Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Marco: Safe Haven
Going by the little silver clock on Evander’s wall, the Emperor’s been waiting for me for an hour now. Unless, with some luck, he’s gone back to his palace.
I’ve never disappointed him, not once in five years. I’m not sure what he’ll do about it. All I do know is my heart’s beating faster with each tick of that clock, and Evander’s cheap potato vodka, which tastes like shit, has yet to kick in.
At least this is a safe place to hide out, Evander being one of the two people in this entire city I’d ever trust. In all my years held captive in Victora, he’s never let me down.
A clink sounds as the bottle taps against my small glass, my refill just as unsteady as the first.
“Evander?” I let it hover over a second glass.
He eyes the clock, looking more annoyed than the last time I asked. Then twice as furious again when his ointment goes flying across the floor, Cas squirming away from him for the tenth time.
“Did you want gangrene?” Evander finally snaps.
“The fuck do you know about gangrene?” Cas throws back.
Evander drags all five fingers down his face, eyes sealed tight as if he could wish Cas away. “Did you actually just ask me that?”
“A real doctor would never have any part in this—”
“Shut your mouth, Caspian.”
He doesn’t. He leaves it hanging open, but he still follows my sharp command, more or less, by not saying anything else.
“Show some respect. You give Evander one more second of trouble, you’ll have me to answer to in training tomorrow.”
His curled lip is begging for a smack.
Thankfully, for both of us, he soon drops his head and lets a childish huff speak everything he needs to learn to not say.
It’s met with Evander’s louder sigh, the click of the lid off the ointment, then Cas’s hiss as Evander applies the stinking liquid to his cut knee.
Evander does it a hell of a lot more gently than I would have. Quickly too, then announces, “You’re done.”
It’s hard to tell who’s more relieved, Cas sloughing off the bench like hot butter left in the sun, Evander’s every movement like he’s stabbing someone.
There’s a three-second crystallization of time where the two hold their opposing stances, then the door slams behind Cas.
“And don’t slam the door!” I shout after him.
Little shit.
“Pour it.” Evander slides his glass toward the bottle, then glares at the door. “All beauty, no brains, that one.”
“He seems alright.” A warm tickle from the first shot finally eases my arm a little as I fill Evander’s glass to the brim. “Works hard, doesn’t talk back. Except when he’s around you.”
“He’s been a thorn in my side from the second he arrived.
” He lifts the drink to his lips, then rips it away again, spilling a few drops across the stainless-steel bench.
“Do you know, his first morning here, he was in and out every five minutes demanding to see Robin? Kept trying to give me advice on how to deal with his possible concussion.” The drink goes back, almost makes it into his mouth this time, then spills again.
“Can you imagine the arrogance of a man who, his first day in the dungeon, is telling the only doctor he has access to how to do his job?”
My stomach’s tightened with his comments, so I top my own drink up. “Close with Robin, is he?”
“Oh yes. Bunking together. Eating together. Thick as thieves, by the looks of it.”
The drink goes down fast, and finally Evander gets to taking a sip of his.
Cas, with his stupid handsome grin and green eyes. Wild hair and laugh lines in all the right places. I can’t help but ask, “You think he’s good-looking?”
Evander’s left eyebrow rises sharply. “Would you have picked him if he wasn’t?”
“No, but… compared to the other men. They’re all…” I’m unscrewing the lid again before I even realize it. “Do you think he stands out? Amongst them?”
Evander settles cool eyes on the door. “I’d be all over him like a swarm of butcher ants on a pot of honey.” His glass tips up, and he swallows hard against the foul taste. “If he wasn’t such a wanker.”
I laugh, but he hasn’t helped. I’m not sure Robin’s convinced he’s a wanker. And I’m not sure I am either. But apparently they’re sharing a room, and that’s a hundred possible complications I don’t need right now.
The alcohol’s finally doing its thing, so that must be why, over the top of my unwelcome visions of Cas and Robin in their room together, I blurt out, “Do you think he’s better looking than—”
“Robin!” Evander shouts at the same time. Then, with a fast glance at me, “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Hmm? Nothing.”
“Is he better looking than who?”
The handle turns, the door swings open, and there he is.
Robin, like a god. He’s cooled down now, waiting until last in line for his physical.
His skin is smooth and touchable, fresh from the exercise, though a stain of pink’s coming into his bruised cheeks just now.
He’s wrestled his mussed hair back into place, but that same dark smudge of dirt highlights the hinge of his jaw from when I pushed his face down in the mud.
His eyes flash from friend to foe as quickly as he focuses on me.
“Hey, baby bird.”
I can virtually see him turning the situation over in his mind. Should I be here? Can he have Evander kick me out? Is there more training to be done?
But before he gets the chance to voice any of it, Evander gasps out an, “Oh!” Then actually cackles as he drops his glass back to the bench, letting it tap against mine. He leans over and whispers, “Caspian. But that’s just me.”
“You’re wrong about that,” I fling back, but he’s halfway across the room, pulling out bandages and whatnot.
Robin’s intelligent eyes follow him, knowing he’s missed something, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Which, thank goodness, it never will. I’ve been talking to Evander like this for years.
We both know it means exactly nothing when Robin and Cas and almost everyone else in this place will be dead in a few short months.
“On the table, Robin,” Evander instructs.
Unlike Cas, Robin does as he’s told, his arm muscles flexing and his short tunic riding up his thigh as he lifts himself.
“Open your shirt.”
I make myself look away, concentrating on filling those glasses again, the snap of the clasps on Robin’s top like two fingers physically attempting to swivel my eyeballs around.
I didn’t come here to ogle him, or to make him feel uncomfortable.
I’m just in hiding. Though there are roughly a thousand worse places to do that right about now.
“Let’s take a look at you.” Evander takes Robin’s hand and extends his arm, which pulls a wince from him. Evander slows the movement, turning his arm over to reveal a series of angry red lacerations beneath his biceps. “Marco…” he sighs out. “What are you doing to him?”
I busy myself watching the clear liquid rise to the top of Evander’s glass. “He needs to learn to climb a tree, doesn’t he?”
“Was the tree made of razor blades?”
“His fault he slipped.”
“I was nine feet up!” bursts out of Robin. “And you threw a rock at me!”
I can hardly help the way my bottom lip juts out. Might have stopped the shrug, though. “Do you imagine your opponent would hesitate to throw a rock at you in the pit?”
“I almost died!” he shouts.
“But you didn’t,” I counter, staying instructively calm. “And now, when it happens for real, you’ll have the muscle memory to help you.”
I can pretty much feel Evander’s eyes roll, but I’m still not looking.
Not at the pair of them, anyway. Evander’s little cache of glasses is glinting at me.
He has six, though I have no idea why, since I’m the only person he ever drinks with.
Maybe that’s why my little finger flicks out and grabs a third.
“And this one?” Evander asks, trailing his thumb beneath the long scarlet slash that runs along the defined curve of Robin’s left pec.
What I’d give to be his thumb right now.
“He’s gotta learn to block.”
Robin’s pretty head flicks sharply across to Evander. “He told me to have a stick fight with Andreas, then he pulled a knife on me as soon as I turned my back.”
“If your back was turned, then how did I get you in the chest?” I counter.
I pour him a drink while I await the answer that comes in a mess of, “Because you… But I… You were…” Then he shuts his lips completely when I hold the drink out for him. The tempestuous gray of his eyes darkens a full three shades.
“Marco,” Evander chides.
“Is it poisoned?” Robin quips, holding his gaze so intently on mine I could lick him. “Will one of them poison me during the game, and I need to learn how to hold my poison?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time, baby bird.”
The hard glint softens into surprise, curiosity. Then, taking the drink slowly, he turns back to Evander for confirmation.
“About two years back,” Evander narrates as he soaks a cloth in antiseptic. “Those two players hated each other to begin with. Thought they’d tear each other’s throats out long before they ever got onto the sand.”
He presses the cloth to the cuts beneath Robin’s arm, and Robin takes in a sharp breath, his ample chest swelling.
Evander talks over him. “Oliver paid a guard to smuggle in some deadly nightshade. He ground it up and put it in the jam the morning of his game.”
“Fuck,” Robin whispers over the top of his drink. Then he takes his first sip, and it’s like alcohol’s burning hot in my own chest. It’s a warm feeling, seeing him easy like that, even if he grimaces over the taste a second later. “Wouldn’t that have taken out the whole team?”
“It took a few of them out. Even Marco had some.”
Robin scans me, like the poison might be in me even now. “Evander figured it out fast. Had me chugging charcoal in no time.”
“What about the others?”
Evander presses a hand to Robin’s back to hold him steady when he brings the cloth to the knife wound. “A few died. I got to six others in time. But Pax was busy playing Deathball. I couldn’t get to him.”
A series of curses sail over Robin’s lips, and I’m not sure whether they’re directed at the pain of Evander’s treatment or at the grim story.
“Pax played well,” I fill in for Evander.
“He realized what had happened. He was covered in sweat, shaking head to toe, swaying on his feet. But he fought on with one purpose in mind. To kill. It didn’t matter by then whether he won the game, because he knew he wasn’t walking out of there alive either way. He was intent on revenge.”
“And did he get it?”
“Oh, he absolutely did,” Evander laughs out. “That went down as one of the bloodiest matches in Deathball history.”
“He fought like a man possessed,” I agree. “Like one of those infected out in the wastelands. It was pure bloodlust. Cruelest thing I ever witnessed, but well deserved.”
Evander takes up his drink, and if not for the topic of conversation, this would be the closest I’d felt to real camaraderie in a long time.
“He broke almost every bone in that man’s body.
He cut bits off him, smeared him all over that stadium.
But he was real careful. He kept him alive until the very end.
He killed him with the Deathball, alright.
But not with a merciful blow to the brain. ”
Evander raises his eyebrows as an end to the conversation, leaving Robin grasping. “How did he do it?”
The gruesome facts will likely scare him too much at this point, so I suggest only, “Use your imagination.”
“I am,” he insists. “I am using it. I can think of a dozen ways you might—”
“It was worse. Drink up, baby bird.”
A frown passes over his face as he reassesses the clear liquid. Then with a flooring flash of trust, he clinks his glass against mine and throws the vodka back. Evander and I follow suit.
That’s probably enough for me. Though it’s honestly tempting to keep going. To keep Robin here for a while.
But then, “What about this one?” asks Evander, lifting Robin’s chin with one long finger, pointing out the same new bruise I noticed this morning.
Robin glances at me, then away again.
“Yeah, what about that one?” I push him.
Eyes glazed, something hard coming into his cheeks, Robin cuts himself off from us. “I don’t remember. But it’s probably your fault one way or the other.”
“Right.” I push the empty glasses into a little group, avoiding Evander’s mental assessment of whatever’s going on here.
He only says, “It doesn’t need any treatment. Anything else I should be aware of?” His eyes drop to Robin’s lower half, covered with his half-open tunic.
Robin’s head lowers. “No.”
“No injuries at all?”
“Nothing.”
“Because Marco will want to know.”
I could kill him.
If not for the fact that pulled a small smile back over those handsome lips. “I’m really fine. Can I go now?”
“You can. You must be desperate for a shower. Sorry you had to wait until last.” Evander swipes up a bottle from his medicine shelf while Robin slides off the table.
“Wait five minutes before you wash to give the antiseptic time to work.” He hands over the small container. “Then put some more on before bed.”
“Thank you.” Robin accepts it with a nod, then leaves without another word.
I only realize I’m still staring at the closed door half a minute later when Evander interrupts me. “That’s a dangerous game, even for you, Marco.”
“Haven’t you heard?” I manage a wry smile, even if I feel like he’s just punched me in the gut. “I fuck all the players.”
“Not the ones you care about, you don’t.”
“I don’t care about him. He’s nobody.”
“A nobody you invite to drink with us on his second day here?” Stupid clever Evander.
“That’s right.”
“A nobody who’s for some reason more beaten up than all the other players?”
“Right again.” A beautiful nobody from my homeland. The one person I’ve met in half a decade who I want to wrap and keep safe, while it’s my sole purpose and means of survival in this life to offer him up to the wolves of this city on a platter. “He’s nothing.”
“Then maybe you’d be wiser to keep your distance.”
“I’ll consider that.” This conversation has well and truly run its course. I love Evander, but Atrea is sacred. It’s not a word I’ll share with him or anyone else in this place, and I can’t explain myself any other way.
Shoving off the bench, I grab the door handle and twist it. But I can’t help flinging a parting shot over my shoulder. “I’ll tell Cas you said hi.”
“Motherfucker!” It takes all my quick Deathball-captain reflexes to dodge the bloody cloth that comes flying for my head. It was worth it for the laugh that rips out of him. “Tell him he’s a pain in my ass. Just like you.”