The kiss burns through me like fire. Desperate. Violent. His mouth moves against mine with a hunger that tastes like grief, and I can feel the tremor in his hands as one slides up my thigh underneath the towel. His fingers dig into my skin like he’s trying to memorize the shape of me.
I pull away, gasping. “Maybe we shouldn’t—” I can’t finish the sentence. Can’t say the words that would make this real.
Marco shakes his head, his forehead pressed against mine. “No. Nothing will stop me from spending the next two weeks with you, birdie. Nothing. You’re mine, for as long or as little as we have left.”
The words slam into me.As long or as little as we have left.
I nod because I can’t speak. Because my throat has closed around all the things I want to say but never will. All the words that would break us both.
He kisses me again, softer this time. A goodbye kiss. A promise kiss. A kiss that already tastes like endings.
“Don’t tell Esme anything yet,” I whisper against his mouth. “I’ll… think about what to say to her.”
Marco’s eyes close, and for a moment he looks like he’s in physical pain. “Robin…”
“I know.”
And I do know. I know that in two weeks, one of us will die. I know Esme will either lose her brother, or her ticket out of here. I know that all our stolen moments, all our whispered promises, all our plans for a future in Atrea—
None of it matters now.
The Emperor has made sure of that.
Chapter thirty-three
Robin: A Step Closer to Death
The first blow catches René in the temple with a wet crunch that echoes through the speakers. René’s hand, still reaching for Cas’s leg, goes slack.
But Cas doesn’t stop.
The second blow lands harder. Then a third. And a fourth.
Blood spatters across the stone platform, across Cas’s chest, across the wooden plank lying forgotten beside them. Each impact sends a fresh spray, until the microphones pick up nothing but the rhythmic thud of metal against flesh and bone.
“Cas has lost it,” Jason mutters. “He’s properly lost it. Again.”
Marco’s reflection stares back at me from the glass, his face pale. In seven days, one of us will be down there. One of us will be holding that blood-slicked weapon.
One of us will be the one still standing when the bell rings.
The crowd’s roar builds to a deafening crescendo, but all I can hear is my own heartbeat hammering. All I can see is the red spreading across the arena floor.
And Cas, still kneeling beside what’s left of René, the Deathball heavy in his trembling hands.
It’s so unfair. René was the only half-decent one. Why did he have to die?
Still, it’s relief, not grief, that floods through me so fast my knees nearly buckle. Cas is alive. Bloodied and shaking, but alive.
He fucking did it. Made champion. He’ll live to see next year’s season.
But then he wobbles.
His grip on the Deathball loosens, the weapon slipping from his fingers to clatter against stone. For a moment he sways there on his knees, eyes unfocused, staring at nothing.
Then he pitches forward.
Face first onto the platform. Motionless.
