Helpless.
He, who had the power, speed, and skills to kill a man with the ease of a League assassin, had been completely unable to stop them from violating him.
Over and over.
With every glimpse of his skin, Darling smelled the blood, the shit, and the urine. The vomit. Every vicious thing they’d said to him while they’d carved him up—the laughter and joy they’d taken in their cruelty rang in his ears until he was deaf from it.
Nothing could silence it.
Nothing.
And above it all, was the sound of Zarya on the other side of the door, going about her daily routine while they viciously brutalized him, day after day, month after month.
Even then, he’d prayed that she, the woman who’d sworn she would never betray or hurt him, would just open the door and help him.
Instead, when she’d finally come inside, she’d slapped and cursed him like all the others.
That
was what he couldn’t face.
And now Maris dared to bring the bitch back into his life…
Maris
was
lucky he hadn’t punched him.
Sick to his stomach and battered to the core of his soul, Darling fished through the mess he’d made in his office and pulled his bottle of Tondarion whisky up from the floor where it’d rolled after he’d overturned his desk.
This had been the only comfort he’d had since they’d rescued him. Nothing else eased the bitterness in his dead heart. While the whisky didn’t get rid of the voices entirely, it at least dulled them enough that he could function around the memories.
He took a deep swig straight from the bottle and let the liquor burn down his damaged throat. The one thing he’d learned in his useless life was how to find pleasure in pain. It was all the gods had left him with. “You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not feeling up to a shower or shave right now.”
Maris closed the distance between them. He set the mask down on the shelves to Darling’s left, then pulled the bottle out of Darling’s hand and placed it beside the mask. “I don’t care what you look like, Darling. I never have. It’s your heart that’s beautiful.”
Darling cursed him for a liar as he reached for the bottle again.
Maris caught his hand to keep him from touching it. “You don’t need that.”
Yes, he did. He had nothing else in his life. “There’s no beauty left in me, Mari. People are nothing but rabid animals who attack friend and foe for no reason whatsoever. They don’t care. They don’t feel. All they want to do is crush others and make them bleed as if that will somehow miraculously aleviate their putrid misery. There’s nothing left but hatred, contempt, and disgust in
my heart. I finally understand what drove Arturo and why I was attacked.”
Wanting only to comfort him, Maris wrapped his arms around Darling’s waist and held him close.
To his surprise, Darling actually leaned back against his chest and closed his eyes. Then, he reached up to curl his arm around Maris’s neck. Darling hadn’t allowed him to hold him like this since before his first rape. If nothing else, that told him just how much pain Darling was in.
“How flagged are you, Darling?”
“Very.” His breathing ragged, he swallowed hard as he surrendered his weight to Maris. “I’m so fucked up, Mari,” he whispered. “All I feel now is unending pain and utter misery. I just want to sleep and I can’t even do that. I’m so tired of it all…”
Maris tightened his arms around him, wishing there was something, anything, he could do to make it better. He held Darling tight as a thousand regrets ripped him apart. “I know, sweetie. I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall, I promise.”
Swaying with Darling in his arms, Maris brushed the hair back from Darling’s scarred face and kissed his bearded cheek before he spoke the words that broke his heart into pieces. “But we both know that I’m not what you need or want. No matter how much I love you, I can’t heal you.”
Tears swam in Darling’s eyes, but not a single one fell. Darling’s strength had always amazed him. No matter the firestorm, he’d always stood so proud and defiant in the midst of it.
Leaning his head back onto Maris’s shoulder, Darling cupped his cheek in his gloved hand. “Why couldn’t I be gay? It would be so easy to love you if I were. You’ve always been here for me, Mari. You’ve never hurt me. Not once.”
The truth stung him as Maris thought back to all the times
Darling had been ostracized, in need of a friend, and he’d been too afraid to publicly acknowledge him. But Darling never seemed to remember that part of their friendship. It didn’t tear him apart the way it did Maris.
“You know that’s not true, Dar. I got your ass kicked the first day we met.”
Darling let out an unexpected tiny laugh at the memory. “But I won the fight.”
“Yes, you did.” Maris smiled as he saw that day so clearly in his mind. He’d been pinned to the school wall by a bully who’d been pounding on him. Out of nowhere, this tiny little red-haired boy had come charging in like a hurricane. Barely five years old, Darling had been short for his age. But what he lacked in height, he made up for in ferocity.
In no time at all, he’d beat the bully back and had him on the ground, crying for his mother. After making him swear he’d never even look at Maris again, Darling had stood up and come over to him. Forever proud and fierce, Darling had wiped the blood from his lips, then offered Maris his other hand. “Hi, I’m Darling Cruel. We should be friends.”
Maris had fallen in love instantly.
And he’d been in love with Darling every day since.
“You have always been my champion,” Maris whispered to him.
Darling closed his eyes as he clenched his fist in Maris’s hair. “Why couldn’t they have killed me, Mari? My mother’s right. I have no reason to be here. I shouldn’t be alive. The empire would be better off with Drake as governor and not a freak like me.”
“Don’t you
dare
talk like that!” Maris didn’t want to think about a life without Darling in it. He couldn’t face the pain of even the thought, never mind the reality. Not knowing where Darling was had been the worst time of his life.
He didn’t care what condition Darling was in. He just needed him to be here.
“It’s true and you know it,” Darling said, his speech slurred as his hand fell away from Maris’s hair. “I’m sick of hurting all the time, Mari. I just want the pain to stop. But it doesn’t. It only worsens. I can’t even dull it anymore.” His words were really slurred now. “I just want…”
Maris tightened his arms around Darling as he finally passed out. “My poor baby.” But at least Darling would have a few hours of rest now.
Maybe by tomorrow he’d feel a little better. Not likely, but he could hope.
Swinging Darling up in his arms, Maris carried him upstairs, to the governor’s bedroom.
He lay Darling down on the large bed and removed his boots, hood, and gloves. His heart broke as he saw the damage they’d wrought on Darling’s face, hands, and feet.
It was so wrong. Damn them for their cruelty.
Darling had been so beautiful in his youth. So flawlessly handsome. But first his own brother had given him the vertical scar on the left side of his face, and now this…
Bastards.
Maris started to remove the explosives that were woven around Darling’s tunic, then caught himself. Knowing Darling, they were trip wired. It was extreme, but he understood that insanity, too. Every Cruel governor for the last three thousand years had been assassinated.
All
of them.
It was one of the reasons why Darling had been so fascinated by electronics and explosives as a kid. As far back as Maris could remember, Darling had been obsessed with protecting himself from would-be assassins.
Ironically, it had been an assassin who finally quelled Darling’s fear of them. Nykyrian had taught Darling every trick a trained assassin had. Even some that no one knew.
And Darling had learned well. He forgot nothing. If any member of his line stood a chance of making it to old age, it was he.
Maris covered him with a blanket.
At least he’s talking to me again.
That was something. But as he watched Darling finally sleep, he had the worst feeling that it was too late to bring him back from the insanity that had sunk its hooks into him. After all the things Darling had been through, Maris had never seen him like this.
His anger and rage were tangible.
“I just want the pain to stop.”
Darling’s heartfelt words haunted him.
Maris’s gaze fell to the scars on Darling’s wrists that hadn’t come from his attackers or Arturo. Those had been Darling’s attempts to stop his pain when he was just a boy. Three times he’d tried to kill himself—once with drugs and twice by slashing his wrists. Three times they’d brought him back against his will. The only thing that had kept him from a fourth attempt had been Arturo’s threat to kill Lise if Darling tried again.
Darling’s entire life had been a study in trying to find shelter in the middle of an unrelenting storm that was determined to bring him to his knees.
Wishing he could help his best friend, Maris picked up Darling’s hand from the bed and studied the scar on his finger that showed where Syn had added the cybernetic replacement for the one they’d cut off.
He laced his fingers with Darling’s scarred ones.
Why couldn’t I be what you need?
It was why he’d never been serious about anyone else. How
could he? He was in love with his best friend and no one else measured up.
But Maris had long ago accepted the fact that they could never be lovers. Darling couldn’t help being straight any more than he could help being gay. Having tried to live in each other’s worlds, they knew that for a fact.
Even so, they were closer than most couples he’d known, straight or homosexual. Closer than any siblings. Maris took pride and pleasure in knowing that. He held a part of Darling that no one ever had. A special place that was reserved exclusively for him.
Still, it wasn’t Darling’s heart.
Only Zarya had ever held that.
How could she have been so stupid?
She’d had Darling wrapped around her finger. He’d been his happiest when she was a part of his life. Maris could still see the light that had been in Darling’s eyes when he spoke of her in ways he’d sell his soul to have Darling speak about him.
It wasn’t meant to be.
It could never be.
But Zarya could heal him. He knew it.
And deep down, he suspected Darling knew it, too. Why else would he have kept her here tonight? He could have easily ordered one of his soldiers to take her away. Or he could have killed her.
Instead, he’d taken her to the kitchen to work where the entire staff was female.
That said it all.
Even in his drunken rage, Darling had made sure she went untouched by another man and that she’d been put some place safe. That wasn’t the action of someone who didn’t care.
In time, Darling would forgive her for being stupid, and Maris
would do everything in his power to make sure that happened sooner rather than later.
Zarya sat in her new room, completely mortified.
So this is how Darling felt in our hands…
After the kitchen staff had finished dinner and then cleaned up, they had turned on her with a passion.
Everything on her body had been stripped off and stolen while they’d laughed about it. Even the pins from her hair. They’d left her with nothing, not even her undergarments.
Take that back. She still wore her damnable slave collar. Who in their right mind would want
that
?
Then they’d locked her in a spartan, closet-size room with the promise that they’d bring her new clothes in the morning—something Clarion had failed to do for Darling when he’d been in their custody.
There was no window, not that it mattered. She wasn’t about to try and escape with no clothes on. And while she sat on the floor with no light or blanket, all she could see was the way Darling had looked when Clarion and crew had been callously dragging him naked through the landing bay like some prized stag they’d shot in the wild.
Because of the tricom he’d made to protect her, Darling had been paralyzed. Completely unable to defend himself from them.
I spit in his face.
Tears blurred her vision. She was no better than the bitches who’d attacked her. True, his uncle had murdered her parents and sister. That her other sister and brother had been killed in the fight against his uncle.
But Darling had done nothing to deserve it. Over and over, she saw the images Maris had shown her of Darling’s wounds. Heard him telling her about Darling’s brutal past.
And that mask…
As scary as it was, it’d been nothing compared to the unreasoning hatred she’d seen in his eyes.
Eyes that were steel blue. All these years, she’d wondered what color Kere’s eyes were. She’d imagined everything from exotic humanoid species to dark like Maris’s.
Tonight that knowledge gave her no comfort at all.
It was a wonder Darling hadn’t killed her on sight. She wasn’t sure she could have held herself back if she’d been in his place.