Never in her life had she wanted to kill anyone more than she did Nylan. Damn him for his cruelty.
Darling winced. “Arturo met me at the door, and then put me through it. Hoping he’d finally kill me, I spat the blood out of my mouth and laughed at him. I told him he hit like a girl. And that I’d whore myself to any man who’d get him out of my life. As bad as I’d been beaten before then, it was nothing like that night. I didn’t think he’d ever stop. At some point, I passed out. When I came to, I was in a mental institution.”
“Maris said it was done to cure your homosexuality.”
He laughed bitterly. “That’s what my file says, and it’s what I let other people think. But it was done to teach me a lesson about trying to find another guardian. Not that I needed it. Believe me. After what Nylan did to me, I wasn’t about to try again. Besides, I knew no one would ever help me. No one cared. I’d been stupid for even trying. I was just so desperate that I was willing to do anything. And those pictures were posted everywhere, by both Arturo and Nylan. They haunted me for years. Every time I thought I could put it behind me, someone would slap me in the face with them. Every member of the Caronese aristocracy has seen them and they’ve all had something horrendous to say to me over it.”
She couldn’t imagine anything worse. It’d been bad enough to experience it, but to have other people dredge it up constantly and throw it in your face…
Glancing down, she saw the scars on Darling’s wrists from his suicide attempts that Drake had told her about. Her hands trembling, she lifted his so that she could kiss them. “How many times did you—”
“Three. It was part of the reason everything was taken out of my room and I was strip-searched every night. Why my guards would randomly come in at all hours to wake me. The gods forbid, I should die and escape my hell.”
She laid her hand against his cheek. “I’m glad you’re still here.”
Darling’s stomach tightened at the love he saw in her eyes. But it wasn’t enough to take away the misery of those memories. Nothing could.
Yet she helped him in ways he’d have never thought possible. Like Maris, she didn’t judge him by his mistakes. Nor did she hold them against him. Or use them to hurt him. They didn’t make him less in her eyes.
For that alone, he was eternally grateful.
She kissed his lips. “I’m so sorry for what they did to you, and I swear I will never, ever speak of it again or mention that bastard’s name. May he rot in hell for eternity.”
He tightened his arms around her. “I’ve never told anyone what really happened, Z. Not even Maris. I’m sure he’s seen the photos, too, but he’s been decent enough to keep silent about them. Too bad Drake couldn’t.”
While he loved his brother, there were times he couldn’t stand him. Why would Drake have told her about the most horrific event of his entire life?
Why couldn’t Drake leave things alone?
“Hey,” Zarya breathed, stepping back and forcing him to look at her. “I love you, Darling. I really do. It’s that capacity you have to care about others more than you care about yourself that has always drawn me to you. You’ve been my hero from that first moment when you risked your life to climb out onto my roof to get my cat for me, to the moment when I first saw Kere carrying Timmon to safety. The rest of us ran for cover during that ambush, but you ran into it, knowing we had soldiers pinned down. I’ve never known anyone braver than you.”
“I don’t feel brave.” Most days, he just felt like complete and utter hell.
Zarya kissed him lightly on the lips. “And that’s what makes you so wonderful. You don’t see the beauty that is you. I hate that you focus on your handful of flaws.”
Why shouldn’t he? “Everyone else does.”
“Screw them if they do,” she said as her anger blazed in those beautiful amber eyes. “Do you really care what they think? Are any of them that important to you?”
“No. But it doesn’t stop it from hurting.”
Zarya blinked away the tears in her eyes. “You’re right. But my father used to have a saying. ‘Don’t let them steal your day.’ Never give them that kind of power over you. They’re not worth it.”
Darling let those words soothe him, along with her fingers that toyed with his hair against his collar. In his mind, he saw an image of her as a little girl on that day when they’d first met, crying and begging for her big brother to save her cat. Wanting to play ball outside, Gerrit had callously brushed her aside and ignored her pleas.
But those tears and her concern for her pet had touched him even as a boy. Unable to walk away from her misery, Darling had gladly braved the high-pitched roof of her father’s mansion to make her smile.