“How long have you known them?”
“Nero all my life. He swears he’s the reason I was named Darling, and if he really was, I’d like to kick his ass for it. Gah, what a stupid name. I can’t believe my parents couldn’t find something better… like Dogshit or Dumbass.”
She snorted. “Could be worse. They could have named you after a girl.”
“Might as well have. A name like Darling sucks all the testosterone right out of you. Of course, it also made it easy for me to pretend to be gay, so I shouldn’t complain. What self-respecting man would use something so god-awful and stupid?”
Propping her head on her arm, she traced the burn scar on his nipple where he’d been electrocuted. Not wanting to think about that and the bitter agony it caused both of them, she tried to distract him. “What about the others? How did you meet them?”
“They were friends of Nykyrian’s.”
When he didn’t continue the explanation, she prodded him. “And… how did you two become friends?”
He took a long breath before he answered. “When I was finally skilled enough to breech the palace security system and evade Caronese guards, my uncle hired Nykyrian to protect me.”
“From whom?”
“Anyone I might run to for help. Arturo lived in fear that I’d find another aristo willing to be my guardian, and thereby usurp him.”
“Why didn’t you go to someone else?”
He laughed bitterly. “I tried twice, and all I did was get slapped back to him so fast that my ears rang from it. In the end, my situation was made worse by attempting to make it better. So I stopped trying to find someone to help, and concentrated on just getting away from here for as long as I could as often as I could before Arturo had me dragged back.”
The bitterness in his tone said it all. She couldn’t believe no one would help him. “I take it you and Nykyrian hit it off then?”
He arched a brow at her. “Have you ever seen Nykyrian Quiakides?”
That was a name she knew well, and to her knowledge there was only one man who bore it. But the universe was vast, so she wanted to make sure they were talking about the same person. “The Andarion prince?”
“Yeah.”
Zarya conjured a perfect mental image of Nykyrian. A former League assassin who’d left their ranks when they ordered him to kill a mother and small child, the man was huge and lethal in a way very few were. So much so, that the League had actually pardoned him for deserting—something they had never, ever done before. He was the only assassin to leave them and survive.
“He’s a little scary.”
“No,” Darling corrected. “He’s a lot scary. I shit my pants the first time I saw him, which was what my uncle wanted. Even with opaque sunglasses over his eyes, Nyk has a way of looking at you that can freeze your blood in your veins. Back then, he never spoke a word to me. He just followed me everywhere I went, and would grab me by the scruff of my neck and pull me back if I so much as took one step in a direction he didn’t want me to.”
“That must have been awful.”
“It definitely wasn’t fun. And I hated him for it. It was bad enough everyone else mocked and emasculated me. The last thing I needed was some League asshole jerking me around like I was his backseat bitch.”
Her stomach sank as she considered the underlying venom in his voice. “Did he hit you?”
“No. He didn’t have to. He could literally lift me off my feet with one hand. For that matter, he still can. That son of a bitch is huge and ungodly strong.”
“Then how did you become friends?”
He wiped carefully at his face with the cloth. “One night after my uncle had counseled me for a couple of hours, I slipped Nyk’s custody and blew up his prized fighter during my escape.”
Her jaw went slack. She was as impressed with his skills as she was with his stupidity. “No, you didn’t.”
“Yeah. He was really unhappy about it, and I had no idea how rare a ship it was, or how much he loved it. But after he tracked me down, I figured it out real quick. It was the first time I’d seen him lose his temper. Not something you ever want to experience, believe me. I honestly thought he was going to rip out my spine and beat me with it.”
That had to be terrifying. She’d rather go up against Nemesis again than to face the Andarion prince. Darling was right, Nykyrian was extremely off-putting. “So what did he do to you?”