by Lisa Henry
“Nothing. He promised nothing; I told him nothing! Please, it’s the truth!”
Boru dug his fingers into Ciaran’s jaw until Ciaran yelped. “If only I could believe that.”
Ciaran whimpered. “It’s the truth, I swear! It was only ever …” He should stop there, but his mouth kept moving. Stories. Flattery. He still had that. “It was only ever his cock I wanted. I’m a whore just like you said. I’m sorry. I wanted his big cock. Once I had it, I needed it again. I wanted to live with it inside me. You should keep me to yourself, Highness, just keep me to yourself and never, never let other men have me and I won’t stray again. I won’t know any different, I won’t want any different.” He choked back his sobs. “I’m a whore, I’m sorry. It’s my nature, but I would be happy with you alone.”
Boru released his jaw.
Ciaran sagged in relief, then stiffened again as he felt a blade against his throat.
“Feel that? This is the knife I’ll use to kill you myself, whore.” Boru turned the knife so that the point rested against Ciaran’s racing pulse. “I’ll fucking wreck you. I’ll cut your eyes out first, then your fingers, then that pretty, lying tongue. You’ll feel it, cunt, long before I slit your throat.”
“Please,” Ciaran wept, shoulders shaking. “Please, please, please, please.”
I don’t want to die. I don’t know why, but I don’t want to die. Not here. Not like this.
“When the Games are over, your head will be on a pike beside the culchie’s,” Boru said. He lifted his weight off Ciaran and slid the point of the knife down his heaving chest, and lower. “But you don’t need your balls to get fucked by a champion, do you?”
Ciaran yelped as the blade touched him there. “Please! God, please don’t!”
“Being neutered would certainly help with your whoring around.” Boru hummed. “Be a proper little house pet then, wouldn’t you?”
“No, no, no,” Ciaran wailed, but it was useless. Useless to fight, useless to plead anymore.
“Or maybe I’ll keep you intact for a little, hmmm?”
Ciaran nodded desperately.
Boru lifted the blade away. Ciaran lay there, gasping for air, and felt something nudge his balls. Too thick to be the blade. Too solid. It slid lower, pushed against him, blindly seeking entrance to his body. Ciaran tilted his hips up. Still fucking obedient, even in all his terror. Just so relieved it wasn’t the blade.
It was thick, the surface hard and unyielding. Warm plastic, with ridges. Slick with sweat. The handle of the knife, of course. Ciaran hoped the bastard cut his hand, trying to fuck him with such a thing.
And then he didn’t hope, because if it happened, he would be punished for the king’s pain.
“Slut,” Boru said, and his tone sounded almost as tender as it had when he’d been at his most affectionate in the past.
Ciaran clenched his teeth and tried to ride out the pain. Court that affection.
“If you are good to me, Boy,” Boru murmured. “Are you listening?”
“I’ll be good,” Ciaran said through his tears, clutching onto any hope of a reprieve. “I swear!”
Boru withdrew the knife. He straddled Ciaran’s chest, one hand on his throat. “If you are good to me, if you mean it, and if you please me …”
Ciaran nodded eagerly.
Boru leaned down and kissed him, then turned Ciaran’s face away so that he could speak directly into his ear. “If you show me how much you love me, I’ll kill you quick when the time comes.”
“I’ll be good,” Ciaran murmured. “I’ll be good, I promise, I promise …”
“That’s right. Now. I know you said you wanted me to keep you to myself from now on, to keep you from straying again. But I think what I’d rather do is to give you all the strange cock you desire, to teach you just how pampered and spoiled you’ve been. So I’ve decided to loan you nightly to my men, and by day you’ll be at my side, as presentable and pretty as you’ve ever been.”
Ciaran shivered. “But, Majesty—”
“Stop!” Boru tightened his grip on Ciaran’s throat. “Always words with you, Boy. Such a lovely turn of phrase you have, you fooled even me. Such a mouth on you. Maybe it needs to be stoppered up to prevent your poisonous words from falling out. Maybe if you sucked more cock, you’d tell fewer lies.”
“I’ll …” Ciaran licked his lips, bit the lower one, tried to seduce. “I’ll suck your cock, my king. Choke on it. Swallow it down for you. You like it, don’t you?”
A thumb jabbed into his mouth. “Oh, I do like it, pet. I like it so very, very much.”
Ciaran sucked.
“But that’s my downfall, isn’t it?” The thumb grabbed Ciaran by the lower teeth, turning cruel as the king wrenched his mouth open. “Your sweet sluttish little mouth. Well, now it’ll be the downfall of all my men, instead. Have to keep your hole nice and tight for my champion, after all.”
Ciaran moaned as Boru tugged at his jaw.
“You’ll like that, won’t you? More cum than even you can drink up.”
Ciaran made a noise that he hoped passed as assent.
Boru released his aching jaw and leaned close again. “And you’ll do it, won’t you? You’ll show me what a good little slut you can be.”
“I’ll be good,” Ciaran whispered.
Boru stroked his cheek. “Oh, you will be, or I will make you think you’re in Hell days before you draw your last breath. Do you know how long it takes to kill a man, Boy?”
Ciaran shook his head.
Boru kissed him on the forehead, just above the blindfold. “As long as I fucking like.”
The place they took Darragh was dark, windowless. It took six of them to escort him there, even though he was too bewildered to fight. No, not bewildered. Already defeated, perhaps. Because what was happening to him, whatever it was, could not be worse than what was happening to Ciaran. Ciaran was treated so terribly as the king’s pet, used so cruelly, that Darragh hated to think what lay in store for him if he was actually being punished. And Darragh was to blame.
“Tell me this, culchie,” Noel said after they pushed him inside the small room. “Was Hugh a traitor?”
“I don’t know,” Darragh said, figuring he could at least be honest now.
He’d expected Noel to be angry, but the man only smiled slightly and shook his head. “Shame. You could have gone places here.”
They left him alone in the dark.
They kept Ciaran’s blindfold on. Kept his arms cruelly tied.
Used him for hours on end, passing him around with laughs and hair tugs and slaps.
In the morning a bucket of water was thrown over him, and he was returned to Boru. Couldn’t even walk after a night on his knees in the cold.
The way that Boru held him and petted him gently as he shivered reminded him of those first weeks. He’d been stupid with fear. Just kill me, he’d thought then, and now. Just kill me quickly, please.
But nobody killed him. They cleaned him and decked him out in gold and pressed a gag into his mouth and a chain around his neck, and then Boru paraded him around as his prized pet, as if nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
Because at the end of a long day playing pretty, he was stripped of the dubious status his gold afforded him and sent to the king’s men for a night of service. He barely slept. He barely ate. He thought he would probably be dead before the Sacrificial Games even began. That would be a relief, if he could just sink down into sleep and never wake again. No pain.
Boru was full of grand ideas for his Games. His most grand: to hold them at night. What greater display of power could he make than to light up Croke Park? That would impress his allies and enemies alike, and fill the city with awe. All the generators that could be found were loaded into vans to be transported to the decrepit stadium. There would be floodlights, because the king had willed it so.
The process of transporting such valuable cargo was a dangerous business, especially with the rebels from Milbourne A
venue still at large, and that danger meant the king was very tense. Which, of course, meant that Boy was called to relieve that tension. A service which may have once meant blowjobs and foot rubs, but now meant bending over the bed while the king beat his arse with whatever came to hand until Ciaran collapsed and wept and then the king fucked him.
Everything had changed.
In the past, he’d thought his pretty words could deflect the king’s anger. He’d thought he had some control, at least. In the past, Boru had preened over Ciaran’s flattery and kisses and smiles. Not now.
“Please,” Ciaran begged him. “Please. I love you, please.”
Boru dug his fingers into Ciaran’s throat until the words wouldn’t come anymore. Until he couldn’t even breathe. Then, laughing, he threw him from the bed onto the floor, and kicked him all the way through the halls and down the stairs, to where the cheering men awaited him.
“I love you,” Ciaran wept, his face pressed into the dirt. The words had lost all meaning. They no longer even disgusted him.
“Hear that, boys?” Boru crowed. “The little slut loves me!”
Ciaran whimpered as Boru pulled his head back, tearing a clump of hair from his scalp. “Please! Please!”
“See you in the morning, cunt.”
Ciaran closed his eyes and opened his mouth as the men began to crowd around him.
At least soon it would be over. The games, and then his final sacrifice, his final degradation and public humiliation, and then he could die.
“Ready to die, culchie?”
There was no answer Darragh could give except a grunt. And anyway, he was too busy trying to blink away the burning in his eyes at the sudden light to give the question much thought. Noel stood silhouetted in the doorway, a mortal man at the centre of an incomprehensibly bright blaze.
“I brought you this,” he said, and held up what appeared to be makeshift body armour: an old police vest cobbled together with scrap metal and even a few pieces that looked like they’d been scavenged from the museum. “The king didn’t care to provide you either way since you’re now persona non grata, but all the other champions will be decked out in their finest to represent their gangs, and me and the lads didn’t want you to go out there looking like some poor culchie fecker who took a wrong turn on his march in from the bogs.”
Darragh climbed to his feet and took it warily. It was heavier than he expected it to be, or maybe he was weaker now. “Thank you,” he said, although he didn’t really feel terribly thankful just then. It took him a moment to figure out which way the armour went, but he managed to get it around his body, and stood still as Noel strapped it on tight. “A weapon?” he asked.
“Not ’til you get to the arena,” Noel said.
Darragh nodded. “Of course.”
“Try not to die too quick, eh? You may not be one of the boys anymore, but that doesn’t mean we want to see you dying like a dog and making fools of us all.”
“Will Ciaran be there?” Darragh asked, unable to hold it in.
This time it was Noel’s turn to grunt. “You mean Boy? Yes, he’ll be at the king’s feet like always. Prettied up.”
“Is he …”
“That was your fuckin’ mistake from the start, culchie. If you cared about him so much, you never should have let on. The more concern you show, the worse it is for him.” Something almost like sympathy seemed to cross Noel’s rugged features. “I’ll take you to the holding area, now. You’re up soon.”
Darragh nodded. He wouldn’t speak again. Wouldn’t ask after Ciaran again. Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d see him there at the king’s knee before he died.
“And culchie?” Noel added, just before they passed the threshold of Darragh’s prison. “Tonight, anything might happen, so be ready.”
Darragh had no idea what that meant, but then, he had a feeling that in this place, he’d never known anything at all.
The gold wristbands irritated the flesh that had been torn by the ropes. The sharp sting of it kept Ciaran awake, if not alert. He stumbled as he left the old Bank of Ireland, nearly falling down the steps to the laughter of the men watching. Boru tugged on the chain around his throat, and Ciaran climbed up into the cab of the van.
There was a time when he would have stared out the windows, eager for any distraction, but not this evening. He was too sore, and too tired. He knew he should have been afraid, for himself and for Darragh, for the bloody spectacle that awaited him tonight, but he couldn’t muster the energy. Boru put an arm around his shoulders, and Ciaran leaned into him.
“Oh, my good Boy,” Boru murmured as the van rattled into life, and his tone was almost regretful.
Regret me. Regret everything, you bastard.
Ciaran half dozed on the ride to Croke Park. He remembered the stadium vaguely from when he was a child—the excitement he’d felt at being surrounded by so many people, all cheering and chanting for their teams, even though Ciaran had been too young to understand what was going on—and from when Danny had died on the field. He wondered if there would still be bloodstains there.
It was cold. The wind was sharp. Didn’t help that he was still naked. He sat huddled close to the king, knees pulled up to his chest as he shivered.
“Are you excited to have your hole fucked today, Boy?”
“If …” Ciaran was too tired to smile. “If it pleases you.”
He’d lost. Whatever this game was, he’d lost. Wouldn’t even get that moment of blazing pride where he had nothing else to lose, where he screamed what he really thought at the man, how Boru could burn in fucking hell for all his crimes. Wouldn’t even get that, not when Boru held that final card in their twisted game: whether Ciaran suffered before he died or not. He wasn’t sure yet if he was afraid of dying at this point, but he was afraid of being tortured. Afraid of the pain, but even more afraid of what the pain would awaken in him. Crying. Begging. Would he ask for his father, then? What would he offer Boru in order to end it? He’d already given so much, he wasn’t sure what was even left … but Boru would certainly find it.
“If it pleases me what?”
Oh.
“If it pleases you, Highness.”
“Mmm, much better. I quite like this new hoarse tone you speak with, Boy. Very seductive.”
“Thank you, Highness.” It was as if another man were speaking through him. Boy. He was a part of Ciaran now, maybe he always had been, but Boru had made him real. Maybe made it so that he was all that was left.
“My men must have used your throat quite roughly the last several nights.”
“Yes, Highness. Very rough.”
“Did you like it?”
“Of course, Highness. I’m a whore. But I would prefer rough use from you.” Strange how that lie still pleased Boru, flattered him … unless it never had. Perhaps the pleasure he got from it was just hearing it fall from Ciaran’s lips, true or not. To have reduced him to the simpering Boy.
“Of course you would,” Boru said. He rubbed Ciaran’s throat, between the gold torc and the chain. “I wonder if I will ever find another treasure that shines like you.”
There was some sycophantic comment waiting to be said, something about only reflecting Boru’s glory, but Ciaran’s tired mind couldn’t find it. He thought of the boy Boru had seen at the warehouse and wondered if the wristbands and the torc would irritate his skin as well. Wondered how long that boy would wear them. He had no question, now, about why he and Darragh had been sent off alone that day. “I shine because you allow it, Majesty.”
“Ah, my favourite little flatterer. If only you’d have used those wits to keep off that culchie’s filthy cock.” Boru smiled peacefully and shrugged to himself. “Ah well. Now you’ll watch him die.”
Ciaran shut his eyes and didn’t shudder. He wouldn’t. He wasn’t even sure if he was particularly sad about Darragh’s impending death. He listed between misery and shame and indifference, remembering in turns that Darragh had been the one to doom them, that Darragh had
wanted to own him, that Darragh had carried him, and that Darragh had been kind and gentle once. Remembering, most of all, that Darragh had been one of the king’s men, like any other, but unlike any other, he’d been the one to most substantially ruin Ciaran’s life … after Boru himself, of course.
Or maybe Darragh had been the one to finally set him free. Not his fault that freedom hurt.
It certainly didn’t feel like freedom, but maybe it would when the moment of death came. Maybe Ciaran would find that same bliss, that same rapture that was painted on the faces of the martyred saints in the books he’d read in the library. Not that he expected hosts of angels to come and lift him up to heaven. Maybe it would be enough to know that wherever he was going, it would be to a place where Boru could no longer hurt him.
Half-remembered childhood prayers came to him, but he couldn’t be bothered to try to recite them, even in his head. Too weak. Too tired. It didn’t matter. It would be over soon.
The van rattled to a stop.
It was dark now. Ciaran shivered as he climbed from the van and hugged his chest. Too dark to see anything much in the corridor that led into Croke Park from underneath the stadium seating. He heard the crowd before he saw it. Several hundred men, maybe as many as a thousand. The king’s men and the men from the gangs allied to Boru.
Torchlight on the overgrown pitch.
Ciaran followed Boru out to cheers.
There was a stage set up at the edge of the lowest seats. The Woolsack had been brought here from Boru’s court. Boru ascended the stage, Ciaran at his heel. He sat, and Ciaran sank to his knees beside him.
In the dark, he didn’t have to see the worst of it. The hulking shape of the ruined stadium, half-collapsed in a modern imitation of the Coliseum. The night sky above, all stars obscured. He could stare at his knees instead.
A shuddering squeal filled the stadium. A blast of static, followed by a vibrating, amplified voice.
“All hail King Boru!”
Even Ciaran was amazed. The PA system.
“All hail King Boru!” the disembodied voice called again, and the chant was taken up by the spectators. Croke Park echoed with it.
