The Majesty of Choice

Snap

"Elf!" Edgar says, in a savage way, which sends the first of many chills into Pete's bones. "What were you trying to do? Did you think we wouldn't find you?"

"No. I mean, yes. I don't know! I'm sorry!" Pete shouts. This isn't how he had expected this to happen.

"What was your goal? Tell me."

"It was nothing!" Pete shouts, because he can't let Edgar know anything. Not if he knows what's good for him. He's got to keep his head on his plans, not on his own safety.

He feels very small. He is an elf after all, but he shrinks into the corner of the room. He tries to make himself smaller, smaller, so that Edgar can't see him, can't ask him any more questions.

"You will tell me," Edgar says.

Pete just looks down at the ground in front of him, refusing to do anything else. He's kneeling on the floor, his arms tied behind his back by sturdy, itchy ropes. He doesn't want to look up at Edgar, doesn't want to see the face of the man who's done so many horrible things to him, and is currently trying to decide on even more.

"I can't say," Pete shakes his head.

"I have ways of making you talk." Edgar's voice creeps into the marrow. Pete physically shudders and looks up at the wrong moment to actually see those evil eyes looking back at him. He sees a flame dancing in them, knows that there is nothing good there.

Gerard had been right. Not like Pete ever doubted it. After what Edgar has done to the elves, how could there ever have been doubt that this man was pure evil?

It's so stupid, did Pete really think that his family would be here? This kingdom is huge, and there are rumors that Edgar has been selling elves to neighboring kingdoms as slaves. Why would the particular people he's looking for be here, in this exact spot?

But at the same time, what if they are? Pete didn't make it inside that building, maybe his family really were there. He had to check, even if they weren't. Even though he never even got the chance. They could still be there. He could be in the same town as his family for the first time in over five years, and there's nothing he can do. He came all this way for this one small hope, and he was caught before he ever even got a chance. This isn't fair.

"You were trying to break in!" Edgar shouts. "That is a crime, you could rot your way through the rest of your miserable life in a prison cell for this. What did you seek?" Does Edgar really not know? Pete was caught trying to break into the building dubbed the "elf barracks" but everyone in Pete's town calls it simply the House. The House is where elves go to be sold. They go there to die, if not their body than their soul.

"You came with that Gerard boy; did he have something to do with this?" Edgar asks, and Pete shakes his head. Is Edgar so devoid of emotion that it hasn't dawned on him that Pete was trying to rescue his own family?

"I'll never tell you anything," Pete says, looking back down at the ground, because he doesn't want to give this man the satisfaction of seeing his fear.

"You will," Edgar says assuredly. Pete doesn't see it coming at all, he just feels his air completely disappear from his lungs, and he falls back against the hard floor, wishing he could clutch his stomach where Edgar has just kicked him, but he can't with his hands tied around his back, trapped underneath him. "I have ways of making you talk." Edgar's voice rings out Pete's insides. It's not the blow to the stomach that makes him feel like he could puke.

Pete doesn't see it happen, but Edgar motions to his guard to drag Pete somewhere. When he was caught outside the House, someone put a burlap sack over his head before he was taken to wherever here is. He thinks it's a dungeon of some sort, because there's no lights anywhere except for the smallest flickering candles in little alcoves on the wall, but these walls appear to be little more than dirt. It must be a dungeon. It smells bad enough to be one.