The Darkest Secret, by Stephanie Draven

by Stephanie Draven, author of The Fever and the Fury (Harlequin Nocturne Cravings, January 2012)

I don’t harbor many deep dark secrets, but like every person ever born, there are a few. Little failures of character that accumulate alongside the triumphs. Things that embarrass me. Things that might complicate, compromise, or destroy my relationships with others.

When I met the man I could share those secrets with, I knew he was the one for me. That he could listen with a forgiving heart, or laugh at my foibles, or offer insights meant that I didn’t have to live in fear. I was loved for myself–my whole self. And that’s true love.

Consequently, it always saddens me when I meet other women who say that they keep secrets from their spouses. Sometimes I think I’m writing the stories I write just for them, because the turning point in my love stories almost always revolve around the precise moment of maximum vulnerability…when the deep dark secrets come pouring out…and true intimacy is achieved.

In The Fever & The Fury my heroine’s secret is so deep and dark, she dares not even share it with herself. She’s an ancient fury, a minion of the Greek Goddess of Battle, Athena, and she’s been unleashed to mete out vengeance. Once, she valued her role as a force of justice in the world, but over the centuries, Phaedra’s life as a fury has become more and more monstrous…to the point that she no longer feels like a force for good in the world. She’s come to hate her job, she’s come to hate her life, and she’s come to hate herself. When she admits that to herself, and to her victim, he offers her compassion. It’s something so foreign to Phaedra that it makes her unravel and it allows her to feel love for the first time in her life, even if that’s an emotion that threatens her entire existence.

I loved writing that scene–the one in which a man who is being tormented is actually capable of offering comfort to his tormentor. It made me fall in love with Lieutenant Luke Lazaros just as Phaedra does…because if you can forgive someone who has done you wrong isn’t that the strongest test of your humanity?

Of course, just because Luke has a soft heart under the hard-bodied exterior doesn’t mean that he’s an easy man to love. Luke has secrets of his own and when Phaedra uncovers them, it leaves them both vulnerable and raw. Just the way a hero and heroine should be when slip into the pleasures of a torrid love affair!

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Stephanie Draven is a multi-published award-nominated author of myth-inspired paranormal romance. Writing for HQN Nocturne, Stephanie’s Mythica series asks the question: What if the monsters of ancient mythology still walked the earth…and what if you found out that you were one of them? Currently a denizen of Baltimore, that city of ravens and purple night skies, Stephanie lives there with her favorite nocturnal creatures–three scheming cats and a deliciously wicked husband. And when she is not busy with dark domestic rituals, she writes her books.

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