“No, just follow me carefully.”
On a chain, like a dog, making very small steps, Kors obediently followed Nik. Nik led him slowly, not hurrying, only guiding him with the tension of the chain.
Finally, touching the edge of the table with his slightly outstretched hand, Kors asked:
“Can I sit down?”
“Yes, of course,” Nik replied, “daddy, I’m not punishing you, understand it.”
And Kors heard him pull a chair close to him.
Kors sat down neatly, and Nik placed his hand on the wooden table top. Kors immediately stumbled upon the fork, felt the edge of the dinner bowl. By the sharp specific smell, he realized that there was lamb meat in the bowl. He had no appetite, and not even because the meat stank. During his time with the unclean ones, Kors has generally become accustomed to their dirty food. Pulling his fingers away sharply from the food, Kors continued to run his hand across the table more confidently, and, as he had hoped, found a goblet of wine on the side of the bowl.
It was better that way. He immediately took it, and, forgetting to ask Nik’s permission, took several large sips, almost draining it to the bottom.
“You need to eat,” Nik said.
“I can’t… a piece won’t go down my throat,” Kors justified himself, and he didn’t lie.
“No, that’s not good,” Nik disagreed, “you need to eat, daddy, I’ll feed you myself.”
“Nik…”
“From my hand, from my fingers, will you take food?”
“Nik…”
Kors felt a hot piece of meat touch his lips. Involuntarily, he tried to push it away from him. Trying to remove Nik’s hand from his face, he accidentally touched his wrist just below the bracelet. Now that all of Kors’ senses were sharpened to the limit, he very clearly felt the thin dent of the scar under his fingers. It was rope trace. Kors ruined his son’s wrists, constantly tying his hands tightly for the purpose of treatment and education, and, being carried away in the process, tightened it so that the rope literally dug into the skin. Tattoos, as always, helped to hide the abrasions, and Kors didn’t think about the consequences. He instantly remembered how Nik, in those moments when his hands were free, tried to rub his stiff fingers, grimacing from the pain of rubbing his wrists, on which deep grooves from the cord remained. And in the Ore Town, Kors tied his hands behind his back with a thin iron wire. What has he done! Now the same marks on his hands were waiting for him, Kors no longer doubted it. And yet, without knowing why, he was sure that after dinner Arel would fuck him, or he would suck him off. Nik was cunning, daddy Kors was punished. But for how long?
“Eat!” Nik hurried, pressing the piece of meat to his lips again.
And Kors doomedly parted his lips. The piece of lamb was small but very hot, burning the palate and tongue. Opening his mouth, Kors took a deep breath, trying to cool his food:
“Hot!”
“Forgive me, hold it, drink it,” Nik lightly pushed him with a goblet in the chest. Kors seized the goblet and drank the contents frantically.
“Another bite,” Nik touched his lips again, and Kors dutifully took the meat from his fingers.
On the fourth or fifth piece of lamb he pleaded:
“Nik, please! I can’t take it anymore! It makes me sick, I feel nausea.”
“Okay, I won’t do it anymore,” Nik said to Kors’ delight, “I have poured you more wine.”
Kors drank it.
“Daddy, would you like an injection?”
“N-no-no, thank you, please don’t! I'm fine.”
“Okay. Then go back to bed. And try to sleep.”
Kors groped his way back to the trestle bed, took off his camisole and shirt.
So far, they didn’t bother him. He warmed up under the covers, and the wine he drank made itself felt, giving some peace of mind.
Suddenly, Kors heard Nik make a strange sound. He seemed to sob, groaning softly, as if in pain, and his quiet moan turned into an equally quiet hissing.
“Ver!” He called loudly, and, apparently, having remembered himself, he added already in his mind, “Bring me this damn plaster and cotton wool,” and then again cursed out loud in unclean language.
“Nik! What happened to you?!” Kors shouted excitedly. Jumping up abruptly, he sat down on the couch.
“What’s the difference to you?” Nik answered coldly. “After all, I’m a piece of shit in a dirty candy wrapper.”
Kors froze ashamed:
“Why do you need cotton wool and plaster? Doctor Cassiel warned that when the poison finally begins to leave your scar, inflammation may begin. In recent days, the skin around was very reddened, did the inflammation intensify from shaking on the road? Yes? Just don’t put the steel brackets in again, I beg you!”
“That’s not your business! I will do what I want!”
“Nik, please! You are offended and angry with me, I understand, but be reasonable.”
“Don’t call me Nik again! For you, I’m Nikto! And I’m not offended and not angry with you, daddy master!”
Kors was well aware that Nik was mocking him, calling him daddy, but he didn’t want to give up so easily:
“No, no. Nik, please! I never really got mad at you. Were you listening to my thoughts on the road? My memories of you?”
“It was hard not to hear you jerk off incessantly to my human appearance in your head.”
“No! I didn’t jerk off… you have misunderstood…” Kors heard Verniy run into the tent. Nik began to mentally communicate with him and was distracted from the conversation with Kors. It pissed him off. “Nik, I was wrong, I admit it…”
“Fuck off and shut up now,” Nik hissed softly again. Kors suggested that he applied cotton soaked in a healing agent to an inflamed scar.
“Son, it’s my fault, I thoughtlessly started treatment and irritated your old wound. Let me help you,” pleaded Kors, he was madly worried that the Demon would completely disfigure the face of his son.
“No!”
And Kors couldn’t resist:
“You're ruining everything now! You won’t be able to apply the medicine properly! You don’t know how to do it! Stubborn idiot!”
“Ah, look, you washed me again and didn’t dry me! But I’m not going to sit and cry anymore after you yelled at me! Mister daddy, shut up, I said, otherwise now I’ll put a plaster on your mouth, and not just on your eyes! And if you want, I’ll fasten it with a steel bracket so that you will completely shut up!”
Kors froze and fell silent. He was very worried that Nik would spoil all the treatment without supervision now.
Nik walked over to him.
“Don’t talk to me. I forbid you to talk, you understand? Everything you wanted, you already told me in the Fort.”
Kors remained silent, not knowing what to do, whether he could answer or not. But he involuntarily mentally said: “Son, what’s wrong with your face?”
Despite the prohibition, Kors didn’t dare to call him Nikto.
“What’s wrong with my face? Nothing. It’s covered in black scales, you know,” Nik answered aloud. “Don’t address me mentally! And now I will touch you with my nasty paws, and you will wet your pants from fear, right, daddy?”
Kors grabbed his head.
“Forgive me, forgive me. I will try to accept your essence and this image of you, in our world you are in merger with my son, and…”
He “heard” how Nik abruptly closed his thoughts from him, as if loudly slamming the door, and moved away from him:
“Sleep!”
Chapter 3
Skid Row – Wasted Time
Kors is locked up again in some empty and dark cell with no windows. Is this a dream? Or is he “catching” Nik’s memories again? Kors has already understood that as soon as dark holes, low ceilings, cells, basements, unpleasant sensations of tightness in a closed space and darkness appeared in his visions, these were the memories of his son.
Darkness and limited space. Kors is no longer afraid, he doesn’t experience panic attacks and claustrophobia any more. He separates from Nik’s consciousness, in which there is emptiness and no thoughts and emotions, as if he is dead. Kors separates because he wants to see him from the side. There is no light source here, but Kors “sees” anyway. Nik is so small! Shit! Kors, as always, falls into Nik’s childhood memories.
He is too small, he is probably not yet five years old. Maybe a little more, but even for five years he looks small and thin, and the expression on his face is so serious and adult, not at all childish. Cheekbones are clearly distinguished on a thin face, there is no roundness and plump cheeks that are often inherent in babies. Pale face with harmonious features. Nik is very handsome, despite the fact that his face is grimy, as if smeared with earth, and his lower lip has already been ruined, rings stick out of it. His lips are black, also in soil. Did he eat soil? Nik’s hair is not cut or combed, it’s tangled and dirty, however, as always. His crown is also dirty with soil. He is badly dressed. He is wearing a short jacket and torn pants. This is frank rags, so old that it seems decayed. Nik is sitting on the bare dirt floor in this crypt-like closet where there is nothing else but him. He sits alone, dirty, covered in soil, thin, lonely. Kors involuntarily remembered Shagezh’s childhood memories. Zaf also always kept him in a closet. What kind of wild methods of upbringing do you unclean ones have?
Or do you only treat the “wrong” children this way? Like Shag and Nik? Nik’s hands are tied wrist to wrist. His hands are brought together, palm to palm, he somehow strangely presses them to his chest, and then the rope goes to the ring in the wall. Why did the witch tie a small child in a dark room alone? Why did she tie his hands together? “She didn’t treat you that well, Nik!” – Kors thinks bitterly. But his son never said a bad word about her, and always called her “my foster mother”, or simply mother. He didn’t say “witch”, didn’t call her by name, he said – my mother. And Kors sees now that Mara clearly didn’t deserve this title.
Nik shudders a little, as if he is listening carefully to something, but total silence reigns around. Shaking his head slightly, he removes his hands from his chest and suddenly begins to scrape the dirt floor. The floor is hard, but Nik must have had enough time, because the hole he scratched in the floor is quite deep. He slowly and somehow mechanically stupidly scratches the ground with his nails. There is neither a mug of water nor a bowl of food nearby. Maybe the poor boy really its soil. Nik scratches, scrapes the ground, and, as if angry, in some desperation raises his hands tied at the wrists, clenches his fists and nervously taps them on the top of his head. How familiar is this movement to Kors! Son, why are you digging the soil? Are you trying to dig a tunnel? To dig your way to freedom? Kors is overwhelmed with emotions of love for Nik and resentment for the witch. How could she treat his son like that! Animals are better treated, and he was a child! Kors’s heart is filled with such pain that he can no longer look at this simple and at the same time unbearable picture.
“Gods, son! Son!” he screams in some kind of frenzy and sees that Nik is shuddering, raising his pale face, his empty eyes staring into nowhere. His lips move barely perceptibly, not a sound comes out of them, but in Kors’ head it clearly flashes: “Father?” It's like Nik is putting it right into his brain, without using his voice or language. Only emotions. Again and again, with such surprise, he seems to ask: “Father? Father?!"
Kors freezes in surprise, emotions overwhelm him, and he begins to “fall out” of the past. The picture gets blurred, but he still manages to hear a sharp cry: “Dad, don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!"
And Kors falls out of his strange state. He wakes up, realizing that he is lying on a camp bed in a tent, but in his head, full of despair, it still continues to sound:
“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave…”
No, it couldn’t happen! It just couldn’t happen! Nik couldn’t feel him there at that moment and hear him, because Kors was just seeing through t the past. And the witch couldn’t treat his son so badly, she needed the child. She herself bought him for the Demon to share his body. So it’s not even the past, but a bad dream. It’s just a nightmare. Just a bad dream! Bad. Dream. Forget it!
What time is it now? His eyes were still tightly covered with plaster. But usually Kors always woke up early, only recently in the Fort his unchanging schedule has gone astray. It probably isn’t even nine in the morning yet, thought Kors. He heard the pounding of rain on the roof. So it hasn’t stopped raining yet, it’s been raining all night? Behind him lay Arel. Kors had no doubt that it was him. The prince was lying very close, clinging tightly and, as usual, placing his relaxed and therefore heavy arm on Kors. He pressed his face against the back of Kors’ head, and he felt his warm, measured breath on his hair. Kors didn’t remember how he fell asleep, didn’t remember when Arel lay down next to him. Most likely, Nik, using his power, put Kors to sleep, just knocked him out, and Kors was offended by this. “Why, like this, without asking, against will, put a person to sleep? Without asking even my desire? He treats me like a thing!” Discontent and irritation were rising in him more and more, and his mood was shitty since the very morning. He was unbearably infuriated by the plaster on his eyes, the sticky layer was pulling his skin, and in general, waking up in the morning, he just wanted to open his eyes, rub them, but Kors couldn’t do this. The way Nik had treated him yesterday was terribly upsetting now, too. Not only did he make him humbly kneel at the threshold, shivering from the cold, but he also blinded him. “I don’t want you to see my face! You won’t see my human face again!” What a crazy idea? Another stupidity in which there is no point, except for humiliation. Senseless humiliation. However, this is absolutely in their style – to humiliate for no reason and cruelly, always the same thing, nothing new. Lis has to be painted like a jester, I have to be blinded. And Nik does this not for the first time, Kors remembered how for several days he was forced to wear uncomfortable shameful glasses in which nothing was visible, and now even worse, Nik just plastered his eyes over. Silly games of an eccentric, cruel boy. “I don’t punish you, daddy.” Hypocritical rubbish, what else are you doing! You allowed me to be beaten! Kors preferred to believe that it was not Nik himself who hit him, but the prince. And then he simply ordered “sleep” and knocked him out.
Kors felt heat from Arel lying next to him. Their camp bed was not wide at all, it was uncomfortable to sleep on it together even in an embrace, and the heavy brocade blanket with which they were covered with their heads now also was annoying Kors. Under it, together with Arel, it was stuffy and hot. Stuffy, hot and cramped. Kors rather rudely threw off the prince’s arm and sat down. Getting out from under the warmth of the blanket and Arel, he immediately felt the damp coolness of moist air. Down below, a draft blew across the wooden flooring, chilling his bare feet uncomfortably. There was a strong smell of tobacco, yesterday’s lamb, sweat from clothes and unwashed bodies, but the smell of cigarette smoke still reigned over all the rest.
“Nik…” Kors called, but immediately stopped short. “Nikto! Son!” He added cautiously. “Can I address you? I really have to!”
“Hmmm…” Apparently, Nik was lying very close, from the side of Prince Arel, and, it seemed, right on the floor:
“What do you want? Oh-h…”
“What time is it now?” Kors asked.
“What?”
“ Do you know what time it is?”
“I have no idea, what?” Nik asked with a yawn.
“Are you asking me?! How would I know if I can’t see anything?” Kors was outraged. Yes, talking to Nik in the morning was a pointless exercise, however, as at almost any other time.
Nik yawned again and didn’t answer.
“Can I peel off the plaster?” Kors asked after a while, realizing that Nik had no intention of continuing the conversation at all.
“Eh? No.”
Kors barely suppressed the uncontrollable wave of anger that swept over him. His fingers clenched nervously into fists.
“No,” repeated Nick, “I’ll do it myself.”
“Then do it…” and Kors, thinking again for a moment, added: “Please.”
“A little bit later. Get away from me, let me sleep! What keeps you up this early?”
“I’m begging you, stop scoffing! Peel it off.”
“I’m not kidding, I want to sleep, do you need it right now?”
“But I can’t see anything!”
“Why do you need to see something now? Sleep, that’s all!”
“I need to step aside to relieve myself!”
“Take a bottle there, Arel left some yesterday…”
“Are you kidding?”
But Nik didn’t answer him anymore.
Continuing to writhe inside with rage, Kors rummaged around near their trestle bed and immediately stumbled upon several empty wine bottles lying there. “Just wonderful!” But what to do, need makes the old wife trot. Standing up and holding a bottle in one hand, with the other hand he pulled his cock out of his pants, and, pressing his head strongly against the neck, he nevertheless managed to relieve himself. As soon as he put the filled bottle aside, he felt Arel’s hands on his belt. He pulled his thin and soft suede pants even lower from his hips and at the same time persistently pulled Kors back onto the trestle bed, forcing him to sit down. Arel didn’t turn him around, releasing his waist, and pressed on his shoulders. Kors lay on his side with his back to the prince. They huddled together like folded spoons in a drawer. Kors felt a hot and hard cock resting against his sacrum. “Well, of course, come on, Arel! Calm your morning boner against me.”
Arel confidently continued to pull off his pants. Kors wasn’t helping him. The prince completely pulled off only one trouser leg from one of his legs. Satisfied with this, he slightly lifted his now bare leg up. Kors felt his fingers, they were wet, Arel drooled on them, they felt and parted his sphincter, then a few pushes followed. Kors just lay there, not fucking back, but he was pleased, he felt somehow comfortable, at home. Arel covered them both with a blanket over their heads and slowly pushed into Kors, hugging him tightly and breathing in his ear. In this warm cocoon of a blanket, they softly fumbled, closely clinging to each other, as in a mink, and Arel, slightly hanging over him, tickled his cheek with his hair. The prince was so strong, firm, young. Kors squeezed his cock with his hand: “A-ah…” Arel increased the pace of his thrusts, and, to Kors’ pleasure, he moaned absolutely sincerely, throwing back the blanket that covered them, tearing their sticky bodies out of the warm, but cramped and airless space into the damp and cold world filled with humid air. Kors pushed back and met him, answering, receiving the thrusts already not so inertly. Arel appreciated this, he accelerated, and his breathing became deeper. They either strayed from the pace set by Arel, starting to move at random, then they again felt for synchronism, lost it and caught it again…
“Should I leave for you?” Without stopping, Arel asked hoarsely, clearly addressing Nik. Kors understood what he meant – he asked him whether he could come inside Kors or pull out in advance, leaving him not so wet for Nik.
“I’m not your cigarette!” Kors shouted indignantly, instantly losing his mood and hearing how the prince sharply pulled out of him, sprinkled next to him, a little on his thigh and probably on a brocade blanket. He “left”, that’s how it was called.
Nik approached them. Hearing the creaking of the floorboards, Kors jerked himself up on the bed and stubbornly repeated:
“I’m not a cigarette to leave me to each other! I. Am. Not. A. Cigarette!”
“Yes?” Nik asked, as if a little surprised, and pulled Kors by the chain dangling from his collar. “And it didn’t bother you before. Even if we… mmm… smoked you alone for two or at the same time.”
“You loved me then, but now you humiliate me!”
“It seems to you,” said Nik, and Kors felt him pulling him by the chain harder, forcing him to lean forward a little, touching his face and ripping off the plaster with a sharp jerk.
“Oh!” Kors covered his eyes with his palms. “You could be more careful! Not only you have eyelashes!”
He looked up, and when he saw Nik, he literally froze in shock. Nik was not wearing a mask, but his face was tightly bandaged with wide strips of black cloth. He wrapped his head in the same way as Kors once wrapped it, with the only difference that Nik left a narrow gap for himself at eye level, and he also cut the fabric at mouth level, just as Kors did. He looked with horror at the shiny ring sticking out from under the strips of fabric under his nose, at the wrapped chin and the top of his head, on which white hair stood up a little between the bandages. Nik wrapped himself around both the way Kors wrapped him and the way Doctor Cassiel had done in Prince Arel’s estate. The side of Nik’s neck was plastered over.
Kors swallowed hard, clutching his throat, unable to utter a word. Nik was almost no different from Valentine now. He looked frankly bad and pathetic. Nik unfastened the chain from Kors’ collar and walked away, returning to his couch of skins, laid right on the floor. He obviously didn’t intend to fuck.
Kors, still silently, looked at him. He saw how hard Nik was making his steps, how he barely hobbled to the skins and sank heavily on them. Realizing that he was no longer going to be used, Kors hurriedly pulled on the trouser leg he had taken off from one leg, pulling up his trousers and buttoning his fly.
“Son… what’s the matter with you?” The way Nik looked was depressing. He seemed to break, in an instant, overnight. Kors was discouraged. And this strange dream!
“Nothing,” Nik said. Head low, he rummaged through his bag, and Kors knew what he was looking for there.
“You look terrible. Why did you bandage your face like that?” he asked.
“Well, how? That’s what you did when you treated me.”
“But I…” Kors stammered, he couldn’t tell him now: “But I didn’t really treat you, and there wasn’t a need for such treatment, I just satisfied my vicious fantasies with you a little.” Does Nik really think this is how he should have been treated? Is he so naive that he didn’t understand that Kors wasn’t healing as much as actually playing with him? Limiting him, reveling in his power. Did Nick take everything in good faith? Did he trust Kors? And so, left alone, he repeated the treatment exactly, not realizing what could be done differently? No-o-o! It can’t be! Well, the Demon can’t be so stupid, Kors won’t believe it anymore! Or could it be so? And Nik doesn’t know how to do it in another way, he only knows what his father showed him? Kors tried to quickly analyze the situation logically. Previously, this always helped him in his professional activities. Everything had to be sorted out.
First, his son is in symbiosis with a demonic essence, and this symbiosis is broken and doesn’t bring any benefit to either one or the other. They can harm each other.
Secondly, his son is a man undeveloped and naive, and really may not understand anything in the treatment.
Thirdly, it was forbidden to the Demon to heal and restore the human body of its owner, this is part of the punishment, and Kors understood this. But the Demon could accept treatment from others if they themselves offered. And Kors offered it to him, and the Demon accepted it.
Now he treats himself. But he repeats the actions of Kors and Cassiel! Can he repeat the way others treated him? Reflect their actions? Not anything more?
And Nik trusted Kors. He believed in his authority and accepted treatment from him. And here is the result of the irresponsible actions of Kors! Now Nik is treating himself wrong!
“Son, let me do everything differently now!” Kors exclaimed ardently, overshadowed by his conclusions. “Let me see what’s wrong with you, and now I’ll do everything right. I will choose the right treatment, and then you yourself will repeat after me, as needed, and not as it is now. Let’s fix it, make everything right.”
“I can handle it myself,” Nik answered indifferently, without even looking at his father, and pulled out his black box from his bag.
“Let me order to call Doctor Cassiel…”
Nik just chuckled and shook his head.
“He won’t come.”
“He will!”
“They are three days ahead from us, people have gone far ahead,” Nik opened the box and took out a small metal cylinder from it. Smooth, it gleamed silver in his black fingers, and Kors knew full well what Nik kept in that case.
“He’ll come!”
“No, he won’t. In the Fort, he still tolerated you, but now he is not at all obliged to go to the camp of the unclean ones on the orders of the disgraced black to treat his lover,” Nik unscrewed the lid of the protective case and carefully took out his syringe from it, attached the needle to it.
Kors clenched his teeth.
“I’ll go after him myself and drag him here by force!”
“Zagpeace will quickly put you in a cage there. You’re not going anywhere, and I don’t need any doctor,” leaning heavily towards the box, Nik slightly rattled the bottles of drugs, sorting through them.
“I…”
Nik raised his voice.
“Calm down!”
Kors froze: “I can’t show that I’m afraid.”
Frustratedly turning away from Nik, he took off his cambric shirt and elegant doublet from the back of the chair – the things that Nik had given him yesterday in exchange for wet clothes. Well, what else was left for him? It was cool in the tent, and there were no other clothes nearby. Having dressed, Kors approached the table. The dirty countertop was covered with spilled wine, there were unwashed plates with the remains of meat, pieces of bread were scattered on the table, the ashtray was full of cigarette butts. Kors took the jug and, bringing it up to his nose, sniffed its contents. Again wine, as in a couple of unfinished bottles, and as in a goblet. Well, what a morning! All was going wrong! Kors slammed his goblet on the table with an already barely concealed irritation.
And Nik, who was concentrating on filling the syringe with the drug from the bottle, involuntarily shuddered and turned to him:
“What are you looking for?”
“Water!”
“What?”
“Just water. I’m thirsty, my throat is dry.”
“Have some wine.”
“I don’t want wine!”
“Vitor, stop your whims.”
“I just want to drink a couple of sips of clean water, do you think this is a whim?”
Nik somehow wearily sighed, but didn’t answer. Kors realized that he was mentally calling his Verniy, because very soon he stumbled into their tent. His cloack was wet as the rain still hadn’t stopped. The dog’s head was covered by a helmet. Ver didn’t take it off, he stopped at the threshold. Kors saw his bestial eyes gleam in the narrow slits of his helmet.
“Ver, Vitor needs water,” Nik said without even looking at his unclean habir. He turned his hand palm up, and seemed to carefully examine the inside of the wrist.
The dog turned to Kors.
“What kind of water do you need, sir? Should I bring a bucket of water for you to wash up?”
“Is there any drinking water?” Kors asked.
“I haven’t gone to the spring yet. But the buckets have stood in the rain all night, they are full. Can you bring rain water? She is clean.
“Pour it into the kettle and boil it properly,” Kors ordered, “I won’t drink raw water from a dirty bucket!”
“Okay, sir,” and Ver turned around and left.
“Though I can wash myself, too,” Kors muttered. His mood didn’t improve, and he thought he could still smell the scent of Arel’s body on his skin. The smell left over from the prince’s strong embrace and his hands. It remained on Kors’ body, on his back, his shoulders, his chest. Everywhere that Arel had touched him. Kors looked at Arel. He was half lying relaxed on the trestle bed, the golden blanket almost sliding down to the floor, exposing his muscular torso, his oblique abdominal muscles, and part of his thighs. The prince had another bottle in his hands, and he took a sip from it.
“Arel, don’t mix up the bottles,” said Kors, “I put that one away, of course…”
“Very funny,” he snorted indifferently, and lazily tousled a long lock of his smooth dark brown hair back out of his face.
“Well, I’m just not sure you’d know the difference, it’s just habit, you know…”
But Arel only smirked indulgently with his lips covered with a thick layer of black dye, glinting in contrast with the white jagged edge of a chipped front tooth. He took another sip from the bottle and gave an audible burp, unresponsive to Kors’ jabs, but still as gorgeous and uncommonly attractive as ever.
Kors shook his head judgingly, but habitually:
“A descendant of royalty, indeed.”
He involuntarily continued to admire Arel, knowing that he didn’t give a damn about the impression he was making on those around him.
Kors glanced at Nik. Strongly tightening his forearm with a black cord, he somehow miraculously found a living vein on his arm and managed to inject himself, injecting the drug just below the elbow bend.
“Nik, maybe you can lie down with Arel, cover yourself with a blanket?” Kors suggested. “It’s cold on the floor, I feel it with my feet.”
“I don’t feel cold. I’m not cold,” Nik said. Kors called him Nik, but he didn’t correct him.
“Just because you don’t feel cold it doesn’t mean you have to lie in a draft.”
“I don't feel cold,” Nik repeated, leaning toward his box again.
So he took care of his slaves in their still human bodies, put them gently on the bed and covered them to keep them warm, but he didn’t care about his own body, just lay down on the floor, on the skins.
“Why don’t you feel the cold? You’re human, but you can lie down in the snow, can’t you?” Kors didn’t understand that.
“Yes, I can. A lot of people are used to the cold. It’s a habit,” Nick said faintly, but he did.
Kors watched him sit on the hide, with his head bandaged and his hair tangled, sticking out from under the bandages. Kors watched as he put something back into the syringe. One of his thick white braids, which Kors had so lovingly braided, was now disheveled and sticking out from under the top layer of shorter hair. It was disheveled, and the tip lay on the dirty floorboards. Playing with Nik and decorating him to his liking, Kors had begun to braid the bottom layer of his hair back in Ore Town. He remembered that this was how Nik’s hair had been braided the first time he was brought in for questioning. The bottom layer of his hair had been braided into four braids, one of which was very short, cut by Arel. Kors had ordered Nik to unbraid his hair then, to show him off at the Spring Ball in all his glory, but later he began to braid him himself, fixing his hair beautifully with bobby pins and, in addition, to keep it tousled longer, he bound it tightly with long thin cords adorned with faceted black and turquoise beads. It was probably wrong, too – beads were usually used by girls to decorate their braids – but Nik looked so much like a girl, so delicate and sweet, and Kors liked it when he was neatly combed and tidy. Later he would braid Nik’s hair in the Fort as well, thus trying to pass the time and do something to occupy himself without taking a restorative or drinking too much. Nik never even looked at what he was braiding into his hair, how he was decorating it. He always sat there obediently, not moving, like a doll, and he never minded Kors, letting him braid his hair, put as many different colored beads in it as he wanted, pin it with different pins. Even now he hadn’t taken them off; his hair had just come undone, unraveled, and was now touching the floor. And Nik didn’t pay any attention to it, didn’t take care of himself, didn’t take care of his beautiful hair.