Page 128 of Dissection of Immortal Hearts

“I haven’t since I attained immortality. I have no idea if she’s alive.”

“Why didn’t you tell her you were being bullied?”

“My wounds were in plain sight. If she had wanted to see them, she could have. But she always looked up at mydeadfather, never at me.” He shrugged. “Besides, she’d have probably just forbidden me from going outside.”

“I think you underestimate her,” Diana said.“Every parent wants the best for their child, but sometimes circumstances blind them to the fact that they’re not providing it. At least children are allowed to ask for help.”

“You speak as if you know what it’s like to be on the other side. Do you have children, Diana?”His jaw tightened at the idea. He didn’t mind children, but if she had offspring with another man, perhaps that wasn’t the only thing she shared with someone else.

“No,” she said at last. “That’s just something my mother told me.”

“Is she alive?”

Diana shook her head. “I have no living relatives.”

“What happened to them?”

“You already know about my brother. My mother and father were killed after the Changes because of an old feud. The usual.”

Her quick response told him she was lying. Lies came from her with ease. However, she was hesitant to share truths.

“What do you think my mother would have done if I had told her I was being bullied?” Constantine asked.

“She would have protected you, of course.” Her confident tone was infuriating.

“No,” he ground out. “She would have made me hide until I grew up. But if I’d hidden all those years, how would I have fed the hatred inside me when I reached immortality?”

Diana frowned, clearly not understanding his words.

“I was giving them a challenge, but they didn’t understand it,” he said. “Every time they hit me, I took the blows and told them with my eyes, ‘Kill me now, because if you don’t, it’ll be my turn later.’ But they were too cowardly to finish what they had started. The years passed, and I remembered faces and names. When I unlocked my secondary form, I found each one of them. Every face I associated with the physical pain I’d endured.I tortured them, let them regenerate, and started again. I burned living flesh, pulled out nails, broke bones, severed limbs, desecrated their bodies…”

Diana swallowed slowly, as if she was visualising the horrors he described.

“But none of that compared to the torment I inflicted by trapping their souls and keeping them captive for decades. It took me a long time to realise that I wasn’t punishing them for the pain they caused me – I was punishing them because not a single one fulfilled my mother’s promise that ‘the right one would see a friend in me.’ If even one of them had seen more than just a necromancer’s child, maybe I wouldn’t have grown up so filled with bitterness towards the world.”

Diana’s eyes widened, and he sensed she was about to say something that would irritate him further, so he spoke first. “And the paradox? When I grew strong enough to retaliate, the hatred transformed into fear – and lust. They either avoided me or begged me to bed them. Sometimes, they hired me to kill someone for them. As much as I hated them all, it was nice to be seen differently for once. I gave them what they wanted, hoping someone would want to learn more about me. But all they ever wished for was more sex, more depravity, more blood, more of what I was so good at.”

He paused briefly. “Eventually, I reached the most important conclusion of my life: my mother’s words were bullshit. If she’d truly believed them, she wouldn’t have been so attached to the spirit of my dead father. She would have walked out into the world. I wondered if, even when he was alive, they were together because they saw beyond each other’s ‘black hearts’ or simply because they had no other choice, but to cling to each other because they were the same despised species.”

Diana’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. “Over the years, you must have encountered women of your kind… Did you everfeel anything?”

“I did. Arousal. Lust. Nothing different from what I felt for anyone else.”

“So, you’ve found the answer to your own question,” she said. “Just because someone is of your kind is not enough to spark the flame.”

He laughed – a sharp, bitter sound. “The question ceased to matter long ago, Diana, when I stopped seeking either friendship or love.” The acidity in his tone was unmistakable. His gaze locked onto hers, unyielding. “I insist on knowing everything you’ve learned from Swan about the reptilians and Antambazi.”

She sat up in bed, startled by the sudden harshness in his voice. “Constantine…” Her lips pressed together. “I can’t tell you. I made a promise to keep his secret. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Hmm… wrong. Do you remember how I told you that no one ever saw anything in me but a necromancer? That was true until I met the boys at the Hospital. They saved my life, yes, because they needed a necromancer for a particular job. I did the job – after all, I owed them for keeping me alive. A favour for a favour, the only way I’d ever known to interact with others. Imagine my surprise when, once the job was done, they invited me to stay at the Hospital. Hard as it might be to believe, that was the first time in my life someone, fully aware of what I was, offered me genuine friendship.”

Diana buried her hands in her hair. “I’m glad you found each other, but—”

Constantine raised a hand, silencing her. “The Hospital’s under siege by the reptilians. You have information that could help. And until you sing like a bird, you’ll remain chained to my bed.”

Diana’s eyes flashed. “So it’s all about the information Imight have, after all?”

He stood, towering over her. “It would be far too bold of you to feign disappointment, Diana.”