“I need to ask you something.”
The ensuing silence is a long lead-in for a simple question. So it’s not simple, then. I say nothing, wait for him.
He takes his time, perhaps trying to stop the break in his voice that comes with the words regardless. “You know I love you.”
Tears cloud my vision, and I blink hard, look away, try to get rid of them. “I love you,” I tell him softly.
He rolls over, away, not looking at me, head on my outstretched legs and eyes on the pond. His fingers draw small circles on my skin. “What’s happened to us is…” He trails off.
I soothe him as best I can, running my fingers through his soft hair, folds and folds of wheaten silk.
“Tomorrow,” he says quietly, “after the game, you’ll be a free man.”
The words grab me at the throat. “I can’t talk about this. I don’t want to imagine it. Robin, I can’t think of walking out of there…”
His hand tightens on my leg, fingertips sinking into flesh. “You’re going to have to. Because you’re all the chance at safety she’ll ever get.”
My gaze shifts to Esme, smiling, sparkling drops of water clinging to her hair, just the way they cling to Robin’s in the bath. “You’re going home to her. You have to believe that. So you can fight.”
“No. Marco, listen…” He falls quiet again, then in slow and measured speech, “I don’t want you to have to kill me.”
I almost laugh at how ridiculous the comment is, considering what’s about to happen. “I don’t want that either. Robin, why are you saying this?”
“Because it’s not… It’s not killing me, or… it’s not murder… if… if I want you to do it.”
My hand stills in his hair, all the softness suddenly like so many grains of sand slipping through my fingers. “No.”
He presses a palm to the earth, pushes himself up, and swivels around to face me. His eyes are clear, no reflection of the hazy mess mine must be. “It’s Deathball.”
Before I know it, I’ve shoved him away, made for the house, searching through the corridors of the villa for some cool, or some peace, orsomething… Some place that isn’t there with him, under the open sky, watching us, watching Atrea, or here in this city, these walls forever pressing down and down on us, always and again and never, ever, one breath of fresh air.
He catches my wrist, pulls me around, and I don’t even have the strength to fight. I let him. I let him take my cheek in his hand, hold me by the hip,and look deep into my eyes. “One of us has to die. You know that. Two men enter, only one leaves.”
“You can’t ask me to do that.”
“I can. I can, because Marco, I love you. I love you, and you’re the only man I have ever loved, or will ever love. You’re the only man I would trust to do this.”
“To kill you in cold blood? Like a rabid dog?” I shout at him.
But his voice stays calm. Soft. “To take Esme home. Please. I need you to get her out of this city. I need her to have a chance at life. One I never got.”
My words come sharp through gritted teeth. “If you want to take her home, then fight me.”
But he comes back brutally gentle. “I know it’s different for you. I know that in your head, you’d give me a good death. A warrior’s death. You’d call it fair because I attacked you. Because I would have killed you if I could.”
His hand falls on my chest so softly the first tear breaks free, rolls down my cheek, and lands on his fingertips. “If I injure you too badly tomorrow, before I die, what happens next? What if you’re like Cas, and a week from now, you’re gone too? What happens to her? What happens to Maria?”
I snatch his hand up, enfold it against my heart. “Then you fight, and you take them home yourself.”
“Marco, my love.” He watches our two hands, his eyelashes wet. “If I kill you, they will send me back to the dungeon. And you will be gone. And they will sell her again.”
I turn my head away because I know he’s right. But I protest, “Not if you were captain—”
“If I were captain, I think I would do all the things you have done and more to keep her safe.” There’s a dark earnestness in his eyes when he looks up. A black sadness that winds its way around my heart. That absolves me, angers me, makes me twice as protective of him. And I think, just for a moment, maybe it’s better this way. Maybe I would rather murder him with my own two hands than know that every day he lives with that.
“There is no guarantee I’d be captain, even if I survived. What if it’s Max?”
“He wouldn’t hurt her. He’s an asshole, but he wouldn’t hurt her.”
