Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Marco: Captain Marco Verus
Cas’s shouts rip down the hallway. Evander’s back slams into the wall with a visceral crunch. “Get him down, Marco!”
“Get your fucking hands off me!” Cas yells. He takes a swing at me, but he’s wrecked and ragged, and I dodge it easily. I strike him in the stomach, once, just to slow him down, then wrench his good arm behind his back, shoving his chest against the operating table.
He screams when his burned arm hits the cold metal.
“Hurry up!” I grit at Evander.
It’s not his fault he’s taking so long; Cas knocked the sedative out of his hand when he hit him.
“Marco!” a guard calls from the door.
“Get the fuck out!” I slam Cas’s head to the table, then kick a leg back to shut the door.
Evander’s got a fresh syringe. He takes hold of Cas’s hand, twisted hard behind his back, then jabs the sharp point into his vein.
“Don’t you put that shit in me!” Cas shouts.
Evander, though he’s breathing hard from the fight, keeps his bedside manner as professional as he can. “It’s for your own good, Caspian.”
“Motherfucker,” Cas mutters as the drugs race to his brain. “I fucking hate you, you fucking bastard. Fucking Doctor fucking Death… fucking… prick…”
His body begins to go limp, his insults fall to a broken slur. He fights it, and it takes Evander’s help to hold him down through the final burst of protest, but eventually, we get him out and on the table.
Evander’s head drops, arms bracing against the table, and the sigh he lets out is soul deep. “‘Doctor Death.’ Did you hear that?”
Evander’s the one good guy in this whole godforsaken place, and this is what he deals with daily.
It’s mostly trauma, and he understands that as well as anyone.
Men might show it in not wanting an injection, like Cas.
They might start throwing punches for the sake of it.
They might go so catatonic you could operate without anesthesia.
You just never can tell. The only thing that’s for certain is what a guy does after his first game shouldn’t be held against him. Nor should it be taken to heart.
I adjust to a similar stance opposite him. “You had to do it. He’d never have let you clean that wound properly if he were awake.”
The smallest crease at the corner of his mouth says he knows that, it’s nice to hear it, but it doesn’t make a lick of difference. Simultaneously, his eyes scan Cas’s skin, red-raw and ripped from the burn, dirt and brown sand nestled deep in the peeling flesh. “What a mess.”
“If it interferes with his next game—”
“He’ll die. I know that, Marco.”
I know he knows. But I felt the need to say it anyway. I always do. It’s all either of us can do for these men. I get them ready to be torn apart, he stitches them back together afterwards—gives them a chance at surviving the next time they’re thrown in the grinder.
These men—all of us—we’re almost solely held together by the stitches Evander’s put into us over the years. None more so than me.
“I’m sorry.”
His head tilts back, the gleam of melancholy humor that’s never far away twinkling in the back of his deep brown eyes. “He’s a pussycat compared to you when you first came in.”
I chuckle, forever embarrassed about that, my eyes running irresistibly to the scar above his left eyebrow. Only the two of us know it came from a bedpan I almost lodged permanently in his head after the first game.
He catches the glance. “You’ve already apologized for that one. About a thousand times.”
“But still—”
“I know that too, Marco,” he says, turning away to prepare for Cas’s operation. “I forgave you a long time ago. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to strip the flesh from this man’s arm.”
I suppress a shudder when the little silver bowl taps down, awaiting Cas’s broken and discarded skin. “Are you sure I can’t do anything to help?”
“You’ve already done everything you can. And when he wakes, he’ll be too high to crack a shit about anything. I’ll keep him that way until this is healed.” He couples the comment with a smile. It is a nice notion. How we’d all love to be given drugs for the pain.
But drugs cloud your mind and your movements. “He needs to be able to train.”
Evander doesn’t look up as he grabs a bottle of saline solution. “He needs to heal.”
“Evander…”
“Later. We’ll talk about it later.” His wall goes up, and he gets to work on Cas.
I can’t imagine what it’s like for him. He gets little to no thanks. Most of the men hate him. But I know, when I’m made free, when I walk out of Victora alive, it will be entirely because of his skill and patience. “You’re a good man, Evander.”
He gives me one of those rare, fleeting moments of vulnerability that are so foreign to this city. A flash of the eyes and a slanted lift of the lips. “It’s nice to be told that on occasion.”
“If you need me, send for me. I’ll be home all night.”
He deepens his smile into wry. “Go now. I’ve got him.”
I don’t want to. But I need to. I have to let him work, and I have to check on the men.
I came straight over here from the game, and I haven’t set eyes on them yet. They’ll be a mess from today, each of them in their own way.
I give Evander a nod goodbye and turn for the door.
There’s no training today. Not in person anyway.
The men have been encouraged to spend a few hours in the gym to burn off whatever grief and anxiety they can.
I find some of them there, do some work with them, try to help them process it as casually as I can.
Especially the ones who were closest to Andreas.
But those are the new men. The more seasoned players, like Jason, Max, and René, turned hateful or cold a long time ago.
That’s what makes them champions. Being dead inside, not caring who dies or how.
They’re in the dining hall, accompanied by those more recent drafts who are either trying to stay in denial or born killers.
I make my time short with them.
A few hours after leaving Cas and Evander, the only person I haven’t seen is Robin.
Some small, cowardly part of me would like to keep it that way.
What he did to me yesterday…
I want him. I want him so badly.
I want him back, and I want him inside me.
He hates me.
But his anger was like a drug.
I can’t even explain it. They’re always angry at me. They always hate me. But Robin’s anger came laced with… more. Like it mattered how I’d treated him. Beyond the reprehensible way I held him underwater, beyond the fact that I almost killed him.
It’s like he expects better from me. Like he has some right to it. Like he senses, somehow, how deep my feelings run.
But everything, all these feelings, can’t matter.
I need to push them down, be captain.
Robin is friends with Cas. I saw the way he crumpled when Cas went down today. I saw it, real and brutal.
Maybe they even have something more than friendship.
It makes me sick to think of them that way.
But he and I are nothing to each other, nor will we ever be, so what does it matter if he finds someone else here for the few days or weeks he has left? He should have some comfort.
And I’m still his captain, so I’ll offer what little I can.
I’ve checked everywhere but his bedchamber, and on approach, the flickering light down the dark corridor reveals his presence in advance.
It’s so much worse to do it here. In a group, I could have addressed them all. Pretended he was just another one of them.
Like you did today in the box when you could barely keep your hands off him?
I need to make it fast, so I quicken my pace, round the corner, and find him laid out long on the bottom bunk, arms stretched behind his head, staring at nothing.
I wonder how many hours he’s spent like that, reliving the mess of this morning.
“Robin?”
His head turns sharply, but rather than the flaming eyes and curses I’m expecting, his lips part, taking in a fast breath, then he’s bolt upright, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. He doesn’t get up, only stares at me from those tempestuous eyes, which I imagine barely hint at the storm within.
“Cas will be okay,” I begin. “Sorry we had to send you away. He’s sedated now. Evander’s fixing his arm.”
He gives me a tight nod, his fingers threading together.
“I was…” What am I even supposed to say?
This is the man who, only yesterday, slammed me against the wall and used me like a plaything. Who made me come harder than I ever have in my entire life. And now I’m supposed to be the one in charge?
He glances down at the spot on the bed next to him, his head dropping as if he’s inviting me to sit. It’s furtive, fast.
Surely he doesn’t want me near him.
“I’m talking to all the men,” I explain. “To see how they’re holding up. It wasn’t a small thing—”
“Marco.” It’s a quiet word, and his gaze meets mine head on. It speaks depths I can’t fathom.
Even though it’s probably the last thing he wants right now, I make my way over to him and settle onto the bed, one knee up so I can face him.
He turns toward me hastily, our legs touching, his fingers knit together.
I want to tell him he can talk to me. I want to tell him I’m the one person he can trust in this place. I want to tell him I’m sorry for what I did.
But before I can figure a way to say any of that, he cuts me off with one word: “Verus.”
It’s like he reached inside me and stopped my heart with one blow. It’s my name. Why shouldn’t he know my name? But it’s the way he said it. He said it like he knows it. Like I should know he knows it.
The air turns thick, time and the candlelight and the dust in the atmosphere, all of it stilling as he reaches a shaking hand to my cheek, his face, his eyes hazy, so close.
“Marco Verus. Hijo de Tomás y Lydia. Hermano de Lucas. ?Vienes de la isla del sol y el mar?” Marco Verus. Son of Thomas and Lydia. Brother of Lucas. Do you come from the land of the sun and the sea?
I slam my hand over his lips, throw him down on the bed, scrambling on top of him. “Shut your mouth. Shut your fucking mouth.” My hands are shaking, my voice ravaged and broken.
He knows. He knows.
His hand snakes around my neck, pulling me down, chest to chest, my fingers clasped over his lips, the only separation between us as my forehead drops to his.
Home.
I’m home.
“Get the fuck away from me,” I hiss.
His other arm glides across my shoulder blades, holding me fast to him.
Atrea.
Home.
Full demolition takes me from the bottom of my soul, and the lot collapses into him.
Robin, strong and glorious.
Robin, fierce and in control.
How I’d kill to lose control. To hand it all over to him.
But even as my fingertips sink into his chest, even as I breathe his breaths and feel the soul of both of us beating in his strong heart, I’m whispering, “You can’t tell. You can’t ever tell them.”
He shakes his head, giving me the promise I need to unclasp, to slowly release his lips. He grabs me at the wrist before I can pull away, takes my hand, brings it to his cheek.
The touch of him, holy like the land I’ve dreamed of every day since they took me.
I’m home.
His head turns, and Robin’s precious lips touch my palm, kissing the scar the very rocks of our homeland painted into my flesh, as earnest and impassioned a kiss as ever there was.
A kiss I want to take with me, that I want to wear like armor all the days of my life.
“Robin—”
“What the fuck is this?”
The words cut through me like a hot blade in the gut.
Jason, standing in the doorway, his face a picture of fury and disgust, lost and appalled. His eyes devour every inch of us—my thighs wrapped around Robin’s, his arm entangling me, this tender moment—the tenderest I’ve had in years—and now he’s seen it, and he’s taken it from me.
I’m off the bed. I barely register the way Jason turns to me, the look of defiance before I smash his back against the wall, the thud of his head against the stone, vicious and sickening, ramming my forearm over his throat so he’s pinned, unable to speak.
“If you say one fucking word, I will kill you.”
His lips break into a snarl, eyes twitching, a mask of pure hatred.
I smash my arm into him, taking his air. “Not a fucking word, do you understand?”
He can’t breathe. I could kill him so easily, right now.
Maybe I should.
Tears rise into his eyes, and he tries to fight me off, but I’ve already bested him. I watch him try to convulse, the internal fight—the desperation to suck air, my refusal to let him.
“Marco.”
Robin’s voice, like a feather on the back of my neck.
I spin away, and Jason doubles over, his great heaving breaths too loud in the tight space.
This weakness. This weakness in me that will get us all killed.
I slam a hand around Jason’s throat and shove him back into the wall. “Your word.”
“I won’t tell,” he rasps out, his glare a dagger thrown in Robin’s direction.
With the grasp of his jaw, so tight it will probably bruise, I wrench his eyes back to mine. “One word, and I will come in here at night, and I will slit your throat. Do you understand me?”
Dark, venomous green eyes meet mine. “Fine. If he’s the one you want, have him.”
The voicing of his jealousy sends me spiraling. The danger to Robin.
No one was supposed to know.
My hand comes away slowly, and I look to the floor. I don’t want to see his reproach; I owe him nothing. And I’m afraid I’ll end him if he stays another second.
Maybe he knows that too, because he doesn’t even pause, the slow sound of his footsteps echoing up the corridor and away from us.
A silence so thick it could drown us both engulfs the room.
Myriad thoughts race through my mind, pressing in on all sides. Jason, the threat, Cas, escape, death and death and death, the Emperor, if the sponsors find out, the crowds, the sand, the blood and more blood, and at the end of it all, the Deathball, waiting for me.
Home.
Atrea.
Robin.
My knees hit the floor hard, but I don’t feel it. Kneeling down at his bedside, all the world is the press of his fingers to my lips as I kiss them, once and feverishly.
“I’ll send for you tonight.”
I don’t hear his reply; the world, the tick of time, life itself ebbs away, taking all sense and reason with it as I strike down the hall away from him.
Everything, all of it, but the touch of Robin to my lips.
Atrea.
Robin.