“Nice one, mate,” he says, lightly punching my arm. “Send some of your horde of new sponsors my way, yeah?”
My gaze skids over to where Jason is now sparring with Max, movements fluid and controlled.
“Something’s off,” I say. “He was too… unaggressive about it.”
Cas’s face falls serious. “Listen, I’ve got your back,” he tells me quietly. “Don’t you worry.” He jerks his head toward Marco. “And so does he, half the time. So that’s one and a half of us looking out for you.” Cas jabs at my collarbone. “Hey, where’s your favorite fashion accessory gone? I sort of miss it now.”
Under my pillow, safe and sound.
The rest of the afternoon passes in a blur of drills and exhaustion. At two, Marco makes us all sit in a ring and watch each other spar. I can’t help but think this might just be to give me a break—it’s obvious how much I’m still suffering. While I’m meant to be watching Max and Jason, I watch him instead, remembering how his hands ran over my naked body. How he felt on my skin, strong and sure.
Finally, it’s time to shower. Cas drags me along before I can linger behind with Marco.
Yet I catch him anyway, towel wrapped around my waist, alone in the corridor, clearly waiting for me. He reaches for my wrist.
“I’m going to go back,” Marco tells me quickly. My heart sinks—I thought he might stay for dinner. “To see how Esme is,” he explains.
I nod. It makes sense, even though it should be me getting to see my own sister. “Thank you. Tell her I miss her.”
He leans in, presses his lips to mine briefly, then he’s gone, leaving me standing there with the taste of him on my mouth.
When I reach the dining table, I find that Cas has saved me a seat, the pair of us far away from Jason.
“Good work,” I mumble as I slide in beside him, where tonight’s dinner is already waiting for me—stew and bread, steam rising from the bowls like incense.
But my eyes keep drifting to Jason, who’s laughing with Max and René like he doesn’t have a care in the world. Like he didn’t just lose his biggest sponsor.
I tuck into the stew with more appetite than I’ve had all day. The carrots are surprisingly sweet, melting on my tongue, and the earthy dumplings taste like home somehow. Like something Esme might have made if we’d had better ingredients on Atrea.
“This is surprisingly brilliant,” I tell Cas, spooning up another dumpling.
He grins, mouth full. “I know, right?”
The second dumpling is even better than the first. I bite down, savoring the rich, meaty flavor—
Something sharp slices through my mouth.
Pain explodes across my tongue, my left cheek, white-hot and immediate. I feel something cutting, tearing, shredding the soft tissue inside my mouth. My hand flies to my face as panic floods my system.
“Cas—” I try to say, but the word comes out garbled, wrong.
I grab his arm, squeezing hard enough to bruise. He turns, fork halfway to his mouth, and his expression shifts from confusion to horror as I open my mouth.
Blood pours out. Not just a trickle—a torrent that splashes onto my bowl, my shirt, the table. The metallic taste fills my mouth, choking me.
“Oh, fuck,” Cas hisses. “Okay. Robin, stay calm.”
His fingers probe gently, carefully, and then he’s extracting something small and gleaming. He holds it up to the light.
A razor blade. Tiny, deadly, slick with my blood.
The entire dining hall falls silent. Every conversation dies, every spoon stops clinking against ceramic. The only sound is my ragged breathing and the steady drip of blood hitting the floor.
Cas’s voice cuts through the silence, cold as winter steel.
“Which one of you fuckers did this?”
Nobody speaks. Nobody moves.
