“Yes.” Evander steps even closer to my table. “His body has suffered extensive damage and will require extensive treatment if I’m to save his life.”
The sound of metal sliding against leather.
“This is a medical unit! Respectfully, I ask you to put that away.”
The air locks in my lungs.
“So he won’t react if I drive this knife through him?”
Somehow, I stay perfectly still. Dead weight on the table.
“Don’t you fucking touch him!” Evander snarls. “I just spent hours stitching him back together—”
The sound of a scuffle. Bodies colliding.
“Hold him,” the cold voice orders.
“Get off me! You can’t—” Evander’s protest cuts off with a grunt.
Across the room, Cas shouts, “He’s in a fucking coma, you sadistic bastard!”
“Then he won’t feel a thing,” the man says. “Will he?”
I only have a moment to prepare.
Adrenaline floods my system, a full-body rush that makes my muscles want to lock up and spring simultaneously. My fingers twitch—I have to consciously relax them, keep them flat against the table. Every nerve fires at once, screamingrun, fight, move. But I can’t. I won’t. Instead, I picture Marco’s face as he held me this morning, a broken thing searching for comfort in his arms. Replay his voice in my ear, from that day in the garden: “Te daría el mundo entero y más si pudiera.”“I would give you the entire world and more if I could.”
The blade punches through my thigh.
The impact registers first—a brutal punch of pressure—before the pain catches up. My body floods with more adrenaline, white-hot and chemical, drowning out everything but the foreign sensation of metal splitting muscle. The agony is there, distant and muffled, like it's happening to someone else. My hand wants to clench—fingers itching to grab something,anything—but the thought of Marco keeps me suspended in this strange, detached space where I can observe the pain without fully inhabiting it.
Dead. I'm dead. Coma.Coma.
Blood rushes in my ears. The blade is still in me—I can feel it splitting my flesh apart, cool and horribly wrong.
Marco. You can do this for Marco. You must do this for Marco.
The smell of copper blooms in the air. My blood, pooling warm beneath my leg, soaking through the fabric beneath me. A flash of terror cuts through the agony—what if my body betrayed me? What if I flinched and didn’t even know it?
“What the fuck?” Cas’s voice cracks across the room. “What the hell are you doing? Didn’t you listen to us? He’s half dead already! You’re going to kill him!”
“I needed to be sure,” the cold voice replies.
“I told you.” Evander’s voice is steadier, but there’s a steely edge underneath. “He’s unconscious. Now get that blade out of him before you kill him entirely.”
A pause. Then the blade slides free.
The relief is almost worse than the initial stab—a hot, wet rush of blood that makes my stomach roil.Breathe in, breathe out.Shallow. Like a man barely alive.
“Pity,” the man says. “The Emperor was looking forward to questioning him personally.”
“About what?” Evander asks. “He’s a victim here, not a suspect. He’s my patient, and you have no authority here!”
“He’s the Emperor’s property. I have all the authority I need.”
Marco. Esme. Their faces. Hold onto their faces. Their beautiful faces. They need you to do this.
“You’re insane,” Cas spits. “The crowd will riot if they don’t get to see their golden boy play one of the finals. You think the Emperor wants that kind of chaos?”
