Born of Silence by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Afraid he'd think she was using him for his money, Zarya had refused to accept his offer.
Now...
It didn't make sense that he would still help out her sister. Especially if he blamed Zarya for what had been done to him.
She handed Maris the mobile. "I was so afraid he'd killed her or sold her off like he did me."
Maris turned his device off. "Was she part of the Resistance?"
"No. Never. I wouldn't allow it."
"Then there's your answer. She was innocent."
Like Darling had been. Only her people hadn't cared about that. They'd hurt him regardless.
Damn them.
"Darling lives his entire life by the Code of Twenty his father taught him. Number nineteen... Love all, regardless of what they do. Trust only those you have to. And harm none until they harm you. He would never punish someone without reason. No matter what, unlike his uncle and even in this insanity that currently has possession of him, he's always been fair and just."
And for that, she'd never been more grateful.
Maris tilted his head down and pinned her with a probing stare. "So I'm asking you one last time, Zarya. Will you please, please help me save a good man who is in a really bad place?"
8
Maris spent hours prepping her on what to expect from Darling as they'd traveled to the Winter Palace.
Once they were there, he smuggled her through the servant entrance and into his private suite so that he could meticulously dress her in a long white, sleeveless gown that was trimmed in silver and lace, and apply her makeup. It was sad when a man knew more about being a woman than she did. But she'd never had the money to waste on something as frivolous as vanity, clothes, and cosmetics.
Maris stepped back so that she could see herself in the mirror.
Zarya's jaw went slack at a face she barely recognized. Her eyelids felt heavy from the eye shadow and mascara, but the color made her amber eyes glow, especially the way he'd ringed her eyes with a thick band of black and swept it out at the sides. Her skin appeared smoother and more radiant than it ever had before. He'd pulled her mahogany hair back from her face to show off her deep widow's peak, and laced white and silver ribbons through it.
She felt like a mythical princess.
One about to be fed to a dragon...
"You are beautiful," Maris said as he fussed with the back of her hair, fluffing out the fat curls he'd made.
"I've never felt beautiful." And she definitely wasn't the kind of woman who turned men's heads when she entered a room. Their stomachs, she'd been told, was another matter.
Other than Darling, she could count her number of boyfriends on two fingers. And neither of them had stayed around for very long. One had left as soon as she refused to pay his rent. The other after he realized she had a much prettier younger sister. Sorche had sent him packing immediately, but the damage to Zarya's ego had already been done.
Maris smiled at her in the mirror. "Don't listen to the haters. Trust me. I'm not the kind of guy who notices women, but I can see why Darling loves you. Aside from being a sweetheart, you have hair to die for. Your eyes are unusual, but stunning, and your skin... perfection. I envy you so much."
The last part surprised her. "Why?"
"You've done things with Darling that I've only dreamed about. I would give absolutely anything to have one night in his arms."
The painful regret in his voice touched her. "You really do love him, don't you?"
His dark gaze was so sad as he closed the lid on her blush and set it back on the table. "Yes, I do. You've no idea how many times I've wished that I'd been born a woman... or that he really was gay."
"He never experimented?" From what she'd heard about the men of the ruling class, they were indiscriminate about their lovers' genders.
A shadow of inner turmoil darkened his eyes.
Even though she hadn't known Maris long, she'd learned to fear that expression and what it usually signified. "What?"
Maris moved away from her.
Zarya got up and went to him. She knew from his reaction that it had to be bad. Still, if it was about Darling, she needed to know before she went in there to face him. "What aren't you telling me?"
Tears glistened in his eyes. His lips quivered.
A knot formed in her stomach. How awful could it be, given what her people had done to Darling?
Maris touched a trembling hand to his lips. "I promised Darling I would never tell anyone. Sorry."
"Did you and he..."
"No!" he said emphatically, slinging his hand downward. "Never."
"Then please tell me, Maris. I swear I'll never speak a word of it to another living soul. I'll take it to my grave."
A muscle worked in his jaw as he debated with himself. After a few heartbeats, he pinned her with a warning glower. "If you do, I swear I will kill you. I mean it. And don't think that I can't. I assure you, for Darling's sake, I can and will be brutal."
She nodded. "You have my word, and in spite of what you might think of me, I don't break it."
Even so, it took him several more minutes before he spoke again. "Darling was fifteen when he confessed to being gay."
Which was all she'd ever heard about the eldest prince and his gender preferences. To her knowledge, he'd always been very open about it. "So he's bisexual?"
Maris let out a bitter laugh. "No. Not even a little."
"Then why would he say he was homosexual?"
By the expression on his face, she could tell he was having to force himself to continue. That rare loyalty caused her to respect him even more than she already did. Most people didn't hesitate to betray a secret.
The majority of people she'd known in her life ran fast to be the first to reveal it. It was as if they took perverse pleasure in betraying someone's confidence.
Maris was a rare man, and one of the best friends anyone could have. "He did it to protect his mother. You have to remember, Natale was only a baby when Darling was born. Widowed in her mid-twenties, she was extremely lonely. Because of her beauty, she was used to men paying a lot of attention to her, and she loved it. Lived on it, point of fact."
Zarya sucked her breath in sharply as she saw where this was going. "She took lovers."
Talk about a no-no in their society.
What had his mother been thinking? It was an automatic death sentence for the governor's widow. But then that was something Zarya complained about all the time with most women her age. Way too many of them lacked good sense, especially where men were concerned.
Maris nodded. "Foolishly, she got caught... or rather her lover was found on his way out of the palace. To save her life and to keep Natale from being arrested, Darling said her boyfriend was his, and that her lover had been leaving his room."
"But he wasn't."
"No, and thankfully there weren't any surveillance cameras on the inside of the private wing at that time to refute Darling's confession. And once Darling started the ruse, his mother seized on it. She used him to cover all her lovers from that point on, and he had no choice except to claim them or watch her die."
Zarya winced at the cruelty of forcing someone to live a lie over something so ridiculous. The woman should have never put him in that position. How could any mother do such a thing?
She couldn't imagine the horror of being trapped in his situation. But it went a long way in explaining many idiosyncrasies about Darling that she'd noted while they dated. His knowledge of fashion. His excessive cleaniness, especially compared to her brother who'd lived his life like he'd learned hygiene from bears. "No one ever suspected the truth?"
He shook his head glumly. "They didn't care. People love dirt and rather than judge for themselves, they prefer to believe the trash spewed by others. From the moment word got out that he was homosexual, and it flew fast, Darling was ostracized over it. Whenever we had state functions and events we had to attend, the other boys refused to dress in the same room with him. They treated him lik
"What did you do?"
Tears glistened in his eyes as he looked away from her. "To my eternal shame, nothing whatsoever." He flinched and squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to banish an even worse memory.
When he met her gaze again, the bitterness there stung her. "Because I am gay, and others had long suspected it, I was even more terrified of having that allegation thrown at me. I saw how they treated Darling and I didn't want any part of that abuse. So like everyone else, I avoided him in public. He told me that he understood, and that he didn't want me to talk to him anywhere others might see us. He said it was safer that way for me. But even so, I could tell it hurt him that I avoided him like they did. That I'd be standing or sitting with those who mocked him while he stood alone in the crowd." A single tear slid down his cheek. "You have no idea how much I hate myself for that cowardice. I abandoned him to their hatred when I should have stood by his side, regardless. What kind of friend am I to ignore him while others cursed and mocked him?"
"He understood, Maris."
"But that doesn't make it right, does it?"
No, it didn't. Zarya patted his arm in sympathy. She couldn't imagine how awful it must have been for Darling to face that at his age. Puberty was hard enough when you fit in. To have something like that make you a target to your peers...
It was hell.
And for it to be a lie...
No wonder he hated his mother. He was more than justified.
"Didn't any of the adults do anything to help him?"
Maris shook his head. "They were even worse than the kids. And they turned a blind eye to how he was treated, even when it was right under their noses. Every time he moved, Darling had to fight someone over it. And his uncle was the most brutal of all. Anytime Arturo saw a man in the palace he didn't recognize or one anywhere near Darling, he accused Darling of sleeping with him. And when Darling was sixteen..." He flinched as if someone had hit him.
Her own stomach tightened in reflex. "What?"
His breathing ragged, Maris's eyes blazed with fury. "Arturo sent him to a mental institution for it."
She gaped at his disclosure. A mental institution? She'd ask him if he was serious, but she could see that answer clearly enough. "How could he do that?"
"He was the acting governor," Maris said simply. "Absolute power and authority. He demanded the doctors use aversion therapy to cure Darling of his homosexuality."
"I don't understand. What's aversion therapy?"
Maris couldn't even meet her gaze.
When he finally spoke, his voice was thick and constrained. "It's where they inflict severe pain, and use negative reinforcement to cause someone to alter their behavior."
"Like putting pepper sauce on a child's thumb to keep them from sucking it?" Her father had done that to her when she was six. To this day, she couldn't look at a pepper without cringing.
Maris toyed with the edge of his sleeve, but he still refused to meet her gaze. "General idea, but much worse. The point is to make the activity so repugnant and horrifying that the patient never wants to do it again."
Biting her lip, she wasn't sure she wanted to hear anything more.
Unfortunately, he didn't stop there. "That was how Darling lost his virginity... and it wasn't to a woman."
She choked on a sob.
Maris swallowed hard. "He was brutally raped, Zarya. Repeatedly. It was so bad, that for weeks after his release, he sat huddled in a corner, with his back against the wall. Like now, he wouldn't speak to anyone, and he had violent nightmares from it for years. Sometimes I think he still does."
His gaze haunted, he wiped a hand over his face. "When I finally saw him for the first time after he'd been released, I stupidly asked what they'd done to him... tears welled up in his eyes and then flowed down his face--and Darling doesn't cry, Zarya. Ever. Not for anything. He refused to look at me or to speak about it at all. By that, I knew what he wouldn't say."
"Did he ever tell you for sure?"
"Years later, when he was extremely drunk and ranting about his uncle, but he's never gone into any details. Other than to say he wanted to kill them all... and now he has."
Sighing, Maris returned to the counter to finish putting away her makeup. "For over a year after his release, he wouldn't let anyone touch him at all. Not even his own sister, and Darling has always adored Lise. If a man came anywhere near him, he literally ran away, and he refused to be alone with anyone. Even me. It was two full years before he'd even look another person in the eye, male or female. So no, he's never experimented. Until you, I've never known him to voluntarily be naked with anyone."
Her heart ached for Darling and what his uncle had put him through. It was so wrong.
But it left her with one question. "How did Darling pull off being gay if he was so repulsed by men?"
Maris smiled sheepishly. "I taught him how to use men he knew were safe to keep up the ruse--like I did with the women I dated. Men who wouldn't touch him or beat him over it. It took a lot of patience, but I got him to the point that he'd let me hug him again. He knew I wasn't going to make a move on him. And once he was used to me, we took smaller steps. First with his friend Caillen, who is rabidly heterosexual, and yet completely at ease with homosexuals. I taught Darling how to stand close to Caillen, and lean in to him so that other people would misinterpret his actions. If anyone asked him if he had a crush on someone, we chose Nykyrian because we knew Nyk would never hurt Darling for it. And once I came out, it was a lot easier. I was the one person he could be openly affectionate with who wouldn't be offended or expect anything else from him."
It was actually a brilliant plan. "So you've protected him all this time?"
"More he protected me. Until I came out, he took the heat for a lot of things I had."
"Such as?"
He gave her a duh stare. "I'm gay, Zarya. I've been that way as far back as I have memories. Obviously, I like to look at men, and read about men being together. I didn't dare do that at home where my brothers or parents might find it. So Darling kept... items for me, and I kept things for him."
That made sense, but it also made her feel stupid that he had to be so explicit. "Sorry. I didn't mean to be dense."
"It's okay. We're all dense from time to time." He let out a bitter laugh. "I still can't get over the shock on my parents' faces when I told them the truth about me. And all I could think was, Are you people totally blind? Did none of you ever really look at me? Even though I'd tried to hide it, I don't see how they missed it. Any more than I've ever understood how someone couldn't tell Darling was straight."
"I have to say I never had any doubts." But then she'd never seen the "Darling Cruel" side of him. As Kere, with a tiny handful of exceptions, he'd been all testosterone, all the time.
That thought made her flash back to one of their first missions together. They'd been ambushed by Caronese troops. When the blaster volley had started, he'd caught her about the waist and pulled her out of the line of fire. With one arm only, Darling had lifted her and held her against him with so much ease that his strength had temporarily stunned her. He'd wrapped himself around her body so that they shot his armor and left her unscathed.
When their attackers had paused to recharge their weapons, he'd literally skated across the slick floor to dump her into an access hallway before he turned. His head low and lethal, he'd stalked down the smoke-filled hallway like the fiercest predator she'd ever seen, and opened fire on them.
She still got chills whenever s
Single-handedly.
Yeah...
No one messed with Kere, or her, without feeling his wrath.
Now she understood a lot more about why Darling had always been so hungry for her whenever they'd been alone. If he'd been keeping all of the real him bottled up around everyone else, it made sense that he'd savor their time together.
And savor her.
There was nothing she loved more than the way he buried his face in the curve of her neck and breathed her in like she was a drug he craved with every part of his being. He could make love to her for hours without tiring. Whenever they were together, he was focused only on her and nothing else.
Always attentive. Always gentle.
Always feral.
Gods, how she'd missed those moments. Missed the sound of his deep, lyrical voice, talking to her for hours on end. No one pronounced her name the way he did.
And his laughter...
It never failed to make her smile. He had the most wicked sense of humor imaginable. Dark and sarcastic, he found amusement in the bleakest and most bizarre things.
Maris cleared his throat, bringing her back to the present.
And to the pain of the fact that she might never have those moments with Darling again.
Tormented agony glowed deep in his eyes. "You've no idea how many times I've wondered if Darling would have been better off had he not been my friend."
She frowned. "Why would you say that?"
"Had we not become friends when we were so young... had he not known and accepted the fact that I was homosexual, he would have never thought to claim his mother's boyfriend as his. It wouldn't have even occurred to him to do it--all of that was totally my fault and I know it."
His words stunned her. "They would have killed his mother, Maris. How could that be better?"
"Honestly?" Maris asked in a deadly serious tone. "I don't think that would have been as bad as what's happened to him since. Yes, he would have had grief from losing her. But I don't think her loss would have been nearly as awful as his stints in the asylums, and what they did to him every time he was confined for it. The unrelenting hell he's had to endure all these years over pretending to be something he's not."