Page 46

B row furrowing, I shift restlessly atop the mattress, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth. “Have you ever gone a single day not knowing if you’d have a place to stay that night?” The question tumbles from my lips before I can rein it in, gaze drifting to study Arius’ hardened profile. “Or whether you’d get a hot shower to actually scrub off the pervading stench of desperation clinging to your skin?”

He stiffens almost imperceptibly at the blunt inquiry, sucking his cheeks in as he mulls it over. When Arius does respond, there’s a weary resignation underpinning his gruff tone.

“You never have to worry about that shite again, not with us looking out for you.” His gunmetal eyes bore into mine with an intensity that has my breath hitching faintly in my chest. “Jace, Hayes, Rhys—we’ve got your back, . That’s not the kind of life you’ll ever have to endure again.”

A hollow chuckle slips past my lips despite my best efforts, the sound utterly devoid of any true mirth or levity. “It’s not about the stability or anything like that,” I murmur, shaking my head incrementally. “When you spend years being conditioned to operate in constant survival mode without fail… it isn’t something you can just magically shut off overnight.”

Shifting to face me more directly, Arius’ expression pinches with a hint of confusion. Before he can interject, I plough ahead with my explanation.

“Every single day for as long as I can bloody remember, I’ve had to claw and fight and degrade myself in whatever way necessary just to make it to the next sunrise.” My jaw clenches against the bitter tide of memories flooding my consciousness, that defiant spark in my chest flaring with renewed intensity. “You can’t simply flip a switch and turn off instincts like that after living so long on the knife’s edge of existence, Arius. It doesn’t work that way.”

“…” Arius’ gravelly tone cuts through my impassioned tirade, one of his hands lifting in a placating gesture. “I’m gonna stop you right there, yeah? Because I’m not about to let you think for a single second that I can’t understand what it means to exist in survival mode.”

Lips pursing into a flat line, my brows wing upwards in pointed scepticism. How the actual fuck could someone like Arius—with his opulence and privilege oozing from every pore—even begin to comprehend what real destitution and hopelessness feels like? The thought is so ludicrous it has me scoffing before I can bite back the derisive sound.

Arius’ jaw tightens at the unspoken challenge, a muscle feathering near his eye as he fixes me with an inscrutable look. “Don’t give me that self-righteous shite, ,” he growls, leaning in closer and allowing his thigh to brush faintly against my bent knee. “There’s a hell of a lot about Ashtiroch and the Order you’re oblivious to, just like there’s even more about mine and the lads’ lives you couldn’t begin to fathom.”

Hunching my shoulders, I start to pick absently at my nails, gaze falling into my lap. “Well, it’s not like any of you lot actually bother to fill me in on anything,” I mutter sourly. “I’m just meant to prance around in this perpetual fog, completely clueless to whatever fresh hell awaits ‘round each corner.”

The weighted silence stretches for several beats until Arius shatters it with an aggrieved sigh, lashes fluttering shut. “I know, srdie?ko,” he mutters, tone strained. “And I hate keeping you so thoroughly in the dark like this. But that’s about to change, starting tonight.”

My brow furrows once more as I cock my head, regarding him with unveiled scepticism. “What d’you mean? We already discussed tomorrow’s Hunt at length earlier…”

Trailing off, I watch as Arius’ jaw begins flexing in that telltale sign of agitation, his piercing stare drifting ceilingward. “Fuck. Honestly, I’m afraid of saying too much and overwhelming you,” he growls at length, sounding almost pained. “This entire sodding mess is a right clusterfuck of epic proportions.”

The naked anguish tingeing his tone has me shifting fractionally closer without conscious thought, my knee nestling up against the solid line of Arius’ thigh. Either he doesn’t notice the abrupt proximity or simply doesn’t care, his internal war clearly raging on obliviously.

“Then don’t coddle me,” I murmur after clearing my dry throat, trying to infuse my words with every ounce of conviction pulsing through my veins. “I can handle a hell of a lot more than you wankers seem to give me credit for, Arius. Honestly, being stuck perpetually in the dark like this is infinitely more terrifying than any fresh trauma you might inadvertently unleash.”

I chew on my bottom lip as Arius drops his gaze, his expression growing sombre and pensive. There’s a heaviness weighing on those broad shoulders, sinking him inwards almost imperceptibly. When he finally meets my eyes again after what feels like an eternity, something akin to melancholy clouds those mercurial depths.

Bracing his elbows on his knees, Arius leans forward and cradles his face in his palms with a weary exhalation. “Fuck, I don’t even know where to start if I’m being honest,” he mutters, voice slightly muffled.

My throat works reflexively as I consider his admission. “Just start wherever you feel comfortable,” I murmur, trying to keep my tone gentle yet firm. “Any little bit helps pull back the curtain, yeah?”

A sardonic chuckle rumbles up from Arius’ hunched form, devoid of any genuine mirth. “That’s just it—none of this is remotely comfortable or easy to unpack.” He sighs, fingers combing through his dishevelled locks as he twists to fix me with an inscrutable stare. “My childhood—all our childhoods really—was… unconventional, to put it lightly.”

The words hang heavy between us, seeming to sap any lingering levity from the air itself. I don’t dare reply, terrified that interrupting this rare moment of vulnerability might cause Arius to retreat back into his fortified emotional walls. So I simply hold that weighted gaze, waiting with bated breath as he gathers his thoughts.

“Since the moment I could bloody walk, there’s been a blade in my hands and lessons on how to efficiently end a life,” Arius continues after clearing his throat, expression hardening incrementally. “My parents aren’t kind people by any means, . Cold, ruthless, cruel—everything the Order needs their soldiers to become.”

A muscle feathers near his eye as he pauses, worrying his bottom lip for a heartbeat. “Can’t even remember the last time the bastards bothered wishing me a happy birthday or some shite. Sentimentality and fillery like that doesn’t exist in our world.”

Despite the undercurrent of disdain suffusing those gruff syllables, there’s an indelible thread of weary resignation threaded throughout. As if Arius has simply accepted this as an immutable facet of reality rather than railing against the injustice.

“After I turned six, it was off to the compound for more… formalised ‘training’, if you can call it that.” He snorts derisively, gaze drifting to some middle distance my eyes can’t track. “All just sanctioned torture and brutality to condition us, really. Beatings, starvation, stress positions—anything to ensure we could withstand whatever fresh hell awaited on ops down the line. Being taught from day one that emotions are a liability that’ll get you killed on a contract.”

Throat bobbing with a convulsive swallow, Arius releases a shuddering exhalation as he massages his temples. “Wasn’t uncommon for boys to die from the ‘conditioning’ regimens or extended training exercises. Only the very best students made it past their tenth birthdays, even luckier if they somehow survived to eighteen and final induction.”

A harrowed, hollowed-out sort of resignation settles over his features as he lapses into weighted silence once more. For several moments, it seems Arius has spiralled too deeply into the throes of those warped recollections, lost to whatever trauma lurks in the darker recesses of his psyche.

Unable to find any words that don’t sound trite or diminishing, I reach out to brush trembling fingertips against his wrist in a fragile tether to the present. The infinitesimal contact seems to jolt Arius from his stupor, his molten gaze snapping back into crisp focus as it locks on me with unsettling intensity.

I hold Arius’ piercing stare, my breath catching in my throat at the rawness etched into the angular planes of his face. For several heartbeats, the weighted silence stretches between us—thick and suffocating in its intensity. Just when I think he’s retreated too far into that haunted headspace, Arius tears his gaze away with a shuddering exhalation.

“When the boys turn twelve…” He pauses to wet his lips, Adam’s apple bobbing convulsively. “They… we’re raped. By an older male member of the Order.”

The words hit like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs as my stomach churns violently. Raped? As goddamn children? Bile scorches the back of my throat as I fight against the visceral urge to vomit, trying to process the unthinkable revelation.

“Repeatedly,” Arius rumbles after clearing his throat, voice rough with suppressed emotion. “Over the span of at least three months, depending on how our monthly assessments went.” His jaw clenches, tendons straining beneath tawny skin. “If they deemed you weren’t ready yet, still too reactive and ‘soft’, they’d just… add another month of that fresh hell to the schedule. Until you became so utterly numb to the depravity that it almost became an out-of-body experience just to endure it.”

White noise roars in my ears, the room seeming to spin as nausea claws its way up my oesophagus. Christ, how is any of this real? How did I stumble so blindly into this nightmare realm of sanctioned evil and perversion?

Fighting to keep my composure, I lift a trembling hand to swipe away the cold beads of sweat prickling my hairline. “Is… is that why Hayes and Jace are so close?” I rasp once I’ve wrestled my rebellious stomach back under control. “They bonded over that mutual trauma or whatever?”

Arius nods, the motion infinitesimal but weighted nonetheless. “Went through a Romanian compound together before being transferred out to mine in France,” he says in a toneless murmur. “They’ve been damn near inseparable ever since that crucible forged their brotherhood, I reckon.”

Throat working convulsively, I finally manage to find my voice once more. “How… how many of those bloody compounds are there?” The question tumbles out with a tremor of dread I can’t contain.

Releasing a shuddery breath, Arius shrugs one shoulder as he stares at where his hands dangle between his knees. “Hundreds, probably,” he grunts, worrying at a hangnail. “Fuck if I know the actual tally. The Order’s reach is fucking everywhere, srdie?ko. Rhys was at my compound in France.”

Raking fingers through his dishevelled hair, Arius huffs out a humourless snort. “His tech skills and the family lineage he comes from aren’t exactly suited for combat roles, though. So he never had to endure that particular… conditioning regimen. But the prick knows the score and what the rest of us went through, even if he doesn’t talk about his own traumatic shite much.” He pauses, eyes drifting shut for a heartbeat. “Sometimes I reckon the not knowing is worse than anything my mind could conjure, truth be told.”

A shudder ripples through me at the implication, nausea churning my gut once more. What does one even say to something so utterly depraved and incomprehensible? Offer empty platitudes and half-hearted condolences like the words carry any weight in the face of such abject horror? No, meaningless drivel like that would only cheapen and diminish the gravity of what Arius is baring before me.

So instead, I swallow back the bitter tide of revulsion and prod the festering wound with a different sort of inquiry. “If it’s all so bloody awful, why haven’t you tried to leave it all behind?”

The bitter bark of laughter that punches out of Arius’ broad chest startles me, his expression twisting into a rictus sneer. “You fucking daft?” he rasps, a muscle feathering near his eye. “Deserters get one thing in this twisted game—a bullet between the eyes or their wine poisoned at the family dinner table. There’s no getting out alive. Not for any of us.”

The words drop like a lead weight into the pit of my hollow gut, driving the air from my lungs anew. There’s no escape from this fresh hell I’ve stumbled into, no guardrails or moral boundaries to limit the depravity. Just an endless abyss of darkness and brutality spanning generations, consuming all within its ravenous maw like a gaping black hole of morality.