Page 7 of The Darkness

Chapter Four

Gina glanced at him. He was deep in thought, but the rage had left his face.

No wonder he hated her. All this time he’d blamed her for what happened to Raven. He’d also said he could forgive her for leaving him, but suddenly she needed him to know she hadn’t abandoned him lightly.

“I didn’t want to leave you,” she said. “That first time. I had no choice.”

“No?” He sounded skeptical.

“It was daytime when Regan came. We were in your room, deep underground. You were sleeping.” He’d been naked, beautiful, gilded in the light from the lamp she kept on so she could watch him.

Darius scowled. “And it didn’t occur to you to wake me?” She almost smiled at the disgust in his voice. “You didn’t think I could keep you safe?”

He still didn’t understand. “You didn’t have to keep me safe. Regan is my sister. She would never hurt me. It was never me who was in danger.”

His eyes narrowed into dark slits as he processed the information. “You went with her to protect me?”

She nodded.

“I can protect myself,” he growled.

Gina wondered how much she should tell him, how much she should reveal of their powers, but he had already seen what she could do. “Regan threatened to destroy you.”

“How?”

“She was going to open a portal to the outside, the sun would have entered, you would have been destroyed utterly, gone forever, and it would have been my fault.” Gina had a flashback to the terror that had pierced her insides as Regan had issued the threat. “We have a saying in my family—take what you want and pay for it—and I would have been willing to pay, but not with your life.”

“You still should have woken me.” He looked at her. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

She nodded. “Regan told me she’d seen a vision of the future. That one day you would take my life.”

“And you believed her?” His eyes were narrowed on her and shock was clear in his tone.

“Of course. The visions do not lie.” But now she had to accept that her sister did. She’d lied when she’d told Gina her baby was dead. Had Regan lied about that vision, as well?

He shook his head as though he couldn’t accept her words. “I would never hurt you.”

Gina took a step toward him, reached out a hand and ran her finger over the scar bisecting his cheek, as she’d been longing to do since she’d first seen it.

“How did you get this?” she asked.

“After the Council called for Raven’s death—”

A jolt of shock hit Gina. “The Council wanted Raven dead? But Kael was head of the Council. Why would he order her death?”

“He was furious with me for taking you, and he thought it was the only way to ensure the prophecy could not come to pass. He told me later he’d regretted the decision almost immediately, but it was too late. I’d taken Raven and run.”

“How can you defend him?”

“I’m not, but I understand why he acted as he did. Nevertheless, if we’d had the Council’s protection, the fire-demons would never have found us. As it was, they did, and I got this”—he gestured to the scar—“in the attack when they captured Raven. They left me for dead out in the open, where the sun would find me. Luckily, I woke before dawn.”

“I’m sorry.” There was one last thing she wanted him to know. She was aware he blamed himself—that everyone blamed him—for her abduction all those years ago. “I have a confession to make.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “The day we met, I watched you arrive.”

A shadow of a smile crossed his face. “And did you like what you saw?”

---