cecilia tan

(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)

Part 31: Kenet

The next day dawned damp and chill, but the fog burned off by midmorning. From the rise where Roichal’s tent was pitched I could see a large portion of the camp. How many men were here? Thousands, certainly. Finding Jorin was going to be quite a task.

Again I felt no urge to eat. After he had breakfasted himself, though, Roichal taught me to shine his boots and how to oil the leather of his armor. There were many buckles to be shined also, and to be kept from rust. He watched over me for a while, and then left me alone with the tent flaps up to let in light to work by. A soldier sat outside, whistling as he repaired something leather with a long needle. He wasn’t obviously a guard, but I wondered if he were there to keep an eye on me.

Roichal and Marksin came in at midday and Roichal gave me some bread and meat, but still I could not bring myself to eat it. They looked at me curiously and gave me plenty of fresh water. Roichal himself checked me for signs of fever, but I seemed well, just not hungry.

“He’ll eat when he’s ready to,” Marksin said. “Just like a stray cat.”

That made the general chuckle and pat my head affectionately, which felt better than it had any right to.

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Mirrored from Circlet Press: Welcome to Circlet 2.0.

Yes, it’s that time of the week again…!
Title: The Prince’s Boy, pt. 30
Author: yours truly
Rating: NC-17
Genre: high fantasy, original fic
Summary: Prince Kenet has lived a sheltered life in his father’s castle–while outside invaders from foreign shores, pestilence, and crop failure plague the land–with his constant companion Jorin, his whipping boy. Jorin and Kenet have been discovering the pleasures of the flesh with each other in secret, but will the ambitions of the king and the schemes of his top advisor, the Lord High Mage Seroi, come between the prince and his boy? And what of Sergetten, the prince’s missing tutor?
Warnings: Male/male sex, dubious consent, corporal punishment, situations of sexual jeopardy.
Part 30: Jorin
When I came to, I was still bound, but this time my hands were in front of me and I was not blindfolded. I was lying on a blanket that smelled of horse and I appeared to be in a small tent.
My head felt like metalsmiths with hammers were shaping it from the inside and my mouth was as dry as if they had gagged me with cloth. I winced as someone pulled aside the flap of the tent and the brightness felt like needles in my eyes.
“Ah, poor thing. Here you go.”
Kan. He knelt by my head and I heard the sound of a flask being unscrewed. He tipped my mouth upward and poured a mouthful of something intensely bitter onto my tongue, but I swallowed it. He let go and already the pain had eased slightly. “I told you you’d feel like this. The tingle-tingle bush in full bloom? I’m not sure if you were lucky or unlucky there, my friend.”
“Kan,” I tried to say but it just came out a croak.
“One thing at a time,” he said, putting a finger to my lips to quiet me. He gave me water next, then went back out of the tent. I did not hear his footsteps, but when he came back in, I had the impression he had circled the tent. “All right. Quietly now. I say lucky because if you’d been awake like the other soldiers you probably would have ended with an arrow in your back. And if you hadn’t been hallucinating and talking aloud, I wouldn’t have realized who you were before I slit your throat, either, Jorin Weltskin.”
He knew who I was!
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Title: The Prince’s Boy, pt. 29
Author: yours truly
Rating: NC-17
Genre: high fantasy, original fic
Summary: Prince Kenet has lived a sheltered life in his father’s castle–while outside invaders from foreign shores, pestilence, and crop failure plague the land–with his constant companion Jorin, his whipping boy. Jorin and Kenet have been discovering the pleasures of the flesh with each other in secret, but will the ambitions of the king and the schemes of his top advisor, the Lord High Mage Seroi, come between the prince and his boy? And what of Sergetten, the prince’s missing tutor?
Warnings: Male/male sex, dubious consent, corporal punishment, situations of sexual jeopardy.
Part 29: Kenet
We passed a check point of some kind around dawn, the guards bantering with Jort before letting us pass, and the wagon rolled on and on. I wondered why I didn’t feel hungry at all, but my stomach was in such knots from fear and worry I couldn’t have eaten anything now even if my hands had been free and a banquet were in front of me.
I had plenty of time to try to free myself from the chains if it could be done. It could not. If they were truly delivering me to General Roichal, I might find myself headed straight back to Seroi and my father if he were to recognize me. I tried to remember when the last time he had banqueted at the royal table had been. Ten years ago? When he had been made commander of the whole army. I was fairly sure he had not returned since, and even then, I don’t know that he ever got much of a look at me. I remembered him as a broad-shouldered man, with his hair in need of cutting and a perpetual frown creasing his brow.
We changed horses again at midday and no one opened the back of the wagon to find me there. A few miles later, Jort made me drink some water but I really could not eat. I finally slept fitfully through the heat of the afternoon, and then woke as the wagon went through another check point. The sun was setting as we came into a camp, a circle of tents visible all around in the fading light. I could hear many voices.
And then suddenly the back of the wagon was flung open and Jort was standing there grinning, gesturing at me. “Here you are.”
The man standing next to him was in some sort of uniform, but not like a soldier’s. He had an apron on as well. A cook? He wore a disdainful expression. “This? This is what our king sends to boost morale? Whiskey instead of grain? And what the hell are we supposed to do with a whoreslave?”
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