It didn’t sound so bad, if she ignored the fact that the word Underworld conjured images of daemons more terrifying than Benares and those creatures that had been sniffing around her apartment building.
“I had a knife to defend myself… I managed to steal it on the third day, and the owner wasn’t happy about it.”
Third day? How far from home had his father taken him? She got the feeling that he hadn’t exactly been given a map to find his way home either. She was surprised he didn’t have abandonment issues. His father sounded like a real piece of work.
Probably not worse than hers had been though.
“I quickly learned it was kill or be killed, and I didn’t want to die, so I gutted my opponent and moved on.”
“You make it sound easy,” she said and he shook his head, a solemn edge to his eyes.
“It wasn’t. I didn’t sleep the night I took my first life… I couldn’t close my eyes without reliving it in vivid… gory… detail… but I did what I had to do to survive and I still do now.” He looked down the rolling slope to the fields and beyond them to the city.
The sun had crept higher, bathing everything in a golden glow, including Valen. If she said he was handsome, he would laugh at her, would try to let it roll off his back together with the hurt he tried not to feel.
She found that sad in a way.
It made her want to take hold of him and say it until he believed it, until he believed it was possible for people to like him, and he realised that his brothers were arseholes, just like their father, and Zeus and the Moirai for whatever they had done to him to make him hate them too.
“I killed over fifty warriors of the outer regions before I completed my trials, and lost track of the number of beasts I added to that count. More than any of my brothers had to.” He closed his eyes and hung his head, his longer lengths of hair falling forwards. “I can still remember every kill. They’re branded on my mind… seared there for eternity.”
Eva’s heart went out to him.
Her father had been a bastard, violent and cruel, and she was beginning to believe Valen’s father had been cut from the same cloth.
What sort of man would force their child to fight for his life?
To fight to come home?
Her eyes slowly widened.
He was still fighting to go home.
“You said your father banished you here.”
He smiled briefly and glanced at her. “You noticed that slip, huh? I try not to think about it that way, but none of us can go back to the Underworld until the calamity the bastard Moirai saw is averted and won’t come to pass.”
“And I thought my father was bad.” She turned her cheek to him, drew her knees up and rested her chin on them, studying Rome as morning light flickered over it and reflected off the windows, so it sparkled.
“How did you end up as an assassin?” he asked in a low voice, one filled with caution. “You mentioned your family before… was it because of them?”
She smiled to let him know she didn’t mind him asking. He was answering all her questions, completing her picture of him, so it was only fair she did the same.
“My father was one of those men who try to control everything… and who are weak enough to resort to violence if they don’t get their way.”
“He hurt you?” Valen growled and she turned her face towards him, placed her hands over her knees, and leaned her cheek against them.
He had that look in his eyes again, the one that told her he wanted to kill for her sake.
“He’s dead already.”
Valen’s eyes widened.
“No, I didn’t do it,” she said quickly, before he got the wrong impression. “I hated him for how he treated my mother, how it was fine for him to sleep with other women and betray her, but if a man so much as looked in her direction she was punished for it while he lied to her face about his mistresses, saying he only ever looked at her and was only with her.”
His face darkened, something surfaced in his eyes and he looked away. Why?
“I’m sorry,” he whispered and his shoulders slumped, his hands falling into his lap. “I shouldn’t have let her kiss me.”
“God,” she snapped, half shocked, half dismayed. “Don’t go comparing yourself to him. If that bitch was anything like Benares, she cast some weird spell on you. It wasn’t really your fault.”
“You don’t have to call me god. Valen will do.” He smiled, but it was strained, and she hated it.
She didn’t want him to blame himself for what had happened.
She lowered her right hand to his lap and placed it over both of his, stared at them as she wondered whether he would ever stop pulling up his defences around her or being so quick to believe he had done something wrong.
“Don’t blame yourself, Valen,” she whispered and stroked her thumb across his fingers. “I hope you don’t blame me.”
He turned his hand beneath hers and seized hold of it, squeezed it so hard her bones ached. “Never. Bastard daemons have some sort of wicked mojo that addles the brain. I’m not even immune to it.”
But he had told his brothers he didn’t need their help and he could handle it. Was he sure that he could resist if Jin turned on the charm again?
She wasn’t sure she would be able to break free of Benares’s spell if he tried to cast it on her again. She felt weaker now, shaken by events, and she feared it would make it easier for him to pull her under his control.
“I won’t let him hurt you,” Valen whispered, dragging her back to him and out of the mire of her thoughts.
He raised his other hand and feathered his fingertips over her cheek, his eyes on hers the entire time, overflowing with determination, affection, and dark with a promise she knew he would keep.
“You were telling me about another bastard in your life.” He looked as if he wanted to grimace.
She had to admit, it wasn’t the greatest change in subjects, but it was the one they had been talking about before he had foolishly compared himself to her father.
Valen was nothing like him.
He couldn’t see it, but he was noble, and passionate, and loyal, and possessive but not in a bad way.
He was possessive in a way that screamed he would do everything in his power, whatever it took, to keep her eyes on him and her heart belonging to him.
Hurting her wouldn’t even cross his mind, because to his sort of possessive nature it would be a crime, something he couldn’t stomach doing.
His sort of possessive nature showed itself in a desire to protect, and a deep need to cherish.
Maybe it was because he had a strong heart, filled with love for others, not love for himself.
“My father got into bad dealings with some men and got himself killed.” Did she sound as sour about that as she felt? “I wanted him to suffer… eternally if possible… for what he did to my mother, always lashing out at her, always hurting her. I’m sure in the end he was the reason she killed herself.”
“Eva.” Valen laid his palm against her cheek, and she closed her eyes, stealing his warmth as it flowed through her and eased her pain.
“Her death drove me away from the family. It was my breaking point. I had it out with my father and brother, and I walked out the door and never looked back. I was so mad. I wanted to kill them.” She rested her head more heavily against her knees as memories of those dark days filled her mind. “I had little money, not enough to last more than a few months. I ended up in a bad part of town, working wherever I could, and then I ended up on the streets.”
Silence weighed down on her and she opened her eyes, needing to see Valen to lift it from her and ease her heart.
Those days were long gone, nothing more than a distant memory now. She had a home, a safe place to sleep, and enough money to last at least a decade.
“It was rough.” She smiled but she didn’t feel it, and the edge to Valen’s eyes said that he knew it, that he wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her, but was
afraid.
This was new for him too. She toyed with his hand in his lap, unsure of herself, but she had to keep moving forwards, no matter what. They could learn everything about being in a relationship like this together.
“I ended up trying to pickpocket the wrong man, and suddenly men in suits were on me. I fought them as best I could and ended up disarming one, and knocking another one out before they managed to capture me.”
“What happened?” Valen brushed her hair from her face and swept it behind her ear, his gaze following his fingers, a touch of fascination in it that warmed her and made her want to tease him for being so surprised that she allowed him to do something so intimate with her.
His eyes drifted to hers and he shot her a glare.
“Message received,” she said, letting him know she wouldn’t say a word about it. She poked the end of his index finger with her thumb, letting her focus drop back to them and her past. He had large hands, callused, but she supposed the hands of a warrior would be worn and rough. She turned her hand in his and frowned at her own calluses. They weren’t so different to each other, even if he was a god and she was human. “I thought I was a goner, but it turned out that my fighting spirit had impressed the man I had tried to steal from, who just happened to be the most powerful man in Rome at the time.”
“Tough gig.” He flashed another smile that sent heat pulsing through her.
God, he was devastating when he smiled like that.
“He offered to train me. I was meant to be security for his daughter, but it turned out I had a natural talent with guns and my years of sneaking around my family villa trying not to be noticed by my father and brother had made me rather good at following people without being seen and blending into my environment.”
“So he swapped your job description.”
She nodded.
“I was security for his daughter for a while, but then he didn’t want to pay the running cost for a professional hit on a competitor so he sent me to do it.” Eva raised her eyes back to his. “Let’s just say that you weren’t the only one who had trouble sleeping the night after your first kill. I think it took me a week to get some sleep… and then it was only because I collapsed from exhaustion.”
“But you kept doing jobs?” His golden eyebrows dipped low and his irises blazed like fire.
She shrugged. “You don’t really get a choice. Once I started down that path, I had to keep walking it. The alternative was leaving, and you don’t just leave that world and Rome’s most powerful boss.”
Valen’s handsome face blackened. “He would have killed you.”
“He’s dead too,” she said before he could offer to kill him.
He arched an eyebrow at her. She shot him a look that challenged him to say he wasn’t going to say it. He huffed and looked away from her, a definite pout to his lower lip.
“It didn’t take me long to get used to it.” She prodded his fingers but he refused to look at her. “I guess I’m like you after all.”
He sighed. “We’re a pair alright.”
He slanted his gaze down at her and smiled.
Eva smiled back at him, silently thanking him for trying to lighten the mood.
“You’ll be fine.” His smile dropped, his expression turning so serious all of a sudden that hers fell with it, and his voice lowered into a dark growl. “I won’t let that daemon and his bitch hurt you. Next time I see the bastard, he’s going to pay.”
She didn’t fail to notice the way his hand rose to his face and his fingers came to rest on his scar as he said that, and couldn’t stop the feeling that went through her.
There was a meaning behind his actions.
A story behind that scar.
And she needed to know it if she was ever going to understand him.
CHAPTER 22
Valen tensed as Eva’s slender hand came to rest over his and her fingers brushed his scar. He wasn’t sure how she could bear to touch it. Why didn’t she think it was ugly, or frightening, like every other person he had met?
“How did this happen?” she murmured, voice low and cautious, as if she had sensed the tension mounting inside him, the need to push her away and tell her not to look at him, not to look at the mark of his sin.
A mark he had to live with forever.
He pulled his hand from under hers, dropped them both into his lap and curled them into fists as he looked away from her, turning his head to his left to hide his scar.
Her touch softened, the light sweeps of her fingers over the puckered ruined skin tearing at him, pulling down his defences and weakening him.
Making him vulnerable.
The tension building inside him twisted tighter, pushed harder, and he closed his eyes to shut her and the world out.
“Not going to tell me?” she whispered, her warm voice coaxing him into doing just that, bewitching him and making him want to tell her.
He couldn’t.
She had looked horrified enough when he had told her about his rite and the things he had done then.
If he told her about how he had killed the Moirai in cold blood, and tried to give his uncle the same fitting end, it didn’t bear thinking about how she would look at him then.
If she would look at him at all.
He wouldn’t blame her if she walked out of his life.
He didn’t want that to happen though, so he kept his mouth shut and pushed away the side of him that wanted to tell her, because it foolishly hoped things would turn out differently from how he knew they would and she would stay.
“Tell me how you got it.” Her voice was stronger, almost demanding.
She pressed her hand against the scar and tried to make him look at her.
He growled and knocked her arm away.
Her beautiful blue eyes held a flicker of hurt as she flexed her fingers, conflict dancing across her delicate features, as if she wanted to try to touch him again.
She lowered her hand to her knee instead and muttered, “Sorry I asked.”
Was he being a dick again?
It certainly felt like he was, and that strange gnawing feeling was back, eating away at him and making him want to tell her that he was the one who should be apologising to her.
It also made him want to tell her why he didn’t want to share that part of his sordid history with her, but memories of that day were beginning to crowd in the corners of his mind, and he didn’t want to go there. Not today.
He wasn’t strong enough today.
He felt too uncertain of everything, and his demons were back, whispering in his ear that no one could love him.
Especially if they knew he had gone on a bloody rampage to slay four gods in the name of revenge.
Valen glanced across at her, gaze tracing her profile and heart memorising how she looked in the morning light, the golden glow of sunrise bathing her clear skin with warmth and the light breeze teasing the straight strands of her jaw-length hair, making the blue streaks dance amidst the black.
He could sit for hours just watching her like this.
But he needed to say something to clear the air between them and make her look at him again.
He needed to snap her out of her thoughts before she got mad at him. He didn’t want her scowls and her sharp words. He wanted her smiles and her laughter.
“Want to see a magic trick?” he said and her blue eyes slid his way.
“You can do magic too?”
He hadn’t meant it quite like that, but the bright shine in her eyes told him she was interested.
“Not magic like you’re thinking…” He smiled slowly. “Although I can pull a rabbit out of thin air.”
He thought he could anyway.
Not a real rabbit.
He studied the sky, and then Rome, charting all the positions of the lightning rods he had installed, trying to figure out if it was possible. It would take a little effort on his part, but it would be worth it.
He just hoped he didn’t fail dismally.
Valen stood, brushed his damp backside down, and focused.
It started as a small dark patch in the sky over Rome that quickly grew and then clouds spilled from it, rolling across the blue canvas. He hated rain, but he wasn’t meant to make lightning without clouds.
An order from those bastards on high.
Funny how Zeus was allowed to do it though.
Eva’s eyes landed on him, sending a hot shiver dancing down his spine and along his limbs. He looked down at her, grinned as he caught her staring at his backside, and she tensed and blushed, her gaze zipping away from him. Gods, he loved how she reacted to him like that, not the cold merciless assassin but a shy yet alluring female.
“You’re wet,” she muttered.
“Yeah, yeah. Good excuse. Now pay attention because I’m about to create something far more spectacular for you to look at than my arse.” He hoped.
He sucked in a few breaths, flexed his fingers and stared at the clouds, psyching himself up. He could do this. He had made dragons. He could master a bunny.
He just had to do a rabbit perched on its back legs with its ears on alert.
Simple.
Right?
He flexed his fingers again and cursed the way they shook and the uncertainty racing through him. It had been a long time since he had felt this nervous about using his power.
He glanced at Eva again.
She sat with her long lean legs stretched in front of her and crossed at the ankles, her hands planted behind her to support her as she waited, and an expectant look on her face that told him to amaze her.
Performance pressure sucked.
“You sure you want a rabbit?” He gave her a hopeful look.
She frowned up at him. “You suggested a rabbit, not me.”
“Can’t interest you in something else?” He smiled and cursed again as it trembled, probably flashing his uncertainty at her like a neon sign.
“I thought you were some big, powerful god?” She smiled wickedly. “If you are, then I’m sure you can handle a little rabbit.”
He narrowed his eyes on her, silently cursing her this time. No damn way she was going to get away with questioning his prowess as a god.
Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2) Page 25
