The hard glint softens into surprise, curiosity. Then, taking the drink slowly, he turns back to Evander for confirmation.
“About two years back,” Evander narrates as he soaks a cloth in antiseptic. “Those two players hated each other to begin with. Thought they’d tear each other’s throats out long before they ever got onto the sand.”
He presses the cloth to the cuts beneath Robin’s arm, and Robin takes in a sharp breath, his ample chest swelling.
Evander talks over him. “Oliver paid a guard to smuggle in some deadly nightshade. He ground it up and put it in the jam the morning of his game.”
“Fuck,” Robin whispers over the top of his drink. Then he takes his first sip, and it’s like alcohol’s burning hot in my own chest. It’s a warm feeling, seeing him easy like that, even if he grimaces over the taste a second later. “Wouldn’t that have taken out the whole team?”
“It took a few of them out. Even Marco had some.”
Robin scans me, like the poison might be in me even now. “Evander figured it out fast. Had me chugging charcoal in no time.”
“What about the others?”
Evander presses a hand to Robin’s back to hold him steady when he brings the cloth to the knife wound. “A few died. I got to six others in time. But Pax was busy playing Deathball. I couldn’t get to him.”
A series of curses sail over Robin’s lips, and I’m not sure whether they’re directed at the pain of Evander’s treatment or at the grim story.
“Pax played well,” I fill in for Evander. “He realized what had happened. He was covered in sweat, shaking head to toe, swaying on his feet. But he fought on with one purpose in mind. To kill. It didn’t matter by then whether he won the game, because he knew he wasn’t walking out of there alive either way. He was intent on revenge.”
“And did he get it?”
“Oh, he absolutely did,” Evander laughs out. “That went down as one of the bloodiest matches in Deathball history.”
“He fought like a man possessed,” I agree. “Like one of those infected out in the wastelands. It was pure bloodlust. Cruelest thing I ever witnessed, but well deserved.”
Evander takes up his drink, and if not for the topic of conversation, this would be the closest I’d felt to real camaraderie in a long time. “He broke almost every bone in that man’s body. He cut bits off him, smeared him all over that stadium. But he was real careful. He kept him alive until the very end. He killed him with the Deathball, alright. But not with a merciful blow to the brain.”
Evander raises his eyebrows as an end to the conversation, leaving Robin grasping. “How did he do it?”
The gruesome facts will likely scare him too much at this point, so I suggest only, “Use your imagination.”
“I am,” he insists. “I am using it. I can think of a dozen ways you might—”
“It was worse. Drink up, baby bird.”
A frown passes over his face as he reassesses the clear liquid. Then with a flooring flash of trust, he clinks his glass against mine and throws the vodka back. Evander and I follow suit.
That’s probably enough for me. Though it’s honestly tempting to keep going. To keep Robin here for a while.
But then, “What about this one?” asks Evander, lifting Robin’s chin with one long finger, pointing out the same new bruise I noticed this morning.
Robin glances at me, then away again.
“Yeah, what about that one?” I push him.
Eyes glazed, something hard coming into his cheeks, Robin cuts himself off from us. “I don’t remember. But it’s probably your fault one way or the other.”
“Right.” I push the empty glasses into a little group, avoiding Evander’s mental assessment of whatever’s going on here.
He only says, “It doesn’t need any treatment. Anything else I should be aware of?” His eyes drop to Robin’s lower half, covered with his half-open tunic.
Robin’s head lowers. “No.”
“No injuries at all?”
“Nothing.”
