Does It Matter?

Chapter 1

"I'll cut your tongue out if you don't shut up," the guard threatened as his hand fisted in Dara's short, dark hair, but Dara refused to be quieted. He didn't care if it was true. Or he did care, but he cared about his resistance more.

As he struggled, the blows he landed on his aggressors reflected pain onto him, twice as hard, lashing deep within to land in a place private and raw. He'd learnt to fight back, though his efforts perverted him. They rotted out the core of him and left something bitter in its place. He could never be what he was before, never be what he could have been, what he should have been.

He screamed, too, though nobody had ever come to his rescue. Nobody had ever dared intervene in this game. He bit when they tried to gag him and pain strummed all around him, threatening to black out his vision.

Burch, the largest of the three guards, easily weighed twice that of Dara's slender frame and was just as strong as he appeared. Even doing his best angry cat impression Dara had never escaped them, but the idea of going along with what they had planned willingly was unthinkable.

They were taking him down to the dungeons. They always did, because that was where the equipment was, the restraints and the tools they would use. Dara didn't understand how hurting someone else could be fun, but then he wasn't like other men. Hurting others hurt him. If he were normal, would he understand it better? Did everyone else appreciate how someone could find joy in the blood of another, even if they didn't share in the hobby?

They had reached the stairs before a voice interrupted them. "What the hell is going on?"

The holds of the guards loosened on him and Dara struggled with renewed vigour, but their grips quickly tightened again.

"Punishment, sir. This little rat was disrespecting his betters."

"No!" Dara shouted as he struck out. A hand clamped over his mouth and he bit it, hard. Pain reverberated through Dara, pressing in on him like a physical force, but the guard yanked his hand away and didn't bring it near Dara's face again.

"Disrespecting his betters... how?" the man asked. Dara tried to look over his shoulder to see who the voice belonged to, but the guards held him too firmly for him to turn.

There was a moment of hesitation in which the guards struggled to come up with a viable answer and failed. "Does it matter, sir?"

"He's in my colours," the man said, and immediately Dara froze. He knew whose colours he wore. The man behind him was Prince Maric. The guards would strip Dara of those colours before they started so that he didn't ruin them with his blood, and then leave them for him to put back on afterwards.

"No, your highness, I didn't do anything!" Dara insisted. "They just like to hurt me."

"Shut up," one of the men hissed and thumped Dara's head against the stone wall. Pain flooded out Dara's thoughts for a moment, but it was a minor injury and things quickly righted themselves.

The prince sighed loudly. "You're right, it doesn't matter. He's in my colours. He's mine. The only one with the authority to have him disciplined is me, and I don't remember giving you any orders. Let him go."

The guards exchanged looks, and a moment later Dara was released. He hit the stone floor with a strangled sound of pain.

"Good," the prince said. "Slave, come with me."

For a moment Dara froze. He couldn't move. Was he in trouble for disrupting the prince? He had just said he was the only one with the authority to discipline Dara...

"Slave," the prince repeated, more firmly this time, and Dara quickly scrambled to his feet.

The prince had been away with the military since he'd come of age, and it showed. The only times Dara had seen the prince before had been when he was much younger, dressed in finery and covered in jewels like his father. Now the only jewelry the prince wore was a single ring that signified his status. His shirt was new and clean and the same blue as the uniform Dara wore, but the buttons down its front were pale wood rather than silver like Dara's. The prince kept his ash brown hair cut short and practical, but he'd made no effort to force it into an unnatural tidiness like most nobles preferred.