Darling fell silent as her question took him right back to that stygian alley on the backside of hell where he’d hidden, thinking he was safe from his uncle’s reach. After three days where he didn’t dare spend a single cred lest it be used to locate him, he’d been starving. Half dead from that and a severe cold he’d contracted while sleeping out in the frigid winter weather with no jacket or cover, he’d left his filth hole long enough to try and scrounge food.
There had been a restaurant around the corner from where he’d set up a temporary home on the street. He was hoping to find something to eat in the trash. Since he’d been so careful to cover his tracks and not use anything that could trace back to his location, he’d foolishly thought himself safe.
Especially in the middle of the night.
He’d just found a bag of outdated bread when he’d heard a faint scraping sound behind him in the shadows. Thinking it was one of the restaurant’s late night cleaning crew, he’d broken out into a sweat, terrified that they’d call the authorities on him.
But it had been something much worse.
Nykyrian had snatched him down from the dumpster and slammed him on the ground so hard he’d seen stars from it. Cursing him, Nyk had pinned him with one massive forearm across his throat. “No one fucks with my ship, you little bastard,” he’d growled. “Believe me, it’s worth more than your putrid life. I don’t care what your uncle pays for your protection or what the League does to me. You’re going to die for defiling it.”
Darling had tried to push Nykyrian’s arm off so that he could breathe, but it was useless. Nyk was too strong. All he could do was cough and wheeze.
Until Nykyrian saw the original scar Ryn had given him that covered the entire left half of his face, and the bruises on his cheek and black eye from his uncle that still, three days later, looked like shit.
Before Darling could regain his senses and to his eternal shame, Nyk had yanked his shirt up to see the other bruises and scars that covered his torso. Then, he’d grabbed Darling’s wrists to examine the scars that Darling had made on his own body when he’d been unable to take his uncle’s bullshit anymore…
“They beat you?” Nyk had asked.
Darling had shoved him away and scooted out from under him. “Why do you think I run? Do you really think I enjoy eating garbage out of dumpsters in the middle of the night when I could be warm at home in a palace?”
Little had he known then that Nyk had endured a childhood that made his seem like paradise in comparison.
Instead of killing him, which would have been preferable all things considered, Nyk had shrugged his coat off and wrapped it around Darling’s shoulders. There was so much difference in their height and build back then that his coat had swallowed Darling whole.
“C’mon, kid, let’s get you fed and cleaned up.”
Darling had stood his ground. “I don’t want to go back.”
“I know… I do. But we both know that you have no choice. If I don’t take you back, someone else will, and they won’t feed you first.”
Disgusted by the fact that Nyk was right, he’d lowered his head and nodded glumly.
“Don’t worry, kid. Now that I know what you’re running from, I’ll give you as much protection as I can.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because no one deserves to be afraid to go home.”
From that night on, Nyk had done his damnedest to keep him safe. Sometimes it’d worked.
Others…
Darling sighed as he ran his fingers through Zarya’s hair. “After Nyk saw the condition I was in, he told me he would do his best to keep me out of the line of fire, and that he would teach me how to protect myself.”
“He trained you as an assassin?”
Darling nodded.
“Is that where your tattoo came from?”
“Yeah. After I’d completed my training, Hauk, who is an old childhood friend of Nyk’s, designed it for me and his brother Fain was the one who did it.” Darling wouldn’t have trusted anyone else to touch him that intimately. But the Hauks had always been good friends to him and he treasured them both.
“Has no one ever realized what it is, and the kind of training you’ve had?”
Bitterness choked him as he thought back to his stints in various asylums over the years. Like Pip, they’d assumed the tattoo was done as a joke or a way for Darling to attract men, and had mocked him for it.
Because of the embarrassing scars and bruises he went out of his way to conceal, no one else had ever seen his bare back.
Not even Maris.
He swallowed before he told her something he probably should keep to himself. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever been with, Z.”
Zarya froze as she heard those words. Was that even possible?
“What?”
“I was always too afraid of being outed either as a heterosexual or a member of the Sentella to take the chance. It was why it took me so long to touch you, even though I wanted you from the first time I saw you.”
Her head swam as she thought back to the early days of their relationship. Even though she’d craved him from the moment he’d first saved her, she’d had no idea that he found her even remotely attractive. Kere had started out as a liaison from the Sentella and he’d turned into an ally who helped them fight against Arturo’s tyranny.