The man being examined starts to shake. His breathing grows faster, more desperate.
Then he drops.
His knees hit the dirt hard enough that I wince. His chains clatter as he throws his hands up, palms pressed together.
“Please!” The word tears from his throat. “Please. Please don’t do this. Anything but that. Please don’t…”
Tears stream down his face. Snot runs from his nose. He’s sobbing now, great heaving gasps that make his whole body convulse.
“Please, I’m begging you, let me go. I’ll give you everything I have—”
Marco starts to laugh.
Not a cruel laugh. Not mocking or harsh. Just… amused. Like the desperate man has told him a particularly good joke. The sound is rich and warm and completely at odds with everything happening around us. I can’t help but glance at Caspian, who raises his eyebrow in reply.
The white shirts look at the man on the floor, then at each other. One of them starts chuckling too. The other covers his mouth, shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth.
“Oh, that’s good,” a white shirt says. “As if that’s how this works.”
The begging man looks up at him, confusion cutting through the terror on his face.
One of the white shirts looks back at Marco, as if awaiting his word.
The condemnation is low and swift. “He won’t last a week down there. It’s not worth the bread to feed him.”
The shot comes instantly.
The man’s head snaps back. His body crumples sideways, still twitching. More blood on the ground.
Marco turns his head toward me.
Those bottomless eyes meet mine. For a moment, everything else disappears—the corpses, the soldiers, the distant city walls. Just him looking at me like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.
Up close, his beauty is even more striking. Sharp cheekbones, perfect jawline, skin that looks like it’s been kissed by summer sun. But there’s something wrong with his eyes. Something empty behind all that warmth.
Like looking into the eyes of a well-fed shark.
The two white shirts step aside like courtiers making way for royalty. He moves forward, closing the distance between us until I can smell him—lavender soap and something expensive. Nothing like the sweat and fear that clings to the rest of us.
His hand rises toward my face.
I jerk back, but there’s nowhere to go. A soldier behind me blocks any retreat, and the chains around my wrists make it impossible to defend myself properly.
His fingers brush my cheek.
The touch is gentle. Almost tender. Like he’s examining something precious, something fragile that might break if he’s too rough. His thumb traces along my jawline, down to my chin. He tilts my head up, forcing me to meet his eyes.
The moment stretches. His thumb strokes across my cheekbones as if I’m something he owns. Or a horse he’s thinking of buying.
Every nerve is screaming wrong, wrong, wrong.
Rage floods through me. Hot and pure and sharp and all-consuming.
How dare this man decide who lives and dies, as if he’s a god? How dare he put his fucking hands on me?
“¿Sabes qué, idiota?” The words come out in the old tongue, the dialect we use on Atrea when we don’t want outsiders to understand.You know what, asshole?“Agarra esas manitas tan lindas tuyas y métetelas por el culo.”You can take your pretty hands and shove them up your ass.
I gather the saliva in my mouth and spit directly into his face. It hits him square in the eye. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t step back. Just stands there for a moment, my saliva running down his cheek like a tear.
