The Mist and the Lightning. Part 18
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Valentine also realized that their father was very cruel, not only with the slaves, but also with his legitimate son. Therefore, Arel with all his soul hated his father and never pronounced his name, always calling him only “damned”. And Valentine, as luck would have it, grew up and matured in the Limit, and if now his helmet is removed… What if during this time, he became even more like the damned? And seeing the traits he hates… Arel would simply kill him!
Valentine began to shake with a small shiver: he was terrified of Arel, and this uncontrollable reaction always started when the prince paid a little closer attention to the boy. Yes, Valentine suffered from the heat in a slave helmet, but at least he was composed.
“Why have I grown and changed so much?! What for?!”
“No, I won’t take off his helmet,” Arel said.
“Valentine is Chester’s bastard? Yes?” Kors asked. “Arel, do you want to deceive me? Have you forgotten who I am? I don’t even need his face, I see his physique, and this is not the body of a peasant and a commoner. Was your father having fun with the pretty slave girls from the Estate?”
“Yes,” Arel replied reluctantly, realizing that it would hardly be possible to hide this fact from the former head of the security service, “and this girl was a little over ten.”
“Sorry,” Kors nodded knowingly. “Your father was very unrestrained. I will say more: Chester was just a pompous turkey, confident that only he was always right and only his opinion and point of view were the only true ones. He managed to quarrel with everyone! Even with Leonardo, who was initially very loyal and sympathetic to him. Yes, your father was a rare kind of shit…”
“I killed him,” Arel said calmly.
At these words, Valentine froze and shrank even tighter.
“Yes, now the owner will kill me too. Exactly.”
“You killed him?” Kors was surprised. “After all, it was an accident, a fatal coincidence: Chester burned down in a fire in your ancestral chapel, when he offered prayers to the Gods.”
“It was already afterwards,” said Arel, “first I killed him, and then he burned down in the chapel, because I set it on fire.”
“But! Arel! How did you deal with him? After all, you were at that time… mmm… no more than sixteen years old, and he was such a healthy and tall, experienced warrior.”
“He was on his knees and prayed, kept whining and complaining to the Gods about injustice and his unhappy fate, as usual. I just quietly approached from behind and cut his throat, then stuck a knife in his back, up to the handle, and then again and again… He didn’t expect this: he wheezed, grabbed his neck with his hands, tried to stop the blood. He considered me a weakling and didn’t take me into account,” Arel smiled bitterly. “He didn’t have time to do anything. And I hit him from the back. It wasn’t fair.”
“I don’t blame you,” Kors stretched out his hand and gently stroked Arel’s head, slightly burying his fingers in thick, parted strands, admiring how the gold rings on his hand glittered beautifully in the prince’s dark hair. “Your father really was the true shit and deserved to die like that. I am sorry for you, sorry that you were forced to do this, to take on this burden, to do this wrong act in order to save your life. He is to blame, he forced you to get dirty in this filth, dragged you along with him into hatred.”
Arel smiled sadly and unconsciously tilted his head a little tighter, pressing it to Kors’ stroking hand. He looked at him with sincere love and fatherly tenderness.
“I felt such relief then,” continued Arel, “it was one of the best moments of my life: happiness, and a little fear that I was the owner of a huge Castle and would not be able to cope with all matters. But everything turned out to be not as difficult as I feared. I could live without flinching at his voice, without jumping into a corner at the sound of his footsteps along the corridor; I could talk loudly and say whatever came into my head, laugh, sleep as much as I wanted, order the servants to set the table at the time I wanted, and eat and drink what I wanted. Actually, I was finally able to have my time! And invite my friends to visit. I didn’t need to hide everything from that freak all the time…”
Kors, in a fit of feelings, pressed Arel’s head to his chest, pressing on the back of his head in the same way as he often did with Nik, and said with the same passion:
“My poor boy, you didn’t tell me anything during the interrogation, you didn’t confess.”
“You weren’t particularly interested in him.”
“Yes. Everyone believed that he burned down in this chapel. Nobody thought of you. But what about Valentine, Arel?” Kors returned to the beginning of their conversation. “Let me see, maybe he doesn’t look so much like Chester?”
Arel, and Kors noticed this with pleasure, with some regret pulled away from his hand and, taking out the key from his pocket, looked at his frozen slave.
“On your knees! Crawl over here!” He ordered, and Valentine immediately collapsed to the floor.
The helmet completely covered his head and wrapped around his neck, it was tightly laced up and additionally closed at the back with a lock so that Valentine could under no circumstances take it off on his own. However, Valentine would never have dared to do this even without these tricks. Moreover, on his throat an iron slave collar was put, very similar to the one that Nik once wore. Wide and heavy, tied tightly, it covered his neck, resting the upper edge against the chin, not allowing Valentine to fully turn his head.
To remove the helmet from Valentine’s head, Arel first had to loosen the lacing a little. After unbuttoning the lock, he finally pulled the edges of the helmet out from under the collar with some effort.
“Lift your face and look at sir Kors,” he ordered, opening his slave.
Valentine’s face was dirty, because on the campaign Verniy had no time to take care of the boy properly. And Arel rarely gave him the key. But despite the dirt, deep streaks of scars on his cheeks and the absence of one eye, poor Valentine’s clear resemblance to Chester was evident, and no injury could hide it.