It was hell.
And for it to be a lie…
No wonder he hated his mother. He was more than justified.
“Didn’t any of the adults do anything to help him?”
Maris shook his head. “They were even worse than the kids. And they turned a blind eye to how he was treated, even when it was right under their noses. Every time he moved, Darling had to fight someone over it. And his uncle was the most brutal of all. Anytime Arturo saw a man in the palace he didn’t recognize or one anywhere near Darling, he accused Darling of sleeping with him. And when Darling was sixteen…” He flinched as if someone had hit him.
Her own stomach tightened in reflex. “What?”
His breathing ragged, Maris’s eyes blazed with fury. “Arturo sent him to a mental institution for it.”
She gaped at his disclosure. A mental institution? She’d ask him if he was serious, but she could see that answer clearly enough. “How could he do that?”
“He was the acting governor,” Maris said simply. “Absolute power and authority. He demanded the doctors use aversion therapy to cure Darling of his homosexuality.”
“I don’t understand. What’s aversion therapy?”
Maris couldn’t even meet her gaze.
When he finally spoke, his voice was thick and constrained. “It’s where they inflict severe pain, and use negative reinforcement to cause someone to alter their behavior.”
“Like putting pepper sauce on a child’s thumb to keep them from sucking it?” Her father had done that to her when she was six. To this day, she couldn’t look at a pepper without cringing.
Maris toyed with the edge of his sleeve, but he still refused to meet her gaze. “General idea, but much worse. The point is to make the activity so repugnant and horrifying that the patient never wants to do it again.”
Biting her lip, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear anything more.
Unfortunately, he didn’t stop there. “That was how Darling lost his virginity… and it wasn’t to a woman.”
She choked on a sob.
Maris swallowed hard. “He was brutally raped, Zarya. Repeatedly. It was so bad, that for weeks after his release, he sat huddled in a corner, with his back against the wall. Like now, he wouldn’t speak to anyone, and he had violent nightmares from it for years. Sometimes I think he still does.”
His gaze haunted, he wiped a hand over his face. “When I finally saw him for the first time after he’d been released, I stupidly asked what they’d done to him… tears welled up in his eyes and then flowed down his face—and Darling doesn’t cry, Zarya. Ever. Not for anything. He refused to look at me or to speak about it at all. By that, I knew what he wouldn’t say.”
“Did he ever tell you for sure?”
“Years later, when he was extremely drunk and ranting about his uncle, but he’s never gone into any details. Other than to say he wanted to kill them all… and now he has.”
Sighing, Maris returned to the counter to finish putting away her makeup. “For over a year after his release, he wouldn’t let anyone touch him at all. Not even his own sister, and Darling has always adored Lise. If a man came anywhere near him, he literally ran away, and he refused to be alone with anyone. Even me. It was two full years before he’d even look another person in the
eye, male or female. So no, he’s never experimented. Until you, I’ve never known him to voluntarily be naked with anyone.”
Her heart ached for Darling and what his uncle had put him through. It was
so
wrong.
But it left her with one question. “How did Darling pull off being gay if he was so repulsed by men?”
Maris smiled sheepishly. “I taught him how to use men he knew were safe to keep up the ruse—like I did with the women I dated. Men who wouldn’t touch him or beat him over it. It took a lot of patience, but I got him to the point that he’d let me hug him again. He knew I wasn’t going to make a move on him. And once he was used to me, we took smaller steps. First with his friend Caillen, who is rabidly heterosexual, and yet completely at ease with homosexuals. I taught Darling how to stand close to Caillen, and lean in to him so that other people would misinterpret his actions. If anyone asked him if he had a crush on someone, we chose Nykyrian because we knew Nyk would never hurt Darling for it. And once I came out, it was a lot easier. I was the one person he could be openly affectionate with who wouldn’t be offended or expect anything else from him.”
It was actually a brilliant plan. “So you’ve protected him all this time?”
“More he protected me. Until I came out, he took the heat for a lot of things I had.”
“Such as?”
He gave her a duh stare. “I’m gay, Zarya. I’ve been that way as far back as I have memories. Obviously, I like to look at men, and read about men being together. I didn’t dare do that at home where my brothers or parents might find it. So Darling kept… items for me, and I kept things for him.”
That made sense, but it also made her feel stupid that he had to be so explicit. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be dense.”
“It’s okay. We’re all dense from time to time.” He let out a bitter laugh. “I still can’t get over the shock on my parents’ faces when I told them the truth about me. And all I could think was,
Are you people totally blind? Did none of you ever really look at me?
Even though I’d tried to hide it, I don’t see how they missed it. Any more than I’ve ever understood how someone couldn’t tell Darling was straight.”
“I have to say I never had any doubts.” But then she’d never seen the “Darling Cruel” side of him. As Kere, with a tiny handful of exceptions, he’d been all testosterone, all the time.
That thought made her flash back to one of their first missions together. They’d been ambushed by Caronese troops. When the blaster volley had started, he’d caught her about the waist and pulled her out of the line of fire. With one arm only, Darling had lifted her and held her against him with so much ease that his strength had temporarily stunned her. He’d wrapped himself around her body so that they shot his armor and left her unscathed.
When their attackers had paused to recharge their weapons, he’d literally skated across the slick floor to dump her into an access hallway before he turned. His head low and lethal, he’d stalked down the smoke-filled hallway like the fiercest predator she’d ever seen, and opened fire on them.
She still got chills whenever she thought about the tough vision he’d made in that dimly lit hallway, surrounded by smoke and blasts, as he returned their fire, and set their enemies into retreat.
Single-handedly.
Yeah…
No one messed with Kere, or her, without feeling his wrath.
Now she understood a lot more about why Darling had always been so hungry for her whenever they’d been alone. If he’d been keeping all of the real him bottled up around everyone else, it made sense that he’d savor their time together.
And savor her.
There was nothing she loved more than the way he buried his face in the curve of her neck and breathed her in like she was a drug he craved with every part of his being. He could make love to her for hours without tiring. Whenever they were together, he was focused only on her and nothing else.
Always attentive. Always gentle.
Always feral.
Gods, how she’d missed those moments. Missed the sound of his deep, lyrical voice, talking to her for hours on end. No one pronounced her name the way he did.
And his laughter…
It never failed to make her smile. He had the most wicked sense of humor imaginable. Dark and sarcastic, he found amusement in the bleakest and most bizarre things.
Maris cleared his throat, bringing her back to the present.
And to the pain of the fact that she might never have those moments with Darling again.
Tormented agony glowed deep in his eyes. “You’ve no idea how many times I’ve wondered if Darling would have been better off had he not been my friend.”
She frowned. “Why would you say that?”
“Had we not become friends when we were so young… had he not known and accepted the fact that I was homosexual, he would have never thought to claim his mother’s boyfriend as his. It wouldn’t have even occurred to him to do it—all of that was totally my fault and I know it.”
His words stunned her. “They would have killed his mother, Maris. How could that be better?”
“Honestly?” Maris asked in a deadly serious tone. “I don’t think that would have been as bad as what’s happened to him since. Yes, he would have had grief from losing her. But I don’t
think her loss would have been nearly as awful as his stints in the asylums, and what they did to him every time he was confined for it. The unrelenting hell he’s had to endure all these years over pretending to be something he’s not.”
The saddest part? She had a sick feeling in her stomach that Maris might be right. To be punished and humiliated for a lie you were forced to live…
It had to have been brutal.
And it made her curious about something else. “How long have you two been friends?”
Maris grinned as if the memory was one of the best of his life. “Since preschool. I met him the first day there when we were five.”
Zarya smiled at the love she saw in his eyes. How she wished she could have found a friend like Maris so young. But most of her friends had turned on her over the years, for one reason or another. One, wanting the bounty on her head, had even told the League where she lived. It was why she was so skittish and suspicious of people now.
She hadn’t met her best friend, Ture, until a couple of years ago—he was a cook in the restaurant she’d started patronizing on her way home to keep Darling from fussing at her for not eating.
And thinking of Ture, who had only confessed his sexual preference to her a few weeks before she’d been taken prisoner, made her wonder how long Maris had waited with Darling. “When did you tell Darling you were gay?”
“I didn’t have to. He always knew.” Maris shook his head. “We were twelve before I knew he knew. Things were starting to get really awkward for me then. When we were younger, it didn’t matter so much. But once puberty kicked in… it was extremely hard as I realized just how different I was from the other boys I knew. Being Phrixian, didn’t help. We’re a warrior culture where men are men, and you better be testosterone driven every nanosecond of
the day or you’re going to get your ass kicked. For years, I didn’t know
anyone
else who was gay—I really thought I was defective. I was born number seven in a total of nine boys, and my brothers are all you’d expect from a Phrixian family. Fierce, tough, and brutal. I’m actually lucky they didn’t kill me for it.”
He laughed all of a sudden. “Ironically, Darling was the one who introduced me to my first boyfriend when I was nineteen. But for him, I’m not sure I would have ever found a community that accepted me.”
She rubbed his arm in sympathy. “I can only imagine how many women must have thrown themselves at you, given how handsome you are. And the fact you’re a high-ranking prince… bonus.”
Maris nodded grimly. “Yes, they did. Anyone who thinks men are more sexually predacious than a woman hasn’t been around any. I’ve never had a man come on to me as strongly as some of the women I met both before I came out, and since. You’d be amazed how many of them have offered to try and convert me. Like that’s all it would take, right?” He rolled his eyes. “And they don’t like to take no for an answer either. I had this one who… Never mind.” He waved his hand in front of his face as if to cool it down. “Girl, the stories I could tell you about some of them.”
Zarya felt her own face flame. Now that he mentioned it, she’d been the one who made the first move on Darling.
Yeah, let’s not go there…
She still couldn’t believe how forward she’d been with Darling in the early days of their relationship. But like Maris said, she’d seen what she wanted and she’d gone after him.
“So how did you find out he knew?” she asked, trying to get Maris back on the original topic and not a segue that mortified her.
“One night, not long before his father died, I was sleeping over. Darling had gone out to see Ryn who was training with the guard.” Maris paused to give her a wicked smile behind his hand as if he
were imparting a secret to her. “Did you know most of them train without their shirts on?” He wrinkled his nose and bit his lip playfully. “I didn’t, and Phrixians don’t. I’d never been around men built like they were who were that close to naked and not related to me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop my eyes from betraying my interest. I absolutely licked them with my gaze.”
He fanned his face again. “Anyway, I suddenly realized Darling had stopped talking to Ryn and was watching me with an evil smirk. I was sick from it. All I could think was that he’d send me home and never speak to me again. Or worse, be like everyone else I knew and beat the mess out of me for it. Instead, he came over and clapped me on the back. Then he leaned to whisper in my ear so that no one else would overhear him, and said, ‘I don’t care what your tastes are, Mari. I never have, and I’ve known about them for a long time. So don’t ever be afraid of me because of it. You’re still my brother, and you always will be. If we were all made the same, the universe would be a boring place. And while my tastes are much more traditional, I will never judge you for yours. Just don’t ever grab my junk, and I won’t kill you for it.’ ”