When Jehovah began to stir, the first thing that he noticed was that his legs twitched. 'Damn' he thought. Keomie's work no doubt. Leana was right, that woman was good. Then again, he wasn't sure how long he'd been out for. He tried to raise his arms to his heavy head only to find them bound to the arms of his chair. Then the panic set in. His eyes shot open as he began to yank at the restraints, finding his legs also strapped to the chair. He looked up to see the king seated opposite him though his attention was diverted as he read a paper before him, careful, strong fingers tracing each word carefully. Jehovah watched as he raised his right hand, taking a lock of his hair roughly, his left then bringing a knife to the crimson strands, cutting through them with no effort. The king then set the knife down carefully and wrapped up the freshly trimmed hair in a white handkerchief and placing it delicately into his doublet pocket.
Jay had seen enough; he began to struggle once again. "Your struggling is futile," The king moaned in a bored manor, lifting his right hand to his forehead as the other brought a nearly empty glass of brandy to his lips, he tipped it back, his unruly hair flopping back as he did so before he slammed the crystal glass onto the table. "Care for a drink?" He asked looking up for the first time. Jay was more confused than he had ever been. This man had found out that he had been having an affair with his fiancé, literally stabbed him in the back and kidnapped him and here he was offering him a stiff one. Jay decided to play this man at his own game. He began to curl his fingers and examine his nails out of boredom.
"How do I know you haven't poisoned it?" He asked. The king rolled his eyes, pushing himself to his feet to strut to a mahogany sideboard, lifting a half-full decanter to two new glasses he plucked from the side also. Once a suitable measure had been poured into both glasses, he came to place one before Jehovah.
Jay's eyes took his moment of distraction to survey the table before him. No knives, he noticed. As he looked, he also noted that his own clothes had been changed, a new shirt and the restraint of a bandage could be felt around his abdomen. This fact alone told him that the king didn't want him to die; not yet at least. The king flicked his hair up, staring into him with his own ruby eyes. "Make no mistake, if I intended to kill you, I would run you through here and now," He warned, Jay could feel the power radiating off him and filling the room with fear. As he spoke, he repeated his previous action of slicing off a significant lock of hair from Jehovah's head, in response he growled and thrashed his head away but it was too late, mossy strands poked out from his enclosed fist. He rolled these up in a napkin too. Jehovah knew better than to ask what it was for – he knew that he wouldn't get an answer anyway. "I understand that your queen is cowardly enough to use a woman's weapon," He almost spat this. The two had met. The thought of this man in the same room as the delicate, tiny queen made him shiver. Perhaps 'Lix was braver than he had first thought. "But I am not," With that, he slipped his dagger under the bounds holding his wrists to the chair and sliced through them, released his hands before turning and walking back to his own chair.
As much as Jehovah needed the drink, he waited until the king himself had sipped at his own before indulging himself. The burn of the brandy felt good. He felt the king's careful eyes watching him, noticing his unease. "I am many things, but I was never a liar," somehow, Jehovah felt as though this was true. He had no reason to believe the king, but somewhere under that cold, unfeeling exterior, the man that Leana once fell in love with must be lurking inside. Perhaps honesty was a trait that he had carried over.
As he watched the king, the good person in him tried to look past the monster of stories he had heard all his life and saw the boy who had watched his mother die in his arms, the man who watched men descend on his dearly loved fiancé, the man who had been denied love for so long by an unfair system of class before finally winning his battle, only to have it all stripped away in one fateful night. He wondered if the king knew just how much he knew. "If you're not going to kill me, then why am I here?" He asked, trying his best to keep the conversation as pleasant as possible. The king grinned, dropping his glass to the table and raising a regal hand.
"You are without a court, are you not?" He laughed. "Well done on that performance by the way, I would have loved to have seen it myself," Jay didn't speak. That did not answer his question. "I brought you here to offer you a home," He smiled, his words tainted with poison no doubt.
"Why?" Jehovah growled under his breath as his knuckles flexed under his skin. Deploma Dondarion smirked.
"Say I killed you," He began as he began twirling the knife between his fingers with great skill. "Our dearest Leana would likely gut me in my sleep," He couldn't picture Leana slipping into the kings chamber and assassinating him in such a bloody fashion. With a face as beautiful as hers, it was hard for Jehovah to remember that she was a trained knight. "That's if she didn't publicly challenge me in front of the whole court," His eyes scanned the blade in his hands.
"And you're confident that she would win?" Jay asked, lifting his glass in an attempt to look less afraid than he really was.
"Oh certainly," He snapped the knife in his hand to grip the blade, the handle pointing towards the ceiling. He seemed to show no shame in the fact that Leana was the better fighter of them. "I was always the brains between us," That was easy for Jay to believe. "But Leana," He looked into the distance as if recalling a dear memory of her. His voice calling nothing but pride, awe and respect. "She's ruthless," Jay just shrugged and swallowed the brandy.
"I bested her," which was truer than he like to admit; he had nearly killed her. The king chuckled, throwing the knife and gripping the handle before leaning forward and pointing right at him from across the table, amusement on his lips.
"Yes!" He hissed, excitement dancing in his bloody eyes. "But did it ever occur to you that she wanted you to win? That she wanted to die?" Jehovah shivered as he realised that it was true. Leana had been so lost and broken that she had not wanted to live anymore. She had dropped to her knees when he impaled her, ready to take the killing blow. She had let him win. The king smiled as he watched the realisation set in across his prisoner's face. "I knew what she had tried to do when she didn't report back that night," The king placed the knife on the table, kicking back his own legs and crossing his feet on the corner of the table. "I knew that she couldn't have been beaten sincerely, and I knew that she had not won otherwise she would have reported back," He shook his head almost to himself, his hair billowing from the draft. "I think that she forgets that I'm not an idiot sometimes," He laughed a little and looked back to Jehovah, as if expecting a response but what was he supposed to say to that?
Realising that he wasn't going to get a response, the king stood "Keomie!" He yelled. Jehovah's body stiffed as the blue woman walked in hurriedly, her eyes widening to see Jay injured and captured before the mercy of the king. In her eyes, she demanded to know where Leana was, if she was safe. All that Jay could do was look away. He felt that she would enjoy watching his inevitable torture. The woman didn't move, she was frozen in place at the sight of him, the king taking matters into his own hands and snatching the bottle from her thin hands making her jump. He pulled another cloth from his trouser pocket this time and wet it with whatever was inside the small vial. "Sorry friend," He apologised as he walked behind him. "But I can���t have you seeing my stronghold just yet," He could hear the smile on his lips as a warm hand clasped over his nose and mouth. Before he could react and fight back, his vision darkened once more.