Redeemed (House of Night #12)(38)

It wasn’t until Aphrodite got outside the auditorium that she slowed down and let her thoughts catch up with her emotions. Her heart was thundering and her stomach felt sick. She was pissed. Super pissed.

No, that’s not true. I’m not pissed. I’m freaked out and upset.

With a giant sigh, Aphrodite moved from the sidewalk to one of the benches under a budding oak. The hand that brushed the thick blond hair from her face was shaky.

Darius had kept something from her, something important. Until that moment she’d thought he was different from all the other guys on this earth. He was supposed to be honest. He was supposed to be loyal. And, most of all, he was supposed to love her enough never to lie to her or keep anything from her.

A lie count was the real gauge of how much someone loved you. Aphrodite knew that because she’d grown up watching an ongoing lie count grow and grow. Her parents had pretended to be the perfect couple, but the truth was they had hated each other almost as much as they hated her. Except for when they were in public, they’d lived totally separate lives—they hadn’t even shared a bedroom for more than a decade, let alone shared secrets.

They’d lied to each other on a daily basis.

When she’d been only eight years old, Aphrodite had sworn to herself that she’d never, ever get herself into anything like her parents’ marriage. Hell, until she’d met Darius, she hadn’t let any guy get close enough to her for it to matter whether he lied to her or not. She’d been sure she’d lied to them first. Cheated on them first. Broken up with them first.

“I can feel your sadness, my beauty. Please talk to me.”

Aphrodite looked up at the sound of Darius’s voice, but she didn’t meet his eyes. She stared over his shoulder. “What do you want to talk about?”

He sat beside her and used the back of his hand to gently wipe a tear from her cheek. She jerked away from him, hastily brushing at her other cheek. She hadn’t even known she’d been crying!

“I want to talk about us,” he said.

“Really? Wouldn’t it just be easier to keep on going like we have been? Pretending to be all ‘in love forever and ever’?” she air-quoted sarcastically.

“That has never been a pretense for me. You know that, Aphrodite.” He spoke calmly, earnestly.

She wanted to slap him—hurt him—make him feel even a little of the fear she was feeling. But she didn’t do anything violent. That would mean she’d lost control. That would mean she’d become her mother. Instead, Aphrodite struck him with words.

“And how the hell would I know that? I can’t be inside your head. I can’t even share your feelings like a real Priestess would. But, whatever. Don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine, and we both have a bunch of shit to do because, as per usual, Darkness is about to try to take over our world.”

“Darkness will have to wait, because you are my world, and if I lose you, I lose myself.”

Aphrodite meant to stand up and walk away and not look back. She was going to make her heart hard, like it used to be when it had actually protected her. Before the shit storm that was Zoey and her Nerd Herd and Darius had happened to her.

She was going to, but somehow Darius had said exactly the right thing so that her legs suddenly decided to listen to her heart instead of her head.

Aphrodite met his gaze. “You lied to me.”

“No, my beauty. I simply didn’t tell you something.”

“Why? Why did you keep that from me? Kalona being Erebus’s brother is a pretty big f**king deal!”

“I don’t care about Kalona or what he did or didn’t say. I care about you and what you say.”

“Me?” Aphrodite frowned at him. “What the hell are you talking about? Not once have I mentioned anything remotely like the possibility of Kalona and Erebus being brothers.”

Darius’s smile was slow and sweet. “Exactly. And if you, my beautiful, wise, gifted Prophetess, don’t have any insight into Kalona’s true past, then why would I care to mention an offhand comment the winged immortal made? Aphrodite, if it was important for us to know Kalona was Erebus’s brother, then I believe you would have told me.”

Aphrodite shook her head, feeling a little dizzy as she realized what Darius was actually saying to her.

He took her hand. “Have I told you how much I love you today?”

“N-no,” she whispered, thinking, Please don’t say it if you don’t mean it—please, please don’t.

“With all my being,” he said.

Tears leaked down her cheeks, but she didn’t look away from him.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.

“I am. It still scares me,” she admitted.

“It scares me, too, but being with you—really with you and not just pretending so that my heart stays safe—is worth facing and conquering that fear.”

“But you’re a Warrior. I’m nothing, not really. I’m just…” Her voice faded. She couldn’t say it, but the words filled her mind: I’m just the daughter of an awful woman who taught me how to hate, and to never, ever trust love.

“You are the bravest person I know,” Darius said solemnly. “And you are not, nor will you ever be, your mother.”

“And you won’t ever lie to me.”