The days blurred into a nightmarish rhythm, measured only by the brutal punctuation of Damian's visits.
The basement cell had no windows. No clock. No distinction between day and night. Jace existed in a permanent twilight, lit by the single bare bulb that never went out. It hummed faintly, a constant, maddening drone that burrowed into his skull.
He was given clothes cheap grey sweats and a thin t-shirt after the first day. He was given food once a day, if he was good. A tray slid through a slot in the heavy door. Water from a tap in the corner. A bucket for waste that was emptied every other day by a silent, stone-faced guard who never met his eyes.
But the real rhythm was set by Damian's visits. They came without pattern, keeping Jace in a state of perpetual, trembling anticipation. Sometimes twice a day. Sometimes once every two days. The uncertainty was its own torture.
The first visits were purely punitive. The crop, a belt, once his bare fist. Damian didn't speak during these sessions. He simply entered, and Jace learned to brace himself, to curl into a ball, to protect his head and his stomach. The pain was a language he was being forced to learn. Each bruise was a lesson in submission. Each welt a reminder of his place.
On the fifth day or what Jace guessed was the fifth day Damian came with a chair.
He set it in the center of the cell and sat, crossing one leg over the other, the picture of relaxed authority. He studied Jace, who was huddled in the corner, his body a map of purple and black bruises.
"You've been quiet," Damian observed, his voice almost conversational. "No screaming. No begging. Is that progress, or have you simply learned that screaming does nothing?"
Jace didn't answer. He'd learned that too. Screaming only seemed to please him.
Damian sighed, a sound of manufactured disappointment. "I asked you a question."
When Jace still didn't speak, Damian stood. He walked to the corner, grabbed a handful of Jace's hair, and dragged him to the center of the room. He forced him to his knees, then released him.
"Look at me."
Jace raised his eyes. They were hollow, shadowed, the fire banked to nothing.
"I asked if you'd learned," Damian said, crouching to his level. "But looking at you now, I see the answer. You haven't learned. You've just shut down. There's a difference." He tilted his head, a predator examining prey. "Shutting down is surrender. Learning is choosing to obey. I don't want a broken doll, Jace. I want you to choose me."
He reached out, and Jace flinched violently. Damian's hand paused, then continued its path, cupping Jace's cheek with a gentleness that was somehow more horrifying than the violence. The contrast was obscene.
"This doesn't have to be your life," Damian murmured, his thumb stroking over a bruise. "The public story is already written. You had a breakdown at the gala. You're receiving private care. The world pities you. They've moved on to the next scandal." He leaned closer. "But in here, you can still choose. Choose me, and the pain stops. Choose me, and you come back upstairs. Not free never free but warm. Fed. Touched with care instead of correction."
Jace's breath hitched. The offer was a poisoned apple, beautiful and deadly. It was the same cage, just with silk sheets again. But God, the silk sheets sounded like heaven after this concrete hell.
"I can't," he whispered, his voice a raw scrape. "I can't choose you. Not after what you did. Not after what you are."
Something flickered in Damian's eyes. Not anger he was past anger. This was disappointment. The disappointment of a collector whose prized possession has developed an unfixable flaw.
"I see," he said softly. He stood, brushing off his knees. "Then you choose this."
He walked to the door and knocked. It opened immediately. He spoke to the guard in low tones, then turned back to Jace.
"You need a stronger motivation to choose correctly. I've been too gentle."
The guard returned moments later, dragging a figure with him. A figure in a rumpled suit, pale and shaking.
Luca.
He was thrown to the concrete floor beside Jace. His face was bruised, one eye swollen shut. He looked at Jace, and the devastation in his gaze was absolute.
"Jace…" Luca breathed, his voice broken. "I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."
Jace stared at his best friend the boy who had held him when his father died, the man who had secretly sold his soul to protect him, the liar who had watched him be destroyed in silence. All the rage he'd felt, all the betrayal, collapsed into something raw and terrible.
Damian crouched between them, a king on his throne of human wreckage.
"Here's the new lesson, Jace," he said, his voice silk over steel. "You won't choose for yourself? Fine. Choose for him. Every time you defy me, every time you refuse to submit, Luca pays the price. Not with his life I'm not a monster. But with pain. With degradation. With watching you watch him break."
He stood, gesturing to the guard, who handed him the leather crop.
"I'll start now. One refusal to choose me, one stroke on your friend. We'll see how long that stubborn pride lasts when it's his blood on the floor."
Luca looked up at Jace, tears streaming down his bruised face. "Don't. Jace, don't you dare choose him for me. I deserve this. I did this to you."
Damian's crop whistled through the air and landed across Luca's back. Luca screamed, a sound of pure agony that tore through Jace's chest like a blade.
"No!" Jace lunged, but the guard shoved him back down.
Damian raised the crop again. "Choose, Jace. Choose now, or he gets another."
Jace looked at Luca, at the pain and guilt and desperate love in his eyes. He looked at Damian, the monster who had orchestrated everything, who had turned his life into a chess game where every piece was rigged to fall.
There was no winning. There was only choosing which form of losing he could bear.
"Stop," he whispered. "Please. I… I choose you."
Damian's smile was slow, satisfied, utterly victorious. He lowered the crop and handed it to the guard.
"Good boy," he murmured. "See? You can learn."
He stepped over Luca as if he were trash and pulled Jace to his feet. Jace stumbled, his body screaming, his soul in tatters. Damian wrapped an arm around his waist, supporting him, guiding him toward the door.
"You'll be bathed. Fed. Put in a real bed," Damian promised, his voice gentle now, a lover's whisper. "And tonight, you'll show me just how much you've chosen me. Every touch, every surrender. You'll prove it with your body, since your words are so unreliable."
Jace didn't look back at Luca, crumpled on the concrete floor. He couldn't. If he looked back, he would shatter completely.
As Damian led him up the stairs, out of the dark and into the cold, sterile light of the house above, one thought echoed in the hollow spaces of his mind:
This is what winning looks like when you play against a monster.
You don't win. You just lose slower.