Chapter 73: The First Captain.

Chapter 73: Chapter 73: The First Captain.

Montrel had always thought of himself as a pretty good fighter. He’s a good swordsman and a good duellist, and is pretty handy in a bar brawl, if he does say so himself. There haven’t been many times in his life when he’s questioned his own strength.

Right now, is one of those times.

One second, there’s a knife coming at him, and the next, no more than an instant later, he’s crumpled on the floor, completely winded, and the knife is in Khobi’s hands, and he’s got it pressed tight against his prince’s throat.

He could almost swear on his life that he didn’t see either of them move.

...

It takes Khobi a moment for his thoughts to catch up to his reflexes. Dimly, he’s aware of Montrel cussing them both out somewhere in the background, but it just joins the thudding of his heartbeat in his ears as white noise. He doesn’t exactly know why his breath shakes when he lets it out, but hates that it does.

He’s grateful that his hand doesn’t have the same problem. The blade sits at Loac’s throat with just the right amount of pressure to hold him still, and doesn’t quiver in the slightest.

He needn’t have worried. Loac makes no move to escape from his grasp. In fact, for someone who’s just tried to kill him, he looks pretty unfazed with the predicament he’s in. The knife at his own throat doesn’t even look to bother him.

If anything, he looks calm.

It makes Khobi’s skin prickle.

(In the back of his mind, something troubles him.)

( When did he move ?)

"You sure you know how to use that?" Loac asks him in a voice low, his throat bobbing against the edge of the blade. His words are even and measured, and when Khobi presses just a little harder, not even his eyes flinch.

"...Wanna find out?" he challenges, and means it as a threat.

It could have been his imagination, and in the weeks that followed, he’d convince himself it was, but just for a fleeting second, the glassy void in Loac’s eyes vanishes, and gives way to something dangerous, and endlessly bright.

It takes Khobi’s breath away.

(If he didn’t know better, he might’ve said it almost felt like a yes .)

He doesn’t have time to catch his breath again before the pain comes.

If it had’ve been anyone else, Khobi would have been impressed. If it had’ve been anyone else, he might have called it elegant.

If it had’ve been anyone else it would have been incredible.

Everything happens in one smooth movement. And three heartbeats is all it takes. On the first, Loac moves, and he takes Khobi with him, shifting his considerable weight like he’s nothing but a puppet on a string being tossed around in the wind.

On the second, blue eyes gleaming, he disarms him, hands deftly --effortlessly --snapping the knife from Khobi’s grasp in the exact way, he dimly realises, that he’s often done to others. Exactly the way that he was trained, to do to others.

On the third, Khobi’s back slams into the wall behind him, a weight bearing down on him, and spots of light speckle his vision as his head cracks into the stone. That’s when the pain comes.

And just like that, in the blink of an eye, it’s not Loac with the knife at his throat, but Khobi.

" What the -- " Montrel breathes, and again, Khobi barely hears him. This time it’s partly because his head is spinning, and partly because he’s somehow, inexplicably unable to take his eyes off Loac.

In those three heartbeats, it had felt like he’d been trapped in a whirlwind, swallowed up by a crushing pressure unlike anything he’s ever experienced before. And he’s fought an awful lot of people in his life.

Holy shit , is all he can think to himself as he raises a hand to his throat out of reflex to try and pry away the knife hovering there. Loac’s skin is surprisingly warm to the touch, and no matter how hard Khobi tries to force it away, the blade refuses to budge.

It’s steady and unmoving, like it’s been cast in iron, and it suddenly becomes all too apparent that Loac Trent is terrifyingly strong.

He wants to be angry --and he is, of course --but more than that, he’s dumbfounded .

When he finally finds his breath again, it’s still shaking.

He’s never seen anyone move so fast in his life.

"...What are you waiting for?" Khobi growls defiantly, and hates how husky his voice comes out. It turns out, it’s hard to maintain aggression when you’re completely awestruck. Loax doesn’t answer, just considers him, gaze unreadable.

It’s weird, but for some reason, despite the fact the knife he was holding was razor sharp and that his first swing had definitely been with deadly intent, Khobi doesn’t actually feel like the guy wants to kill him.

Which doesn’t make sense, since he had just tried to kill him.

And then there’s what he says next.

" Not bad ."

His voice is so low that Khobi can almost feel the words on his skin. It makes him want to lean away from it, but the wall behind him has left him with nowhere to go, so he settles with tugging at Loac’s hand with as much strength as he can muster, demanding the knife. It still doesn’t budge, but that doesn’t mean he stops trying.

Something crosses Loac’s expression, and if the princess had’ve been there she would have known it was amusement.

But the princess wasn’t there. So neither Montrel nor Khobi understood.

"...You want it that bad, huh?" he drawls, raising an eyebrow and moving in just a little closer. Too close, Khobi thinks, because all of a sudden he can feel his body against him,can feel his breath brushing against his cheek as his head dips lower.

"Fine." His hand moves, turning the knife, and Khobi tenses, only to feel Loac’s fingers prying apart his fist, offering him up the blade. He’s careful not to nick his throat, or to let Khobi have too much control all at once.

His hand is warm, and calloused in a way Khobi thought it wouldn’t be, and when he presses the hilt into his palm, releasing one finger at a time, he doesn’t miss the way those fingers trace against his skin, and linger in a way that feels horribly, unbearably intimate.

That inch of height difference between them suddenly doesn’t seem like very much at all. A lock of his hair brushes Khobi’s nose, and he’s fairly certain he can feel the curves of raw muscle taking shape under Loac’s shirt as he breathes.

(Or rather, pants. He’s not in the least bit out of breath, yet his breathing feels slow, and heavy, and Khobi isn’t all too sure about the way it sounds against his skin.)

It’s far too close.

The last time Khobi had been this close to another man he’d been fucking him.

As it is, right now there’s only thin fabric between them, and from the way Loac’s staring at him with those eyes of his --less glassy now, but not that sudden, earnest electric either (for which he’s endlessly glad), he’d rather there wasn’t.

The anger rises back to the surface all at once, and bubbles over.

"Get away from me," Khobi snaps, grabbing a fistful of Loac’s shirt and shoving him away from him as hard as he can, a couple of buttons coming off in his hand.

Oddly, Loac lets himself be pushed away without resistance, but despite the force he’d used, doesn’t go reeling nearly as dramatically as Khobi had been hoping.

Instead, he just staggers a little, like the way an adult does when a child throws themselves onto their legs, and disinterestedly tucks his hands into his pockets as he regains his balance.

"Sorry about your shirt," he adds, wholeheartedly not sorry, and throws the buttons down at Loac’s feet. He looks at them as they bounce to rest upon the stone, but doesn’t move to pick them up.

Then, his gaze trails over to Montrel, still set back on his haunches on the ground where he’d fallen only a short time before.

"Tsk, still too slow, Montrel," he taunts, gaze hooded and rife with contempt as he jerks his head at Khobi, "...If this guy hadn’t been here, you’d be dead, wouldn’t you?"

"... Loac ," Montrel grits out from behind a snarl, "You got a lot of nerve doin’ that, y’know? If His Majesty hears --"

"Go on then," Loac growls, pushing off the wall and kicking his stray buttons so they scatter around him.

He turns his back on the pair of them, and like a candle being extinguished, his blue eyes turn right back to glass. "Tell Gurdet. See if I care."

" Fuck, I...I will," Montrel snaps irritably, gathering himself up off the ground, "You can’t just go fucking attacking people, Loac!"

" He did," Loac points out dryly, pausing a moment to glance meaningfully back over his shoulder. "Besides, he’s fine, isn’t he?"

Montrel shoots Khobi a look, just to check if Loac’s telling the truth. Khobi’s got a hell of a sore head, but that’s about it, so he nods, reluctantly. Loac shrugs, as if that’s all there is to it, and keeps walking.

"So it’s fine."

Montrel looks particularly chagrined, so Khobi imagines this is an argument he’s played out many times.

It’s only as he’s helping the soldier to his feet that he realises he’s still holding Loac’s knife. Which is what he wanted, but doesn’t feel at all like he’s earned.

"Hey, bastard, you forgot something," he hollers at Loac’s retreating back. For a second he contemplates throwing it at him, but a knowing look of warning from Montrel makes him reconsider.

(It probably wouldn’t have mattered. For some reason, he’s certain that Loac would have dodged.)

"Keep it," Loac calls back over his shoulder dismissively, not even bothering to look back. In the empty corridor, his shadow seems endless, and his voice, low and flat, carries, and echoes like a challenge.

" Better luck next time ."

It sends a shiver down Khobi’s spine.

Which wouldn’t be unusual except that, for the first time, it’s not in a bad way.

(It kind of feels a little like anticipation.)

"That guy sure knows how to make an exit," Montrel grumbles, dusting off the seat of his pants and sending a rude gesture down the hallway as Loac’s shadow disappears deeper into the castle.

"Thanks, by the way, I guess," he adds, clapping Khobi on the shoulder with one hand and digging him in the ribs with the other.

"Any time," Khobi finds himself saying distantly, turning the knife over in his hands and accidentally nicking himself. Now that he’s really looking at it, he can see that it’s a real work of art.

Light, weirdly unbalanced, and terrifyingly sharp --not an easy weapon to wield by any means. "He often try to kill you?"

"Hmm, sometimes," Montrel admits with a shrug, and an eye twitch that says it’s actually quite a fair bit more than that. "Never seriously. Never like that , even , " he explains, gesturing to the space Loac had occupied not a few minutes ago.

On one hand, this information is odd, because although he’s gathered that Montrel and Loac have had some unpleasant encounters in the past, he’s never gotten the impression that the prince was in any way particularly skilled at fighting.

On the other, in all the times they’ve crossed paths, Loac’s very presence has left Khobi’s skin crawling, and set him on well on edge. He’d figured, for the most part, that it was because he was a creep, but deep in his gut he’d known, from the instant that they’d met, and without a shadow of a doubt, that it was because Loac Trent was dangerous .

Possibly more dangerous than anyone else in this entire castle.

Now he’d seen it, and he felt like an idiot .

Sure, it didn’t take a genius to disarm someone, but Khobi wasn’t just anyone. He’d lived a life where losing your weapon meant losing your everything. He wasn’t easy pickings --not by a long shot. Sure, Khobi could make excuses about being caught off guard, but that wasn’t it.

He’d had Loac pinned , and with a knife at his throat. Ten times out of ten, the guy only got away if Khobi let him. It was a track record he was pretty proud of.

Tarnished now, apparently.

And then he’d been pinned himself. Shit, and he hadn’t been able to make him budge. Khobi’s not got the deep roots of Jaga or Bongo, or even his uncle, by any means, but he’s not easy to push around.

Loac had knocked him off balance like it was effortless.

And the way he’d moved...

It was otherworldly. Like disarming someone was as simple and as thoughtless to him as breathing. No normal castle lordling moved like that.

Even Rogard, who Khobi had been informed was actually a fairly talented, and well trained swordsman didn’t move with the speed and ferocity of a raging tempest.

So fast that to the casual observer he would have been but a blur of blue against a veil of shadow. If even that.

Here one second, gone the next.

Like lightning.

He wonders, briefly --dangerously --what he would be like with a sword.

"I don’t like it, kid," Montrel muses, half to himself. "Don’t get me wrong, the guy’s an asshole but he doesn’t usually make a habit of tryin’ to knife people."

That’s hardly reassuring.

"Lucky me," Khobi remarks flatly, and nicks himself with the knife again when he tries to spin it between two fingers. It nearly takes off his thumb. "I didn’t even know he could fight."

"Of course he can fight," Montrel scoffs, staring at him like he’s grown an extra head. Obviously Khobi’s missed something very important.

"Khobi, he’s like the best swordsman in the whole fuckin’ kingdom." He sounds equal parts envious, annoyed, and reluctantly in awe.

Khobi’s jaw hits the floor, and Montrel blinks at him all of two seconds before he starts laughing.

"pffft. Who did you think was the First Captain?"