the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (snow like ashes txt) 📕

brown eyes.
"You only keep your job here because I have given your father a promise to give you a home. The fact that he still holds a position in the court of Hispania is due to his diplomacy. He keeps his mouth shut about my past as a Gfuhre." Some home he has given us, Eric thought. "I don’t wish to put you out in the forest without a home. But that doesn't mean you can come in unannounced during important conferences. This is not the first time it has happened; otherwise I wouldn't waste valuable minutes conferring my duties. When that door is closed, KNOCK! Yes?" Rebecca nodded. Adnicul continued. “If it happens again you pay me in love." He smiled and chuckled. “Usted puede ir, puta hispánica!" He discarded her and she ran in quick little bunny steps to the table, took the plates, ran to the door and slammed it shut behind her. He could hear her drop the plates outside. "I swear I shall murder her one of these days."
If you do, I shall avenge myself in the cruelest of ways. Eric thought. It was as if Eric's thoughts had confused Adnicul, so he swung toward Eric again, black velvet cape swinging around, fixing his eyes on him. Adnicul only reacted by sneering from the side of his mouth, one eye glaring to the side. Adnicul walked up to Eric and threw him on the floor. Eric slid toward the fireplace and laid still for a bit. Adnicul mumbled some words to himself. “Rebecca was a temptress in the beginning of time.” Adnicul muttered. “This Rebecca needs tutoring in confidence.”
Eric smiled. “If confidence is what she needs, why did you call her a whore?”
Adnicul ignored Eric’s comment completely, marched toward the fireplace and leaned against the marble and nodded to himself. He lifted his head and looked at himself in the mirror and then down at Eric. Eric did not react.
"You are a loser. In the half year here you have not bettered your abilities one half arm length, so I am asking myself ..." He reached down and grabbed Eric's face and squeezed it. "... why I keep you here at all. I had hoped on some betterment."
He let go of the grip and Eric rubbed his chin in pain of the firm hold. “I have a responsible task, young man. I have a task of running this country.” Adnicul kept saying in a bored tone of voice.
“Your country, your majesty,” Eric spat “is a land of thieves created by a bastard son.”
Adnicul slapped Eric across the face with his leather-gloved hand. Eric’s head thudded to the floor. “Are you king?” Adnicul screamed. “No? Then hold your mouth or I will chain you to the floor.” There was a long pause. "Are you listening, Eric?" Eric nodded. “You have about forty scars on your back from talking back. The rebel in you has a hard time relaxing.”
“You are right about that.” Eric sat up and spat at Adnicul. He kneeled and stood up. The look in his face was wrath and that startled Adnicul. It was as if it was strange to hear the young man talk, as if he did not remember what his voice sounded like. “Usted llama a mi muchacha una puta otra vez y le mataré mismo. Entonces máteme, yo no cuidan.”
Adnicul stepped two centimeters closer and embraced Eric's throat with a leather-gloved hand.
"Does this bother you?” Adnicul grinned.
His sarcasm broke into an even wider grin. Eric didn't know weather to laugh, scream or cry. A drop of blood trickled down his cheek toward his chin. Adnicul was squeezing his nail through his glove into Eric’s cheek.
"Wh-what answer will save my life?" Eric responded.
Adnicul loosened the grip and started smiling. He threw Eric on the floor a second time, giving him a blistering pain in one of his knees. He looked up, supporting himself on his left elbow. His knee hurt and the wound upon it was throbbing.
"The answer that stops assuming that I hide what will save me will save you. My master does not work for the living."
What was he speaking of? Master? Did Adnicul have a master?
“I shall take on the task of taming the rebel in you, if you take on the task of shutting the hell up about who I confer with, Eric.” He turned around watching Eric stare at him. “You heard me, Eric, I needn’t repeat myself. Comments like the one you gave me an hour ago are not welcome. Do it again and you might find yourself in
Tumular Canyon.” He chuckled and looked out the window. “You know what we have there?”
He saw the dark nature of the forest below Rigor Mortis. There were some beggars by the gate. One of the guards chased them away. He smiled. “Don’t you, Eric?”
“You insane half-breed.” Eric shouted.
"Continue working here and there are two nevers you should remember." He sighed. "Two nevers. Never ever talk back." Eric said nothing.
Adnicul started walking back. He walked up to Eric, still on the floor. Adnicul’s eye patch made Eric wonder what hole lay behind that upside down cross. He grabbed Eric by the cheeks again and this time the wound hurt. It made him look like a pig and then he dried off his glove on his cape. Adnicul grinned cynically, almost shiteatingly friendly.
"And second: never doubt my authority. If you do I shall personally flog, burn, impale, quarter and kill you, in that order. Understand?"
Eric did not know if it was tears, sweat or blood that trickling down his cheeks now.
“No comments about Lucinda!” Adnicul yelled.
Why was this woman so important to Adnicul? Eric wondered as he nodded twice and understood it was not popular to call Lucinda a royal courtesan without a proper royal task. He had a loose, rebellious tongue and he hated being pushed down, even in front of someone like this awful man. He loosened the grip and stood up, looking down at Eric.
“Lucinda’s my property. Question her and you will be dead and gone before you know it.”
“Where is she?” Eric asked.
“On leave, Eric. That is all you need to occupy your silly little mind with. No questions.”
He was playing his mind-power-game on him again. Eric saw Adnicul and although it was not funny, he wanted to laugh. He turned around and faced the fireplace, as Eric stood up and rushed out, three times slipping on the marble floor and hitting his head.
"Tell your idiot girlfriend to stop disturbing important conversations."
As he felt Adnicul come closer to him, breathing at his neck, he walked faster.
"She can look through the hole in the door next time she wants to enter, if she likes."
He fell again. He heard him laugh.
"Not my hole though."
He laughed again.
"Leave."
He felt a hand on his neck, and thought of those hands squeezing his cheeks into a piggy face. Eric slammed the door shut and leaned against it. He expected a hand to come through the door and grab his neck again. He broke out in a cold sweat. Why had he come here and why hadn’t he already tried to leave? He had, hadn’t he? Yes. His back displayed wounds as a memory of trying to escape. He stepped away from the door and collected his thoughts.
"Calm down, friend, there must be a way out of here."
If it hadn't been for all the rumors about Adnicul’s countless simultaneous terror attacks on innocent civilians across all of Medatlantia, he would've called this place a loser's home. If it hadn't been for the stories of Nocturania's dark past the odd servant Nomed told him when Adnicul wasn’t watching he would call Adnicul the worst king in history. But Adnicul was not in any way human. He had to be taken seriously. He had killed servants before, for lesser crimes than dropping a plate or two, so escaping Rigor Mortis had to be planned well, especially since he was positive that Adnicul could read minds.
He turned around. The spy hole in the door was there so guests would know if they were invited or not. He stepped up to it and with a trembling hand pulled the handle of the golden cover to the side. Adnicul was there, glaring one inch from the hole bent over, teeth flashing in a grin as wide as the Canyon.
He whispered, “Where the criminals hang, Eric my boy, and you too very soon.”
Eric’s tongue bobbed, his hands ripped at his hair, then he gasped and closed the spy hole. His hand slowly leaving his mouth, his eyes quietly closing and a tear quelched through a closed eyelid and dropped down his cheek like a lonely squirrel down a steep mountain chased by a werewolf.
He opened the lid again a second later and Adnicul was by the fireplace with a glass of wine looking at the crackling flames. Then, as if on a given signal, Adnicul turned around and glared at a frightened Eric, whose eyes suddenly widened with fear. At once Adnicul started rushing with a steady fast step toward the door as if he suddenly decided to kill Eric at last and eat his severed head. He screamed and closed the lid.
Eric ran as fast as he could down the hall and stairs, again falling several times, heard a door open and close and feet running after him faster and faster, across the courtyard to his apartment on the west side of the castle. He closed the door and threw himself on the bed and screamed into his pillow. His girlfriend rushed in from the washroom and saw his bleeding cheek. She took a cloth and dunked it in water. Eric looked up with tears running down his cheeks. She cleaned the wound with the cloth.
“He called you a whore and I only listened and said nothing.”
Shaking her head, she looked out at the ravens in the courtyard through the window. Rebecca chuckled bitterly and looked at him again with dead eyes, kissed his head and sighed.
“I thought it might be a bright future for us here,” Eric whispered. “In a castle …”
“Away from home?” she giggled, sadly. “No.”
“I’m sorry” Eric said.
“You could never have known, Eric Sweetie.” Rebecca said. “All this talk about Adnicul’s mission and now this constant chatter of that other Rebecca somewhere in time that was the start of it all. He seems to know something, but only about other people. He still searches himself.”
He hugged her hard again thankful that the wounds on his back were healing and that he now could hug his girl as before without screaming.
“We must leave.” Eric proclaimed.
Rebecca gave him a look of surprise. She took her right hand and put a lock of hair hanging across her left eye behind her ear. She nodded, frustrated.
“We might not have much time before Adnicul wants to fry us.” Eric looked at her, surprised. “In a matter of speaking.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t have those big frying kettles here, although I would not put it past him.”
“We should fry him.” Becky said.
Eric nodded, laughing and desperate to find some humor in all of this and dried a tear off Becky’s cheek. She gave him the cloth and dried his face as well.
"What can we do except fry that tyrant?"
“Leave.” Eric said nervously. "I feel as if we are being watched.”
Eric kissed her gently. “I don’t want to risk you getting