Page 24 of House of Darkness
He smiled softly. “I had to meet the acolyte feisty enough to fantasize about kicking a vampire in the balls.”
“And the night you picked me up too? You heard my thoughts about Matei.”
“I did,” he said, his fingers ghosting my cheek, “I don’t mean to intrude, doll. I do my best to keep out, but when you’re passionate about something, your thoughts shout at me.”
I ground my teeth to keep from sobbing. He had power over every part of me, including the ability to know my deepest thoughts. “You know everything about me, yet I have nothing. It’s like one more thing you have over me.”
“I don’t have anything over?—”
“You have everything over me! You own me, Roman! And now I learn you have access to my every thought, yet I know nothing about you!”
“What if you don’t like the monster you find?” His jaw clenched, and the space between us stilled with a thick, electric tension as the weight of his fears settled on us.
“I’ve grown up around monsters, Roman. You can’t scare me.”
He leaned in until I could feel the heat of his breath on my lips. His eyes were like torches burning holes into my patchwork soul. He spoke in a low rumble that sent goosebumps racing up my arms. “You know nothing of monsters and men.”
His fingers traced a path from my cheek down my collarbone, across my shoulder, and along my arm. “You are quite delicious in blue, doll.”
I forced myself to ignore the heat rising in my cheeks and the warmth pooling in my stomach. “Tell me something important. Why did you kill Tsar Leonidas?”
He sighed. “A truth for a truth?”
I nodded.
“What do you know about Leonidas?”
I thought back. Roman had only recently taken the throne, so most of my education had been under Leonidas' rule. That didn’t mean Iknew much about him, beyond the fact that he had ruled for several hundred years. Our government education was basic—just enough to avoid embarrassment and please our masters but not focused on specific individuals.
“Only what I was taught at the academy.”
Roman nodded. “What they probably didn’t teach you is that he was a controlling, abusive asshole.”
He sat back, rolling into a sitting position on the floor in front of me. He threw his arms over his knees and looked at me with solemn eyes. “He wanted to use my powers to turn me into a weapon. When I was young, he would hurt me if I refused—take a finger, beat me, or cut my wings just to watch them grow back. As I grew older, that approach stopped working. I became too strong to control easily and too numb to the pain. So, he targeted my mother. He had always disregarded his acolytes, but by using her, he forced me to carry out his evil.”
A twisted smile transformed Roman’s face, turning him into something almost demonic. His fangs glinted in the firelight. “His mistake was thinking I’d never turn on him. He went too far with his abuse and killed my mother. I wasn’t there to save her, but I was there to enact her vengeance.”
I stared at him, stunned into silence. It wasn’t his actions that shocked me, but what he had endured. Matei had hurt me, but him threatening Solaris to bend my will was unfathomable.
“Tell me what you’re thinking right now.”
“Can’t you just read my mind?” I asked softly.
“Like I said, I try not to. Tell me.”
There was a hint of vulnerability in his voice that made me really look at him. His brows were furrowed, and tension ran from his jaw through his broad shoulders and into his tightly clenched fists. Heseemed genuinely concerned, as if my thoughts mattered to him.
“I’m thinking we’re more alike than I realized.”
Roman laughed, and my heart skipped a beat at the sound. He was always handsome, but when he laughed, reason seemed to dissolve. “What, two broken souls with anger issues and unhealthy avoidance tactics?”
I laughed in response. It was too true to be genuinely funny, but it was either laugh about it or cry. “Something like that.”
“Knowing what I did doesn’t scare you?”
I thought for a moment before shaking my head. “If I had the chance, I’d probably kill Matei. I don’t think ending your abuse makes you a bad person.”
Roman smiled. “Thank you, Estrella. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my powers sooner. I won’t keep things from you anymore, agreed?”
