"And again, I'm telling you that I have seen him in battle. Many times. Bloody and fierce. He never hesitates. Your brother is a major badass with a capital 'B.' He's a fully trained assassin with all the skills that entails. How do you think he took your uncle out so easily and held the guards at bay?"
Drake still looked like someone had sucker punched him. "I'm such a stupid bastard," he breathed. "How could I have missed seeing it?" He winced as if some bad memory had slapped him. "Damn, the shit I've said to him over the years for..."
Whatever it was, he didn't finish naming it.
She rubbed his arm comfortingly. "Don't beat yourself up, Drake. Siblings fight. It's what we do."
"No," he breathed. "Not like I did. Until I was fifteen, I was a total asshole to him, in ways you can't begin to imagine. I honestly don't know why he even speaks to me, never mind tolerates my presence, now. You know how he got that long scar on his face, don't you?"
"He fought with Ryn."
"Yeah. Because of me." The pain that one word betrayed was so deep that it put an instant lump in her throat for him. The self-loathing in his eyes was hard to look at. "That fight would never have happened had I not been a first-rank bastard."
"I don't understand."
Drake ground his teeth so viciously that his jaw muscles protruded. "I was only eight when my father died, and honestly, I barely remember the man. Still, I didn't want to go back to school after the funeral. I wasn't ready. I needed my family around me, especially my mother, but Darling made me leave. He literally picked me up and carried me out of my room and forced me onto the shuttle without any explanation other than I was better off at school."
She felt terrible for Drake. It had to be awful to be so young and alone after something so tragic. She knew how lost she'd been when her parents had died. The only thing that had kept her going after her father's death had been Sorche.
"He was trying to protect you."
Drake pierced her with a cold glare. "That's not what he said to me. Ever. All I heard from him was that I needed to keep my grades up and stay at school. Every time I turned around, he stopped me from coming home on holidays and at breaks. He'd arrange for me to stay in the campus dorms or with people I barely knew, and I hated him for it. I kept trying to call my mother, but she wouldn't talk to me either. In one heartbeat, I was an orphan no one wanted, and I had no idea why my entire family had abandoned me and left me to the care of strangers."
That would have been hard on anyone. The anguish in his eyes reminded her so much of Darling that it was all she could do not to pull him into her arms and hold him. "I'm sorry, Drake."
He didn't comment on her sympathy. Instead, he continued. "Then, on the very night when I was finally allowed back here during one of my semester breaks, my mother was arrested in front of me. Next thing I know, my brother confessed to the world that he was gay."
"How old were you then?"
"Ten. I didn't even know what gay meant. But I was quickly educated." His gaze burned into hers and the agony there rivaled every bit of the pain that Darling carried. "You have no idea how bad it was. Arturo was so angry over it, that both Lise and I were rounded up and sent back to school that very night, still in our pajamas. Once people found out, which was pretty much immediately, the kids at school were merciless to me over it. All I heard from everyone was that it ran in the family, and that I would be or was already gay, too. From that day on, it was a constant fight against everyone I knew as I tried to prove to them that I wasn't anything like Darling."
Anger whipped through her. "Darling--"
He held his hand up to silence her defense of his brother. "Don't go there. Again, you weren't here in those days. You have no idea what I went through and you didn't see or hear the things I did. And if all that wasn't degrading enough, when I was thirteen, I was going to be honored at school for good merit and for maintaining the highest student body GPA for that year. Something I'd worked my ass off for. Night and day. Then what happens? The day before the ceremony, Darling gets caught screwing Senator Nylan, and that shit went instantly viral."
Now it was her turn to feel sucker punched. "Excuse me?"
He nodded bitterly. "Oh yeah. There were pictures and videos of the two of them circulating everywhere. You couldn't get away from it or miss it. Everyone knew about it. Because of Darling's scandal and the fact my school didn't want to even admit they had a Cruel on their roster, my award that I'd worked so hard for was yanked. I lost my position on the school team and in our student government. They put me on probation, and I was pulled from the regular residence hall and put in with the social rejects and delinquents. Meanwhile, Darling ended up in a mental institution over it."
That was not the story Maris had told her. Did Maris not know or had he outright lied to her?
Drake continued with his angry tirade. "For years, Darling was in and out of them. Whenever I talked to my mother about it--which was only twice a year if I was lucky--all she'd say was that Darling had a lot of problems, and that Arturo was trying to help him with them. And I believed her. I had no reason not to. The only member of my family who called every week to check on me was Arturo, who told me that I was always welcome to come home anytime I wanted. He said that Darling had snapped after my father's death and gone crazy. That he was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and that I shouldn't waste my time worrying about him. I almost never heard from Darling and when I did, he was either drunk or high--I couldn't tell which. But his words were always slurred, if not completely incoherent. All I could ever make out for sure was his insistence that I stay as far away from here as I could."
Zarya rolled her eyes at his assumption. Most likely those conversations came while Darling was on pain medication for the beatings Arturo routinely gave him.
Or the meds they pumped into him whenever he was in an institution.
Drake laughed bitterly. "By the time I hit fifteen, I was basically psychotic from everything I'd been through. I couldn't stand any of them. Not my mother, my sister, and definitely not my brother, whose every scandal rained down on my ass like a firestorm. I didn't want to be in school anymore and deal with that shit, and I hated Darling in a way you can't imagine. The handful of times I'd seen him over the years, he was either so effeminate or so terrified of his own shadow that he repulsed me. Every time I turned around, Lise would call saying Darling had tried to kill himself again. I prayed every night that his next attempt would not only be successful, but come sooner rather than later..."
Wanting to slap him for that last comment, Zarya gaped at another tidbit no one had mentioned. What else didn't she know about Darling's past?
Drake drew a ragged breath. "I never saw Darling that he didn't have his head down and his arms wrapped around his body as if he was trying to become invisible. He'd cower and cringe if anyone came near him. He wouldn't look anyone in the eye. Not even me. I thought he was a worthless coward, and I have called him every insult you can imagine."
Tears welled in her eyes as she realized that what Drake had seen was the aftermath of Darling's rapes and abuse. The times in his life when he'd needed his family most of all.
The times when they'd all let him down and left him to face it.
Alone.
She tried to tell herself that Drake, who was three and a half years younger than Darling, had been far too young to realize what was going on, but still she was mad at him for being so selfish and stupid.
"The summer I turned fifteen," Drake continued, "if all of that wasn't bad enough, I found out that Arturo was syphoning off our inheritance. When I asked Darling if he knew, he sounded wasted as usual. He told me to let it go and not worry about it--that it was no big deal. Furious over his cavalier attitude, I signed myself out of school and came home. I'd intended to stay here and be taught by a tutor like he was so that I could keep an eye on our money before Arturo stole it all. Darling met me at the front door on my arrival and told me I needed to leave immediately and go back to school. He
had bruises all over his face and a busted lip. I asked him what had happened, but he wouldn't answer. He wouldn't even look at me. You know what I said to him then?"
"No." She wasn't sure if she wanted to know.
He curled his lip in self-disgust. "Next time you give head, you should wear protective gear."
Fury tore through her. "Why would you say that to him?"
His eyes blazed with hatred, but she wasn't sure if it was for him, Darling, or for both of them. "Because at least once a day, every single day for years, someone e-mailed me photos of a naked Darling being groped by a man old enough to be our grandfather, with some kind of insult for both of us tagged to it. They didn't stop until Darling and Syn became tight, and Syn hacked in and deleted every online copy. You have no idea how humiliating it is to be laughed at for something your brother did that you had no control over. How many times other men propositioned me because of it. I was sick of hearing and seeing it."
Zarya couldn't make any sense of that. Maris had told her that Darling had never experimented. Had those pictures been forgeries?
Or was there something about Darling that Maris didn't know?
"Anyway," Drake continued, "I pushed past him and went to my room. He dogged me every step of the way there, telling me that I had to leave before Arturo found out I was in the palace. He said that Arturo would kill me if I mentioned the missing money to him. That Arturo would be furious at me for coming home without permission. I didn't know the man Darling described. Arturo had never been violent toward me in any way. Never raised his voice. So I stayed. And that night... I found out fast why Darling's face looked the way it did and why Darling was so skittish of Arturo. Even with my fight training, Arturo beat me unconscious, and just like Darling had warned, he damn near killed me. I didn't even get a chance to accuse him of his theft before he had me on the floor."
"What did Darling do?"
Drake clenched his eyes closed as if he were reliving that night. But he didn't answer her question. At least not right away. "When I finally came to after the beating, I lay in the hospital, feeling sorry for myself, thinking that I had no family who gave a shit about me. No one came to check on me or call. Not until two days later. I was still in ICU on a ventilator, unable to speak. Darling came in, looking even worse than he had the night he'd warned me how stupid I was. His eyes were so swollen and bruised, he could barely open them. He had one arm in a sling, and the other one in a brace from a third-degree sprain. He was just a krikken kid, too. You know? I still don't understand how he could hold himself up in that condition, never mind move. Yet with all that pain, he'd come to see me even though he should have still been in bed himself.
"I found out later from Maris that once Darling had called the medics for me, he'd gone after Arturo with everything he had and that Arturo, after beating the shit out of him, had thrown him down the main palace stairs. As soon as Darling had been able to get out of bed, he'd come straight to the hospital to sit with me, so that I wouldn't be alone there. And do you know what Darling's first words to me were?"
She shook her head.
"I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you better. I promise I won't let him get a hold of you again." Tears swam in Drake's eyes. "After all the mean, awful shit I'd said to him over the years. After being a complete and utter dick whenever I was around him, he apologized to me. Apologized. Like it was somehow his fault I was an idiot who wouldn't listen. And it was then that I found out why his speech was always slurred when he called me at school."
"Because of his pain meds..."
He swallowed hard. "No, it was from the way he had to hold his mouth to speak around a busted jaw and loose teeth. You talk about feeling like a worthless piece of shit... It killed me that I wasn't able to tell him how sorry I was for everything. That I couldn't tell him how grateful I was he'd saved my life. That I didn't care what anyone else said or thought about him. I was finally proud to call him my brother. Most of all, I wanted to tell him that I loved him, too."
Drake drew a ragged breath. "Three days later when they finally took me off the ventilator and moved me to a regular room, he went to beg Ryn to help us. Something he'd never done before. But Darling was so afraid I'd go after Arturo again, that he was willing to sacrifice his dignity to keep me safe. So the fight they got into that scarred him so badly was over my dumb, stupid, ignorant ass."
His gaze haunted, he cleared his throat. "That beating I took opened my eyes to a lot of things. I realized then that Darling had kept us at school so that we wouldn't be in the line of Arturo's fury, while Darling was forced to live here and bear the brunt of it. Day in and day out. And instead of saying thank you for it, all I'd ever done was insult him because I was too busy listening to lies about him rather than bothering to discover the truth for myself. To this day, I don't understand how he stood living here, or tolerated us. He has every right to begrudge us every breath we take, and yet he doesn't. And now you're telling me that all this time he wasn't even gay..." He cursed under his breath. "If that's true, then explain to me where those photos came from."
"I don't know. I have no idea. But I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Darling wasn't a willing participant."
Glancing down the hallway, Drake focused his gaze past her. He went ramrod stiff.
She turned to see Darling approaching them.
Darling hesitated as he saw them together in the hallway, not far from his room. "Is something wrong?" he asked her.
She smiled to allay his fears. "Not at all. We were just talking."
Suspicion hung heavy in Darling's gaze. "About?"
"The fact that you're not gay, you asshole," Drake snarled at him. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"
Darling shrugged with a nonchalance she was pretty sure he didn't feel. "You enjoyed insulting me over it too much. I didn't want to take away your only creative outlet."
"You are such a bastard. I'm serious, Dar. Why didn't you say something?"
Darling sobered. "I know your temper, Drake. I couldn't risk you popping off at the mouth about it to someone who might tell Arturo."
Arms akimbo, Drake glared at him. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. Appreciate it."
"What are big brothers for?"
"Apparently not much," Drake breathed. "I'm going to tell Lise to get ready to leave for your surgery. I'll see you two later."
After Drake left them alone, she wrapped her arm around Darling's as they continued on to his room. "Drake really loves you."
"I know he does. Most of the time, I love him, too." He opened the door to his bedroom and allowed her to enter first. "And I can tell by the look in your eyes that something's bothering you. What's wrong?"
She hesitated inside the room. "I probably shouldn't say anything."
"Never stopped you before."
"True." But this was extremely personal and she wasn't sure how he'd react to her asking about the photographs. Fact or fiction, it had to be something that had caused him a great deal of pain over the years. As bad as Drake thought his agony was, she was certain it couldn't compare to Darling's.
Part of her didn't want to dredge it up, but the other part of her wanted to know the truth.
Darling scowled at her. "You know you can talk to me about anything."
Yeah, but she didn't want to hurt him. He'd been kicked enough.
Taking a deep breath for courage, she forced herself to broach a topic she was sure was brutal. "Drake mentioned something about photos of you and--"
He cursed so foully it broke her words off. By his furious expression, she knew she didn't have to finish her sentence.
Darling knew exactly what she was talking about.
"Why the hell would he mention that to you?"
"Because it was why he felt justified in insulting you when he was younger."
"Of course it was," Darling sneered. " 'Cause everything's always about Drake."
She didn't comment on his hostile words. "So what happened?"
Darl
ing flinched as his memories went to a place and time he never wanted to think about again. Something he did his damnedest to never, ever remember. In a life filled with degradation and pain, that entire ordeal reigned supreme in total humiliation.
Why can't I live that one afternoon down?
Every time he thought it was buried, it came back like a vicious curse.
Now Zarya knew about it, too.
He winced. "I was stupid."
"How so?"
He wanted to curse her for her insistence. But then, that was Zarya. Whenever she wanted something, she wouldn't give up until she got it. "I'm going to kill that little bastard for telling you. Please, don't make me relive it, okay?" Darling wasn't sure if he could survive it again.
It hurt that much. Even all these years later.
Why the hell wouldn't it die?
Nodding, Zarya caught him against her and held him close. "I'm sorry I asked. You don't have to tell me. It's fine. You're allowed to have your secrets."
In the moment, he'd never loved her more, and as he'd done hundreds of times in the past, he found himself telling her something he'd never told anyone else.
Even though it shredded him to do so.
"By Caronese law, once I turned sixteen, I was old enough to choose another guardian to be the Grand Counsel instead of Arturo. For several months, I debated on whether or not to leave everything alone or replace him. Finally, I decided it was time to do it."
"Why did you wait so long?"
"By that time, Arturo had tightened the noose around me to the point I couldn't breathe. I was seldom allowed contact with anyone from the ruling class. Not my mother, my siblings, or even Maris. And you have to have a guardian who is a natural-born Caronese aristo with the right bloodline. More than that, I needed one willing to stand up to Arturo. Most weren't, and I knew it. He kept everyone around him so intimidated that they didn't dare."
Zarya listened as he stepped away and paced a small area in front of her. "So what happened with Senator Nylan?"
Darling flinched as if the name itself struck him like a blow. "He was a distant cousin on my father's side, and I knew from past encounters with him that he thought I was... pretty." He spat the word out. "He'd made several lewd remarks and offers to me over the years after my father's death."