“I wanted to make sure you were…safe.” He caught her hand, tracing the backs of her knuckles with his thumb.
“I am.”
He studied her face. Dark circles still hid under her eyes. “Are you happy?”
She shrugged. “Most days. Nights are…hard.”
Jack nodded.
Her lashes lowered as her gaze dropped to their hands. She opened his fingers and dragged her thumb over his signet ring. He sensed her piecing together the things that went unsaid.
Like a toy soldier controlled by a key, every muscle in his back tensed until his lungs were too tight to breathe.
“Was he your first?”
Jack’s eyes closed. The chancellor had been the first of many things. Most of them evil. “Yes.” His throat constricted to a pinhole.
“Screaming,” she said softly, face tight as she dragged her finger slowly over the raised letters.
“Yes.”
Her brows drew tighter. “He put all those marks on you?”
This time, his voice abandoned him. He nodded.
“How old were you?”
His lungs collapsed as though under the foot and weight of a crushing giant. “It started when I was six.”
The air shifted as she looked up at him in disbelief. “Six?” Fresh tears welled in her eyes. “When… When did it stop?”
It never fully stopped. Those brutal moments lived immortally inside of him. “I escaped when I was fourteen.”
A soft sound of disbelief skipped past her lips. “Eight years.”
“Daisy, there are things I’ve done that others would never understand. I don’t expect you to?—”
His words cut off as she pressed her lips to his. For the briefest moment, the world found balance again.
He cupped the side of her face and closed his eyes, savoring the contact while he could. He wished they could hide from the truth forever, safe and secluded, pretending the world wasn’t this imperfect place. But he had a purpose to serve.
Capturing her hands in his, he pulled them from his face. “It’s all a glittering lie,” he confessed, putting pressure on the fragile illusion the world desperately wanted to believe. “I’ve made an artform out of dismantling corrupt and powerful men. Do you understand? I host The Feast, not just to help tributes, but to use them as bait. The right circumstances can bring out the worst in people. And every year, I watch, adding names to my list.”
“Like Hadrian?”
He nodded. “I make bad men go away.”
She looked into his eyes, searching for justification she’d never find. “Peter was on your list.”
He shook his head. “Not anymore.” When her breath caught, he quickly explained. “He’s fine. Still the self-centered prick he always was. But he’s not my problem.”
“What do you do to them—the men on your list?”
He tried to measure her curiosity, unsure if she truly wanted an honest answer. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but trust me when I say, some things are better left unsaid.”
“I want to know.”
He let go of her hands and drew a deep breath. “First, I dismantle their lives. I strip away their power, force them to sell off everything they have until they understand what true vulnerability feels like. Then, I remove any source of hope and let them suffer in that existence for a while.”
