“Fuck.” He steps away, pacing, fingers sinking deep into his hair.
The rest of the room has gone silent, waiting for my thoughts. But what am I supposed to say? Because all I’m thinking is, why me? Not in some self-pitying, scared way. But why did the game planners choosemefor this? Why chance the champion getting injured? Or worse, infected.
Because I bet they’d love me to play the champions rounds sick. I bet they’d love to bring me out on the sand, frothing at the mouth, hungry for blood, and have me tear one of these men apart.
Then they could put me down in the desert like a rabid dog.
And never grant me my freedom.
What a show-stopping end for the Deathball champion.
I can’t imagine the Emperor would want this for me. So who did it? That bastard Julius? Fuck, he’d love me out of the way.
“Marco?” asks René, watching me closely.
I stare down the line of names, but it’s all a blur.
Who will be captain if I’m infected? René? Max? Robin…
“Training.” It’s my only refuge from this mess. “You’ve got five minutes to look at the match-ups, then I want you all lined up at the door.”
I make my way out of the room, fast as I can, and into the dark passage, where the air is cooler, where I can hardly see a thing. Where I might be able to think for one minute.
“You can’t just walk out.”
My sinking heart wrings a deep breath out of me as I come to a halt. “I’m not doing that.”
Robin’s hands don’t wrap around me like I want them to. He doesn’t grab me like he did last week. He comes to lean against a wall, keeping his distance, the feeble light of the torches flickering orange across his statuesque features. “Don’t you think we need a plan?”
“I think we need a plan.”
“Then let me talk to you.”
“We can’t—”
“About the game, Marco. Nothing else.”
His eyes have softened since the last time I looked into them, at the ball, when they were all fire and granite.
It kills me, and mine flinch away. “I don’t see how we can do this together.”
“It’s not as though we have a choice.” He’s right. But then I also don’t think we have much of a chance, depending on what they throw at us. Not with everything between us. I’m supposed to be pushing him away, not getting closer to him. He’s supposed to hate me. I’m supposed to walk away.
“I’m not asking anything else from you,” he says.
Something about those words is gutting. Something about those words makes me want to punch the wall. Or him. Just to get him away from me.
Yet he speaks on. “If we don’t plan this, we’re never getting out, either of us. You can get back to ignoring me afterwards. And I won’t bother you either, if that’s what you want. But you and me… we have to get home. Both of us. And right now, we’re each other’s best chance at doing that.”
There’s a movement down the hall, men coming, ready for another day of training. Another day of preparing for battle.
But after all, that’s what Robin and I were born to.
Battle.
War.
Ready, since birth, to kill and to die for Atrea.
