Salas stood in front of the threshold of the door patiently, waiting to be greeted. As seconds gathered into minutes, however, he felt his impatience alight his nerves. He clenched his hands to keep from fidgeting—a habit of someone with a lesser disposition, as Eldron had said (leading the man to swat at Salas’ hands when the Emperor had caught him in the past.) Yet as he waited now, he was reminded that he’d never been much one for idle waiting. 

The fire helped. Salas had never seen a hearth so big. Aside from cooking fires, lamps, and the miniscule festival bonfires, lighting fires was not a common practice in the South—it was far too warm already for it to be necessary for indoor temperature moderation. This flame was large enough to the point where Salas slightly feared it. What would happen if a log were to trip and run astray over one of those horrible fur rugs? Perhaps such an accident would not be so terrible. A carpet burn couldn’t possibly add anything more to the awfulness of the ugly thing. But the fire dutifully remained in its place, snapping and cracking away at the kindling. Salas decided he enjoyed it.

“So you’re the one my soldiers will not shut up about.”

Salas nearly jumped, realizing that he’d been spoken to by the man. He spoke in Susconian. At some point while he’d been ogling the fire, the man had turned to face him.

King Jareth was younger than he would have expected. Though to be honest, he had not imagined much of the Northern King. It was pure naivety, but for some reason Salas had always imagined that kings of other nations would be quite similar to Eldron in appearance—perhaps because it was the only other ‘king’ Salas had known. But King Jareth was young, perhaps in his early years of thirty. He had a strong, square-shaped face, umber skin, and deep set, hooded eyes that were glared piercingly. He was attractive, Salas was, of course, quick to realize.

Salas smile grew wider, more sure as he considered what he had to do next. So you’re the one my soldiers will not shut up about. He’d promised a display of bedroom skills. He’d been taken to a bedroom.

Finally, it seemed, his future had offered a path forward, bargaining with the only thing that Salas had to offer.

He took a step forward, the fire warming his toes and his ambition. “All complimentary gossip, I hope. I don’t like being made fun of.” 

King Jareth’s eyes followed him with hawk-like precision. “Where. Is. It?” the words were grated out stiffly, as though the King were reigning in a yell. 

For the first time, Salas was picking up on the dire atmosphere in the room, and he knew better than to let the man know that it unsettled him. The King was outright glaring at him, his eyes murderous in their ferocity and his jaw clenched tight.

Salas blinked, pulling himself from the revelation of the King’s foul mood and focusing in on the question carefully, picking his brain for the correct way to respond favorably when he did not understand the question nor the stiffness behind it. 

“Where is what?” he decided to ask, approaching slowly. Distance would get them nowhere.

The man with the viscous glare watched Salas as he approached, all predator that promised no yield should there be an attack.

For a moment, the harshness of the glare almost gave Salas pause. Then he remembered what Emperor Eldron had said to him on the occasions where the man had brooded upon scenarios in which the South would fall.

“They will take you from me,” the Emperor had said, “and because you are mine, they will want to have you as their own. To spill their seed between your thighs to claim my most prized possession. You must kill yourself before you let that happen.”

Salas had nodded gravely, as though taking this proclamation deeply to heart while quite adamantly thinking, ‘I will not.’ The Emperor did not know Salas at all if he truly believed that Salas would forfeit his own life so that the man wouldn’t have to die knowing his enemy had taken his pet. 

There was something, however, that had been quite instructive about the conversation he and the King had shared. They will want you.

This Northern King, like many of the others Salas had met since captured, wanted him. As had the guard earlier last night. Perhaps meanness was part of a Northern romantic ritual he had yet to understand.

It was with this fact that Salas knew that he would use this ‘want,’ the primal neediness he saw in the eyes of the men who lusted after him, and free himself and the birds. Better their situation. 

So, despite the icy rage behind King Jareth’s eyes as they bore into Salas with nothing but contempt, Salas held onto that one fact of the King’s hidden ‘desire,’ and with it, the rest came naturally. He was accustomed to seduction, if not much else. 

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Salas purred, slinking closer still until he finally stood before the man. “Perhaps you—”

A force, painful and powerful, shattered across the side of Salas’ face, catching his temple and jaw and a bit of his right eye as it shot upon him. Salas stumbled, nearly spinning to the floor though his wobbly legs caught him gracelessly before the collision was made. It took him full seconds to realize what had happened. King Jareth had backhanded him.

Salas had been slapped by the guards earlier, but it had been like this. Shattering. Intent to punish, not just quiet. He knew his shock was written on his face, amidst scattered locks of hair. He quickly shuddered his expression when he realized he’d given his surprise away. His confusion. He cleared the hair away from his face with his two delicately curled fingers and stood straight, as though the disruption had not happened. As though his heart were not now hammering in his chest.

“Where is it?” the King repeated, his voice a cold threat as he peered down at Salas as though he’d stumbled upon an unimpressive garden snake. The King didn’t explain why he’d been hit, and it unnerved him. He was used to explanations paired with gentle punishment. Had he been hit because he had spoken too much? Said the wrong thing? Moved without permission?

It took every bit of effort to not bring his fingers to the side of his face and clutch the stinging skin there protectively. To show anything other than willingness and desire would turn a partner off, he’d been taught. So Salas’ eventual smile was false and pretty, and he wielded it like the weapon it was. 

“The Crown Jewel,” Salas said slowly, his mind scanning the memory of what he’d babbled to the guards as he attempted to figure out the ‘it’ this man spoke of. He leveled a look at the King as though they stood at exactly the same height, and Salas was not two and a half heads shorter. As though Salas was not a whore who’d just been backhanded by a king. “I have just the one. The one your father was so displeased to part with. It would be an honor to return it to you now, my King.”

“Your King?” the man repeated flatly. The cold words were bitten out, unbelieving, and Salas ignored the fire behind them as he brazenly sauntered over towards the bed.

The man was mostly right, not that Salas would give this crucial fact away. No one had, or ever would be, Salas’ ‘king.’ Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that, under the right circumstance, anyone could be.

Are you devoted?

Apparently not enough. Not if it meant dying inside a hanging cage. Not if it meant the death of the birds, or permanent imprisonment. Not if it meant the nothingness returned.

Salas paused and turned when he reached the massive, quilted bed, throwing a glance over his shoulder to make sure the King’s eyes were on him. “I have the jewel,” he amended with a wicked smile, “but you will have to take it from me. It is your prize, Your Majesty.”

“You have it on you now,” the King repeated, clearly disbelieving as his eyes roamed the sparse tattered draping Salas still wore. “Where?!” The last word was barked, impatient.

Salas’ secret smile grew wider, all the while hoping all of this unnecessary hostility would sizzle out swiftly once the man put his desires to use.

Salas didn’t understand the violence in this country, but he knew all about measuring mens’ impatience when they were kept from what they wanted, and therefore knew that the patience of this man was wearing thin. So, without a reply or further preamble, he pulled aside the flap of his skirt that floated around his rear, bent over the bed with his chest to the quilting, and exposed himself. His back was arched as he moved a hand to his ass and pulled his left cheek gently, revealing the red jewel that extruded from his puckered hole. 

Silence.

It was a force of will to not glance over his shoulder, to see the King of Diagor’s reaction, which, Salas was sure, would be pleased. Salas knew how he looked- irresistible. He’d been told a thousand times. His presentation was perfection. He’d been prepared hours ago. Though his makeup must have been smudged with sweat, his silken clothes rumbled and pressed with dungeon grime, and his gold in disarray, he knew the illusion would still be there, much like it had been the days after festivals when he’d awoke in the mayhem of a party’s aftermath.

 Furthermore, in addition to himself, he had with him the object the King sought. King Jareth would be further pleased with the return of the lost artifact. 

Salas remembered the day that a magnificent crown had been sitting on a particular side table, gleaming against the midday sun that peaked through the windows of the Emperor’s bedroom. “This is a pretty toy,” he’d said with no small amount of wonder as he’d scooped up the headpiece and carefully placed it atop his own head, turning to the Emperor with a giggle. “How do I look?”

The Emperor’s eyes had been amused as they ran over Salas, stopping at the crown. “Like an insatiable slut who had not been satisfied with his partner’s gifts, so he demanded the whole of the Northern Kingdom.”

Salas had reached to touch the delicate, swirling tips of the crown. “This crown is from the Diagor?”

“It was King Malvock’’s. And I’m still deciding what to do with it. Melt it down for silverware? Horseshoes? You’re creative, Salas. What do you think should become of it?”

Salas had smiled. “I have a few ideas, Your Grace.”

The Diagorian crown had been melted down and made into a phallus, and had turned into a bedroom toy, the same one that had been oiled and pressed into Salas after he had bathed less than ten hours ago.

It is the perfect offering, Salas thought, fingers curling into dense bedding with anticipation.

When another moment passed, he couldn’t help but to glance over his shoulder to decipher the King’s reaction.

What he saw made him stiffen and straighten up. King Jareth was trembling, his body on the brink of collapsing into chaos as he seemed to struggle to keep something ferocious within. He vibrated anger, his lips pulled back in a fierce snarl as his teeth sharpened, elongated. His eyes were glowing with a rage that promised violence.