Robin’s eyes haze over then fall closed. “I was taken from Atrea.”
“No.” Before the horror of the idea can fully form, I’m halfway across the room, desperate to get away from it. Pressing the back of my trembling hand to my lips, I manage only, “They’ve taken it?”
“They’ve…” His head stays low. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they did after I was taken. I… I didn’t last long. Not long enough.”
His cheeks flush, some combination of shame and anger that I know too well. I’ve felt the same thing a thousand times over. I’ve played the scenario out a billion ways in my head. What if they found it while I was here? Trapped and useless, so far away I’m not even sure I could find my way back.
The clawing, eviscerating shame of it.
“Robin, tell me…” My insides curl as I try to prepare myself to ask, to be told, to hear it. The air comes thin, my voice weaker than I’ve ever heard it. “Do you know my family? Do they live?”
He raises his eyes to me, and something breaks inside. Some depth of unspoken sorrow strikes out of the ashen depths of his gaze, ripping into my heart, taking my every hope in bloody hands and pulling it to pieces.
“They live,” he says.
They live.
Like a punch in the chest, the air’s knocked out of me. The loss—I was so sure.
Tears sting my eyes, threatening to escape. I turn away from him, wiping the moisture away with the back of my hand, the relief so overpowering it makes me weak.
They live.
“Robin.” This man, taken from our home. This man, his pain, his family—what they must have done to them. I’m at his side again, pouring wine stupidly, because I don’t know what else to do. “Who are your people? Where are you from? Do… do your family—”
“I’m not sure. It’s just me and my sister. She’s only thirteen. She’s… she’s everything.” His hands wrap around the glass absentmindedly.
“Then they did not take her?”
His gaze meets mine, broken rocks, the cliffs of home. “I told her to hide. We had a place beneath the floorboards—”
My fingers press against his lips, silencing him. “Do not speak your secrets. Not even here.”
A specter of shock is written in the lines that cloud his forehead, and I realize what I’ve done, the intimacy of the action. I recoil in the instant, but he snatches my wrist, brings it to his heart.
I feel so sick.
“If they have found it,” I speak on, eyes on the carpet, “that’s one thing. If they hear us, they need know none of our secrets.”
“Can they hear us?” he whispers.
I shake my head. “It’s smarter not to risk it. To keep your secrets close. I’ve never told…” My voice cracks on the words, and he has hold of my arm now, and I can’t turn away to hide the tears that come fast into my eyes.
His wine glass touches down on the table. His warm hand slides over my jaw, up my cheek, forcing me to look at him. “All this time?”
I only nod; I can’t speak.
His grip tightens, fingers edging into my hair, treacherous shocks of pleasure, safety, vibrating through my every nerve. “Marco Verus…” He looks deep into my eyes, as though he can see straight into my heart. “You’ve been so alone.”
Everything shatters. Every brick in the wall I’ve spent five long years building breaks, crashing down, dust and broken edges, rocky and brittle and sharp, and at the center of it, weak and drowning, exposed and flayed and grasping, nothing. I’m nothing. And he’s seen right through me. “Don’t touch me.”
I try to pull away, but I’m too sick, too dizzy.
“Marco.” He pulls my hand over his shoulder, and I close it on his beautiful hair.
And I fucking hate him so much.
“Fuck off.”
