Chapter Text
The boy looked precisely as Silas remembered him. Sun-kissed, a stubborn jaw and freckles peppered across the bridge of his nose, curls the rich golden-brown of burnt sugar falling into his eyes. He had long, willowy limbs, a slender frame with the bones pressed right up against the skin, creating tantalizing hollows in his throat. He was, just now, restrained by no less than two men, each of them roughly twice his width, who had wrestled him onto his knees and twisted his arms up and behind him to keep him down. They each held one of his hands high up at an angle, their opposite palms pressed to his shoulder blades, to ensure that he could not struggle without the risk of dislocating his shoulders. The boy was panting, furious as a trapped animal, eyes on the floor. From where Silas sat, on a dais several feet above the throne room floor, he could not see most of the boy's face.
Behind this—honestly, quite lovely—tableau were Silas's Captain, Titus, and two others, each of them looking a bit scuffed up and thoroughly put out. The boy had clearly not made this easy on them. Still—
"Five men?" Silas asked, letting his delight seep into the edges of his voice. "Don't tell me it took you five men to bring him in."
Titus, long-suffering as always, said, "Without injuring him, yes."
"I believe I told you not to damage him, which is not precisely the same thing."
"…Apologies, My Lord."
Silas waved his hand magnanimously. "No matter. I'd rather you over-correct than under-correct, and he's here now, in any case."
Silas turned his attention to the boy, who was clearly fighting very hard to control his breathing. His chest moved with the jerky deliberateness of a person who would dry-heave if his control faltered for even an instant.
"What's your name, sweetheart? I'm afraid I never asked."
The boy turned his face away, his lips pressed into a thin and petulant line.
"His mother called him Ren," supplied Titus.
"Thank you, Titus, but I'd prefer that our boy speak for himself. Ren, is it?"
Ren said nothing.
"Can you look at me, Ren? You're in no danger."
Ren said nothing.
Silas sighed. This was mostly for Ren's benefit. He got up and made his way down to where his boy knelt, then crouched in front of him. He took Ren's chin in his hand and jerked his face up to look him in the eyes.
Those eyes. Warmly brown in this light, the color of strong tea, but they'd be liquid gold in the sun—if Ren ever saw the sun again. They were red-rimmed and bright with the effort of suppressing tears, wild and watchful as a fox in a snare.
"There we go," Silas said, making his voice low and soothing. It did not escape him that Ren had yet to say a single word, and he thought that might be a good place to begin. "Lord Above, but you're beautiful when you're angry. I'm beginning to understand why my men needed reinforcements. I imagine you were quite the hellcat when they came for you."
"What am I doing here?" Ren asked, failing entirely to keep the tremor from his voice. "What do you want from me?"
"Are you frightened, little mouse?"
"No." Adorable narrowing of his pretty eyes, a prideful tilt to the chin.
Silas brought his face closer, close enough to feel the breath catch in Ren's chest. He pressed his cheek against Ren's cheek, pressed his lips to Ren's ear. "I don't believe you."
Ren openly shuddered. When Silas pulled back, he looked very near tears. Silas let go of his chin. Ren kept his face upturned, refusing to be the first one to drop the eye contact.
"My name is Silas, by the way. And perhaps you may call me that, if you're very good."
"And what if I'm not?" This was not a question asked out of fear. It was a challenge. There was a certain calculation in the boy's expression, a visible sizing-up.
Silas's smile widened and grew teeth. "Oh, you're going to be fun."
As dearly as Silas would love to defile this boy here and now on the throneroom floor, it simply wouldn't do. He had big plans for Ren, and they required patience and restraint. What he lost in Ren's shock and terror now, he would get back in spades at a later time.
"Titus," he said as he straightened. "Escort our guest to his temporary living quarters. I believe you know the way."
Titus bowed, stiffly, respectfully, at the waist. "My Lord."
The men hauled Ren to his feet. He was trembling, the poor thing, stiff and jerky with rage and terror. Silas supposed this must all be quite the ordeal for him. He'd have to get used to that.
At first, Ren was too disoriented to resist the men dragging him to the-gods-knew-where. And by the time he came back to himself, he knew that it would be pointless. Even if he could break their grip on him, which was doubtful, he had no hope of navigating his way back through the warren of hallways and staircases he'd been led down. Certainly not well enough to outrun them.
So he was compliant, for once in his life, as they brought him to his future.
When faced with that future, though, his reason failed him and he found himself throwing his shoulder against the door as it closed. This did absolutely jack shit except make his shoulder hurt. The door was heavy, and locked from the outside, and he'd seen that it was guarded on the way in.
He sank down to his knees, pressing his forehead against the cool wood, digging his fingernails into the ground. What the hell was going on?
Yesterday, everything had been normal. As recently as yesterday morning, he'd been setting off for work like any other day. And then he'd been chased down along his way by his little brother, who'd told him to come straight home.
And then the men in the kitchen, handing Ren's mother a very large sum of money for the promise that she wouldn't fight them. And she had apologized. She had taken Ren's hand and told him she was sorry and stepped back, clutching the money to her chest. She hadn't fought them.
And they'd brought him here. Where was here?
He turned around. The room was small, windowless, somewhere far underground. They'd gone down a lot of stairs to get here. He could cross the whole length of it with three paces in either direction. There was room to lay comfortably, but nothing to lay on. The floor was hard-packed dirt, disturbed only by a bucket in the corner and an ominous metal ring protruding from one wall. The only light was dim, flickering torchlight from out in the hall, cast through a grate set high up in the door.
He turned back toward the door and banged on it experimentally with his fists. As he'd suspected, it hardly deigned to shudder on its hinges. But there were people outside. He could hear them, could see their shadows in the crack under the door. "Hey!" He shouted. "Hey, talk to me!"
Nothing.
"Somebody! I just want to know why I'm here! What's the charge? What did I do? Someone! Please!"
Silence. The silence of people who had stilled, who were being quiet on purpose.
"Fuckers, talk to me!" He punctuated this by slamming the heel of his hand against the door. "What is wrong with you people? I haven't done anything! Whatever you think I did, I'm innocent! I haven't been given a trial! Has everyone gone insane?"
Long, thick, unspooling silence. Tense and breathing silence.
"Fine," he said. "Fine! Every last one of you can fuck your mothers in hell!"
He slumped back against the door and stared at the opposite wall. The immediate panic and rage was fading from his body, and nothing was coming in to replace it. It left him hollow and cold, and very tired. He put his head between his knees.
He would try again, in the coming days. He would scream and plead and reason and insult them, pound on the door and appeal to better natures and say graphic things about their relationships with their mothers. It would never, not once, do him any good.
They fed him through a sliding panel at the bottom of the door. Twice a day, like clockwork. He assumed. Without the sun, there was no way to be certain, but if he was awake, and very quiet, he could hear the guard changing outside the room.
There were two guard shifts between each meal. By Ren's figuring, that meant that they took six-hour shifts, four per day. Twelve hours between trays. That felt right.
By this metric, he tracked the days. It was difficult to tell morning from night, but if he just kept counting in groups of four, he could have a decent estimate for how long it had been. This went a long way towards keeping him calm.
The panic was a dense, volatile thing, all shoved deep down inside him and smothered as completely as it could be. He could not entirely hold it still, and it slipped, sometimes, up through his fingers. In these moments it crept into his stomach and lungs and made him feel restless and sick. But mostly, it stayed where he put it.
Every few days, someone came for the bucket in the corner. This process involved at least two people. One of the king's nameless, interchangeable brutes to wrestle Ren onto his knees and cuff him to the iron ring in the wall, and another servant of a smaller build to actually change and carry the thing. Why the brute couldn't simply do both jobs, Ren did not know, except that it may be considered beneath him.
The first few times this happened, Ren snarled and snapped at the both of them and bared his teeth whenever they came near. But the utter uselessness of this quickly began to wear on him. For all his stubborn courage, it was difficult not to grow weak. His cell was not large enough for any kind of exercise. There were three hundred and eighty-seven bricks making up its walls, flickering constantly in and out of focus in the uneven torchlight from the hall. The food, while hearty and filling, only came about once every twelve hours. He began to shiver violently at random moments. There were days when his lips chapped together and bled when he tried to speak. Most of his time was spent lying on his side, his arms wrapped around his ribs, staring at the walls.
He could feel the fight beginning to go out of his body. When they came for him, he no longer struggled. He no longer spoke. He stared at them with mute and helpless hate as their gazes slid over and past him. Time blurred before his eyes, grew gray and sticky. He moved only to eat, or when forced. His thoughts were slow and opaque as mud.
He noticed, though, when the food changed. There was less of it. What of it there was had gotten less filling. Portions were smaller. Meals lacked meat, or bread. There was no butter, no fat, nothing to pad the holes in his stomach. They were not starving him. If they were starving him, his body would catch on at some point and he'd lose his appetite. They gave him just enough to leave him constantly wishing for more.
He began to live between meals. The morning meal—the one he assumed was the morning meal—only increasing his appetite for the evening one. He lay there on his side for hours and salivated, thinking only of the next time the hatch in the door would open and a tray would be pushed through.
And then, one day, the second meal didn't come.
At first, he thought he was mistaken. Maybe he'd gotten his days confused, it wasn't so far-fetched that he might lose track of time. But then it happened again. And again, and again, and again.
Ren was peasant stock and he'd been hungry before, but that didn't make it any more comfortable. When he slept, he dreamed of apples and potatoes, meat and fresh bread. Even his hate and anger and fear were dulled under the roar of need that buzzed, constantly, beneath his skin.
Silas took the tray before sending Brutus into the cell. Brutus looked askance at this, but he submitted, as was his way. He went in, just as directed, and restrained the boy to the wall.
Silas could hear speech from beyond the door, Ren's voice, sweet and boyishly clear. "What are you doing? Why? It's not time. You're off-schedule. What's going on?"
Off-schedule? Clever little bunny.
Silence fell in relatively short order, and then there was only the faint clinking of the manacles securing him to the wall. Brutus came out again and nodded. "It's safe to go in."
"Thank you, Brutus. Wait outside."
He nodded again and stationed himself dutifully outside the door.
Picking up his robes in one hand to keep them out of the dirt, Silas slipped in and let the door shut behind him.
Ren looked surprised to see him, and understandably so. And then Ren only looked at the tray balanced on his forearm. His eyes were wide, and very focused. Silas set the tray down on the ground between them and settled cross-legged on the other side of it. Distasteful, this, but more effective than sitting in a chair would be at such a crucial juncture.
Up close, he could see the deep shadows forming under poor Ren's eyes, the cracks in his lips, the exhaustion etched into every line of his pretty face. He bore his captivity with a saintly and determined tragedy, which suited him beautifully.
His whole body seemed to pull towards the covered tray on the ground. It had brought quite a smell into the room—fatty, savory, spicy. Silas wondered if his pupils were enlarged. Impossible to tell, in this light. He wondered, also, if Ren might be convinced to put his face in the bowl and lap his food up like a dog.
A tempting idea for another day.
Silas smiled. A schoolteacher's smile, gentle and solicitous. "Good morning, pretty thing. I trust you've slept well."
Ren glanced at his face, and then back to the tray. Licked his lips. "Is that for me?"
"This?" Silas uncovered it. On it was a bowl of soup. Thick, creamy broth, potatoes, generous chunks of meat and vegetables. On a plate beside it, a slice of crusty bread smeared with glistening butter. "Of course. I thought it polite to bring a gift. Though, if you don't mind, there's a little something I'd like to discuss with you first. To bring gifts when visiting is the habit of civilized people. Do you think we can talk like civilized people?"
"I—" The poor boy was transfixed, almost drooling. His eyes were wide and dark.
"Ren, darling? Ren." Silas snapped his fingers in front of Ren's face. This hardly succeeded in diverting his attention. Silas sighed. "Would you like to try it?"
"Yes." It fell from between his lips with force and reverence.
"Very well."
Ren's eyes stayed trained on his hand, on the spoon. Silas dipped it into the soup so delicately as to capture a mouthful of broth without anything solid in it. He brought the spoon up to rest against Ren's bottom lip. It left salty residue on his skin, shimmering faintly in the uneven light.
Ren looked a little lost, a little helpless, a little pleading. The emotions flitted across his delicate features in succession. Confusion, comprehension, reluctance, resignation. And hunger, always that desperate hunger.
He opened his mouth and allowed himself to be fed. Closed his eyes as the spoon withdrew, like he was suppressing the urge to moan.
"Do you want more?"
He nodded. There was a sweet little crease forming between his brows. "Please."
"In just a moment. First, I'd like to talk to you about your place in my court."
Ren just stared at him in helpless distress. He probably wasn't listening, but that was alright, so long as he heard. It was vital that this next part hit him just right. "Your defiance is perfectly understandable, of course. It's admirable, even. You're a fighter right down to your marrow, and I suppose I am bound to respect that about you, the rare and unbroken creature that you are. But Ren, sweetheart, you are going to lose. And the meantime is going to be very painful. Do you understand?"
Ren shook his head. "I don't. I don't understand. I want to go home."
"Home? Home to your mother, who allowed all this to happen to you without even a pretense of a fight? Home to your hovel to starve to death?"
"I'm starving now."
Silas tilted his head, made his face as compassionate as it could be, and plucked a potato out of the bowl with his thumb and first finger. Ren's hesitation was longer, this time, but he took it delicately with his front incisors. He was careful not to touch Silas any more than he could help it, but there was still the soft brush of his breath against Silas's fingers, the stray, smooth edge of a tooth. Silas tucked a strand of hair behind Ren's ear, which the boy submitted to with a stiff neck and a curl in his upper lip. "But you don't have to starve here. Here, you have a choice. Perhaps for the first time in your life, you have a choice."
"This doesn't feel like a choice."
Patience, Silas schooled himself. Patience. "Being clever and brave has probably served you quite well in the past, hasn't it, Ren? Those are wonderful qualities in a farm boy. But you're not a farm boy anymore, and you never will be again." He let this sink in for a moment, watched the wheels turn in his poor bunny's brain. And then, "Think on it. I await your response."
He took up the food and made to leave.
"Wait," Ren called after him. There was a metallic sound as he jerked against his bonds. "Wait, no, please!"
The thud of the door shutting behind him was immensely satisfying.
Brutus sprang to attention as Silas stepped out and handed him the tray.
"Don't release him just yet," Silas said. "Feed him at the usual time this morning, but keep him kneeling there to stare at it until mealtime this evening."
Brutus nodded and set off to relay his instructions to the other servants.
Silas's boy would learn gratitude, one way or another.