by Lisa Henry
Darragh frowned. “Do you not trust me?”
“No, I—” Ciaran scowled. “Fuck you. You don’t understand anything. Of course I don’t trust you. I don’t trust anybody! How could I tell you such a thing, when you can’t even— One little blowjob and you’re wearing a sad puppy dog face that’ll get us both killed. I did want you, but not … not now that you’re going to be stupid about it!”
“I’m not as stupid as you think,” Darragh said.
Ciaran should have felt sorry for his own cruelty, but this was life or death, and it bloody well needed to be said. “You’re stupid enough.”
“I’m sorry. I just … I’m not good with any of this. Secrets. Suspicion. Lies. Not stupid. Simple. Your world is complicated. You are complicated.”
Ciaran felt his anger lessen. “Fine. What did the king want with you anyway? Has he sent you to find his mysterious traitor?”
Darragh’s face fell. “How could you know that?”
Ciaran shrugged. “You went to see him alone, and you’re not dead. What else could it be?”
“Then they’ll all know,” Darragh said slowly.
“Michael’s probably telling them now,” Ciaran agreed. “So much for your career as a culchie secret agent.”
A rueful smile tugged at the corners of Darragh’s mouth, and for a moment Ciaran was tempted to smile as well. Then Darragh’s face became grave as the implications sank in. “If they know, then they won’t tell me anything.”
“They won’t,” Ciaran agreed.
“So I’ve already failed.”
Ciaran snorted. “Rubbish. Give Boru a name.”
“How?”
“Draw one out of a fucking hat if you have to, but just give him one.”
“But,” Darragh said, “do you know who it is?”
Ciaran sighed. “Listen, Darragh, a king like Boru … he’s mad, but he’s also right. There are always men who want to take his place. Sometimes they’re too scared to say anything, but they’re thinking it. Always thinking it. I don’t know who the traitor is. I don’t know if anyone set up the Milbourne Avenue raid to fail or if it was just a genuine defeat. Give him a name, or the one he’ll come up with will be yours. That’s the only choice you have to make here.”
“Is it Noel?” Darragh asked cautiously.
Ciaran rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. Why do you think I know? You think the king’s men tell me their secrets while …” His throat thickened with the onset of tears. “While I suck their filthy dicks?”
Darragh stepped back suddenly, his face pale.
“This is how it is,” Ciaran said. “You wanted the truth, and that’s the truth. This is an ugly place full of ugly people. Even me. Especially me. You have eyes in your head, but you’re just not seeing it. You pick the name of a man to die, and maybe you won’t die yourself. You don’t get to have friends. You don’t get to have anything.”
“Not even you?” Darragh’s eyes were liquid, as though he’d just been slapped in the face.
Oh God. Guilt and anger struck Ciaran all at once at the expression. But then, that expression and everything it represented was why Ciaran had wanted him in the first place. He was kind, and he didn’t belong here.
Too bad. Ciaran steeled himself against his own affectation. Whether Darragh belonged or not, he was here now, and if he wanted to survive, the first thing he needed to lose was his soul. Not his fucking heart.
Well, Ciaran knew how to harden him. Make him ruthless. “Not even me. Not unless the king gives me to you himself. Sneaking around like this, it’s just pretending. It’s play. And it’ll get us both killed, sooner or later.”
“You said you wanted me,” Darragh said woodenly.
Ciaran shrugged again, even though he ached to prove he still did want him. But he couldn’t. “You’re not what I thought you were.”
“Well, neither are you. Son of a politician, and you kept that from me.”
Because it doesn’t mean anything here. All I am now is a whore. The king’s whore, but a whore just the same. And I don’t know why I ever tried to pretend any differently.
“Because it’s none of your business.”
Because you’re still not seeing it, Darragh. You’re not seeing me as I am, as this place made me. You’re only seeing what you want me to be. What I was.
And a part of him was afraid that if Darragh’s simple mind ever keyed into how valuable Ciaran’s name made him, then Darragh would trade him like a piece of meat, just as the king had. And he’d rather be a sex toy than a pawn.
And damn Darragh for not even thinking of that possibility.
“I don’t understand you,” Darragh said.
Ciaran smiled coldly. “You don’t understand anything.”
I tell Boru I love him, just so he won’t hurt me.
He thought Darragh would turn and flee then, but he stalked forwards instead, and suddenly Ciaran was seeing how truly huge he was—over six towering feet—for the first time. Darragh grabbed him by the face roughly, squeezing his cheeks, and he flinched inwardly, ready to be thrown to the floor or shoved to his knees. But he wasn’t. Darragh just stared down into his eyes as if he was searching for something there.
“I understand how little I understand,” Darragh growled, “Can you say that for yourself, Boy?”
“Don’t,” Ciaran said, body trembling, and tried to pull free of Darragh’s grip. The fear seized him when he should have been used to it by now. From Boru, or from Darragh, or from anyone, what difference did it make? “Don’t touch me, culchie.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t.” Darragh dropped his hand. “Get yourself back to the king’s bed where you belong.”
Ciaran stood there, panting for breath.
Well, look at the monster I made.
Darragh waited three days before he paid the king his fateful visit. Tonight, he would sentence a man to death.
None of the king’s guards attempted to block his path, just ushered him silently through doors and halls.
The last door closed behind him.
Boru’s chamber was lit with lamps that smelled of kerosene. A fire burned in the fireplace. The king himself was sitting up in bed, Ciaran sprawled naked between his legs on his belly. In the strange flickering light, Darragh couldn’t be sure if those were bruises on Ciaran’s pale flesh or not. But the slurping sounds he was making were unmistakable. The wet noise went straight to Darragh’s cock, so he kept his distance, refusing to get too close to the bed or the shameful goings-on there.
“Well?” Boru snapped. “You’ve never seen a whore suck cock before? You best have news for me to be disturbing me at this hour.”
Ciaran let out an enthusiastic—if smothered—moan, and the sound of it put the steel back in Darragh’s stomach. Ruthless. Conniving. Ugly.
“Don’t touch me, culchie.”
Had Ciaran ever really wanted him? That boy, that boy in the library … did he even exist?
Darragh dragged his gaze up to Boru’s face. “It’s Hugh.”
Pick a name out of a hat, Ciaran had said. Instead, Darragh had chosen the next man to take his boon out of Ciaran’s arse. Of course, now he knew Ciaran was as cold and deceitful as the rest of them, but Darragh’s blood still boiled with jealousy, and here in Dublin, that was as good a reason as any to condemn a man to die.
So he’d made his decision and damned himself for it.
“Hugh?” For a moment Boru wore a confused frown, and Darragh’s stomach froze. He thought he hadn’t gotten away with the lie, but then Boru made a sound that was almost like a growl. “Fucking bastard.”
Ciaran’s head bobbed up and down frantically.
Darragh’s nod followed the same rhythm. “That’s right. I heard him saying you weren’t fit to lead. That you were a madman.”
“Enough, Boy.” Boru grabbed Ciaran’s hair and pulled him off his cock. “I’ll kill him. Fucking kill him.”
“You would be just to,” Darragh recited mechanically
.
He’d gotten away with his ploy. He’d satisfied his jealousy with blood.
So why did he feel so ashamed?
Ciaran went with Boru to inspect the slaves in the warehouses. An unaccustomed trip away from College Green. Boru called it a treat, as though Ciaran should have been pleased to stand in front of all those slaves, all of them naked and in chains. Ciaran’s chains shone, and he wore a pair of loose-fitting trousers that hung from his hips, but he was just as dirty and abject as the rest. His future just as bleak.
Bleaker, perhaps. Some of these slaves might be sold for sex, but Ciaran had heard rumours that some might end up in Europe, in factories or on farms, or even farther away in America. There were places where, although the economy had collapsed, things weren’t as miserable as in Ireland. Places where civilisation had adapted, not vanished. There were places where, even though there were slaves, they might at least be treated with a little dignity. Have beds to sleep in. Regular meals. Medical care. Ciaran could hope for that, for them. He had to hope for that. The alternative was too awful to stomach.
“They don’t need to be pretty,” Boru said to Michael. “The pretty ones sell better. We only need the dregs for the champions to use.”
“Yes, Majesty,” Michael said, his tone falling into that place between fear and respect that Boru loved so much.
All of the king’s men had been pulled sharply into line because of Hugh. Hugh, whose head now stood on a pike in their dining hall, stinking up the place and putting everyone off their appetite.
Boru’s eye was caught by a grimy boy, no more than a teenager, who stood with his hands cupping his genitals. “Pretty,” he said.
Ciaran felt a sharp jab of panic. He twisted his mouth into a pout. “As pretty as me, my king?”
Boru laughed at his impertinence, tugged him closer by the chain around his neck, and ruffled his hair. “Nobody shines like you, my treasure. Golden boy. Happy little cocksucker.”
Humiliating, especially with Darragh looming nearby, but the delight apparent in the king’s words eased Ciaran’s fear of being replaced. He’d long since given up hope that if the king bored of him, he’d be sold back to his father. He would live in the king’s bed or he’d die. There was no third option.
“Have this pretty one cleaned up so I can gift him at my leisure.”
And use him too, Ciaran thought, but it didn’t matter as long as he remained Boru’s favourite. The boy, cursing and spitting now as Michael took him by the arm, would be too terrified and not nearly clever enough to amuse the king with the flattery and grand stories he hungered for beyond just the pleasures of flesh.
Ciaran was more than a warm hole, and that was why he lived.
No shame in that, he told himself. No shame in doing what you need to survive, not in a world as cruel as this one.
The stench in the warehouse was terrible, and Ciaran raised his hand and pinched his nostrils shut. Boru laughed at that as well.
“Have I spoiled you, Boy?”
Ciaran smiled at him. “Of course you have, Your Majesty.”
It was easy to play the flirt when Boru was in a good mood. Maybe for this afternoon’s fuck, the king would even use lube. Make it so it didn’t hurt, so Ciaran could close his eyes and almost like it. Picture Darragh—or at least, the Darragh who once was, before Ciaran had killed the kindness in his eyes.
As hard as Ciaran tried to convince himself that that Darragh was dead and gone, however, he could never quite manage it. Especially not since that fateful night when Darragh had come to the king’s chambers and spoken the name.
Hugh.
Why Hugh?
Ciaran couldn’t help but remember that earlier that week, Hugh had rutted him against a wall and bit his neck like a dog. He couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, Darragh had chosen him to even that score. Maybe even chosen him out of some hopeless attempt to protect Ciaran from harm, as if with Hugh gone, no other cruel bruiser would appear in his place to continue the abuse.
Ciaran had long ago stopped counting, stopped taking names. Smothered that last remnant of angry pride inside him: I’ll remember you, animal. Because, in the end, his fantasies of revenge were just that—fantasies—and all the king’s men were as bad as each other. Weren’t they?
He stole a glimpse at Darragh, standing stony-faced nearby, and then a tug at his chain pulled him forwards a few steps and brought his attention back to the king.
“Twelve,” Boru announced. “Give me twelve for the Sacrificial Games. Put enough food in their bellies that they can put on a decent show, but don’t waste it. It’ll be feeding the worms in a few days anyway.”
“Too bad you don’t have a garden,” Darragh said.
Boru looked at him for a moment and then laughed loudly, clapping Darragh on the back. “Waste not want not, eh, culchie? Is that how it goes back wherever you’re from?”
Darragh smiled. “It is, Your Majesty.”
Ciaran dropped his gaze. Either the old Darragh was gone or he had smartened up enough to hide it. Ciaran had told himself that was what he wanted, and he had, but the thought of Darragh’s kindness having been extinguished made his heart wither. It had been a stupid fantasy—the kind, gentle culchie—but now that it was gone, he missed it.
“Why the long face, Boy?” Boru asked him.
Ciaran blinked, wondering how far he could push Boru’s good mood. “It’s dirty here,” he said, pouting again. “It smells bad.”
“Oh, my spoiled little Boy. Well then. Culchie, take my Boy back to College Green before he gets sick. He knows the way.”
Darragh looked surprised.
“If he tries to run,” Boru said, “kill him.”
A cold chill ran up Ciaran’s back.
“He won’t try to run,” Darragh promised. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“Good man,” Boru said and handed him the end of Ciaran’s chain.
Darragh led him away from the stink and the misery, away into a new and different hell.
The streets outside the warehouse appeared deserted. That was the trick. There would be men watching from their posts inside the ruined buildings. Boru was nothing if not cautious. Or paranoid. Even in the heart of his own territory, he posted men to watch.
Darragh obviously didn’t know that yet. Ciaran saw the way his eyes swept the streets.
“It’s this way back,” Ciaran said. He started to walk and was pulled to a halt by the chain.
“What if …” Darragh’s voice trailed off.
“You wouldn’t make it past the river,” Ciaran spat—although whether in contempt of Darragh’s foolishness or of their dire circumstances, he wasn’t sure.
Darragh grunted and fell into step beside him.
A startled sparrow took to the air in front of them, small wings beating fast. Ciaran watched until it vanished into the grey sky.
“You chose Hugh,” Ciaran bit out. “Why?”
Darragh looked at him out of the corner of his eye as they walked, his expression giving nothing away. “Maybe he was the traitor.”
Ciaran snorted.
“What? I’m too stupid to figure it out?”
“No, but— I thought— He was the last one to … to me,” Ciaran said softly.
“The last man to fuck you, yes.”
Ciaran’s heart pounded. So it was true, then. Darragh had chosen Hugh for him. “It won’t protect me, you know. Although I … I appreciate …”
Darragh stopped, tugging on the chain so that Ciaran was wrenched around to face him. “You appreciate? I didn’t do it for you, Boy. I did it for myself. Not to protect you. I was jealous. As much as it makes my stomach turn, I still want you for my own. That’s all.”
Ciaran shuddered. Oh, this one was a quick study, wasn’t he? Put on the skin of a monster like he was born to it. He lifted his chin. “But I’m not yours, culchie. I’m Boru’s. He is my king, and I …”
“You what?” Darragh asked, scowling.
I
love him.
But Ciaran couldn’t lie that way, not to Darragh. To Boru, and maybe even to himself, but not to Darragh. “Nothing.”
Darragh started walking again. “Eventually he’ll be bored of you. He’ll gift you to me, then.”
“Is that what you think?” Ciaran struggled to keep pace with Darragh’s long strides. “You think you can come here and be his fucking right-hand man in the space of a few days? You don’t know anything.”
“I know that you’re a liar,” Darragh said. “I know that everything you said, everything you did in the library was a lie, but I’m seeing your true face now, aren’t I? I’m only treating you as you deserve.”
Other way around, fool.
“He doesn’t trust you,” Ciaran said. “No more than he trusts anyone else. You know what you are? You’re his fucking dog.”
And Ciaran had put that idea in Boru’s mind, hadn’t he? With that whispered story about Cú Chulainn and the king who was clever enough to keep the brute to heel.
“I’m not the one on a leash,” Darragh said, and yanked the chain around Ciaran’s neck.
Ciaran’s hands went to his throat. “You think you aren’t, just because you can’t see it? But it’s— Fuck!” Something sharp drove into his bare foot, and he stumbled.
“What is it?” The sudden concern in Darragh’s voice had no place being there.
Ciaran lifted his foot, dripping blood. “Glass.” He caught it by the end and wrenched it out. His foot throbbed.
“The king should allow you to wear shoes, if he loves you so dearly.”
“Oh, and I suppose if you were my owner, you’d let me?” Ciaran snorted. “He knows I can’t run away like this. I’m surprised I get to wear trousers.”
“You should bind that,” Darragh said, “before it gets dirty.”
“With what?” Ciaran watched the blood dripping onto the street. Tetanus. Not how he’d thought he’d die… Well, life would always find new ways to surprise him.
Darragh sighed. He fumbled with the hem of his shirt and tore a strip of fabric free. “Use this.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Use it.”