Chapter 41
Chapter forty-one
Marco: Paradise Lost
The palace lies vast and pale in the morning sun. Clipped hedges, playful statues, soft blooming flowers. It offers no hint of the evil that lives inside, that rules this place, this city, all the wastelands, and beyond.
But not for long.
He’s not getting another drop of blood from me or from Robin.
Today, I’m ending him.
There’s little sign of other human life here this early. Just the heavy steps of my feet, the clank of the guards’ armor. Almost nothing until we arrive at those enormous wooden doors.
I raise my hand, pound on them.
They open instantly.
Sunlight cuts into the dark hall, illuminating the marred and malevolent face of Kane Bishop. His scar tilts as his smile emerges. “Verus. We’ve been expecting you.” Before I have time to react to the shock of seeing him, he snarls, “Guards! Seize him!”
My own guards, who have walked me back and forth to that dungeon for a year now, who have witnessed the blooming love between Robin and me, predictably stand back and do absolutely nothing. It’s the Emperor’s own detail who moves forward.
My arm strikes out. I take the first one with a crunch to the gut. But in the same moment, a sharp jolt cuts through my shoulder, down my spine, my body screaming all over. I fall to my knees, then a kick lands hard in my stomach, knocking the breath out of me.
In half a second, chains snap closed around my wrists, my neck, and I’m hauled to my feet, a prisoner in full regalia once again.
Kane directs me up the hall with a wave of his taser, and a hand cracks into my back, shoving me forward.
Fine. I’ll go in chains.
I’ll wrap these chains around his neck and strangle him with them.
The smell of freshly cut flowers turns sour on the air. The coolness feels like the breath of a gaping grave. It’s all horror, all this wealth and beauty, sickening.
I hate this place. I hate that man.
He doesn’t make me wait. None of the pathetic showmanship I’m used to. I’m brought straight into his office, where he sits behind his big desk, fully dressed and awake at an hour I know he’s always asleep.
They shove me to my knees, the chains rattling against the stone floor, and I raise my eyes to him.
The Emperor.
The man who stole me from my home, who terrorized me for years. Who’s trying to take the one precious thing in my life away from me.
“I won’t fight him.”
“Then you’ll die.” Happy words from his lips, light and goading.
“You promised!” I yell at him, spit from grit teeth landing on the floor. “You promised. I fought and I won. This is my time!”
“Oh, Marco.” He laughs, climbing to his feet. He rounds the table, the swish of thick silk grating on my every nerve as he leans back against his desk. “Of course I’ll make you free. That’s what the people want, you said it yourself.” His eyes narrow. “Only I’ll do it on my terms.”
Every promise, every hour spent with him, everything on the verge of collapse. The crowd chanting for me, Julius’s words. It all shrinks into one red-hot ball of fury, and I lunge for him.
Electricity bursts through my chest. Chains catch me at the neck. The floor slams into my shoulder, my arm screaming from the blow. “You fucking bastard!”
He tsks his filthy tongue. “Now, now, Marco. I’d have thought all this would be a lesson in why you should be more polite.”
I lunge again. It’s stupid, but it’s all I can do. Some kind of fight. Like a lion in a cage, striking out. I can’t do nothing. I can’t stand here and…
My knees crack down on the floor, the shock of the taser ripping through me again. I slam a hand down to steady myself. “You cannot make me fight him.”
“Fine. Go there and die, if that’s what you really want.” His fingers curl around the edge of his desk. “But I have a feeling Shore will fight.”
It almost makes me laugh. Even now, so jealous of the two of us that he’d kill Harlan, orchestrate this cruel game, he has no idea what we mean to each other.
Robin, precious, beautiful Robin, would never raise a hand to me.
Not in a million years.
But that’s when my promise to Robin comes back on me tenfold.
My promise to kill him. My promise to take Esme home. To set her free. Even now she waits outside the city walls. Robin cannot get to her. She can’t even get back in. Come nightfall, she’s at the mercy of the wastelanders, the infected, unless I’m there to protect her.
The sickening realization claws at me. My oath to him. This devastation I thought we’d escaped. A thick, cloying nausea drowns me, from my chest, up my throat, bodily, so my hands begin to shake.
“He’s really not worth the trouble, Marco.” His voice seems to come from far away. Some night noise, some insect buzzing, until one word cuts through me like a knife. “Even if he is from Atrea, like you.”
My head snaps up, in spite of myself.
“Did you think I didn’t know?” He laughs, good and hard. “Oh, no, I’ve known for some time. Haven’t I, Bishop?”
Kane Bishop puffs his chest out with a half chuckle, nods his head like this is some grand joke the two of them share.
“You see, Bishop is the man who brought Robin in.”
Everything begins to tilt and sway. This man, this filthy, repugnant man, set foot on the shores of my home. He put Robin in chains. He set every event in motion. It was him.
The Emperor speaks on. “And he told me that Robin was wide awake and watching when your mother’s throat was slit, ear to ear, in front of all the citizens of your tiny nation. And he didn’t do a thing to stop it.”
Every muscle, every nerve, turns to ice.
That didn’t happen. I know it didn’t. I know because Robin told me. They’re just trying to get to me.
“Your mother, with her long dark hair…”
My chest turns inward. How could he know?
“Lydia,” Kane fills in, and the word slices into me. “And there was the brother.”
“And your father…”
The air, the walls, and all of Victora crushing me.
One breath. Just one good breath…
“Tomás Verus,” Kane supplies.
My eyes fall closed, tears forcing their way through.
“Yes. Verus.” The Emperor’s silk rustles, coming closer.
“You know, we did attempt some negotiation with your people. But your father refused to be ‘owned,’ as he put it. Didn’t want to be ‘subjugated.’ Well…
you see what happens to those who refuse to help build Victora’s empire.
They end up like Robin. And they end up like you.
” His fingers, repulsive, wrap tight around my chin, and I squeeze my eyes harder. “Like father, like son.”
All the grief and anger slam into me, and I burst to my feet, only to be yanked back again, my arms tight behind my back, that collar strangling the air out of me.
The Emperor leans in close. “Why do you fight, Marco? Haven’t I been good to you?”
He turns away, fingers floating in the air as he points out all the treasures of his room. “I invited you into my home. Gave you one of your own. I’ve dressed you, educated you, raised you up out of obscurity and made you a star. And now you want to throw it all away over some stupid boy?”
I would rip his throat out with my bare fingers if I could only get one hand free.
But he stands there, placid, smiling. “Have it your way. But I seriously doubt the man who left your family for dead, used you for the riches I bestowed upon you, is going to pass up his chance to take your place.”
When he sees the sickened understanding dawn on my face, his smile deepens, cruel. “That’s right. I’m offering him captain once he smashes your head in. Everything you’ve had, it will all be his. What do you think he’ll say to that?”
“You won’t touch him,” I grit out.
His smile drops, dead eyes boring into me. “Is that what you’re worried about? Even now, when you know what a worthless coward he is?”
“You won’t touch him!” I scream. A guard pulls at my chains; my back hits his chest, useless. Even as I fight with all my strength, I can’t beat this many of them. I can’t do this one thing. Protect him. Protect Robin when…
When I have no one else.
Not one other soul on this earth. Because my family…
They can’t be gone. And so recently. All these years, and me so close to escape, and now…
Why now?
And Robin knew… All that time, he knew.
As if to twist the knife, the Emperor says, “You must see, your opponent has every reason to kill you out there today. Is your freedom worth throwing away for a man who didn’t even respect you enough to tell you about your dead family?”
I make no reply, my chest too tight to speak, but he barely even pauses, enjoying every second of my misery, finding just the right place to sink his teeth in.
“I can see from the look on your face, you had no idea. This entire season, he didn’t say a word, did he?
He just let you carry on, unable to mourn them, so he could keep on using you. ”
“Then you knew my family were gone?” I snap at him.
“I found out only yesterday.”
I don’t believe him. Not for a second. And I think he can see it in my eyes because he talks on, talks only of Robin.
“He’s a man who uses you—who will, I promise, murder you if he’s given the chance to take your place.
” His footsteps come slow and confident toward me.
“You can throw it all away for that, or… you can learn to be a good boy, do as you’re told, and put on a show.
Then, when it’s all over, you can walk out of here a free man.
With my blessing. Get on with your life. Carve out a future.”
“Future?” The word tastes like ash in my mouth.
My beautiful future. It was so simple. So meagre. Just me and Robin and our own beach. My mother, my head on her shoulder. To see my brother grown. To hear my father’s voice just one more time.
But now they’re all gone.
And Robin promised me. He promised me, every day, they were waiting for me. All those nights, he held me and lied to me. All those dreams that kept me going, kept me fighting…
They were already dead. Dead and in the ground. And what have I been fighting for?
Months of pain, every night I spent with the Emperor, every time I didn’t die, fought on, all for nothing.
Grief hits me full in the chest.
I could have died months ago, with no one to miss me. I could have been saved from this… this loss, this pain. The double-edged pain that there is no future, no home, no Atrea, and Robin…
Oh, how deeply I have fallen in love with Robin. Robin who became my world. Who I risked everything for.
Robin, who, had he told me all those months ago…
I would have slipped away quietly in the night, been dead and gone and truly free.
It’s Robin who kept me in this cage.
Robin, who let me fall in love with him then asked me to spill his blood with my own hands, to take his life and to keep that memory with me always, every time I look into his sister’s eyes, the man who killed her brother.
Robin…
Tears break free, all the vulnerability I never wanted to show these people. But they break free and flow fast, wetting his floor, carving lines down my face and deep into my heart.
Everything’s gone. I’ve survived for nothing.
If he had only told me…
The Emperor’s head cuts across to Bishop. “Get him out of here.” Then he makes for the door, head held high, as though he never had a hand in any of this.
“Come back, you fuck.” The words claw out of me, my wrists twisting, wrenching against the chains. Arms pull me in every direction, a sharp pain cuts through my shoulder, but I still shout, “I will fucking kill you! Mark my words, I will kill you for this!”
All the way down the hall to his front door, I scream promises of retribution, a thousand ways I can conceive of his slow, painful death.
But every scream is no more than a wish I can never fulfil. The last desperate grasp at a dying dream.
I have no home.
I have no future.
I’m going to kill Robin.
Horror upon horror falls on me. Crushes me. Too much grief. More than any man can take. Too much all at once, suffocating me. Taking all my air, all my love, every last piece of my heart.
Push it down.
Push it down like I’ve done so many times before.
Push it down into that dark place nothing ever comes back from.
Push it down and turn it black. Black and small and hard, where it can’t touch me.
Where all that’s left is me and this promise I made to the man I fell in love with.
Where nothing else exists, and I can’t feel anything.
I’m going to kill Robin.
I’m going to kill the only man I’ve ever loved, and I’m going to do it today.
And there’s not a thing anyone can do to stop it.
Both of us are dead already.