Nykyrian snorted. “Yeah, I’m still severely fucked up. I own that fact. It’s not like I can hide it.” He cleared his throat before he continued. “But to answer your question, Mari, there’s no telling. No one comes through torture intact. You’ve been around us long enough to know that. After mine, I was like an animal for a long time. Some days, I still am.”
Syn tossed the woman roughly over his shoulder. “Ditto. I was certifiable and alcoholic until my sister-in-law verbally kicked my ass and made me realize what I was doing to myself. I can’t believe I’m going to admit this outside my head, but thank the gods for Kasen. Anyone ever tells her I said that and I’ll deny it, then kill you.”
Sick to his stomach, Maris allowed Nykyrian to take Darling from him, and lead him back toward the hangar. He wasn’t as optimistic about his friend as they were. He knew Darling better than anyone, and before this had happened, Darling had been surfing the edge of paranoid insanity.
Every time he’d seen him, Darling had become more and more silent and sullen.
More unpredictable and defiant.
The ongoing hatred and rage Darling kept for his mother and uncle had blazed in his eyes like a tangible beast that wanted blood, and that repressed fury had scared Maris to the point, he’d expected Darling to lash out at them and kill them for it.
Would this push him over the edge?
It’s all my fault…
“If I’d only found him sooner,” he breathed.
Jayne rubbed his arm with a kind caress as she walked by his side. “Don’t go there, Mari. But for you remembering the woman’s name, we’d have never found him at all.”
Perhaps.
Yet looking at Darling’s condition, it was hard to see any kind of bright side. They’d torn him up so foully.
So cruelly…
How could anyone do this to another human being?
I wish my fighting skills were honed and up to date. Had they been, he’d hunt them down and make them regret their vicious brutality. But he’d walked away from his training years ago, and while he did work out to keep his lean muscles defined and was occasionally Darling’s sparring partner, he no longer had a warrior’s build.
Even when he’d possessed some of the best fighting skills in the universe, he hadn’t wanted them.
Unlike his brothers, Maris had never enjoyed hurting other people, especially not for sport or practice.
However, tonight, he understood the need to taste and let blood.
Please be all right. He wouldn’t be able to live if anything happened to Darling. He knew that.
Darling was his entire world. He always had been.
And as he watched Nykyrian carrying Darling on board their ship, a bad premonition went through him.
By their actions with this, the Resistance had awakened the devil himself and there would be hell to pay for it. Not from Maris. Not from the Sentella.
But from Darling.
If there was anything in this universe Darling truly hated, it was being a victim. Having his hands tied so that he couldn’t fight back.
It was an unforgivable sin where Darling was concerned. And contrary to popular thought, Darling was one of the most skilled fighters out there. Maris would even run him up against Nemesis/Nykyrian.
Once Darling regained his strength from this, he would become the very god of death and retribution that Hauk had proclaimed him as a joke. No one suspected that darkest side of Darling existed, but Maris knew and it scared him to the core of his soul.
Take cover, bitches.
The right hand of retaliation was about to come calling. And it was going to be brutal.
There would be no escape or sanctuary. Not for any of them. May the gods take pity on all who came into Kere’s path because he knew Darling wouldn’t.
6
Darling came awake slowly to the sound of something beeping in a steady rhythm nearby. He held his breath, waiting for that familiar, rancid pain to kick in.
It didn’t.
But when he tried to open his eyes and couldn’t, panic tore through him immediately. Had they finally blinded him?
Am I dead?
He felt a kind, gentle touch on his shoulder. “Sh… It’s okay, baby. It’s me, Mari. Don’t strain yourself. You’re safe. No one’s going to hurt you.”
Darling relaxed at the sound of Maris’s soothing voice in his ear. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t do that either.
What was in his mouth now? Even with Maris here, panic consumed him.
Maris took his right hand, and cupped it with both of his. “You’re in the Sentella’s hospital. Syn’s been tending you since you were freed. We have you, sweetie. It’s all good now. Don’t worry about anything, okay?”
Darling tightened his hand around Maris’s fingers as gratitude overwhelmed him and he remembered his rescue. It hadn’t been a dream after all. He was free and alive.
Thank the gods.
“Is he awake?” That was Caillen’s voice from a distance.
Darling heard his heavy footsteps as he neared the bed on the opposite side of where Maris stood. Since Caillen had been trained as a smuggler and not a thief or assassin, his footsteps were very distinctive and extremely loud compared to the rest of Darling’s friends.