Wizard's Wish - (Kinda) Yandere SGE x reader

Chapter 105: Someday My Weasel Will Come

(yeah, this chapter took a while, sorry. I've been so busy this week. I don't wanna be an adult omg)

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When Hort was a child, a pirate boy named Dabo used to bully him by roping him to a tree and putting things down his pants. Roaches, leeches, ants, cat poo, spiders, pee-filled snow, and once a stolen hawk egg, which the hawk mother came for, leaving Hort with ten stitches in his thigh.
But none of this compared to the sheer torture of having one of the Snake's slimy, sticky eels worm down his shirt, probing every inch of his skin.

Hort stood stiffly in the corner of Y/n's bedroom, clad in a puffy, ill-fitting white tunic and matching harem pants that he had to double-knot so they wouldn't fall down. He's had to suffer with this for the past two days. He focused on the sounds of the bath running and Y/n's faint humming as the eel roamed over his chest. He tried not to scream.

His release from the dungeons had to come with a price. A scim stuck to him like a parasite. A sliver of the Snake's body melded onto his own, spying on his every move—
"Hey!" Hort snarled, snatching the scim as it slithered into his pants. The eel hissed and stabbed his thumb, drawing a drop of blood, before it hopped up Hort's flank and neck and curled around his ear.
"Dirty little bugger," Hort murmured, sucking his hurt thumb. He wanted to grab the little leech and smash it and grind it to a pulp, but he knew another scim would replace it. If he was lucky. More likely he'd be killed or thrown back in the dungeons.

Morning sun frayed through the window and Hort rubbed his eyes. The last few days he'd barely been able to sleep, as all he had was an old, unrenovated room with a bed hard as rock. But It was mostly because he was up, having to hold himself from checking on Y/n over and over in her room, to make sure she was okay. But then he thought of her in the bath, becoming a blushing mess, and freezing up.

He'd been freed from his cell in the middle of the night two days ago by the Snake— who, upon hearing his brother had made a deal with Y/n to set Hort free, had taken it upon himself to do the freeing, for the sole purpose of tormenting Tedros into thinking it was the prince that Y/n had released. Then the Snake dragged Hort out of the dungeons, slapped him with a surveillance scim, and whisked him to a servants room.

The past few days, he'd not been allowed to meet Y/n yet, but today he'd been woken up at the break of dawn by guards, fitted in this billowing uniform like a discount genie, and brought to the queen's chamber, sleepless and filthy, and told to wait for his new "Mistress" to emerge from her bath.
Why did Y/n pick me? he wondered.
I understand she didn't pick Tedros. But she could have picked anyone else. Sophie. Hester. She could have picked Dovey. She could have picked the Dean.
Does she need me for something only I can do?
Is she sacrificing me so the others can live?
His blood pumped hotter.
Or... did she choose to save me first?

The scim moved and Hort remembered it was there. Only Y/n could make him forget about a monster on his ear.
He blushed hotter and sniffed his armpits. Blech. Maybe he could ask to use the bath after she was finished. He'd need to be quick. The Blessing was in less than an hour as her new "steward". he'd been tasked with getting her ready, even though he had no idea what that meant.
Hort glanced around the vast room, suddenly ashimmer in sunlight. Everything looked so much older than the rest of the castle. It wasn't full of Lion stuff, it wasn't all blue and gold. It wasn't all fake.

All that time playing Tedros' loyal knight, Hort snorted, thinking of Rhian's perfectly honed act. Almost made him feel sorry for Tedros.
Almost.
The scim started creeping down his neck again.

Hort could hear the bathwater draining. His thoughts turned to Y/n in the bath and he bit down the inside of cheek, trying to unseen his own thoughts. Even if Y/n was his sort of girlfriend, or they were at least something, it wasn't appropriate to think of her in the bath. He tried to distract himself by watching Y/n's new cat she apparently had. But the cat was just going around in circles, seemingly chasing its own tail like it was a dog. He tried to distract himself with other details of the room but found his eyes moving to Y/n's bed... the silky, rumpled sheets... the tin of sweets... the cup of tea and vial of untouched honey... a stain of lipstick on the edge of the cup...