Keaton remained quiet.
“Guards are saying you’re in here because Lord Belmont wants you in here. Not a good place to be, my friend. Not a good place to be.”
He couldn’t help responding to that, his teeth gritting. “Yeah. I know.”
The man let out a low whistle. “That’s rough, bud. I’m sorry to hear it. I’ve seen Lady Belmont — not up close, mind, but enough to see why a man might lose his mind. I gotta say, doesn’t matter how nice they are: There’s no pair of tits in the world nice enough for this shit.”
A good point, but ultimately meaningless. His stupidity in the face of a nice pair of tits had landed him here. That and a string of occasions where life had decided to kick him square in the balls, then spit in his face when he sank to his knees.
“What can we do, though?” He could almost hear the other man shrug. “I let myself get bewitched, too. Lost a good woman over it. Not the prettiest thing, but kind. Real good mother. I threw it all away, and you know what? I paid the price.”
Keaton’s jaw set and he bit his tongue, forcing himself to stay quiet. He realized it made him a hypocrite, but he had no sympathy for a man cheating on his wife. Especially when that wife was the mother of his children.
“She kept me out of trouble too, she did. But I wasn’t ever happy with any of it. Kept wanting more, no matter what I had. Played my hand against the gods, and, well. The gods always win, don’t they?”
“Seems that way,” Keaton finally said, allowing himself to wallow in the bitterness for just a little while longer.
His “companion” kept talking, going on and on about his wife, his kids, and the misadventures he’d had after he lost them. It was hard to sympathize, considering the man had absolutely created his own situation, but Keaton did his best to at least keep from being outright hostile.
Hours passed with no other sounds of significance, though he strained to hear them. Just the distant drip of water, the crackle of flame burning down torch tallow, and the constant drone of his fellow prisoner’s voice.
It was predictable enough that when Keaton closed his eyes, he briefly drifted off to sleep, only to be awoken by that harsh, rodent-like voice once more.
“Oi! You haven’t fallen asleep on me, have you? Wish I could sleep. I—”
Keaton’s fingers curled against his palm, nails digging crescents into his flesh. He opened his mouth to snap at the man, but something else caught his attention: Heavy boots coming down the nearby stairs, the light of a carried torch casting long shadows against the wall.
Keaton sprang to his feet, ignoring the ache in his muscles as he made his way to the bars. The iron was cold in his grip, his fingers closing around it.
“Get back!” the guard warned, pulling out what looked like a fireplace poker.
He rammed it through the bars, jabbing Keaton in the ribs with it. Keaton groaned and staggered back, clutching his side, pain radiating through his torso.
“I’m only down here because, by law, I have to offer you the services of a priest if you want them. Worthless soul like yours is beyond saving, but rules is rules.”
As if to punctuate exactly how he felt about the situation, the guard hocked up a wad of phlegm and saliva, spitting it past the bars. It splattered at Keaton’s feet.
“What?” he asked, ignoring the disgusting glob. “Why would I need a priest?”
The guard let out a short grunt of a laugh, sounding almost like a pig. It would have been comical, if not for the gravity of his words.
“Because you’re scheduled to hang tomorrow.”
3
Scheduled to hang tomorrow.
The words rattled around in his head long after the guard had left. They danced about mockingly, reminding him that he had no weapon, no armor, and no plan to get out of this place, nor was he capable of thinking of one. Keaton was numb for hours after that admission.
He’d said nothing when the guard asked him if he wanted a priest, too stunned to process. No priest was ever sent, and Keaton was glad for it. He didn’t need to contemplate the fate of his immortal soul — not when he was still trying to figure out his more immediate fate.
How had sleeping with a lord’s wife led to him being hanged?
Rotting in the dungeon for the rest of his life, sure. Being paraded naked in the square, chains about his neck, a red sinner’s cloth draped over his shoulders, yes, maybe that could be deemed acceptable in some circles. If Lord Belmont pressed his influence enough, Keaton could even see having his balls squeezed in a vice until they were shriveled and useless, depriving him of the ability to ever have children — and making sex a painful and humiliating experience from that moment on.
But hanged? That seemed excessive, to the point where he almost wondered if they were just fucking with him; trying to scare him straight.
He doubted that, though. He didn’t have that kind of luck, and it seemed Elena was telling the truth about one thing: Her husband was a cruel son of a bitch.
“Real tough break there, bud. You hate to see that, don’t you?”
The rat had been blessedly silent — or Keaton had just been able to ignore him — since the guard left.
“Sometimes I wonder if I was supposed to be hanged. I think maybe they decided my neck wasn’t worth the rope. Or maybe thought it wouldn’t snap right? My mum always said I had a fat neck, heh. Could be they just—”
“Shut up!” Keaton roared, taking his head into his hands. “Please, just shut. Up.”
There was a long pause, during which Keaton actually had the grace to feel a little guilty. That feeling faded when the man spoke again.
“Alright, friend, you don’t have to shout it. Could’ve just asked nicely,” the rat said, sounding genuinely bothered by his rudeness. “Course, you are about to die, so I guess it doesn’t—”
Keaton closed his eyes, drew in a long breath, and just tuned the man out. After a while he’d either become an expert in it, or his companion had finally gotten the message and lapsed into silence. Keaton wasn’t about to question it. Instead he settled onto the scratchy straw and the cold stone floor, staring up at the half-crumbling ceiling.
He just needed to think. There was a way out of this. There had to be. He’d gotten out of bad situations before, after all. He’d been doing that his whole life. If nothing else, Keaton was resilient. Much like the beetles that skittered about in the darkness, he hadn’t let himself be crushed under the weight of the many booted feet that tried to stomp on him.
Granted, none of those boots had ever belonged to an executioner…
He bit back a groan of frustration, his heart racing with sudden panic. What if he couldn’t manage it? What if the law had simply caught up to him, as his mother always said it would?
What if he deserved this?
“Oh, come now. Surely you don’t think you deserve to hang for sticking your cock into a woman you loved. Even if she was a manipulative cunt.”
The voice seemed to exist in the space around him, caressing his senses with husky undertones that made goosebumps ripple across his arms. Keaton peered through the gloom of the cell and at first saw nothing. His only indication that something had changed was the strange scent of cardamom that wafted into the space. For several moments, nothing changed. Then suddenly his vision was filled with a brilliant white light that hurt to behold. His eyes watered from the strain of it if he even tried, and he was forced to shield them.