“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.
“What are you wearing?!”
Kors saw that Nik was wearing the clothes of the unclean ones again. His leather trousers were visibly frayed at the knees, on the outer sides there was a wide strip of lacing, it seemed, in three rows, one to the other, and maybe more, with some complex intricacies of the unclean ones. Probably, it could have been beautiful once upon a time… but now it was torn, tied somehow into sloppy knots with protruding dangling ends. Moreover, the trousers were sewn over the edge in some places. Kors saw a rough seam under the knee. On the thigh, a torn flap was roughly fixed by lacing, so that the hole was still visible, and through it and loose lacing, Nik’s tattooed thigh was visible, and also it could be seen that he was again without underwear. A short vest was put on his naked body, barely reaching the waist; it didn’t cover his sunken stomach. In general, it was not clear from what pieces it was sewn, on the shoulders there was the shabby fur of some animal, which apparently died at the dawn of time, it was slightly puffed up. Boots were lying nearby, again boots of the unclean ones, with heavy soles and a blunt cape, adorned with a million iron buckles and clasps to the very top.
Kors couldn’t resist:
“What kind of tattered stuff are you wearing? Did Valentine sleep on it at the doorstep? It’s just that you wouldn’t give such shit to your beloved Verniy.”
“These are my clothes.”
“No, Nik, these rags can’t be called clothes. What is that shabby fur on your shoulders?”
“This is my blouse!”
“Is it knitted?”
“Kiss my ass!”
“Nik, this is the edge, don’t wear it ever again. I gave you good clothes! Or do you now refuse to wear them?”
“No, I don’t refuse. Not only your clothes got wet,” oddly enough, but Nik tried to explain.
He carefully peeled the band-aid from his neck, slightly touching the indentation from the healed “well” with his fingertips, and put the needle of the refilled syringe under the hoop of the golden collar.
Kors turned away.
“Nik, let me help you with your treatment,” he said a little later, waiting for a moment.
“I'm fine.”
“Are you taking the medicines I gave you, the ones the doctor gave you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still have any left?”
“I have.”
“Do you remember that they need to be taken regularly at the same time?”
“I remember.”
“I still have some left to share with you?”
“I told you, I still have some!”
“Can you show me your face?”
“What? No!”
“Show me what’s wrong with your scar!”
“Nothing.”
“What happened to your face?!” Kors couldn’t hide his excitement.
“I said nothing!”
“Is the scar inflamed? Yes? What’s happening? You bandaged your face too much. What’s up with your scar?”
“Nothing.”
“But you bandaged your face for some reason!”
“I got a tattoo on it, okay? Is that all?”
“What?!” Kors froze, shaking his head. “No, no, this is stupidity. Are you kidding? You’re lying? Is this a stupid joke? Don’t joke like that, I’ve always said that humor is not for you!”
“Leave me alone!”
But Kors couldn’t stand it:
“I can’t take it anymore! My strength is gone! I’ll break all your needles! I’ll pour out all your colors! Do whatever you want with me! Blind, humiliate, beat me, I will endure everything, but I will deprive you of the opportunity to disfigure this body, at least now, while we are on the road!”
“I can do it with my own syringe if I want to. Soot, urine and a needle from a syringe – that’s all, I don’t need anything else,” Nik answered calmly, not reacting in any way to the fact that Kors switched to screaming.
“No! You can’t lie, I’m about to die! Be honest! I can’t stand it if you get more tattoos! I still can’t come to terms and accept that your face has a brand on it, like cattle!”
“Yes…”
“People write with ink on paper, and not on the forehead, it would be better to learn this!”
“I can write on paper!”
“Yes?”
“Yes!”
“I didn’t notice that you wrote at least something at least once on one piece of paper during this time!”
“It’s just that you never asked me to write. I can write!”
“Come on, write then!”
“Now I won’t write anything for you!”
“You only know how to write on your forehead! Admit it, you can’t lie to me, were you joking about the tattoo?”
“Yes, I was joking,” Nik agreed.
Kors breathed a sigh of relief.
“Don’t joke like that anymore, it’s stupid. Poison began to come out of your scar, as Cassiel had warned? Answer me!”
“It constantly flows from it,” Nik reluctantly answered him and bent to his leg, slightly lifting up his trouser leg.
“Oh,” barely calming down that Nik was joking about the tattoo, Kors got nervous again, “what is flowing out?”
Nik didn’t answer, carefully examining his leg.
And even now, in spite of everything, Kors wanted to educate him, give Nik a good beating and properly punish him for all the nonsense that he had done. For the fact that he never really obeyed, stubbornly doing everything as he liked. For blinding him yesterday and letting him be hit. And for the way he looked now: sloppy, dirty, dressed in God knows what. Ill, with a bandaged face, but at the same time stubbornly continuing to stick to his line. He jokes stupidly, knowing that he will cause a surge of emotions in Kors with just the word “face – tattoo.” He sniffs with his ringed nose and constantly brings his hand to it, touching and tugging at it.
Ignoring Kors and apparently not listening to his emotions and thoughts about himself, Nik tried to put the needle to his leg. Kors looked at his black tattooed skin and the wide black band of the “bracelet” that went around his ankle just above his foot. The shameful slave stripe was clearly visible and stood out, even though the patterns of other tattoos. Something like sharp teeth was closely adjacent to it. Teeth on the leg, well, only Nik could do such a thing, Kors was no longer surprised. To destroy himself every second was an irresistible craving for his son and the Demon. Slightly turning his foot to the side, Nik injected the drug into the inside of the leg just above the ankle.
“What is the number of injection you have already given yourself?” Kors asked. The way with which maniacal persistence and without respite Nik poured substances into himself began to frighten Kors.
Silence. He was stoned. Already in the morning. How to make him obey? Unfortunately, no way.
“Do you want to overdose again?”
“No,” Nik slightly shook his head in a negative gesture and lay on his back, “I also need water, only another, not rain.”
“Again?!”
“What do you mean again?”
“Didn’t you say you injected it in your Limit?”
“So what? How much time has passed?”
“No, it will never end!”
“It will end. Soon the body will stop rising.”
“I won't survive if you die!”
“I have been dead for a long time.”
“Nik! Why are you making me emotional?! You endlessly take emotions out of me! Stop eating me!”
Nik lay motionless, his good leg bent at the knee and his bandaged head slightly thrown back, a tousled braid with beads woven into it sweeping the floor beside him. He didn’t answer Kors, as if he didn’t hear him.
Without thinking, in some kind of frenzy, Kors rushed to him, and, grabbing his forearm, jerked him up from the skins. Nik quickly glared at him from the gap between the bandages, but said nothing, remained seated. But that look… Kors’ insides went cold.
“Don’t touch,” said Nik very calmly, and this made his voice sound even more terrible.
“I’m sorry…” Kors whispered, but immediately shouted again in despair:
“How long are you going to torment me, Black Demon?! Seeing how you destroy this body, I am dying together with you!”
“Go away, I won’t touch you, you yourself are rubbing the skin around me!”
“What?”
“You come to me. Why are you here? Do you understand what you are doing now?”
