“Like Leonardo?”
“I’m not interested in Leonardo anymore!”
“How do you want to influence fate?”
“Just like the higher ones do! Like Demons! I influenced the fate of people in this world, executed and pardoned.”
“Oh!”
“Okay, okay, let’s say I influenced the fate with the permission of the higher ones. And I want to influence the fate of other beings from other worlds! Influence the fates of lower order Demons. So far, at least.”
“This world is just a small box, and the fact that you in it, as it seemed to you, commanded and decided fate, is presumptuous nonsense. In fact, you are a fool and don’t see or hear anything!”
“I want to have my own world, where I will be the master! I’m ready to learn and take on tasks. In our world, for good service, you are given a title, land, and slaves. I want to be given a title, land, and slaves in the Demon World!”
‘You are insane!”
“No, I just want development and don’t set restrictions for this. I can develop and reach any peaks that I want, and there is no limit to them!”
“When you rise high, it hurts to fall.”
“Do you know it? Punished Demon. You fell from heaven, broke your wings. You sit here now and don’t understand what to do with the human body and mind of my son. Are you warning me against this? Like an old woman who warns the young against bold dreams and deeds. I literally hear a rattling old voice: “Where are you going? Life has beaten me, and life will beat you! Forget it all. The world is arranged the way ittreated me!” But this is not an axiom! I want to dare, try myself, make mistakes, let it be! Get up and fly again! Act to the best of my ability! Which one of us is old, you or me? Sounds like you’re talking like an old man drunk with failures! And I want to hold on! I want to be like Lis!”
“What do you want?! There are laws and regulations.”
“And it’s you who are telling me this? You who break all the rules?”
“I don’t break the rules! And if you don’t understand this, then there’s nothing to talk about with you,” Nik threw the empty bottle away.
“Your own pride is on the rise! We are mice, right?”
“Exactly! You are my mice!”
“I’m not a mouse anymore! Not a mouse! You understand! I’m tired of drinking and getting drunk, dulling my consciousness, I want to create something important, meaningful, weighty! To change worlds!”
“What about fucking?” Nik got up from the table and walked over to the bed and sat down on it. Arel immediately followed him and lay down beside him. “Do you like to fuck?”
“I do,” Kors agreed.
“Then come here, mouse!”
“I’m not a mouse! I’m the ring finger, and it’s special, doctors take blood from it!”
“Oooh!” Arel drawled. “Shut him up already, Nik. I can’t listen to this nonsense.”
“Shut up, you stupid handsome prince!” Kors flared up.
“You call me a stupid prince, but it’s you who are a fool!” Arel abruptly sat up on the bed and also raised his voice. “You measure the Demon world with the concepts of our world. Power, positions, awards, lands and slaves. You can’t imagine anything else! This is the ceiling of your dreams! All this is not important and has no value! And Nik has a lot of images and makes missions in several worlds at the same time, you won’t understand it! You want to be the main mouse not only in the world of mice, but also in the world of mouse gods! Mouse in a paper crown!”
“Leave me alone, Arel, go feast on your freedom, eat your freedom! It seems to me that you have already eaten enough of it from Leonardo! He gave you a try. Did you like it?! Stuff your freedom, as the highest value, in your mouth and shut up!”
“Kors, you have just walked along the edge,” said Arel in a dull voice.
“You won’t do anything to me!”
“Are you so sure about that?”
“Even if you stuff your shit in my mouth, I don’t care! I have already eaten it a hundred times when I was licking you. I love your shit! Come on! Piss in my mouth, this is not a punishment for me! Beat, fuck, pisson me – this is not a punishment for me! No more!”
“Shall we check it?” Ariel said.
And Kors froze. Arel was silent and looked at him expectantly.
“Nik won't let you,” Kors finally said, but not beingen tirely sure.
“Nik will let me do anything because he respects my freedom!” and, seeing how Kors’ face changed and turned pale at these words, Arel burst out laughing.
“Stop laughing at me! You are always mocking me! Before you humiliate me, I will punch you in your beautiful and impudent face!”
Kors pounced on him.
But Arel quickly put both hands forward, grabbing Kors by the wrists and holding him at a distance:
“So, I’ll humiliate you after all? I had to tie you to a post for a couple of days to make you howl!”
“Well, fighting is the last thing we need here!” Nik shouted, seeing that Arel was holding the attack and was ready to twist Kors with a retaliatory attack.
“Cool down! Stop! In this world, you, Kors, are my petty tyrant father, you, Arel, are my lover, a fallen descendant of the royal family. And I’m a lame fool with a pretty face! That’s all! You understand? These are our suits. And we play by the rules! You get it?!”
Arel let go of Kors’ hands, first pushing him away from him with force.
“I’m not a petty tyrant,” Kors said quietly and with some resentment.
“I will punish you for the quarrel. You won’t fight now, but you know what you will be doing?”
“No, I don’t want, Nik, don’t make me fuck with him!”Kors literally howled from powerlessness.
“Then figure out how to amuse me, smart daddy sir.”
“How?!”
“Stand on your hind legs, mouse, sing and dance!”
Kors indignantly began to literally rip off his clothes:
“Be your way, let him fuck me! I can't sing and dance anyway. If it entertains you to watch stupid fucking without feelings and love, you are welcome!”
“Well, of course, but you are doing it really with love,” Nik disagreed, “you are made for each other, beautiful black lovers. And no matter how much you pretend to hate each other, you are in love. And you add a title to his name, you always call him Prince Arel, no matter what.”
“Just out of habit! I hate him!” Kors shouted.
“More, more, Vitor, keep going! Say you don’t love Arel, I love how passionate you say it!”
Kors collapsed onto the bed in despair.
Nik nodded approvingly.
“Begin, mice,” he said affectionately.
Chapter 15
Arel threw Kors on his back and crushed him under himself, starting to fuck him with some bestial cruelty. Hammering Kors, he was lifting his legs higher and higher, literally folding him in half, and everything happening was very unpleasant and humiliating. Kors hated the Demon’s pastimes, not understanding the pleasure of making his mice fuck for his fun, humiliating them and trampling their feelings while watching the bonded mice dutifully perform a play in bed. And now Nik was sitting on a chair, looking at them and smiling with a barely noticeable predatory smile, laughing at them and at how they tried to please him.
Kors clenched his teeth in pain, no longer doubting that all this would end badly for him, Arel would tear him apart and provoke another bleeding. And, most importantly, Kors had no way to cope with the mad prince and force him to stop.
“Legs up!” Arel hit him in the jaw with all his might, making him twitch and moan in pain.
Kors “heard” that Arel was angry with him for his words about freedom and the mention of Leonardo, and already desperately regretted that he had not kept silent in time.
Arel grabbed him by the ankles and pressed hard, leaning on them with his hands and pushing forward, towards Kors’ head, as if he wanted to break him in half. Kors’ feet were almost by the sides of his head, and he couldn’t help but let out a short cry, feeling that just a little more and his spine would give out. In addition, Arel, not on purpose, but very painfully, brushed his hand over incompletely healed tattoo on Kors’ leg – a bracelet of magical symbols. At that moment Kors felt like he was being skinned alive. A flash of pain and calmness. Kors appeared to have passed out. He saw himself from the side, not lying under Arel with shamefully upraised legs, but being in some richly furnished room, similar to an office. Were it memories from the past? But Kors didn’t recognize the place. He saw that he was standing, turned to the table, sorting through some papers. He wore luxurious, but somehow old-fashioned clothes, and on his back lied his shiny black waist-length ponytail. And now Kors didn’t understand where he was, why he was dressed like that and what was happening.
“The teacher complained about you again!” Kors growled in a strange voice and turned around.
Gods! It’s not him at all! This true black is Chester, Arel’s father! Really, all noble blacks resemble each other, like brothers!
“You look into the book and you can’t read a single line!” Chester raised his voice even more, and Kors realized that he was looking at Chester through the eyes of little Arel. He was kneeling before his father, and Kors felt that Arel was about nine or ten years old.
“I’ll whip you, damned fool!” Chester just yells at him.
Ariel lowers her head. Dark flowing hair obscures his face, and Kors, catching Arel’s inner feelings, is not afraid of punishment, but some kind of wolf longing. He literally wants to howl from his powerlessness to change at least something, get up from his knees now and just leave. But he cannot do this, and this hopelessness washes all over little Arel. And Kors doesn’t want to “catch” and endure such emotions with Arel at all.
“You haven’t learned to read! You can’t even write a simple sentence!” Chester grabs the scribbled papers off the table and throws them in his son’s face. “What is it?! Explain to me! The teacher fights with you every day, and all to no avail! I trust Ronviel, he has been teaching several generations of our family and says that this is the first time he encounters such a creature! You are my disgrace! Stupid, lazy moron!”
Chester approaches Arel and kicks him in the chest. He kicks him with all his might, not holding back his anger and not even trying to somehow control himself. And it seems to Kors that he himself is beaten, he feels every blow: in the stomach, on the head, in the face. He wants to shrink into a ball because of unbearable pain, but little Arel doesn’t do this, and Kors suddenly realizes why. Only now he feels that under the jacket Arel was closed in some kind of metal armor. Kors feels a hard iron stick pressed against his spine from the coccyx to the very neck vertebrae. She forces him to keep his back straight. Rigid straps, slightly unfolding, pull his shoulders back, and all this design doesn’t allow little Arel to slouch, lower his shoulders, even just bend his back and bend freely. “So this is the reason for your perfect posture of a born master, Arel,” Kors thought sadly, feeling how uncomfortable it was, and imagining how unbearably painful it must be to wear this steel corset for many days.
“You will sleep on the bare floor in the closet! I will deprive you not only of sweets, but of any food in general! But I will teach you to read and write!” Chester growls, continuing the execution.
And under the hail of his blows, Arel doesn’t even try to dodge, despite the pain, without making a sound.
After hitting his son a few more times with his boot, Chester finally leaves, slamming the door loudly.
For a while, Arel just lies on the shabby family carpet, coming to his senses, then gets up and slowly approaches the table. On the table is an open bottle of wine and his father’s family goblet. But Arel doesn’t touch the goblet, he grabs the bottle and takes a few hasty and greedy sips from it. The wine is sweet, like candy, which he is always deprived of, and little Arel likes it very much. Fortunately, the bottle is dark glass, and his father will not notice that there is less wine in it. Arel hears his roar somewhere in the distance, but already feels pleasant calmness from the drink. He returns to his seat and kneels again – he is not allowed to sit on a chair or leave the room without permission. Separated from his wine-clouded mind, Kors notices a thick silver chain around Arel’s neck. Kors doesn’t understand why he is so drawn to it, but he wants to take a closer look. And he gets the feeling that he is stretching out his hand, slightly shifting the high collar of Arel’s leather jacket to the side, and sees that the chain is rather short, so that it cannot be removed over the head, and is closed with a lock. A pendant is attached to it. It is a rectangular plate, polished, with an engraving on it: “Return for a fee to Professor Ronviel at the address…” Little Arel sharply jerks away from his hand. No, Arel did it in the present, now. And from his jerk, Kors returns to reality.
Reeling back, Arel released him, stopped holding his ankles and folding him in half, lifting his legs up. He pulled out his cock, stopping fucking him. Kors was just lying under Arel, and he looked at him, looked very strangely, with some kind of stunned, discouraged look.
“Kors, what the hell are you doing?” Arel asked, and Kors didn’t recognize his voice.
“I saw your childhood,” Kors answered quietly and calmly. “Father hung a dog tag around your neck, a tag which is usually used to mark dogs in case they get lost. Did you want to run away?”
And Arel abruptly got up from the bed:
“Don’t you dare do that again!” he shouted and quickly went to the bathroom, slamming the door loudly.
Arel interrupted their “love” on his own initiative, and Kors, not knowing what to do now, sat up on the bed and looked inquiringly at Nik.
“I seem to have influenced Arel,” Kors tried to explain not very surely, but suddenly a hunch seemed to dawn on him. “He stopped torturing me, just feeling that I saw his childhood! I saw that dog tag around his neck!”
“Yes.”
“I can influence people by knowing their past! I may not just “watch life”, but find their painful moments, secrets from the past! And then beat them with words!”
“A word can kill,” Nik agreed.
“Especially if you know where to strike! If you know the emotions that a person experienced at that moment! If you know the pain points! Arel knows how to stupidly squeeze people with force, well, and I will crush them with words! I will get skeletons out of their closets, all their dirty secrets, bitter memories and resentments, their weaknesses and mistakes, their crimes, after all! I will learn everything about them! All their secrets that they try so hard to hide and forget! And I will blackmail them with this! I will squeeze their throats no worse than Arel does! Knowing their weaknesses, I will control the people! Manipulate them! And they will do what I order! I have understood the meaning of my gift!”
Nik smiled.
“That’s great!”
“I literally threw him out of his stride,” Kors continued happily, “his cock got limp immediately when he realized that I saw the details of his sad childhood,” then Kors thought better of it. “Maybe I shall go after him?”
“Leave him alone for a while, you know how painful the memories of his father are for him, the memories of his father who in his whole life has not shown him not only a drop of love, but even pity.”
“Well, Arel hurt me too, I hurt him in return. We’resquare. Wait! You… have you been teaching me again now?” Kors laughed, but grimaced in pain. “Oh, Nik, you are a good teacher, of course, but in your case everything is the same as always: even learning is through the ass!”
And Nik laughed too.
Coming out of the bathroom, Arel silently gathered his belongings, and without saying a word to them, left. He was still in bad mood, and Kors and Nik were sleeping, hugging and caressing each other tenderly. Kors couldn’t get enough of him, stroking him incessantly and squeezing him in his arms. He sat up on the bed and sat Nik in front of him like a toy, admiring his face without a scar, now even more like the face of his Inness. Nik sat without moving, and was silent, diligently portraying a doll. However, when he saw that Kors took a comb from the bedside table, he shuddered and immediately said:
“No, please, you have combed me just recently! My head hurts later, you have torn the skin on my head with this comb!”
“But Nik, you have to comb your hair every day.”
“You pull and twitch so painfully!”
“Nik… but I try to be careful…”
“No, you’re hurting me!”
“It’s just that your hair was too tangled, but now everything will be easier.”
But Nik didn’t share his confidence and made such a sour expression on his face that Kors almost gave up and retreated. But, having gathered his courage, he nevertheless decided to insist on his own:
“My little white kitten, well, I beg you, please your daddy-master! I’m asking you!”
Nik capriciously pouted his lips, and, with all his appearance expressing displeasure, and reached for the ashtray, taking out an unsmoked joint from under the mountain of cigarette butts.
He lit it, inhaling deeply.
“Here, take a wait…”
Kors patiently waited for him to smoke, and when Nik had finally smoked enough, he began combing him, trying to do it as gently as possible. Still, from time to time, he accidentally pulled Nik’s hair, so that his head jerked back, and Nik hissed, barely able to contain himself. And Kors said quickly:
“Everything, everything, everything, I won’t do it again!”
He diligently combed each strand to the very tip, gently ran his hands along the entire length of the hair, admiring their color, stroked them and kissed them, buried his face in them, breathing into the back of Nik’s head. Now Nik’s hair smelled of scented soap and perfume water from the Ore Town. Kors ran a comb over them, inhaled the smell and realized that he was getting up. So he threw away the comb, and pressing Nik on the shoulders, laid him face down on the bed, pushing his legs and buttocks apart. Inside, Nik was not tattooed, and Kors was always amused and touched at the same time – this strip of untouched light skin, hidden from everyone and so seductive in its whiteness among the skin clogged with ink. A stripe that only a select few know about.
Kors slightly drooled on the head of his cock and put it to the still squeezed hole … but, before he could enter, he came.
“Ah, motherfucker!” Kors was extremely annoyed.
Nik, realizing that everything had already happened, rolled over on his back:
“You have just got too excited about your Inness’ hair,”he tried to console Kors when he saw his face.
Still somewhat upset and angry either at Nik or at himself, Kors grabbed him by the ring hanging under his nose and pulled him forward and up rather roughly, so that Nik was forced to quickly rise on the bed and sit up.
Kors didn’t let him go, he jerked so that Nik turned his head to the right, and then pulled in the other direction, and Nik turned his head to the left, up, down. And Kors, finally relaxing a little, laughed.
And Nik, realizing that Kors was playing with him, said:
“You are going to tear my nose.”
“No, no…”
“You are dragging me, it hurts me.”
“I just like your helplessness. When I hold you like this, you can’t move anywhere, and it’s funny.”
But Nik didn’t seem to have so much fun:
“Color my eyes,” he asked, clearly trying to distract Kors from his nose, “color them with black, the arrows have completely disappeared.”
“No,” Kors immediately objected, disagreeing, “it suits you, but it’s too vulgar. And you are so beautiful and tender with those fluffy eyelashes of yours, I don’t want to paint you like a whore.”
Saying all this, Kors didn’t even think to let go of his nose. Holding the ring firmly in his fingers, he forced Nik to throw his head back a little. Nik, no longer trying to think of something, froze in his arms.
“But I would like to decorate your face a little differently,” Kors said, “to give you a present.”
“A present?” Nik winced in pain as Kors pulled a little harder. He tried to look at Kors, but he was uncomfortable because he made him tilt his head higher and higher.
Kors finally released him:
“Yes, a gift. Will you accept it?”
Nik rubbed his hand under his nose.
“What the gift?”
“You’ll see now! I have called someone!”
There was a knock on the door, and Kors, smiling slyly, got out of bed and opened it to the guest. Matin was standing outside the door, and he just silently handed Kors a box and left.
Kors returned to Nik:
“Let me decorate your face a little differently!”
“How? What’s in this box?” Curiosity crossed Nik’s face.
Kors opened the box and pulled out a silver chain.
“Let me take out some of your jewelry and hang a chain on you.”
“On my face? Like you did before?” Nik looked somewhat discouraged.
“Yes.”
“Okay… but where did you get it?!”
“I’m learning to do like you, I ordered it mentally. Zaf helped me.”
“Oh!”
“Have I coped with it?” Kors asked again.
“Yeah, okay,” Nik agreed, and Kors smiled happily.
He carefully pulled Nik’s half-blood marks out of his lip, took out the black beaded ring, and removed the rings sticking out of his nostrils, leaving only one ring in one nostril. He fastened a chain to it, and attached the other end to an earring in Nik’s ear. The wide chain lay in an arc. Sinking down, it covered the corner of Nik’s lips, and Kors, moving it slightly to the side with his hand, bent down and gently kissed Nik on the lips. Then he pulled away. Leaving his hold on the chain, he let go of it, and it lay again on Nik’s lips. Kors stroked his cheek affectionately and raised his small mirror to his face.
“Have a look. Do you like it?”
Nik looked at his reflection.
“Yes. It is beautiful,” he raised his such bewitching bright eyes to Kors, “thank you,” Nik hesitated, as if he was waiting for something, and then finally said: “and the second one?”
“No,” Kors smiled, “one is enough. Isn’t it too heavy? Are you comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, will you wear it for me?”
“Yeah,” Nik replied.
“And you won’t take it off without my permission?”
“I’ll wear it as long as you want,” Nik answered obediently.
And Kors, in a passionate impulse, leaned towards him, rising on his knees and hanging over him, squeezing his temples in his palms, throwing back his face and greedily biting into his lips. Nik returned his kisses, and Kors calmed down a little, began to kiss him more tenderly. He suddenly heard music in the distance. The melody flowed slowly overflowing, and a beautiful female voice sang a prayer song to the God of the Upper World, repeating the words of gratitude and praising him.
Praise God! May God’s light be with us! Praise God!
Kors slowly pulled away from Nik.
“Am I going crazy? I kiss you and hear an angel!”
Nik listened.
“I think it’s Lila,” he said, but not very confidently. “I don’t understand music very well, sorry.”
“Lila? Is that the actress, Tol’s wife? But what is she doing here?!”
Nik laughed and slapped his forehead lightly with an open palm, so that the chain on his face swayed:
“I have completely forgotten, today is the wedding! Shrad marries Anya.” He laughed again. “Shall we goto the wedding?”
“Let’s go,” Kors said.
In a small beautiful grove not far from the estate of Prince Arel, near a clear river that ran to waterfalls, a solemn marriage of Shrad and Anya was arranged. A lot of guests came to the wedding. Here were the black mercenaries of Zagpeace Gezaria, and he himself. There were also Daniel Crassus with his cadets, and Prince Ariel Riel with his noble knights, and Tol’s warriors from the Lower City, and many unclean ones, and residents of the nearby town, and just peasants from the Estate of Prince Arel and the surrounding area.
Seamus was a witness on the groom’s side, and Lila was on the bride’s side. Tol led the bride to the Altar. People and unclean ones lined up on both sides of the path with bouquets of flowers and bowls of grain in their hands. Kors looked at such an important and concentrated Tol, who, with a proud look, slowly and solemnly led Anya by the arm, dressed today in a feminine white dress, and involuntarily recalled how he had also led his beloved daughter Karina to Lis. Tears filled his eyes as he overwhelmed him. Damn, I think I’ve gotten too sentimental with age, Kors thought. Trying to control himself, he began to blink rapidly so that tears would not flow from his eyes and none of those standing nearby would notice his weakness. However, he was worried in vain – everyone looked at the bride and groom, and many also wept with emotion.
Tol led Anya to the Altar of the Four Elements, on which fire burned in all four directions of the world, incense smoked and bowls with water, salt and offerings stood. He handed over the bride to the groom. The priest connected the hands of the newlyweds with a ribbon embroidered with magical symbols. Shrad and Anya swore allegiance to each other until death do them part.
After the ceremony, the guests settled down not only in the main hall of the Manor, but also under the canopies in the courtyard at long tables. It was a lot of fun. The guests feasted, sang, danced and arranged various competitions. And the bride, having soon stained her snow-white dress with wine and stained the hem with the dust of the yard, famously danced on the square in front of the main entrance to the Estate, circling now with her newly-made husband, now with Seamus, clearly provoking another fight between them in the near future. Everyone was happy and congratulated each other, and Kors was also happy and good, because his Nik was there and didn’t leave him anywhere. He didn’t rush to his unclean ones, followed Kors like a tail, limping quite a bit, and Kors was also very pleased – that Nik no longer limped as much as before, and even more so that he was without his crutch. In Kors’expensive and elegant clothes, in his long leather jacket, clean and neat, beautifully combed, without a mask on his face, Nik didn’t smoke and didn’t spit on the ground, didn’t speak loudly with his unclean ones in their language, and even more so didn’t laugh with them. He generally tried to be silent. Not opening his mouth, he was simply next to his father and behaved like a good boy. Kors enjoyed the fruits of his proper upbringing and amused himself by watching Nik feel embarrassed that his face was exposed.
“Fuck!” Nik finally exclaimed. “They used to stare at my scar, and now they stare at me because I don’t have a scar! Will this ever stop?”
And Kors laughed:
“They look at you because you are very beautiful. I’m not kidding,” he liked to see how Nik looked down, and how his always pale face got flooded with a blush.
“You are my most beautiful boy, you have the divine beauty of the Upper, the appearance of an angel.”
Nik was silent, and Kors felt that he was listening to him, and he was pleased. But not from the fact that he was beautiful, but because it was Kors who said those words to him. For him it was important. If someone else had called him handsome, he wouldn’t have reacted that way.
“My white kitten, everyone sees your beauty and cannot look away. You shouldn’t be embarrassed,” Kors said affectionately and stroked his cheek with the chain hanging down. “I adore you!”
And he immediately caught from Nik such a splash of euphos in his direction that he involuntarily stuttered:
“Oh…”
Kors looked at the now empty Altar. The fragrances were still smoking on it. Kors saw that in a sacrificial bowl for offerings filled with thick transparent honey an unlucky bee had drowned.
“I remember the day when I led Karina to this Altar,” Kors said, “then I first approached you, experienced feelings, and you were sick and alone. You were lying in Arel’s room, forgotten by everyone, and no one cared that you felt bad. Your scar looked terrible, you had a fever.” Kors shook his head in frustration and looked lovingly at his boy. “Do you remember this?”
“Yes,” Nik replied, “I remember the broth.”
Kors didn’t immediately understand what he meant, but then he recalled:
“Yes! I brought you broth the next morning! Gods, so much has happened in that time! And you said then: ‘It seems that I have a daddy.’ And, as always, you werenot mistaken.”
“I love you,” Nik said, and, approaching Kors, hugged him by the waist, frankly clinging to him and not paying any attention to the fact that quite a lot of other guests were spinning around, and not only uncleanones, but also black warriors. Kors couldn’t yet overcome some of the taboos accepted in society, and reject all the norms of decency.
“Nik, dear, well, not here, not in front of everyone…” he whispered quickly. “This is not a stable,” yet he was unable to set him aside.
Nik immediately pulled away himself, without making Kors more nervous about this, and Kors suddenly, in some outburst of feelings, again pulled him to himself and quickly, briefly, but passionately kissed him on the lips, and then pushed him away again.
He furtively looked around and saw Daniel Crassus standing nearby, who was talking with a company of several young warriors of Tol and at the same time hugging a young pretty girl, clearly from the local “elite”. Most likely, it was the daughter of some merchant from the town. He wondered if Daniel saw them.
“Let’s go inside,” Kors said to Nik.
“Okay,” Nik said, narrowing his eyes slightly, he looked at his feet, and, bending down, picked up from the ground a golden sparkle in the form of a heart, with which the newly married couple had been sprinkled before.
“Gods, Nik, why are you picking up confetti?” Kors smiled, relaxing a little. Daniel didn’t look at them at all, maybe he didn’t see them after all?
“It’s beautiful, take it!” Nik handed him a small gold foil heart.
Kors shook his head, looking at him condescendingly as if he were a child, but he took the glitter so as not to offend Nik and put it in his pocket.
They were sitting at a table in the main hall, along with Tol’s warriors. The guests alternately made toasts, and Lila, to the cheerful play of the musicians, danced on the big high drum of unclean ones, banging on it with her heels to the beat of the music and earning applause with enviable regularity. Kors was pleased that Nik looked so healthy and happy. He ate with appetite, and at some point, reaching for the jug, joyfully poured himself a dark red liquid from it, but,having taken a large sip as usual, froze, his face changed.