Dark Solace (26 page)

I waited.

“I know now that Devlin is not going to give
you up,” Theo said reluctantly. “Danial said as much, said that
Devlin had asked you for another Oath, and that you were probably
going to have to give him one, even if you didn’t want to. I have
to face that I was deluding myself, to think he was going to let
you go, Sar. And I need counseling myself, because I can’t deal
with sharing you with him for the rest of our lives. And I have to.
For your sake, and Devon’s sake, I have to somehow make it
work.”

“We’ll go see Carol,” I affirmed, wondering
if it was safe to reach for his hand.

“Do you love him, Sar?” Theo asked.

Would he believe me if I said no after what
Danial had told him? “Theo, I don’t—”

“Answer me!” Theo demanded, his tone serious
as death. “The truth.”

“I love him as a friend, almost a best
friend. I couldn’t let him die without trying to save him.” That
wasn’t an answer, but it was all I felt safe saying.

“Did he ask you to leave me?” Theo said
finally. “To be with him?”

“No.” Lash had made it a point not to ask me,
in fact. But he’d wanted me to leave Theo, and get Devlin to
include him, so we could remain lovers. Without saying the words,
he had made it a point to make sure I knew that, too.

“You’re lying,” Theo whispered.

“He didn’t ask,” I said defensively. “But
yes, he made it clear he wanted me to. I told him no.”

Theo was quiet so long I figured that was the
end of the conversation. As I was drifting off to sleep, he asked
pointedly, “Does he love you, Sar?”

“He never said the words.”

Lash had been careful not to say them, or to
make any kind of lasting commitment. But how he felt had been in
the way he’d touched me, the way he’d loved me and wanted me to say
his name, as he’d said mine to me so many times in the heat of
passion. It had been in the way he’d held my cheek and kissed me
that last time, loss and longing in his soulful dark eyes. Most of
all it had been there in his affectionate, awkward tone when we’d
been together in the cemetery.

“Does he love you, Sar?” Theo reiterated
steely.

“Yes,” I replied softly. “I know he
does.”

Chapter
Nine

“Good afternoon, Sar, and Theo,” Carol Clay
said calmly as she entered. “I’m sorry that when you called I was
on vacation.” She sat down and faced us. “Please tell me why you
wanted to meet with me today.”

Theo and I both looked at each other.

He was my husband, but there was no love in
his look, just weariness and bitterness. I admitted that was more
than understandable. It wasn’t a date: we were here to discuss my
inadequacies as a wife and how to solve them. Our problems were
serious, much more serious than they had been a year ago when we’d
been sitting here on this same couch.

Theo looked away.

My eyes remained on him. His attire was the
loose casual clothing he’d always favored because it hid his
physique. I hadn’t known that he was muscular until the first time
I’d seen him with his clothes off. His sand-colored hair was still
wet from the shower, and much longer than usual. Theo was most
likely growing it back into the longer style he’d had when I first
met him. Maybe he’d always preferred that style. It didn’t matter.
I wasn’t going to ask him to cut it for me anymore no matter how
this turned out.

His eyes were dark with sadness, not love,
and there was a touch of anger in them as he glanced back at me.
“You want to start?”

I nodded, though I really didn’t want to. I
took a breath, then let it out. “We’re here, Carol, because I need
some help coming to terms with my life.”

“So do I,” Theo added. “Our marriage is
falling apart.”

Carol looked like she heard this every day of
the week. “Why would you say that?” she said calmly. “Back in
December things were going well. What’s changed?”

Theo and I looked at one another. Where to
start? December seemed a lifetime ago.

Well, I could sum up easily enough. “Carol, I
told you about Devlin, Danial’s brother.”

Theo shot me a shocked glance. I pointedly
didn’t look at him. Carol looked a little nervous too, but she
nodded.

“You never said his name. I assume from this,
you have told Theo what you told me?”

“Yes. Theo knows what happened with Devlin
and I, but that’s nothing. A lot has happened since then.”

I took a breath, and then spent the better
part of the next hour telling Carol about Devlin’s saving me with
his bite and his body, about his taking control of Canada from
Ebediah, becoming Oathed to Danial and Devlin, about getting
pregnant with Devon and Venus, the lust with Lash, Devlin’s
burning, and Lash’s brush with death, and he and I having sex
again. I left off the part about how I had saved him, just said I’d
had crucial information for him, and that a potion from a friend
had saved him.

I’d promised Devlin that I would stick to the
story he’d come up with about Lash’s return to youth and vigor.
While I didn’t like the role of slut that it made me play—like I’d
gone to find Lash just to have some excuse for sex with him again—
I didn’t have much choice. Devlin was right: if other supernatural
creatures knew about what I’d been able to do for Lash, I’d be in
terrible danger from beings that would make the other Vampire
Rulers look harmless. Lash wasn’t the only one willing to go to
great lengths not to die. According to Titus, Devlin’s demon, there
were others who took a potion similar to the one Lash had taken for
decades. And they wouldn’t stop themselves when I began to lose
consciousness as Lash had. They would take all of my blood until I
died. The thought was sobering, to say the least.

I finally finished my recanting with a shrug
for Carol. “That’s it.”

Carol looked over at Theo. “What do you feel
about all this, Theo?”

“I can’t deal with it,” Theo said angrily,
running his hands through his hair. “I hate Lash more than anyone
alive, and I hate Devlin too, for making me share my wife with him.
He could have other women, scads of them! Why did he have to have
her? Why couldn’t he have left her alone?”

“If I understand right, Theo, if Devlin
hadn’t loved her as much as he did, Sar would be dead,” Carol said
gently. “Right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Theo growled. “I could
understand his wanting a child. Sar is the only one who could have
one of his. But she did it, and that isn’t enough for him! He wants
her even more than he did before. He wants her to live with him,
and that fucking Lash—!”

“Back to Lash,” Carol said smoothly,
interrupting Theo’s tirade. “Sar, you say you love Theo.”

“I do,” I said wearily.

“Then how could you just leave for a few days
to go to his worst enemy and have sex with him?”

Her incredulous tone was an echo of Danial’s
when I’d confessed to him, and it rankled me. “He was my friend. I
didn’t go to him for sex, I went to him because he needed me, and
there was no one else who could find him.”

“Couldn’t you have told his location to the
person who made the potion for him?” Carol asked pointedly.

I went from rankled to defensively annoyed.
“I wanted to be with him. I wanted something I had a choice in!
Danial asks for my input on decisions, but certain things I have no
choice in if he feels that they are the right thing for me to do.
Theo gives me choices, but he also tells me what to do. If I don’t
do as he says, he punishes me with sullenness, and—”

“I am never sullen,” Theo said sullenly.

I stifled the insane urge to laugh. “Really?”
I retorted. “How angry are you when you’re smelling another man’s
scent on me, even when you know it’s someone I’m Oathed to? You
know what I do when I see them, Theo. It’s not a secret. I’m tired
of being made to feel dirty because of a promise I made to Devlin
to protect my life, so I could stay your wife and be around my
children.”

Theo glared, but said nothing.

Carol's expression said she was glad she had
booked us a two-hour session. She hadn’t wanted to, but I’d been
adamant. I’d known it would take an hour just to give her the
background to catch her up. We’d been delayed enough waiting for
her to get back from vacation. I had to try to heal our marriage
before things fell apart so much with Theo that there was nothing
to put back together.

“Theo, you should give an answer to Sar.”

“You know I don’t like to smell anyone else
on you. I want you to be just mine, Sar.”

“But I’m not just yours, Theo,” I shot back.
“You know how things have to be! Everyone knows it, even my parents
now—”

Carol took a quick intake of breath. I
glanced at her and gave her a nod, and then kept going.

“I’m tired of pretending for you. I’m not
going to anymore. I can’t do it! I can’t give you everything that
you want from me!”

“Sar, you sound very upset,” Carol
interrupted. “Your situation is not one I’ve dealt with before, but
I’ll try my best to help you come to terms with it. Let’s take a
break for a few minutes, and then begin again.”

Theo and I both nodded.

Carol got up and left. I wondered crazily as
I watched her go if she was leaving to pop a Valium because she
needed one to deal with us for another hour.

“
Do you really want to be here?” Theo
asked when we were alone.

I looked over at him as if he were an idiot.
“Of course not. I feel like I’m on trial for being a bad wife. But
I want to do whatever I can to rebuild your trust in me.”

“Why?” Theo asked nastily, sitting back on
the couch. “It seems to me like you’re blaming me for being
jealous, when any man in my position would be.”

“I’m not blaming you for feeling jealous,” I
amended. “I blame you for making me feel bad about how you feel,
because I didn’t want this when I married you. I wanted a life with
you. And I didn’t ask for any of this to happen.”

“Why couldn’t you have been with Danial and
not had a child with him?” Theo growled. “If you had just left that
well enough alone, Sar, we would have been fine—”

“Stop it!” I shouted, startling him. “I love
Theoron! I wanted a child with Danial, and I wouldn’t take it back
for anything!”

“I’m sorry,” Theo said quickly with remorse.
“I didn’t mean it, Sar. I love Theoron too. I just—”

He had meant it. “It wouldn’t have mattered
anyway,” I said darkly. “Devlin knew even then that I might hold
the key to something he’d wanted for centuries. He always had his
plans for me, Theo, from the moment he first tasted my blood.”

“How do you know this?” Theo asked, giving me
a strange look.

I looked away, my memory of Devlin’s
confession unsettling. “I asked him one night what he’d planned if
he got me away from Danial. Trying for a child was on his
list.”

“I’m not surprised,” Theo said bitterly.
“He’s fucking diabolical.”

Devlin was diabolical. I had never met anyone
with his talent for manipulating people or events with the absolute
ruthlessness to do whatever it took so his plans unfolded just as
he wanted them to. Dev was gorgeous with his heart-shaped face, his
sculpted body, his golden hair to his shoulders, and his beautiful
golden eyes. Though he looked like a hero from a romance novel,
Devlin was closer to the devil his name implied. He had a sadistic
streak that I’d been on the receiving end of once or twice, until
he had began taking a potion from Titus that had made him less
edgy. He was also a philanderer, and I had been on the receiving
end of that as well. The latter was the reason I no longer wore his
choker. But scars from his bites still adorned my throat, one on
each side, though the newer one had healed a good deal, so it was
no longer a match for the original one on the other side. They
marked me as his, more so even than the choker around my neck.

It was Devlin’s brother Danial’s symbol—the
golden fox head with ruby eyes—that hung at my throat. I was Oathed
to Danial, too, because when Devlin had taken my promise from me,
he had included his brother. But Danial did not have his brother’s
faults; he’d never cheated on me. The mystery was that his collar
had not fallen off when I’d broken my promise to him by being with
Lash.

My theory was that the choker didn’t see Lash
as forbidden. Danial and Devlin had allowed me to be with him
during my pregnancy, to help me combat The Lust. It made sense then
that as neither of them had verbally rescinded that permission, the
choker didn’t register what I’d done as literal Oathbreaking.

Danial, however, was sure that it meant
Devlin’s cheating on me had broken not only his own Oath, but also
affected Danial’s, too. “I told you there was a grey area, Sar. We
aren’t truly Oathed anymore.”

I’d been tempted to take the choker off and
give it to him right there, but was worried that I wouldn’t be able
to. It had been a while since we shared blood. “That wasn’t my
doing, Danial.”

Danial had glared at me. His rich brown eyes
were red with anger, and his face, so perfect as to be more
beautiful than handsome, was grim. He was taller than his brother
Devlin was, and he towered over me as I sat at his desk, his
shoulder-length hair slipping forward in a black fall around his
face.

“I didn’t say it was.” He paused. “I still
want you to work for me. But don’t come to me, Sar. You can see
Elle and Theoron whenever you want, as much as you want, of course.
And if you need a place to stay, the spare bedroom above is
yours.”

I’d expected something like this, but hearing
the words still hurt. I’d bit my lip, and nodded, pointedly looking
away so he wouldn’t see how upset I was.

After Danial had left, I’d cried for a while.
But I’d dried my eyes when I was done, and gotten back to work.