The Unwritten King

3. The King and His Men

He tugged off the blindfold and beheld bare wooden walls. He could only see a small square of the room, the rest hidden behind a white curtain. The bed he slumped over was surprisingly plain and narrow for how plush it felt beneath his elbows. He hauled himself onto the colorless sheets, turning to sit facing Yasmin, and waited.

But Yasmin did not say anything else. Without looking away from Nicholas, without moving at all save for the waving of her fingers, she rummaged through the only other furniture in the room. The cabinet door swayed open and an assortment of items floated out onto the counter beneath it. Faint glacial blue gleamed from the ring on her pointer finger.

A labelless black bottle and something white drifted toward Nicholas. He scurried away on his hands, but there was only so far he could go. The cap of the bottle twisted away. Clear liquid dripped over a square of gauze. "Wait, what are you doing?" He leaned back as much as gravity would allow. Yasmin took no interest in his terror. "Please, can't we- I don't know, can't we talk, I'm not-"

He was debating the merits of toppling over the bed to get away when the gauze hit his cheek. For an instant, there was a biting sting and a sharp smell - alcohol? Then the gauze dropped, listless, onto the bed beside him.

Yasmin frowned. Lines pulled at her cheeks when she did, the kind she was too young for. She twitched her pointer finger, and the gauze lifted again. Nicholas very bravely resisted the urge to flinch away, but the moment the gauze touched his skin, it fell.

"What are you doing?" demanded Yasmin.

Nicholas blinked down at the gauze. That was his doing?

"I'm not doing anything," he said dumbly. When he looked back at her, the lines on her face had multiplied, carving out the bridge of her nose and the space between her brows. Nicholas foolishly met her eyes and felt something inside him wither, die, and turn to dust. She wanted to crucify him. "I swear," he added in a rush. "I don't have any magic. I don't know how that happened."

He could've sworn she started to glow. "Do you think you are in any position to play games?"

"No! No games, I hate games-"

"This is not my fucking job, I will not be toyed with-"

"No toys, never toys-"

Nicholas watched in horror as the tips of her hair began to rise in serpentine locks, floating around her head like she was about to turn him to stone. She was glowing, a faint red that haloed her entire body and burned from her eyes. The lamp on the counter flickered wildly, plunging the room back and forth between darkness and light, before surging in size, bursting from the lamp's opening.

Nicholas couldn't believe his last thought was going to be, she shouldn't have the magic to do that.

Instead of death came a pained grunt, not from Nicholas, but from just beyond the cracked doorway. The illusion vanished. Yasmin's hair fell back around her shoulders, the halo disappeared, and the lamp dimmed to a warm glow.

If she had looked homicidal before, she was downright bloodthirsty now. Nicholas thanked whatever higher power existed in this world that her bloodlust was directed at the slowly opening door.

"Quit messing around," she hissed.

A curly head of hair butted through, bearing a pained smirk. "You know I like to put on a show. And why do you always have to go for the groi-"

"I locked the door for a reason. Leave."

The door opened further, revealing a young man with thick eyebrows and brown skin. He came in hunched over, holding his gut like he'd been struck, but when he straightened, he loomed over Yasmin by nearly a head. When had Nicholas made them all so tall?