“You mean you’ve fucked Marco.” His voice is deadpan, but he’s not truly amused.
I bury my face in my knees. “Twice now,” I mumble into the fabric.
Cas groans and slides down to sit on the floor beside me. “I told you it was a bad idea. What happened?”
“What happened is that he’s a fucking psychopath.”
He snorts. “I know that. And you must have known that beforehand. He’s been here for five years.Five years,Robin.”
“I know! I know, okay? It was a stupid idea. I never meant to get so wrapped up in all this. In him.”
Cas studies me in the dim light, his good hand drumming against his knee. He searches my face for a long moment, then nods. “Okay,” he whispers.
The simple acceptance in his voice breaks something loose inside me. I let my head fall onto his good shoulder, suddenly desperate for comfort, for someone who doesn’t want anything from me except to keep me alive. The cotton of his shirt is rough against my cheek, smelling of sweat and the antiseptic from Evander’s medical bay.
Cas shifts, trying to readjust his burned arm, and a sharp intake of breath hisses through his teeth.
“Doctor Death said I can’t train for a week, at least. I told him to fuck off.”
I straighten up. “Don’t be a fool. You need to sit out and watch for as long as Evander says. You’ve got five or six weeks at least before the variety games. Rest now, and you can shout at me during training instead.”
“And even worse, the fucker wants me in his room every day for dressing changes,” Cas grumbles, flexing his fingers experimentally. “Will you help me do it instead? Please?”
I chuckle. “No way, mate. I don’t want to touch your crispy fried arm.”
“Don’t joke about it. I’m sensitive.” Cas sighs, rolling his neck. “I’m actually due to go see him before I shower this morning. Though I can’t actually shower properly for ages, so I’m going to stink up our cell. Sorry.”
“Maybe you can ask Evander to give you a sponge bath.”
“I’d rather smell like a pig,” he mutters, but I could swear there’s a touch of pink in his cheeks. He shuffles onto his knees, wincing as the movement jostles his injured arm. Then he looks down at me, his face turning deathly serious in the pale light filtering through the corridor. “Listen, it’s you and me, mate, okay? We don’t need anyone else here.”
I nod, something tight in my throat.
“You remember your promise to me? To kill that bastard?”
Of course I do. Sometimes, it’s all I can think about. “I remember.”
“Good. If Marco tries to fuck with you again, kick him where it hurts.”
Cas pushes himself to his feet, cradling his burned arm against his chest, and shuffles out of the cell.
I drag myself over to Cas’s bottom bunk and collapse onto it, stretching my legs out across the thin mattress. I need at least a minute before the lights come on and another nightmare of a day officially begins.
Of course, lying here instantly makes my mind wander back to last night. To the villa. To Marco’s fingernails raking down my back. My hands on his neck as I whispered promises in our mother tongue into his ear. I told him he was everything I wanted. That he smelled like sunshine and felt like the warmth of the ocean at sunset.
And, of course, my mind returns to the lies that poured out of my mouth so easily I almost believed them myself.
“Your family lives.”
My gut twists. The words replay in my head, over and over, each repetition making me feel sicker. What the fuck possessed me to say that?
I saw them die with my own eyes. Watched that commander order those three blades to slit their throats. But how could I have told him that? How, when Marco looked at me with such desperate hope, like I was handing him salvation instead of poison? I couldn’t be the one to take away the only thing keeping him alive in this place.
The island elders used to tell us stories when we were children, warnings wrapped in fables. One about a fisherman who lied to save his nets, then had to keep lying to cover the first lie, until the lies grew so heavy they dragged him to the bottom of the sea.
That’s what that felt like last night. One lie spawning another, each one pulling me deeper.
But what was the alternative? Tell Marco the truth and watch him shatter completely? Watch whatever humanity he has left bleed out of him until there’s nothing left but the weapon the Emperor made him into?
