Born of Silence (5 page)

Holy gods…

The thing was worth a fortune.

She’d known Kere was loaded. As one of the five Sentella leaders, he made a killing, pardon the pun, by taking out military targets.

But this…

Whoa. It caught the light and glittered in a spectrum of rainbow
colors. There were two blood-red smaller stones on each side that only made the rich, dark color more intense.

A classic-style Caronese engagement ring, the stones stood for the past, the present, and the future. The red for passion and the center stone for fidelity.

His promise to her. She couldn’t wait to call her sister and tell her what had happened. Sorche wouldn’t believe it. As far back as Zarya could remember, they’d spent countless hours talking about what kind of man they’d fall in love with. Who they dreamed of marrying one day.

Never had she imagined hers would be the most lethal outlaw in the universe.

One whose face she’d never seen…

Her gaze fell to the notecard he’d left on her nightstand by her clock. How very old-fashioned and sweet, and it was so vintage Kere that it made her smile. But even more endearing, on top of the note was one perfect white rose and a small round electronic something she’d never seen before. Curious, she pulled the note and black circle device toward her.

The hair on the back of her neck rose as déjà vu tortured her. Her eyes filling with tears, she touched his flowing script. The last time a man had left her a note like this, it’d been her father.

Her father had died on his way back for them.

She winced in pain as a bitter lump tightened her stomach.
Please, please don’t let history repeat itself.

2

“Are you out of your mind? I would slap sense into you, but you’d most likely punch me back and that would… really hurt. ’Cause the gods know, you pack one nasty left hook that you always lead with. Might even kill me. At the very least, it would wrinkle, and stain my clothes with blood, which is worse than death, if you ask me. Still, are you out of your mind?”

Darling sighed at Maris’s angry tirade as they stood in the governor’s office of the Winter Palace—the main political seat Darling’s family had used to rule their empire for the least two hundred years. This room was one of the few electronic dead spots of the palace where they couldn’t be overheard or monitored in any way.

Richly appointed and decorated with dark blues, golds, and maroons, the study was intended to overwhelm and impress visitors with the ostentatious wealth of the Cruel family—to make others feel inferior and small in comparison.

It worked on all but the stoutest egos.

His uncle also used this room to plot the deaths and downfalls of his enemies, as well as his own allies and friends.

And it was in this very room, where there was no surveillance whatsoever, that Darling’s uncle had murdered his own brother…

Darling’s father.

Something Darling couldn’t prove so he didn’t dare breathe a word of it to anyone, not even Maris. But he knew the truth from his uncle’s own lips. It’d come out as a drunken boast one night eleven years ago when his uncle had been particularly brutal with him after he’d escaped and run away from the mental institution his uncle had confined him in. The royal guards had found him in hiding and brought him back to this very room—beating him almost every step of the journey home.

His face stinging from his uncle’s fists, Darling had shoved Arturo away from him.
“You’re not my father, you worthless bastard. And you’re not a governor in full right,
Lord Grand Counsel
.”
He’d sneered the title he knew his uncle despised as it reminded Arturo of his lesser rank and position.
“You’ll never be one. But I will be governor one day, and I don’t have to listen to
you
.”

His uncle had slammed his head into the desk that stood on their right and used his hair to pin him to it before he’d leaned over Darling to snarl in Darling’s ear with his drunken breath.
“You better wise up, you little smart-mouthed faggot. I own you and I can make your life, and your family’s lives, utter hell. If you don’t do what I say, when I say it, I’ll kill you just like I did your spineless father. You should have seen the shock on the pathetic bastard’s face when I cut his throat.”

It was a night his uncle didn’t remember.

A night Darling couldn’t forget.

And since the moment of that slip, Darling had been plotting his uncle’s downfall in this very room where the walls bled from past treacheries.

Unfortunately, it’d taken a lot longer to put an overthrow into place than he’d wanted. But then it wasn’t easy to topple a govern
ment, especially when the handful of people you loved would be executed along with you should you fail.

Dragging his thoughts away from the past, Darling met Maris’s irritated gaze—Maris would be the first to die if he screwed this up. And that was something he could neither allow nor contemplate. Honestly, he could barely remember a time in his life when Maris hadn’t been a major part of it.

Though they were only a few weeks apart in age, Maris looked a lot younger. He’d recently cut his black hair short and wore it in spiked waves that went in all directions. For once, Maris was dressed conservatively in a light green jacket and tan pants. Something that was a stark contrast to Darling’s normal jet-black attire.

But then they were ever opposites in most things. While Maris had pale skin, Darling’s was deep olive. Maris had dark eyes. His were light blue. And only Darling’s sister shared his dark red hair.

Maris was lean with smooth, unblemished skin, and Darling was ripped with more scars than any aristo he knew, and that included the Andarion prince, Nykyrian Quiakides, who was a former League assassin and a close friend of Darling’s.

But their most polar opposite trait was their personalities. Maris lived out loud with a flamboyant, carefree style that tended to offend a lot of people. Meanwhile Darling was quiet, understated, and reserved. A demeanor of necessity he’d developed not long after his father had died. If he wasn’t noticed, he wasn’t attacked.

As often, anyway.

He much preferred flying below the radar while Maris preferred flying in the face of anyone who annoyed him.

And even though he knew better, Darling was still an eternal optimist who tried to see only the best in people, and who hoped everything would get better. Meanwhile, Maris only anticipated treachery from every person he met, and expected things to worsen, no matter how good they were.

Darling was the sole living being Maris trusted. Not that Darling blamed him, given his past. Trust didn’t come easy to Darling either, but he tried not to let his experience with assholes defeat his innate belief that people were good at heart.

All except his uncle.

That bastard had been born chromosomally damaged.

For the whole of his life, Darling had fought to protect, and run interference for others. Whether it was his mother, his siblings, or Maris…

He’d bled for all of them.

But never happily, and not always without complaint. While he didn’t mind it so much for Maris and his siblings, he resented the hell out of his mother’s inability to put his life and well-being above her own selfish needs.

She couldn’t even look at him anymore. Whether it was from disgust that he wasn’t her willing slave or from her own guilt over sacrificing him, he didn’t know. They rarely spoke to each other, and he couldn’t remember the last time she’d wished him well.

That was all right. He’d long ago accepted the fact that for all intents and purposes, he was an orphan.

Now, after all these years of battling for them, he finally wanted something for himself. And no one, not even Maris, was going to talk him out of this.

He had to have Zarya. She was the only one who could save him from the madness that was quickly pulling him under. He knew it with every part of himself. Without her, Kere would consume him, and he didn’t want to be the same cold-blooded, unfeeling monster his uncle and mother were.

I’d rather be dead.

Zarya was the only good thing he had, and he intended to hold on to her with both hands. Consequences be damned.

Darling met Maris’s gaze, wanting his friend’s blessing for
what he was about to do. “If anyone should understand this, it’s you, Mari.”

Maris scoffed. “Yes, but I fall in love every five minutes and within twenty I’ve moved on to the next. You cannot marry a
woman
. You know that. Just imagine the scandal that’ll cause.”

“Mari—”

“Don’t Mari me… in more ways than one. Do you remember what you said when I was about to walk down the aisle and make the biggest mistake of my life?”

“Your pants were too tight?”

Maris rolled his eyes. “After that.”

“That you were sweating so badly you needed another shower or else you’d drown your bride?”

Maris actually growled at him this time. “I’m being serious, Darling. Damn it! Stop being impossible.”

Darling’s eyes widened at the unexpected profanity. “Wow…
Damn it
. Really? I didn’t know you knew how to cuss. I’m impressed.”

“What can I say?” He crossed his arms in irritation. “You’ve ruined me. And—”

“I hear everything you’re saying.” Darling cut him off before he repeated the same argument he’d been making for the last thirty minutes. “I do. But my uncle has already tried to kill me. You were there. Remember?” Not wanting to completely alienate his best friend, he tempered the sarcasm. “In eighteen months, I’ll be old enough to legally dethrone him and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He knows that, and it’s now open season on my ass. If I don’t do something fast, you’ll be visiting me in the family vault, beside my father.” Darling swallowed as that pain washed over him. He’d give anything to have his father back.

But that desire changed nothing. His father was dead and he didn’t really want to join him there.

Not today, anyway.

“We both know Arturo’s not about to go blithely into retirement. Not while I have a younger brother who can inherit the throne after me. He kills me and then he moves his guardianship to Drakari for the next six years. Or worse, the bastard locks me up in another institution and has both me and Drake permanently declared insane so that he can rule in our names without being contested.”