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Just this once.
"I have to play the game," I finally admit, my voice barely above a whisper. "It's the only way."
She turns around slowly, her arms still wrapped around herself like a shield. "The only way for what?"
I take a deep breath, steeling myself for the truth. "To get revenge."
Her brow furrows in confusion. "Revenge for what?"
"For my mother." The words hang heavy in the air between us, a confession I've never spoken aloud before. "I'm doing all this—completing my initiation into the Order—so I can reach the man who killed her."
Aria's eyes widen in shock, her lips parting slightly. "Your mother was murdered?"
I nod, swallowing past the lump in my throat. "Maybe not directly, but he's responsible for her death all the same."
"Who?" she asks, her voice soft and filled with empathy.
I close my eyes, the truth burning like acid on my tongue. "My father."
Silence stretches between us. Endless. Dark. I can feel Aria's gaze on me, searching, probing. Looking for the lie, the trick.
But there is none.
Not this time.
"I'm sorry," she finally whispers, and I can hear the sincerity in her voice. The bizarre understanding. "I can't imagine how painful that must be."
I open my eyes, meeting her gaze. "I don't feel pain. Not even when I was a child." My throat tightens. "I grew up not knowing if I had a father out there, not knowing his name. But he left his mark on me all the same." I clear my throat. "I knew I was different from an early age. I knew there was something… missing."
"Missing?" she asks, frowning.
She's trying to understand. Trying to make sense of the insensible, of things even I don't understand. Things I gave up trying to figure out ages ago.
I turn away from Aria, staring out the window at the city lights. The memories rise up like bile in my throat, bitter and burning.
"I always had a tendency toward violence," I say quietly. "Not toward people weaker than me, or animals. But people who were strong. People who could fight back."
I remember the first time it happened, the first time I let that darkness inside me take control. I was just a kid, barely old enough to understand the consequences of my actions. But I understood the rush of power, the thrill of domination.
"I almost killed another child," I confess, my voice flat and emotionless. "I had to move schools after that. And it kept happening, throughout my adolescence. I got in fights, hurt people. Doctors threw around words like ASPD, ODD, sociopathy, psychopathy. But the common denominator in all of them was that I was different. Twisted. Broken."
I can feel Aria's gaze on me, heavy with a mixture of horror and fascination. I know I should stop, should spare her the gory details of my twisted past. But I can't seem to help myself. The words pour out of me like blood from a wound, raw and unstoppable.
"Through it all, my mother was the one person who never gave up on me," I continue, my throat tight with emotion I shouldn't be capable of feeling. Not anymore. "She accepted me, loved me, even though I couldn't love her back. Not the way she deserved."
All the things I did to take care of her flash through my mind. The things I had to do because my father left us both destitute. The people I hurt. The people I killed. Would this innocent little fawn still feel sympathy for me if she knew how much I enjoyed those kills?
"She had an addiction," I say softly. "It was her way of numbing the pain the only two men she ever loved couldn't even feel. The things my father inflicted on her, things she never told anyone. Not even me." I swallow hard, my chest aching with a strange grief I've never allowed myself to feel. "It killed her, in the end."
I turn back to face Aria and find her watching me, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Tears I've never been able to shed on my own mother's behalf.
"But before she died," I continue, "she spoke about my father for the first time in my life. She told me I was like him. That I possessed a dark gift."
I step closer to her, my voice dropping to a whisper. "She made me promise that I would use it to protect people. And that if he ever came for me, I wouldn't let him make me like him. That I'd resist, that I'd fight him the way she never could."
Aria stares up at me, her eyes wide.
"Lucian," she breathes, and there's something in the way she says my name that makes my heart clench painfully in my chest.
