“I found out only yesterday.”
I don’t believe him. Not for a second. And I think he can see it in my eyes because he talks on, talks only of Robin. “He’s a man who uses you—who will, I promise, murder you if he’s given the chance to take your place.” His footsteps come slow and confident toward me. “You can throw it all away for that, or… you can learn to be a good boy, do as you’re told, and put on a show. Then, when it’s all over, you can walk out of here a free man. With my blessing. Get on with your life. Carve out a future.”
“Future?” The word tastes like ash in my mouth.
My beautiful future. It was so simple. So meagre. Just me and Robin and our own beach. My mother, my head on her shoulder. To see my brother grown. To hear my father’s voice just one more time.
But now they’re all gone.
And Robin promised me. He promised me, every day, they were waiting for me. All those nights, he held me and lied to me. All those dreams that kept me going, kept me fighting…
They were already dead. Dead and in the ground. And what have I been fighting for?
Months of pain, every night I spent with the Emperor, every time I didn’t die, fought on, all for nothing.
Grief hits me full in the chest.
I could have died months ago, with no one to miss me. I could have been saved from this… this loss, this pain. The double-edged pain that there is no future, no home, no Atrea, and Robin…
Oh, how deeply I have fallen in love with Robin. Robin who became my world. Who I risked everything for.
Robin, who, had he told me all those months ago…
I would have slipped away quietly in the night, been dead and gone and truly free.
It’s Robin who kept me in this cage.
Robin, who let me fall in love with him then asked me to spill his blood with my own hands, to take his life and to keep that memory with me always, every time I look into his sister’s eyes, the man who killed her brother.
Robin…
Tears break free, all the vulnerability I never wanted to show these people. But they break free and flow fast, wetting his floor, carving lines down my face and deep into my heart.
Everything’s gone. I’ve survived for nothing.
If he had only told me…
The Emperor’s head cuts across to Bishop. “Get him out of here.” Then he makes for the door, head held high, as though he never had a hand in any of this.
“Come back, you fuck.” The words claw out of me, my wrists twisting, wrenching against the chains. Arms pull me in every direction, a sharp pain cuts through my shoulder, but I still shout, “I will fucking kill you! Mark my words, I will kill you for this!”
All the way down the hall to his front door, I scream promises of retribution, a thousand ways I can conceive of his slow, painful death.
But every scream is no more than a wish I can never fulfil. The last desperate grasp at a dying dream.
I have no home.
I have no future.
I’m going to kill Robin.
Horror upon horror falls on me. Crushes me. Too much grief. More than any man can take. Too much all at once, suffocating me. Taking all my air, all my love, every last piece of my heart.
Push it down.
Push it down like I’ve done so many times before.
Push it down into that dark place nothing ever comes back from.
