Sea of Glass ✔️

Chapter 40 - Quality Time

The room that King Idris confined him to wasn't fit for a peasant. Frankly, he didn't think it was suitable for any human being. A pile of hay to sleep on and a bucket to relieve himself were the only two things that furnished the stone cell.

He supposed the King was generous. He could have been left with no bucket at all. And where would that have put him in the hierarchy between peasant and aristocrat?

He would have been beneath them all, sitting in his own waste like a barn animal. How lucky he was to be treated like a human being.

Curse that wretched Duke. Was it so hard to die peacefully, to let him be? Why couldn't the Demons have gotten to him before he sent that damned letter?

Haydn would have liked to be in the good graces of the father of his soulmate. He would have preferred to have been born into the right family with the right face, never craving acceptance that was perpetually out of reach.

And beggars would have liked to shit gold. Pigs wished to fly, but they weren't going to spontaneously turn into birds. No matter how far he ran, he was still that peasant boy from Stuckersby who was good with a knife.

If he hadn't been chosen, he would have lived an ordinary life. Maybe at some point, he would have given up the dagger and settled down with a village girl. But realistically, he could have very well ended up in the same place, behind bars for his innumerable sins.

He wasn't stuck in his stone prison. Yes, there were guards stationed outside the iron bars of his cell and it was true that the gate that separated him from the rest of the world was locked. Yet, he also knew it was within his capabilities to bend reality.

Escape was easy. It was everything else that followed that was hard. Running away was exactly what the King wanted him to do. He had the guards ask him every day where he wanted to be shipped off to. Haydn never answered, but he suspected that if he didn't make a choice soon, one would be made for him.

Ideally, he would have wanted another audience with the King. Although he hadn't been able to persuade him to let him see Evelyn last time, he thought that using some Chaos magic to change the circumstances might do the trick. He hadn't practiced it yet, but he suspected that he could alter a man's perceptions beyond projecting an alternate reality into his head. He wagered that he could even change a man's memories and thus transform his entire personality.

He tried practicing on his guards, aiming for minute changes. The man closest to his cell had an incorrigible habit of chewing loudly on his bread. The sound of his lips smacking was enough to drive him up the wall. So he attempted to fix the guard by breaking into his head, wading through a deluge of memories.

The experience was overwhelming. He nearly drowned under the sheer weight of his mind. Panicking, he shoved back against the force of the guard's spirit.

That proved to be the wrong thing to do when Haydn left his mind and found the guard in a drooling catatonic pile. He was replaced the next day, but the incident left the rest of the men watching him on edge.

"Nice trick," Odi said, appearing before him as a snake. "You might have thought to ask for my guidance before attempting it."

"The King is going to send me off any day now. I hardly had the time to consider that option." He slumped against the pile of hay.

"And you'll follow what he says if you fail? I don't remember you being a lowly coward." The snake curled around his leg, slithering upward.

"I'm being realistic." The twin suns were high in the sky, two bright points of light that glared at his form through the cramped window. By now, the King would have had the chance to tell Evelyn everything about him. No sane person would still decide to love him after hearing about his crimes.