Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
Robin: Twist of the Knife
The guards shove me through the entrance to the dungeon, the iron door slamming shut behind me. The common room stretches empty. Even with the dim light spilling in from the corridor, the room is almost pitch black.
Thank fuck. Everyone’s still asleep.
I can’t let them see me like this—wild, gutted, raw, still smelling like him. Still feeling his hands on me, his mouth, the way he said my name in the dark. The way he looked at me this morning, like I was nothing to him.
My feet carry me across the stone floor without thought. Back and forth, wall to wall, like a caged animal. The anger builds with each step, hot and consuming, nowhere to go but inward. I yank at my hair, pulling until my scalp screams, but it’s not enough. Nothing’s enough to drown out his voice.
‘Him. Always him. I’ll always choose him.’
I should have known. Should have seen it coming the moment we kissed in the training room, his arms lying to me when they wrapped around me so tightly it seemed like he never wanted to let me go.
But Marco was never capable of that.
Five years of this place have carved Marco hollow.
Five years of killing in the arena, of surviving whatever the Emperor does to him, of pretending he doesn’t bleed the same red as everyone else.
Last night, when his hands shook against my skin and he whispered my name like a prayer, I thought I’d found the man underneath the weapon.
I thought I’d cracked through all that scar tissue to something real.
But is there anything real left? Marco has become a machine. He learned how to shut it off—all of it. The fear, the pain, the hope. Everything that makes losing unbearable. Everything that makes living possible.
Yet machines don’t feel. They don’t ache. They don’t hold you like you’re the only thing keeping them tethered to earth, then wake up and look through you like you’re already dead.
My nails dig crescents into my palms.
“What’s the matter? Been kicked out already?”
I spin around. Jason leans against the corridor entrance, arms crossed, that familiar smirk twisting his mouth. How long has he been standing there, watching me fall apart?
My rage redirects, finds a target. I cross the room in three strides and grab his shirt, slamming him back against the stone wall. “Don’t fucking start. I’m not in the fucking mood for you right now.”
Jason shoves me off, stumbling but keeping his balance. “I warned you to stay away from him. You should have listened to me.”
“This has nothing to do with Marco.” The lie tastes bitter.
Jason’s laugh echoes off the walls. “When you’ve been here as long as I have, you notice everything.” His eyes glitter with malice. “Including when pretty boys with big egos get summoned to villas in the night like whores.”
Heat shoots to my face. I lunge for him again, but he sidesteps.
“It was the same with me, you know.”
I can’t help it. I freeze, fists still raised.
“Oh yes.” Jason circles me slowly, scenting wounded prey. “Marco took a shine to me from the beginning. Extra training sessions where we’d work up quite the sweat.” His voice drops, intimate. “Smuggling me out of here to his villa for fancy dinners and hours and hours of sex. Sound familiar?”
“Shut up.” My voice falters, and I want to die. “I don’t care what happened between you.”
“He got bored of me, of course. He always does—that’s Marco’s specialty.
He’ll make you feel like you’re the only person who’s ever touched him, like you’re saving him from this place.
Then one morning you wake up and it’s over.
No explanation. Though I lasted a lot longer than some of the guys I’ve watched him toy with over the last few years.
” Jason’s smile turns vicious. “You didn’t even make it a week. ”
My heart is pumping so fast I can barely breathe. My next words explode out of me. “I don’t fucking care. You’re pathetic. You need to get the fuck over Marco.”
Jason’s face darkens. “Over him?” He steps closer, voice dropping to a snarl. “You think I’m over here pining for him like a lovesick puppy?”
He swings. I duck, drive my shoulder into his stomach, and we go down hard on the stone floor. Jason’s elbow catches my ribs, knocking the air from my lungs. I roll, trying to pin him, but he’s stronger than he looks.
“You little shit!” Jason gasps, bucking me off. “You need to learn your place.”
His fist connects with my jaw, and I taste blood, copper and salt flooding my mouth. The sound of our struggle echoes through the common room—flesh hitting flesh, ragged breathing, the scrape of bodies against stone.
“Stop, or I’ll press the alarm for the guards.”
The voice cuts through our struggle. Cas.
Jason freezes above me, his fist still raised. Blood drips from my split lip onto the stone floor.
“You’ll see,” Jason whispers, his face inches from mine. His breath is hot and sour. “If you survive long enough, you’ll get to watch him pick the next one, and you’ll see.”
I shove him off me and scramble to my feet, chest heaving. Jason straightens his shirt, that twisted smile still playing at his mouth.
Cas stands by the corridor entrance, his burned arm held awkwardly in a sling. With his good arm, he shoves me toward our cell.
“Well, I hope you’ve slept, because it’s lights in ten minutes.”
“Did we wake you up?”
“Nah. Got moved out of Evander’s room to our cell late last night.” Cas winces as we walk. “Haven’t slept a wink since. The pain won’t let me.”
His voice is steady, but I catch something underneath it. Something that has nothing to do with his burned arm.
“How much does it hurt?”
Cas shrugs with his good shoulder. “Like someone held my arm over a bonfire. Which they basically did.” His voice is matter-of-fact, but I catch the tremor underneath.
“It’s not just the arm, though,” he says quietly.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see…” He stops walking, his good hand flexing at his side.
“I hear that sound. The Deathball hitting his skull. Over and over.”
I don’t know what to say to that. There’s nothing to say.
“And… I keep thinking about how he looked right before—” Cas’s voice cracks slightly. “Andreas. He was scared. Really fucking scared. And I just… I kept going.”
“You had to.”
“Did I?” He looks at me then, his eyes hollow. “After the first blow, he was done. But I kept hitting him. I couldn’t stop.”
“Listen, you did what you had to do,” I say. “Don’t think about all that right now. You were incredible out there. The way you took Andreas down—that was smart.”
“Smart.” Cas barks a laugh. “Is that what we’re calling murder now?”
We reach our cell, and Cas sinks onto his bunk with a suppressed groan. The small space feels tiny after the villa, after silk sheets and wine and hands that knew exactly how to touch me.
“Anyway, what the fuck were you doing fighting Jason in the dark?” Cas’s voice snaps me back to the present. “You need to be careful not to die before your match.”
I groan and sink onto the floor, resting my head against the cold stone wall. “I’ve fucked up, Cas.”
“You mean you’ve fucked Marco.” His voice is deadpan, but he’s not truly amused.
I bury my face in my knees. “Twice now,” I mumble into the fabric.
Cas groans and slides down to sit on the floor beside me. “I told you it was a bad idea. What happened?”
“What happened is that he’s a fucking psychopath.”
He snorts. “I know that. And you must have known that beforehand. He’s been here for five years. Five years, Robin.”
“I know! I know, okay? It was a stupid idea. I never meant to get so wrapped up in all this. In him.”
Cas studies me in the dim light, his good hand drumming against his knee. He searches my face for a long moment, then nods. “Okay,” he whispers.
The simple acceptance in his voice breaks something loose inside me.
I let my head fall onto his good shoulder, suddenly desperate for comfort, for someone who doesn’t want anything from me except to keep me alive.
The cotton of his shirt is rough against my cheek, smelling of sweat and the antiseptic from Evander’s medical bay.
Cas shifts, trying to readjust his burned arm, and a sharp intake of breath hisses through his teeth.
“Doctor Death said I can’t train for a week, at least. I told him to fuck off.”
I straighten up. “Don’t be a fool. You need to sit out and watch for as long as Evander says. You’ve got five or six weeks at least before the variety games. Rest now, and you can shout at me during training instead.”
“And even worse, the fucker wants me in his room every day for dressing changes,” Cas grumbles, flexing his fingers experimentally. “Will you help me do it instead? Please?”
I chuckle. “No way, mate. I don’t want to touch your crispy fried arm.”
“Don’t joke about it. I’m sensitive.” Cas sighs, rolling his neck. “I’m actually due to go see him before I shower this morning. Though I can’t actually shower properly for ages, so I’m going to stink up our cell. Sorry.”
“Maybe you can ask Evander to give you a sponge bath.”
“I’d rather smell like a pig,” he mutters, but I could swear there’s a touch of pink in his cheeks.
He shuffles onto his knees, wincing as the movement jostles his injured arm.
Then he looks down at me, his face turning deathly serious in the pale light filtering through the corridor.
“Listen, it’s you and me, mate, okay? We don’t need anyone else here. ”
I nod, something tight in my throat.
“You remember your promise to me? To kill that bastard?”
Of course I do. Sometimes, it’s all I can think about. “I remember.”
“Good. If Marco tries to fuck with you again, kick him where it hurts.”
Cas pushes himself to his feet, cradling his burned arm against his chest, and shuffles out of the cell.
I drag myself over to Cas’s bottom bunk and collapse onto it, stretching my legs out across the thin mattress. I need at least a minute before the lights come on and another nightmare of a day officially begins.
Of course, lying here instantly makes my mind wander back to last night.
To the villa. To Marco’s fingernails raking down my back.
My hands on his neck as I whispered promises in our mother tongue into his ear.
I told him he was everything I wanted. That he smelled like sunshine and felt like the warmth of the ocean at sunset.
And, of course, my mind returns to the lies that poured out of my mouth so easily I almost believed them myself.
“Your family lives.”
My gut twists. The words replay in my head, over and over, each repetition making me feel sicker. What the fuck possessed me to say that?
I saw them die with my own eyes. Watched that commander order those three blades to slit their throats.
But how could I have told him that? How, when Marco looked at me with such desperate hope, like I was handing him salvation instead of poison?
I couldn’t be the one to take away the only thing keeping him alive in this place.
The island elders used to tell us stories when we were children, warnings wrapped in fables. One about a fisherman who lied to save his nets, then had to keep lying to cover the first lie, until the lies grew so heavy they dragged him to the bottom of the sea.
That’s what that felt like last night. One lie spawning another, each one pulling me deeper.
But what was the alternative? Tell Marco the truth and watch him shatter completely? Watch whatever humanity he has left bleed out of him until there’s nothing left but the weapon the Emperor made him into?
I can’t do it. Even after this morning, even after he looked at me like I was nothing, like last night was just another transaction in his collection of meaningless fucks—I can’t be the one to destroy him completely.
Maybe that makes me weak. Maybe it makes me a coward.
Or maybe it just makes me human.
My jaw throbs where Jason’s fist caught me, the pain spreading up into my temple. I probe my tender lip with my tongue. Perfect. Yet another injury. Just what I need before a day of training.
Six days. That’s how long I have before I step into the arena with Elijah. Six days to forget about Marco Verus and his dead family and the way he felt beneath my hands. Six days to prepare to kill someone who doesn’t deserve to die.
Six days to figure out how to survive when part of me wants to lie down and let it all end.
The lights flicker on overhead, harsh and unforgiving. Time’s up.
I push myself off the bunk, my body protesting every movement. In the corridor, feet hit concrete as the other men rise.
I need to train. Need to focus. Need to forget everything that happened in that villa and concentrate on staying alive.
But as I head toward the door, Marco’s voice whispers in my head. “It’s you.”
And I know forgetting him is going to be impossible.