s attentions, and as mischievous as Felix suspected, it wouldn’t go unnoticed.

  He imagined Torsten being much closer to him than he currently was, shirt off, that soft look still on his face. He imagined touching his chest, smoothing his hand over the dark patch of hair, how warm the skin would be beneath his touch. He imagined himself not needing to stand on his tiptoes to kiss him, just slightly lifting his head in order to align their mouths. And then he imagined the press of Torsten’s lips against his, the way he’d run his hands down Felix’s hips and wrap his arms around his waist and—

  Torsten turned sharply from Jossy and looked at Felix, eyes narrowing. And then, to Felix’s horror, he began walking swiftly toward him. Felix gasped, his heart pounding, and scowled down at his flute. Had his playing truly revealed his thoughts? It seemed to have made Torsten spare his life. It seemed to have made the bandits fall asleep. It seemed to have made the guards ignore the robbery happening right behind them. Could it actually reveal the imaginings of its player? The queen had said it was old and special. Could she have really gifted him a magic flute? Or, more likely, had Felix completely lost his mind?

  Moments later, the bandit king was upon him, that peculiar, soft look on his face, and Felix didn’t know what to expect. He was blushing madly, as if Torsten had seen precisely what he’d been imagining. But what if he had? He’d shown nothing but disgust the first night they’d shared the tent, when Felix had made mention of being used for talents other than flute playing. There was no reason to believe he would be anything less than disgusted now, even if Felix’s own opinion on the subject was undergoing a rather befuddling shift.

  Torsten’s gaze was unbearable, and Felix cleared his throat awkwardly. It was too much like the fantasy he’d just indulged. Torsten only needed to step a few inches forward and he’d be close enough to touch. He could feel his face growing hotter, could feel a bead of sweat dripping down the back of his neck, and then Torsten did step closer, his eyebrows lifting in question.

  “Are you unwell?” he asked, speaking at last. “Is your ankle hurting you?”

  Felix couldn’t help the slightly hysterical laugh that escaped him, for he had completely forgotten about his ankle. He gave it an experimental twist and found nothing wrong with it at all, but then again, he could hardly feel anything at the moment except the harried beat
ing of his heart. “My ankle is fine,” he answered weakly.

  Torsten’s eyebrows lowered to their usual prowling grounds, but he didn’t look satisfied. For a moment, Felix thought he was on the verge of speaking again, but then he seemed to think better of it. He looked down at Felix’s ankle, nodded stiffly, and strode past him. Felix turned to watch him go. He ended up beside his sleeping tent, sharpening arrows, but not before he’d retrieved his previously discarded shirt.

  Torsten was bad, Felix reminded himself once the shirt was in place, hastily putting the trouble-making flute away. He was a bad, bad man, who had chained him up and made him sleep outside. He was a bad man who had a few redeeming qualities, but was still mostly bad, and Felix kept reminding himself of that fact for the rest of the day. While he helped Dot with dinner, he focused on how Torsten had threatened to kill him when they’d first met. While he passed out mugs, he recalled the man’s ominous camaraderie with the local wolf pack. All bad things. He did an excellent job of avoiding Torsten until a time well after supper, when night had fallen and he was henceforth summoned to the tent for bed.

  The bad man requested a simple tune as he readied himself for sleep, and Felix warily obliged, not terribly excited to put his mouth on the flute again and risk having his thoughts betrayed. Pointedly sitting on the ground instead of the pallet, Felix focused on playing a simple melody, and it was going splendidly until he saw a shirt land by his feet. He looked up slowly, and sure enough, Torsten was standing there shirtless. He’d never taken his shirt off for bed before.

  Refusing to fumble with his flute again, Felix kept playing as smoothly as he could, though now his eyes were fixed on the muscular cut of Torsten’s abdomen, and the glow of his skin in the candlelight, and they were awfully close now, in the confines of such a small tent. If Torsten were to simply reach out and—

  “Flautist.”

  Felix pulled the flute away from his lips and tossed it onto his satchel, as if it were a snake that might bite. He glared at it accusingly until he could feel Torsten’s eyes burning into him. With great hesitance, he turned to look at him, where he now lay on the pallet of furs.

  “Blow out the candle and come to bed,” Torsten said, rolling onto his side and facing away from Felix.

  But he was still shirtless, and Felix couldn’t help but stare at his bare back, at the jut of his shoulder blades and the hair at the nape of his neck. Of all the nights they’d slept side by side, why was Torsten only now choosing to sleep without his shirt on? Could it have been some trick of the flute again? Had, unbeknownst to him, the flute made Torsten want to remove articles of his clothing? When Torsten tutted with impatience, Felix shook the silliness from his head and began to undress for sleep. Since he was not obscene like Torsten, he kept his shirt on, removing only the black pelt and shoes, and then he slipped reluctantly under the blankets, trying to keep to his own side of the pallet.

  “The candle,” Torsten reminded him, and Felix leaned over to the bedside crate to blow out the flame.

  The tent was cast in darkness and Felix burrowed back on the pallet, pulling the blankets up around his shoulders. He stretched out his foot and it brushed against Torsten’s calf. The other man said nothing, but Felix could feel his blush returning furiously at the contact, his heart beating too fast. Silently, he cursed the flute lying innocently on his satchel, for it was surely at fault for his newly boggled mind. He fought to remember what he’d told Torsten earlier that day, that he might give fruit and coin away to the needy, but he had still shot Merric, and Felix was still his captive, and those were not the actions of a good person, no matter how good he looked without a shirt.

  He made himself close his eyes, trying not to bask too much in the heat coming from the body beside him beneath the blankets. He tried to think of Merric, of seeing Merric again, because Merric was good. Merric was good, and Felix liked Merric. If Merric had only known Felix was still alive, he would have rescued him by now. What a good person he was. Merric, Merric, Merric.

  ***

  Felix woke with Torsten’s hand on his waist.

  Sometime in the night, Torsten had shifted closer and put his hand on his waist. Not only that, but Felix could feel the heat from Torsten’s thighs on the backs of his legs, and his breath was rustling the curls at Felix’s neck and making his skin tingle. But most notably, and entirely impossible to ignore—try as Felix might—was the heat pressed up against his backside, hard and unmistakable.

  “Oh, Gods,” Felix whispered in alarm. When caught under the blankets with a bandit’s erection pushing against one’s ass, was it better to keep completely still and pretend it wasn’t happening, or wiggle away to a safer portion of the pallet? Felix opted to wiggle, which turned out to be the absolute wrong choice, because Torsten’s hand tightened on his hip and pulled Felix closer. Then there was a groan—possibly from Felix—and a slow grind of hips—definitely from a still-sleeping Torsten.

  Felix stopped trying to wiggle, and gathered his remaining energy to will away the swell in his own trousers, a task made increasingly difficult due to the hot puffs of breath on his neck and the stiffness at his back. Torsten’s hips had stilled, and his hand had lessened its grip on Felix’s hip, but there was no way he would try to move again. He sighed softly and tried to relax into the warmth. It wasn’t how he’d thought he would wake up, but now that it was happening, it wasn’t so bad. For the first time since they’d gone to sleep on the same pallet, their bodies had found one another in the night, and now they were all but entwined. Something about it felt irreversible.

  And it was, up until the moment Torsten jerked awake and quickly pulled away, grunting as he rolled onto his other side. Felix tried not to be upset by the sudden lack of his touch, but his body felt cold now that the heat of Torsten’s body was gone.

  Torsten didn’t linger in the blankets, nor did he utter a word about snuggling his flautist in the night and waking up hard. He simply dressed and left the tent, not sparing Felix a single glance. Honestly, he was glad to be left alone, where he could hide a little longer. Maybe Torsten didn’t mind walking out into the camp with a full erection, but Felix wasn’t quite at that comfort level yet.

  He groaned, rolled onto his back, and wished his problem away, keeping his hands determinedly above the blankets. He refused to relieve the tight coil in his abdomen through any means involving touch. Instead, he focused on scolding himself for his reactionary body. It was the flute’s fault, somehow. It had caused these new, irritating developments, and he would not succumb to its mischievous influence. He waited impatiently for his predicament to pass, and then took his time pulling on his shoes and pelt. Torsten had taken back his black pelt and left the other for Felix to wear, which now smelled as strongly as the other did of the bandit king. Thus, he remained trapped in the man’s clothes, surrounded by the man’s scent, and when he stepped from the tent, there the man was—though apparently no longer hard, thank the Gods—taking a bite of porridge by the cook fire and looking handsomer than any hero Felix had ever sung about.

  He sputtered an unintelligible greeting to Dot and accepted his own bowl. Torsten moved over on the log, a clear invitation, and Felix was powerless against it. It was only polite to accept the seat offered. The smell of peppermint wafted through the air and he inhaled it greedily. It was as if he’d woken with an incurable selfishness inside him, and all he wanted to do was look his fill and breathe in all the scents. It left a strange feeling in his stomach, one he could scarcely describe. If he had to write a song about it, had to put the sensation to words, he would say it was a feeling both empty and full, both aching and soothing. He wanted to latch on to the feeling as much as he wanted to shake it off and never feel it again. He wondered if he was coming down with something, or if it was merely the effect of eating breakfast beside Torsten after waking up practically in his arms. He hoped it was sickness, because he’d eaten next to Merric many, many times and never once felt such a feeling.

  They finishe
d their meal at the same time, and Torsten took Felix’s bowl. Felix got to his feet, prepared to follow along and play his blasted flute while Torsten planned the next raid, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

  “Not today, Flautist,” Torsten said, and his voice was gruffer than usual, though the words were not spoken unkindly.

  Felix saw that Torsten held something crumpled in his hand, a note of some kind. He could make out an inked scribble, but could tell nothing of the words. Whatever it was, it was apparent that Torsten wished to be alone with it for the time being, or at least absent of his flautist. Felix watched him stride toward the planning tent, summoning Jossy and Harold along his way. They followed behind with pinched expressions.

  Felix was left with Dot and the remaining bandits eating breakfast, one of whom was Selon. Apparently frustrated that she’d been overlooked for Torsten’s morning confidences, she wound her way over to Felix. The charcoal smudge around her eyes looked fresh, and her hair was springier than usual. Had Felix any liking for her, he might have complimented her, told her she looked pretty. Or prettier than usual, anyway. But he didn’t like her, so he tried to look elsewhere and ignore her.