Page 172 of Of Blood and Banes
He swivels to me, ripping his shirt off and flinging it to the ground. “Is this what you want? Is this what you want to see?” he thunders. “Here, take a gander.”
My heart cracks when he turns away from me again. The barrier of his shirt between my fingers wasn’t enough to prepare me for what’s before me. Faint, jagged scars rip down his shoulder blades, his spine, and all the way down his dimpledlower back. I might have gotten a glimpse of his back once or twice before, but I always brushed it off. Assuming it was from the night back in Midkeep where I found him in a dungeon getting beaten by Corvin and Sethan. I never stopped to give it much thought.
Oh, Gods. How could someone do that? And to their ownchild? My eyes grow blurry at the sides, a thickness collecting in my throat, and I rest my fingers against my chest.
He glances at me from over his shoulder. “Now have you had enough?”
Something crosses in his face when he recognizes the pain in my expression, before he rips the shirt off the floor. “Don’t pity me. I deserved every lash. And if I had the chance to kill my father again, I would. Every day, for the rest of my miserable fucking life.”
“Stop,” I murmur, taking a step toward him.
His eyes flash, and he pauses, watching me with hesitancy.
I take a few more steps, closing the distance between us and gently tracing my fingers up his forearm, his bicep. My voice is softer than a breath. “If you don’t want my pity, you won’t have it. But don’t lie to me. Why did you kill him, Darian?”
His chest rises and falls heavily, his eyes searching mine as if fishing for something I’m not even aware of. He bites his lip, shaking his head firmly. “Because I wanted to.”
“I don’t believe you…”
“Because itfeltgood.”
He’s trying far too hard to push me away. He doesn’t want me to see him—he doesn’t want to admit the pain he’s holding. But I have to try. Secrets are painful, heavy things. Lonely. And he has no one.
“Try. Again,” I prompt gently.
“The fuck you want me to say, Katerina!” His pulse races in his throat. “Because he didn’t just hurt me? Because he also hurtmy mother? And I couldn’t stand him putting his hands on her? Is that it?”
My breath catches in my throat as the impenetrable wall between us explodes.
He leans closer to stare me in the face. “Shall I go on? The day I killed him is the day I found him over my mother, his hands wrapped around her throat and choking the life out of her. I fucking flung myself at him, knocking him off her, and even with his hands gone, she was still unresponsive. I fucking killed him. Right then and there. Strangled every breath from his pathetic fucking lungs because he didn’t deserve another. Because I couldn’t stop myself. Because I was…” His eyes cloud, reliving the memory for the first and millionth time since the incident, his bare chest rising and falling even more dramatically.
“You were scared,” I whisper with a small nod.
When he breaks our eye contact to stare at the floor, avoiding me and saying nothing, I brush my hand against his stubbled cheek.
I grip his chin, turning his face to look at me. “I understand. I’ve been scared before, too.”
Fuck. The way he’s looking at me. The green of his eyes is agonizingly beautiful and haunting. His jaw clenches, a softness to his gaze as he shakes his head. And then he grabs me.
Andkissesme.
For the first time, I realize what this means to him. Where I buried myself in this mindless, explosive sex to escape from the reality of my future, he does it to escape the haunting of his past. Because his pain is so deep, it lingers with each breath. I suddenly understand him, seeing him in a new light. Every flirtatious innuendo. Every venomous threat.
He’s calloused. Hardened by someone who broke him over and over.
How much has changed between that small boy painted in his room back at Windmere and the man in front of me now?
I hold him, running my fingers through his long hair, chasing away all the thoughts and memories haunting him. Our lips melt into kiss after kiss, until a few soft, intimate moments later, he pushes at my shoulders to create space between us.
“I can’t do this,” he mutters, avoiding my eye contact.
I grab his hand before he can move away. “Wait?—”
“I can’t.” He pulls his hand from mine, then he takes his spot on the floor across the room, locking his wrists back into the manacles himself.
CHAPTER 54
MEANT TO BE YOURS
