Capítulo 61: .
The next week, Jylan was officially given a letter. It was his last letter at the palace because he was fired. It wasn't a new concept to him - but the folded envelope, along with a note from Sebastian that read, in a single line, "Sorry, I couldn't stop them.", still gave him a terrible note of sadness. His heart felt like it was crumbling in his chest, breaking into a million irreparable pieces. Even if he did like the prince, he shouldn't have ever voiced that or walked into that forbidden library no matter how curious he was. Sighing, trying not to cry, Jylan took the envelope in his hand and got up.
When the palace guard asked why Jylan was leaving in the middle of the day, he finally cracked and broke down, to the dismay of the guard, who hurriedly offered words of condolences and ushered him out the palace gates.
Jylan then slowly trudged away, his shoes kicking up small clouds of dirt behind him. It was all his fault, so he didn't even have anything to cry about. All the way through, he was useless, just like he had been back then. Tilting his head up to the sky, Jylan looked at the clouds wandering by. They certainly looked happier than he was.
Jylan, six years old, was cold and shivering in the middle of winter. He was wearing tattered brown rags, not those of a peasant or even a slave, but worse. He was trapped in a steel cage, where the cold iron floor numbed his feet. There was a rotten smell in the air, and all around him were even more metal cages, all inside a large warehouse. Jylan looked up as the bars of his cage were rattled, and the slave trader appeared in front of his face. Yellow, dirty teeth and wrinkled skin glared at him through a hunched back, holding a wickedly curved dagger. Jylan, terrified, tried to move away, but he realized he couldn't move his body. The trader grabbed him roughly by the wrist, which was so thin Jylan could have circled his whole arm with two fingers, and dragged him up, not caring about how Jyaln's knees scraped painfully as he scrambled up. "Don't try anything funny." The trader warned in a rough voice, and Jylan closed his eyes.
Someone save me.
I don't care who it is.
Jylan opened his eyes quickly again, as he was brought down the winding path, he realized he wasn't the only one condemned to this path, although he had known it internally in his heart. The path was surrounded by many other metal cages, some newer and some rusty with age, and many other slaves that looked at him, gaunt with hunger and exhaustion, and he suddenly became even more terrified than he already was, if that was possible. His hand started trembling.
"P-please don't kill me." Jylan stammered, and the trader didn't reply. Jylan tried to stop, but nails were dug into his skin and he was forcefully dragged further down the path. Finally, they stopped as a small shack came into view. Inside was a gray-headed butler, wearing a gray suit that contrasted greatly with the shabby interior of the shack.
"This is the… thing?" The butler asked disdainfully, in an elegant, clipped accent, and Jylan wilted under his stare. "Yessir. His parents abandoned the bloke to us a few years after he was born, said he'd do anything, so we paid them a pretty sum and that was all it took." The trader said, yanking Jylan's wrist forward and taking his knife to make a clean cut through the slave mark on his wrist. Jylan silently watched as pain streaked across his skin in a dark red band, a few drops of crimson leaking out. The trader took a large pouch of money from the butler, who Jylan saw made an utmost effort not to come in contact with even a single finger of the grubby trader, who didn't move the knife off his wrist.
"Now, you have to be good, or you'll have a world of trouble in front of you." The trader said, and Jylan nodded hurriedly. The trader let go, and the Butler spared one final glance at Jylan, who was dirty, shivering, and barely up to the butler's waist, and turned around.
"Chop chop. You're going to work at the royal palace, boy."
And now, he had lost that place, and perhaps the only person that cared about him. Jylan stopped walking and slightly rolled up his sleeve to inspect the long, thin scar that stood out on his wrist.
"I'll be back."
Jylan soon found his way back into the cottage. It was a bit bigger now, and a bit more developed - with new roof tiles in some places and a new window in a corner. It now looked sort of mismatched, since different parts were older and newer, but Jylan still liked looking at it. He opened the door to be greeted by the wolf, who was now significantly bigger - fully grown, in fact, with a beautiful white mane and sharp, slitted yellow eyes. "Not right now, Ivory. I had a bad day today, and I might not be able to get you treats again." Jylan informed the wolf, who didn't seem to listen and instead only rubbed against his knees. Jylan thought for a minute, then said,
"Yes, we might need to do some things."
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