Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Marco: All the Breath I Can't Take
“Marco Verus. Hijo de Tomás y Lydia. Hermano de Lucas.”
It’s been years since I’ve heard those names spoken aloud. My parents. My brother. No longer the fantasy I keep locked away in the cage of my heart, protected from this vile place.
He brought them out into the open. He knows them. He knows me.
For the millionth time, I resolve to stop pacing, to sit and wait patiently. I’ve given Maria strict instructions to stay in her quarters overnight, and sent the guards for Robin. They’re to bring him after lights out, when the other men are sleeping.
It doesn’t look good, not for either of us. But it’s the only way.
It’s not that I’m banned from having anyone here. But the sponsors like me to look available—an obtainable object of desire—and the Emperor likes me to be his lapdog.
Public favor is almost everything here, outdone only by private favor.
None of that gels with me taking teammates home.
There’s a clank of chains by the door, and I almost jump out of my skin rushing to open it. All three faces display how taken aback they are when I rip the thing open before they’ve even knocked.
One of the guards lowers his head too slowly to hide his smirk.
That’s fine. Let him think we’re fucking. Let him think Robin’s no more than a late-night urge. So long as he doesn’t tell anyone important about it, I’ll cope.
I snatch the key to Robin’s restraints, passing some money over to the guards in exchange.
Robin’s silent as I pull at his restraints to lead him in. He’s clearly proven himself less of a threat to them, as his wrists are shackled in front this time, though they’re still tightly attached to that neck collar by a long and thick chain.
As soon as I lock the door behind us, I turn to him, working the wrist cuffs first. “Did they hurt you?”
“No.” His eyes follow the fast movements of my fingers—unlocking the cuffs, threading the chain out of them, up through the link attached to his collar. He leans his head back to give me better access, and I hate how sexual the movement is.
He doesn’t want me like that, ever again. He told me yesterday.
And I’m still smarting from that gut punch.
‘Remember this moment the next time your emperor is fucking you.’
Nausea shakes me as I pull the bronze chain loose, letting it slink to the floor. Sickness and shame.
It’s a thousand times worse today than it even was when he said it.
He knows who I am. He knows how I’ve fallen. The governor’s son, next in line to guide Atrea, now nothing but a whore—a hole for the highest bidder.
Survival.
He’s rubbing his wrists as I reach around his neck to unlatch the collar. Why does he let me do this? He could do it himself now I’ve unchained him.
I can’t stand to look into his eyes, but I feel them on me, searching for connection. I focus on the glinting metal tight across his throat.
‘Remember this moment the next time your emperor is fucking you.’
“Thank you for coming.” It’s a stupid thing to say. He had no choice. “This way.”
I lead him through to the lounge. Some wine in a decanter on the table, some ridiculous food. I don’t know what I was thinking. This isn’t a friendly meeting, some chit-chat to pass the time. This is my entire world held in the palm of a man who’s ashamed to even know me.
I take my place on the far side of the room, indicating the couch, but he stands and waits.
Where do I start something like this? My senses are drowning in the beating of my heart, the racing of my pulse, and I can barely see straight, even as I stare hard at the cream fabric rather than look at him.
“Marco?” he asks softly. “Marco Verus?”
When I dare to look, his face is as soft as his words, and my own spill out of me. “I am Marco Verus of Atrea, son of Lydia and Tomás, brother of Lucas.”
By the time I’ve finished the sentence, his wide eyes show his full alarm at the confirmation, but I speak on irresistibly. “I didn’t abandon them. I never would have left them, not for all the world.”
“They know that. Marco, they know.”
He drops to the couch, and I lunge forward, sinking to his side, desperate for more, holding myself back from taking his hands. “You know them? Robin, tell me, are they— You— Your people— Are you…” My voice fails as I try to stutter out the million questions I have for him.
He places a hand on the couch, so close to mine it’s almost as though he would consider touching me again. I crave it, ache for him, especially when the corner of his mouth pulls into a sad, soft, almost-smile.
Just for a second, it’s like yesterday never happened. As though all those days of Deathball training never came between us. For the first time in too long, I feel like I’m not the prisoner they’ve made me. I’m just a man, talking to another man. On our own terms.
‘Remember this moment the next time your emperor is fucking you.’
My head drops, driven by the weight of his words.
“They knew.” His voice comes firm, his face close to mine. “Tomás was… he was a wonderful leader. He never stopped looking for you.”
The word lodges in my heart. “Was?”
A thousand emotions play over Robin’s face, too fast for me to capture any of them long enough to understand.
The paling of his lips, the aversion of his eyes, the twitch in his cheek.
Finally, that same slant of a smile, accompanied by the twist of his fingers.
“It was the last I knew of him. Before I was taken.”
“You were taken…” I repeat, turning the thought over slowly, like there might be blood on the other side of it. “From where?” His brow draws tight in response. “Please tell me it was the mainland, like me. Please tell me…” I can’t voice more than that. I can’t even stand to say it.
Robin’s eyes haze over then fall closed. “I was taken from Atrea.”
“No.” Before the horror of the idea can fully form, I’m halfway across the room, desperate to get away from it. Pressing the back of my trembling hand to my lips, I manage only, “They’ve taken it?”
“They’ve…” His head stays low. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they did after I was taken. I… I didn’t last long. Not long enough.”
His cheeks flush, some combination of shame and anger that I know too well. I’ve felt the same thing a thousand times over. I’ve played the scenario out a billion ways in my head. What if they found it while I was here? Trapped and useless, so far away I’m not even sure I could find my way back.
The clawing, eviscerating shame of it.
“Robin, tell me…” My insides curl as I try to prepare myself to ask, to be told, to hear it. The air comes thin, my voice weaker than I’ve ever heard it. “Do you know my family? Do they live?”
He raises his eyes to me, and something breaks inside. Some depth of unspoken sorrow strikes out of the ashen depths of his gaze, ripping into my heart, taking my every hope in bloody hands and pulling it to pieces.
“They live,” he says.
They live.
Like a punch in the chest, the air’s knocked out of me. The loss—I was so sure.
Tears sting my eyes, threatening to escape. I turn away from him, wiping the moisture away with the back of my hand, the relief so overpowering it makes me weak.
They live.
“Robin.” This man, taken from our home. This man, his pain, his family—what they must have done to them. I’m at his side again, pouring wine stupidly, because I don’t know what else to do. “Who are your people? Where are you from? Do… do your family—”
“I’m not sure. It’s just me and my sister. She’s only thirteen. She’s… she’s everything.” His hands wrap around the glass absentmindedly.
“Then they did not take her?”
His gaze meets mine, broken rocks, the cliffs of home. “I told her to hide. We had a place beneath the floorboards—”
My fingers press against his lips, silencing him. “Do not speak your secrets. Not even here.”
A specter of shock is written in the lines that cloud his forehead, and I realize what I’ve done, the intimacy of the action. I recoil in the instant, but he snatches my wrist, brings it to his heart.
I feel so sick.
“If they have found it,” I speak on, eyes on the carpet, “that’s one thing. If they hear us, they need know none of our secrets.”
“Can they hear us?” he whispers.
I shake my head. “It’s smarter not to risk it. To keep your secrets close. I’ve never told…” My voice cracks on the words, and he has hold of my arm now, and I can’t turn away to hide the tears that come fast into my eyes.
His wine glass touches down on the table. His warm hand slides over my jaw, up my cheek, forcing me to look at him. “All this time?”
I only nod; I can’t speak.
His grip tightens, fingers edging into my hair, treacherous shocks of pleasure, safety, vibrating through my every nerve. “Marco Verus…” He looks deep into my eyes, as though he can see straight into my heart. “You’ve been so alone.”
Everything shatters. Every brick in the wall I’ve spent five long years building breaks, crashing down, dust and broken edges, rocky and brittle and sharp, and at the center of it, weak and drowning, exposed and flayed and grasping, nothing.
I’m nothing. And he’s seen right through me. “Don’t touch me.”
I try to pull away, but I’m too sick, too dizzy.
“Marco.” He pulls my hand over his shoulder, and I close it on his beautiful hair.
And I fucking hate him so much.
“Fuck off.”
But I can’t take it away. I grasp the sandy locks in my hand, and he’s home, and I hate him for it.
‘Remember this moment the next time your emperor is fucking you.’
Everything in me shrinks from him, my arms pulling close into my chest, but he takes them, his strength so much greater than mine tonight. He forces them around his waist, locking his arms around me. “I didn’t know.”
He says it with an earnest strength that feels too dependable. Only I know better. “Would it have changed anything?”