Chapter 31: Emerald Vs Ruby.

Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Emerald Vs Ruby.

"Release him, Prince Khobi."

Defiantly, Khobi’s grip on his hostage tightened as his irises danced wildly across the crowd to set a face to the man who had not only been fucking stupid enough to try a stunt like that, but dared to just order him around.

He found him with no trouble –the man was arrogantly making no attempt to conceal himself, slowly striding through the parting crowd with a bared knife in hand, leaving appalled stares in his wake. He paid them no mind, narrowed emerald eyes beating imposingly upon the scene.

Khobi resisted the urge to scoff, but was less successful at holding back a grimace as he recognised the haughty, ever-frosty form of Vogrid Vector.

Some of the soldiers in the crowd seemed to share the sentiment.

"Are you insane??" one of them shouted out aggressively, as Vogrid stalked on through, his very presence –accompanied by the knife he was clearly wielding –enough to force the crowd to peel back for him. "What if you’d hit one of them!"

The man’s accusation made Vogrid draw to a standstill, green eyes snapping sharply towards the speaker with icy disdain.

"That was not my intention," he declared flatly, as though insinuating such a reasonable thing was bordering on insult.

His tone was stony, and advised against further outbursts, but the man seemed to find such a response laughable –or absurd enough to pay no heed, adding hotly, "Not your intention? Well, what if you’d missed??"

Vogrid’s lip curled as he regarded the man with a practiced coolness, seemingly oblivious to the hushed whisper that rippled across the courtyard at the accusation.

"Impossible," he dismissed, setting his gaze back upon the situation at hand, as though this mere soldier’s concerns were inconsequential.

And Khobi would have been lying if he said a little shiver of some kind of anticipation didn’t spark in his blood when those emerald eyes turned back to him with a steely, unshakeable confidence gleaming in their depths.

"I never miss."

That was probably meant to make him feel afraid, it was definitely a threat, after all --poorly concealed, but a threat nonetheless –and at the same time spoken so simply and without hesitation that it could only be the truth. So maybe Khobi believed him.

There was no lie to the confidence with which he strode through the crowd --a beacon of order amidst a scene rife with chaos, with head held high and deep green robes unsullied by the filth caking upon the courtyard’s stone.

He made for quite the striking figure –tall and pale, and a splash of colour against a backdrop of dirty soldiers in black, eyes glinting with a steel not unlike that of the knife delicately grasped in long, deft fingers. And not once did that piercing gaze stray from Khobi.

There was a fight brewing in the air, Khobi could feel it –instincts whispering heavy warnings into his skin and setting the thick thrum of adrenaline alight in his blood. And maybe the crowd felt it too, because they shrank back from him and let him pass unhindered.

In his wake, an unsettled, heavy tension fell over the courtyard, as if the night were waiting with bated breath to see what the final act might hold.

"This has gone quite far enough," Vogrid stonily declared into the evening’s silence, adjusting his glasses upon the bridge of his nose as he drew a halt at the foremost ranks of soldiers circling Khobi.

His eyes narrowed as he surveyed the scene with distaste, taking in the ruined state of his surroundings and the shabby, dirty urchin of a prince at its heart. "Your foolish endeavour ends now."

Khobi gritted his teeth around the insult but his expression darkened at the other man’s tone.

"Yeah," he bit back vehemently, obligingly pressing his knife a little tighter against the throat of his captive, "It does." The threat went unsaid this time, but his warning glare and the thin line of his lips served as reminder enough.

No one needs to get hurt.

It hung heavy in the air and seemed to make the soldiers uneasy, but Vogrid didn’t seem at all ruffled by the scene –as if it were one he had endured countless times already.

"You seem to misunderstand your situation," he scoffed, with all the airs of a man rolling his eyes, only for his expression to harden abruptly. "This is not a negotiation."

His tone was so serious that Khobi actually laughed aloud –a harsh bark of disbelief, roughly jostling the nobleman securely restrained against his chest and currently breathing against the edge of a blade.

"Really?" he snorted dryly, glancing pointedly from the blonde man currently serving as his prisoner and then back into Vogrid’s deadpan stare, "Coz it sure seems like it.

You let me go, and you can have the pretty-boy back in one piece." The grim alternative went without saying, and he was certain that everyone present caught it loud and clear.

It was plastered all over their faces –concern for their nobleman dancing in their expressions, and heads were craning in Vogrid’s direction to see just how he intended to handle such a delicate situation.

Khobi’s lips were well on their way to a triumphant smirk when a simple scoff from Vogrid chased it clean off his face.

"Do what you will," he huffed indifferently, adjusting his glasses to a horrified intake of breath from the crowd, and paying them little mind. "It will not change the outcome."

Khobi’s eyes narrowed as he met Vogrid’s even gaze –completely unaffected by the ultimatum he’d presented him with. Did he just not understand what Khobi was threatening to do? Did he not care? Did he really intend to let this man be tortured before his very eyes?

Seriously?

For what it was worth, although the soldiers closest to Vogrid appeared incredulous –obviously as blindsided by his words as Khobi was –they were undeniably, genuinely alarmed. It was chilling.

"My Lord..." a soldier dared to query, voice and eyes sharp with concern and laced with wariness.

To his credit, he didn’t flinch when steely emerald eyes set upon him, but there was a strange hush to his words that had his gaze darting around as though searching the crowd for something.

Or nervous that someone was watching. "...Are you certain? I mean...If any harm comes to him...his father..."

" –That is of no concern of mine," Vogrid interrupted coldly, turning aside his gaze and directing it instead towards Bongo, who had been watching the scene unfold with trepidation.

"Captain, order your men to stand down," he ordered coolly, and the soldiers present bristled at the condescending tone he maintained while addressing their Captain. "I will handle this."

"My Lord..." Bongo cautioned, voice low and hesitant and his brow dipping into a frown that betrayed his reluctance, "I –"

" –You have your King’s orders, Captain."

The firmness of his tone –expecting to be obeyed –had Bongo swallowing down whatever concerns he had been about to voice aloud.

He knew the young man wouldn’t say such a thing unless it was true, and he knew how whimsical and petty his king could be –but surely not.

But when he glanced up at Gurdet’s table for confirmation, his king merely returned his look with what he probably thought was a pleasant smile. So, it was with a small sigh that he turned back to the scene at hand.

"Understood," he said flatly, straightening as he projected his voice, " –You heard him. Stand down, all of you."

They were good soldiers, all of them –even the ones who weren’t really his –so they obeyed. But dark, angry whispers reached his ears nonetheless, and suddenly the back of his neck was burning with the weight of icy, mistrustful eyes.

It was of no consequence though, he served who he served, and if they had a problem with such a thing, then that was a confrontation for another time.

That didn’t mean he didn’t feel the menacing chill all the same when he locked gazes across the ring with a soldier dressed in blue and gold.

"I hope you know what you’re doing," he snorted to Vogrid, sheathing his sword in one, deliberate motion as he spared first a glance towards Khobi –standing with desperation in his eyes and a resolute grimace plastered across his face, and then one towards the golden-haired man pinned against him like a lifeline.

Interestingly enough, he didn’t seem incredibly bothered by the knife at his throat –he’d taken being taken captive admirably well, in fact.

The most ruffled he’d looked was when Vogrid had practically declared that Khobi could go right on ahead and do his worst –and even then it’d been out of indignation more than anything. Gods knew that a flair for the dramatic ran in the kid’s family.

Nobles, Bongo despaired, and as if to prove his point, Vogrid scoffed as if he’d just insulted him.

"Rest assured," he snorted, and Bongo was sure that the leer he turned on Khobi in that moment, though testimony to his own strength and the faith he held in it, could be read as nothing but a taunt.

"This is nothing I cannot deal to alone."

Khobi flinched, the cold words stinging like an open palm to the face. And when his hand curled tighter around the hilt of his knife, Vogrid’s eyes narrowed in a kind of smug smirk, knowing that his slight had met its mark. And right on cue, hammering home the humiliation of being belittled, the soldiers who had been hunting him sheathed their swords, one-by-one, until there was only a single armed man left opposing him.

The one man who had all but declared that he was all that stood between Khobi and freedom. And the face he wore made Khobi’s pride came boiling to the surface, coiling and hissing as it reared.

Because in Vogrid’s face he could see his surety that there was no possible ending in which he would be anything other than the victor.

Heat flared up behind red eyes and washed away the budding fatigue as the heavy thrum of his pulse struck up a beat in his blood unbidden.

Pity. Khobi felt the same way.

Maybe he should have backed away. Maybe –if nothing but for good measure –he should have just made good on his threat and taken a chunk of flesh out of his noble hostage, his face was pretty enough that a scar wouldn’t dampen his looks, and men didn’t need all of their fingers anyways. But Khobi had never wanted to play a coward, and as Vogrid strode across the courtyard towards him with an imposing aura that he’d only ever known dangerous men to wear, he remembered steely eyes glinting in moonlight, and the icy shock that had churned through him when he had been brought so easily to his knees.