She couldn’t imagine anything worse. It’d been bad enough to experience it, but to have other people dredge it up constantly and throw it in your face…

Glancing down, she saw the scars on Darling’s wrists from his suicide attempts that Drake had told her about. Her hands trembling, she lifted his so that she could kiss them. “How many times did you—”

“Three. It was part of the reason everything was taken out of my room and I was strip-searched every night. Why my guards would randomly come in at all hours to wake me. The gods forbid, I should die and escape my hell.”

She laid her hand against his cheek. “I’m glad you’re still here.”

Darling’s stomach tightened at the love he saw in her eyes. But it wasn’t enough to take away the misery of those memories. Nothing could.

Yet she helped him in ways he’d have never thought possible. Like Maris, she didn’t judge him by his mistakes. Nor did she hold them against him. Or use them to hurt him. They didn’t make him less in her eyes.

For that alone, he was eternally grateful.

She kissed his lips. “I’m so sorry for what they did to you, and I swear I will never, ever speak of it again or mention that bastard’s name. May he rot in hell for eternity.”

He tightened his arms around her. “I’ve never told anyone what really happened, Z. Not even Maris. I’m sure he’s seen the photos, too, but he’s been decent enough to keep silent about them. Too bad Drake couldn’t.”

While he loved his brother, there were times he couldn’t stand him. Why would Drake have told her about the most horrific event of his entire life?

Why couldn’t Drake leave things alone?

“Hey,” Zarya breathed, stepping back and forcing him to look at her. “I love you, Darling. I really do. It’s that capacity you have to care about others more than you care about yourself that has always drawn me to you. You’ve been my hero from that first moment when you risked your life to climb out onto my roof to get my cat for me, to the moment when I first saw Kere carrying Timmon to safety. The rest of us ran for cover during that ambush, but you ran into it, knowing we had soldiers pinned down. I’ve never known anyone braver than you.”

“I don’t feel brave.” Most days, he just felt like complete and utter hell.

Zarya kissed him lightly on the lips. “And that’s what makes you so wonderful. You don’t see the beauty that is you. I hate that you focus on your handful of flaws.”

Why shouldn’t he? “Everyone else does.”

“Screw them if they do,” she said as her anger blazed in those beautiful amber eyes. “Do you really care what they think? Are any of them that important to you?”

“No. But it doesn’t stop it from hurting.”

Zarya blinked away the tears in her eyes. “You’re right. But my father used to have a saying. ‘Don’t let them steal your day.’ Never give them that kind of power over you. They’re not worth it.”