Page 27 of A Guard and a Gardener

Sir frowned, glancing at the healer slumped in a chair in the corner of the room. His sweat-drenched hair was plastered to his neck, his skin was flushed, and his eyes hooded. All the signs of a Blessed reaching the last dregs of their magic, and if he triedusing it again before it had properly replenished, he’d be lucky to survive.

“How long until you’re better?” Sir barked at him.

The healer could barely raise his head. He whispered something, his tongue flicking out over cracked lips, and Sir glowered.

“¿Qué?”

The healer tried again.

“At least two days, sir,” one of the rebels standing closer to him conveyed.

“Prince Renato will be long gone by then, if he’s not already.” Cursing, Sir waved a hand in my direction without bothering to look at me. “Consider the mission an absolute fucking failure, and kill this one.”

I let out a long exhale, a breath I felt like I’d been holding since my capture.

My prince was safe, I hadn’t broken, and I was now to be permitted death.

I couldn’t ask for more.

Sir was in front of me in an instant, digging his fingers into one of the knife cuts along my ribs. I gritted my teeth, focusing the last of my strength into lifting my head so I could hold his disdainful gaze.

“Notquickly, brute,” he murmured. “My men will make sure it takes you a very long time to die, considering how much you’ve inconvenienced us. They’ll take you apart piece by piece, starting with your cock and ending with...let’s see. Maybe your heart? Your eyes?”

“His tongue,” rasped the healer, looking as though he was struggling as much as I was to keep his chin up. “Because I’ll have that scream from you before you go, big guy.”

I smiled and spat out yet another mouthful of bloody spittle. “I’ll take that bet.”

It seemed my late friend Ademar’s spirit was with me in my final moments, for hisfuck youattitude in the face of danger graced my words and expression, making the smile a genuine one. With Dios’ mercy, I’d soon be reunited with him, and I closed my eyes in a futile attempt to block out what these men could – and would – do to me.

“Jiron,” Wyatt murmured, hot breath tracing over my balls. His small hands, delicate yet rough, roved down my thighs, jolting me out of my acceptance of my death and reminding me of everything I had, everything that had happened, and that all of this terror and pain was nothing but a months-old memory.

For a moment I existed in two realities: one where a man began to carve up my skin and I fought to rein in a scream, and the other where a beautiful blonde boy lavished affection on the most sensitive parts of my body, his touch sweetly provocative as he worked me over with his hands and mouth.

With the duality came clarity, and remembering that my torture at the rebels’ hands was long over reduced its hold on me. While it seemed real, such was the vividness of the memories that seized my mind,knowingit was anything but immediately dulled every sensation.

It was like when one realised one was dreaming. I’d had my control returned to me, and while I wasn’t entirely immune to the memory’s effects, it no longer felt so inescapable.

I moved my hand.

In the memory, I could do no such thing: my wrists were tightly strapped to the posts with tough strips of leather designed to keep me in place while they worked.

But in the present, my fingertips found the feathery softness of Wyatt’s hair, felt his head bobbing beneath my hand as he returned to sucking me off. He murmured something incomprehensible, yet I didn’t need to understand the words to feel his intent through the vibration it made along my cock.

The rebels were still inflicting their painful attentions on my body, the healer rasping out commands on how to worsen the hurt – but I forced myself to hold on, blocking out the agony and replacing it with the pleasure Wyatt was delivering on me instead. The comfort. The assurance ofdaddy, I’m here.

The head of my cock bumped against the back of my boy’s throat and I groaned, clutching him tighter to me.

All the pain was gone now. It was as if I was merely watching the scene in the basement instead of living it.

“Just one scream,” the healer purred from his chair, stroking a finger down its arm. He still looked pale, but the excitement of my renewed torture had perked him up, for his eyes were bright as he watched what the others were doing with their blades and ropes and twisted shards of metal. “Give me what I want, big guy, and I’ll see your corpse is properly prepared for the afterlife. Refuse me, and you’ll never stand before Dios-”

I watched with a vague kind of detachment as his left eye exploded, the space where it had been replaced in an instant with the glistening tip of an arrowhead that was protruding through his skull. The healer’s surprise froze on his face, echoing that of everyone else in the room as they stared at him for a second and then scattered, diving for weapons and cover.

It was too late for most of them. Two more arrows found two more targets with deadly accuracy, and then Luis was there, polishing off the remainder with his sword and whatever torture implements were within his reach. One rebel died with a pair of pliers stuffed into his open mouth and his innards sliced open, while a second – who had slipped on the gruesome, slithery mess of his friend’s intestines – soon found himself both decapitated and with a heated poker through his leg.

Sir hissed out orders for Luis’ death, but there was no one left to follow them.

The rebel unsheathed his sword and swung it at something I couldn’t see from my position, only to be parried with a clash of steel. I caught sight of Elías’ sword before I saw the man himself, graceful yet ferocious in his movements...movements I had taught him myself, long ago.

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