Born of Silence (20 page)

“And now?”

Zarya tried to stamp down her tears, but against her will, they swam in her eyes as she thought about Kere and everything they’d had.

Everything she’d lost.

There were so many tender memories. So many nights of laughter over their links. Sharing their dreams and hopes.

Their deepest fears…

No matter how bad she felt, he’d always made her smile. Just the sound of his voice, the smallest whiff of his skin, set her on fire.

She’d never felt for anyone what she felt for him.

But he’d betrayed her. He’d thrown her away like she was nothing, condemned her to this hole without a single regret or thought.

That
was unforgivable. She wasn’t trash to be discarded the moment it became unpleasant.

Still, her emotions were tangled where he was concerned, and they weren’t simple. How could she love and hate someone as much as she did him? And all at the same time. It didn’t make sense.

Despising herself, hating her situation, and none too pleased with Darling or Maris, she sighed. “I honestly don’t know. Yes, I
still love him. I hurt for him and I’m so mad, I could stomp him into the ground, and laugh while I do it. He’s hurt me worse than anyone ever has.”

One black brow shot north as if he couldn’t believe her words. “You?
You
were hurt?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her as if she repulsed him. “Are you in total denial or are you really that stupid? Or are you just that selfish? Please tell me. I have to know.”

Anger pierced her over his condemnation when he didn’t know anything about her. “Excuse me?”

“My God, woman, how can you talk to me about
your
hurt after what
you
put Darling through? Really?” He paused before he added another, “Really?”

A bad feeling washed over her. He wouldn’t be this angry without a good reason. Would he?

What did he know that she didn’t?

“They were wrong to interrogate him so harshly, but—”

“Lady,” he said, interrupting her, “they didn’t interrogate him at all. They had a muzzle buried so deep in his throat that it caused permanent damage to his esophagus and voice box. Darling said it was the first thing they did to him when they took him into custody and before he’d regained his ability to move, never mind speak. There was no way for him to answer anyone’s questions once that was in place. And I know he’s not lying. It took the surgeon four hours to dig it out of the tissue it’d cut and grown into because he’d had it in his mouth for so long.”

Her stomach hit the floor at what he described.

No… she refused to believe it. Her men wouldn’t have done something so awful. Not to mention, she didn’t remember seeing a muzzle on Darling.

Could she really have missed it?

She tried her best to think back to her few minutes with Darling before they’d rescued him. But all she could remember was the feral hatred in his eyes and her own absolute lack of judgment. “Was he really muzzled?”

The moment those words left her lips, and even before Maris spoke, she flashed on the men who’d freed Darling.

The angry conversation between themselves. Darling
had
been muzzled. She remembered them talking about it now. So much had happened so fast, that it hadn’t made an impression on her at the time, and since then, her thoughts had been on other things.

I am the biggest dolt who was ever born.

“You truly don’t know what was done to him, do you?” Maris pushed her back into her cell and sat her on the floor while he pulled out his mobile device.

Oblivious to the fact that he was wrinkling what had to be an extremely expensive outfit, he sat down beside her and handed her the file he’d just pulled up.

“What’s this?”

His dark eyes blistered her. “Just read.”

Irritated, Zarya let out a breath of frustration. But as she began reviewing Darling’s medical report, her stomach shrank into a painful knot. No wonder Maris had sat her down first. Had she been standing, she might have fallen. “Is this for real?”

“Yes. It’s why I pulled it. I knew if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.” He reached over her to scroll to photos of Darling that were also in the file. There, she saw for herself the damage done to his mouth by the muzzle. It had worn permanent holes under his tongue and had pierced it through.

But that wasn’t the worst damage. Not by far.

Oh my God…

Her “friends” had brutalized him in a way that defied belief or imagination. And like Maris had said, with a muzzle in place, it wasn’t done for information.

He’d been tortured for entertainment.

Maris clicked to another page of the report. “They fed him his own vomit, along with urine and excrement.”

Zarya couldn’t see past the tears in her eyes as her stomach lurched over the viciousness. “I knew them. They… they weren’t animals. They were fathers and sons, daughters and mothers. Loving spouses and parents. How could they do that to anyone?”

Yet there was no denying the proof in her hands. She saw it with brutal clarity.

They had torn Darling apart. No wonder he was insane. Who wouldn’t be?

“Darling wasn’t a person to them,” Maris said in a strained voice. “He was an effigy. He stood for everything in their lives that they despised and hated—for every person they felt had it better or easier than them, anyone who had ever done them wrong or ever used them—and they took their own anger at the world out on him. They didn’t see him as a human being. Only as an enemy they wanted to feel every pain, real or imagined, they’d suffered in their own lives.” Maris went to yet another page. “They even cut off his finger and fed that to him, too.”

She rushed to the toilet and barely made it before she was sick.

Still, Maris took no pity on her. “They brutally and repeatedly sodomized him with objects we have yet to identify, and beat him to the brink of death. They attached electrodes to his genitals and muzzle, and ran enough electricity to him to leave burn scars all over his body, including his face. Anyone would be broken by that. But you have to remember, these weren’t strangers to him. These were people he’d protected. People he’d risked his own life, and that of his family, to help.”

People he’d been wounded for…

Zarya’s stomach heaved again under the true horror of what she’d allowed her men to do to him. Why hadn’t she checked on their prisoner?

Just once…

Her head swam from the horror of it all. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t. I wouldn’t have allowed them to do that to my worst enemy… not even Arturo.”

“You were in the room with him when we arrived.”

She sputtered in guilt and remorse. “I had just found out that we still had him in our custody. Literally right before your arrival. It was the first time I’d gone in. I swear.” But like the others, she hadn’t seen Darling as a person either. He’d been nothing to her but…

Dear gods, I slapped him while he wore a muzzle…

Her stomach heaved again as she realized just how much that would have hurt him.
How could I have done something like that?
She’d always prided herself on being fair and impartial. Compassionate.

Yes, she’d thought that he’d harmed Kere. Still…

I should have seen him. Should have seen the condition he was in instead of latching on to my own pain and being oblivious to the one right before my eyes. Someone who was hurting so much worse.

She’d always prided herself on being kind and sympathetic to others. The reality that she could be as cold and indifferent as those who’d wrong her, was a harsh slap in her face.

Pressing her hands to her eyes, she tried to blot out the image of Darling in those photos. The sight of him in that awful room when she’d finally become aware of his condition.

She couldn’t stop herself from seeing every minute detail. And the worst was the guilt that ate at her. She, who had promised to love and protect him from all enemies, had failed him horribly.

Maris flushed the toilet, then brought her a cool cloth and
pressed it to the back of her neck to soothe her. “Until this moment, I didn’t believe that about you.”

“And now?”

He brushed the hair back from her face. “I see the truth in your eyes. You do love him, and I believe you when you tell me that you didn’t know what they’d done.” He narrowed his gaze at her. “Now I’m asking you to help me save him before it’s too late. Please, Zarya. I love Darling. I always have. You’ve no idea how many times he took up for me when no one else would. How many fights he fought for me. How many times he held me when I cried because I was afraid of other people’s prejudice and cruelty, and you know what he always said to me?”

She shook her head.

“Life sucks, Mari. It’s never fair to anyone. But I’ll always keep you safe from it. As long as I breathe, I won’t let them hurt you. Night or day, you call and I will drop everything to come running to you.”

That sounded like Kere.

“Now that he needs me to be there for him, how can I turn my back on the only true friend I’ve ever had?”

She felt the same way and yet…

“He hates me, and given that”—she gestured at his mobile—“he has every right to.”

Maris sighed. “You know, that’s the sickest thing about love. When it’s real, you’ll forgive anything.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve seen the way Darling’s family has treated him over the years. The thoughtless things they’ve said and done, and all the fights they’ve had. And I’ve seen him not only forgive them for it, but risk his life and health to keep them safe. Over and over. If he can forgive them, I know he can forgive you, too.”

She wasn’t so sure. “What about the Resistance? What’s happened to them while I’ve been imprisoned?”

“They’re… gone.”

She cringed at the news. Not that she hadn’t suspected it given the way the Sentella had attacked them to get Darling back, but hearing the confirmation was another matter. “Did Darling kill any of them?”

Maris dropped his gaze to the mobile, then showed her the burn scars on Darling’s nipples and groin where he’d been electrocuted… and that done while he wore a muzzle…

She flinched at the sight of such wanton brutality.

“What would you have done?” he asked her.

The same. If not worse. There was no doubt whatsoever. In fact, she wanted to kill them herself for what they’d done to him.

It was so wrong. The Resistance hadn’t been founded on cruelty. They were supposed to be a humanitarian organization that protected people from those who wrongfully hurt others.

How had the oppressed become the oppressor?

But she knew that answer, too. Like Maris said, they’d felt justified in their violence. Arturo had hurt them and their families. Why not hurt his?

They hadn’t bothered to find out that Darling was innocent. That he was one of them.

They hadn’t cared. In war, the innocent died and were punished along with the guilty. That was the one thing her father had drilled into her most.

In a fight, no one walked away unscathed.

Zarya drew a ragged breath and asked the most important question of all, even though she dreaded the answer. “What about my sister, Sorche? What has become of her?”

Had Darling killed her, too? If he had…

That she would
never
forgive. And she would kill Darling herself if he’d hurt Sorche.

Maris paused until she thought she’d be sick again. How bad was the news that he couldn’t even speak of it?

“Sorche Starska?”

She nodded as the knot in her stomach tightened with dread.

Please, don’t be dead.
She could handle and maybe forgive anything, except that.

Maris sat back in thought. “So that’s who that was… Weird.”

“What?” Why wouldn’t he answer her already?

“Nothing bad,” Maris said quickly, as if he’d finally realized he was being cruel. “Darling has her enrolled in the same academy his sister attends.”

It took several seconds for that to fully register over the wave of disbelief that crashed through her. “I don’t understand.”

Why would Darling have helped her sister after he sent
her
here to this hell?

Maris pulled up her sister’s private transcript. “I’ve been wondering who she was and why he cared what happened to her. Der to me, I should have paid attention to the last name. But what can I say? I have great moments of epic stupid like everyone else.” He bit his lip. “No wonder Darling had such a strange reaction.”

“To what?”

“Well, I saw the bill for her tuition a few weeks ago in his office and when I asked him about it, he got highly testy at me and refused to answer. He actually tossed me out of his office and told me to quit snooping through his things. I thought for the merest instant, she might be his mistress or something. I knew it was an odd reaction to something that didn’t require that degree of hostility. But you can see for yourself that she’s in the best classes and has a private tutor three times a week… All paid for by Darling.”