Two Days Late So Far…

(Swords with Souls)

Fantasy Fiction

By Dan Watt

(Author of BARD: Bearer of the Gemstone)

Cover by Darren Joy

(Author of the Plagueborn series)

– Adult content –

He knocks on the fourth-floor door.

‘Come in boy,’ Lord Ysbail commands him. The lord was dressed in an embroidered satin robe with the belt loose. It was obvious to him the lord wore nothing underneath.

‘I know you are very close to my brother,’ the lord says, while staring out an arched window beside his ornate bed. ‘But you need to do what is right.’

‘What is that?’ he asked nervously.

‘Did my brother, Lord Ibris, kill Dodder?’

The lord’s question confuses him. ‘He fell out of your tower, lord.’

‘Everyone in the tower adored Dodder.’ The lord opens the stained window, and cool air gushes in blowing his robe open.

‘This gardenery will be shut down soon. The flow of the river is being diverted to the king’s new palace. There will be a new gardener there. Thus, it would be beneficial for you to tell me what I want to know.’

There was a bronze letter opener on a desk along with numerous papers. He moved silently towards it.

The lord looked even farther out the window. With a sigh the lord continued, “Lord Ibris is not what you think he is. He is conniving and a manipulator. He has tainted your thoughts. Perhaps you need to know what its like to have a real man inside you.’

‘Sorry, my lord?’ he asks as he clenches onto the paper opener.

‘You’re his boy, his play thing. I guess he goes both ways, considering he sleeps with that whore. They call it sodomy but really, it’s dominance.’

He steps closer to the lord. ‘If you look far enough down, My Lord, you’ll see the garden, along the edge of the wall, planted for Dodder.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ the lord says with unhidden emotion. He leans farther over.

It was then that he knew his death was a possibility.  But he was no one’s boy. Never had been, never would be, and would never have a boy. He thrust the paper opener on an angle into the lord’s lower back, right beside the vertebrae. The lord howled in pain and arched his back.