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 government, 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.