Dark Solace (27 page)

Even though Danial had cut back on his
caseload somewhat, Theo, Terian, Danial, and I were still putting
in a lot of hours every week. He had done that reluctantly, because
Theo had asked that he and I have more time together as a family
with our son, Devon. In spite of having to reduce his scheduled
meetings, Danial was very pleased that the business had expanded,
and was looking forward to going into business with our son,
Theoron, when he was old enough.

That day was coming much sooner than anyone
might have expected. Theoron was now looking more like sixteen than
the ten he had been at the end of the summer. He also looked the
spitting image of Danial, with his dark hair, wide shoulders, and
narrow waist. But he had my green eyes, though his were a much
darker green, like the color of a spruce forest on a summer
afternoon. He had even outstripped Elle in height, and she was none
too happy about that.

“I’m the older sister!” she’d said in
frustration yesterday, when Theoron had reminded her that she only
looked about fourteen, while he could probably pass for being old
enough to drive.

“Not anymore! Now you’re my kid sister!” he
had said with a grin, which of course had started a shoving match
that I had to break up.

They were both good kids, though, and I
didn’t even need to raise my voice to do it. Both of them were
smart too, very smart, and they knew something was wrong between
Danial, Theo, and me. They hadn’t asked me why I hadn’t been
spending my usual one night a week with Danial, but I knew they
noticed. I hadn’t said anything to them about it, deciding it was
better if they brought it up to me.

It had been awkward that first week, getting
used to the fact that Danial didn’t want me to touch him anymore in
any way. We hadn’t been intimate for months while I had been
pregnant, so that part of it wasn’t that hard to get used to. But
we had touched each other casually for almost a year now, and I
found myself reaching out to him almost before I thought about it.
Then, realizing what I’d done, I’d draw my hand back quickly,
before I touched him. I knew he had noticed my actions, both
unconscious and not, though he hadn’t said anything. It was his
silence about that which had been the hardest to bear.

Carol’s return brought me back to the
present. “Now then,” she said, sitting down in her chair, “Tell me
what you would like to achieve in your time here, Theo, and then
Sar, you do the same.”

“I want to be able to let Sar go to Danial
and Devlin without being jealous. I know she has to, that it’s not
her fault, and I know that it’s wrong to blame her. And I want to
be able to trust her again, so we can be intimate again—”

“So you are not being intimate now?” Carol
interjected.

“No. I don’t trust Sar. I don’t know if I
believe she loves me like she used to because of what she did. And
I think she still wants Lash, and I’m repulsed just thinking of the
two of them together.”

“Sar, do you still want to be with Lash?”

“I’m not going to be with him again. Devlin
has forbidden it—”

“That’s not what she asked you, Sarelle!”
Theo growled low, cutting me off.

“Yes, I want him!” I spat the words back at
him. “But I wanted Danial before too, back when he and I weren’t
Oathed, and I managed to keep my panties on, Theopolis!”

Theo growled softly, but said nothing.

“Sar, what do you want out of this time?”
Carol asked.

“I want not to feel like I’m torn in three
directions. I want no one to be jealous of anyone, or to make me
feel like it’s my fault that things are as they are. I want to feel
in control of my life again, to be happy. I want my life back, so
that it feels like it’s mine, that it belongs to me again.”

I lapsed into silence.

“Theo, how do you feel about what Sar just
said?”

“I don’t want to push her away,” Theo sighed,
running his hands through his hair. “I’m grateful she told me what
happened, what she did. I know she didn’t have to, she could have
covered it up.” Theo’s tone was guttural and raw, his rage building
with every word. “I know I should be glad, because she did what she
promised she would by telling me the truth, but I just feel
betrayed. It would have been bad enough if it was anyone else, but
it had to be fucking Lash!”

Carol tried to head him off by speaking
quickly. “Theo, you seem to have a lot of anger still, and it does
seem to be directed at Sar—”

“She fucked my worst enemy! Damn right, I’m
angry! She could have saved him and not done that! No one made her
be with him!”

“I think that is what Sar is saying, Theo,”
Carol interjected. “She was with Lash at least in part BECAUSE no
one made her do it; because she wanted something she had a choice
in—”

“Well, I’m not MAKING her be with me!” Theo
snarled. He pulled off his wedding band, and tossed it on the
floor. He got to his feet in a smooth motion, and then glared down
at me. “Teleport wherever you’re going to be spending the night,”
he said coldly. “I’ll be at home, with Devon.” Without a backward
look, Theo stalked out.

I put my head in my hands for a little while
and wept. There was motion beside me a few minutes later, as Carol
sat next to me. She said nothing; just put her hand on my shoulder.
I slowly got control of myself, using some of the tissues on her
table.

“Do you think we can work out things?” I said
softly, not looking at her. “It’s bad, Carol.”

“It depends if you both want to,” Carol said
simply. “If you and Theo both want things to work out badly enough,
Sar, you’ll be able to work them out. But if he won’t try with you
to meet you halfway, you’ll have to decide if you want to stay in
the marriage with him, or if you want to separate.”

“I don’t want to lose him,” I said, looking
at the wall. “But I think it’s going to come to that before it’s
all over.”

Carol got up, and went back to her chair,
settling into it. “We have another half hour or so. As Theo is
gone, there are some other things we should discuss.”

I looked over at her. “What things?”

“Do you love Lash?” she asked frankly. “You
give all indications that you do.”

“No. But he’s a good friend. I like him to
touch me and kiss me, even though I know it’s wrong to want him
that way. I enjoy spending time with him. He makes me laugh, the
way Theo and I used to, before our lives became the mess they are.
We talk a lot, about a lot of things, not just what’s going on in
our own sphere of the world. And that day I was with him, I told
myself that it was mostly just that I wanted to forget for a while
everything that had happened to me, to get some solace from my
problems. I rationalized that was why I had given in. But really it
was just that I liked him, and I knew Theo was going to be angry
anyway, that it didn’t matter if Lash had only made love to me to
try to distract me—” I trailed off, as I’d said too much.

“What do you mean by that, Sarelle?” Carol
said, watching me closely.

“I mean that part of saving Lash caused me a
lot of pain,” I said carefully.

“Does Theo know this?”

“Carol, he hates him,” I said flatly. “Theo
probably gets a warm happy feeling when he thinks that Lash was in
terrible pain, and is angry at me for saving him just as much as
he’s angry about me having sex with him. To him it doesn’t matter
why, only that it happened. Which is just how I knew he would feel
when he found out.”

“Then you should bring in Lash, as well as
Danial and Devlin, to some sessions.”

My eyes bugged out of their sockets. “Are you
joking? Do you know how bad that could—?”

“Not with Theo,” Carol said simply. “Just
them with you, one at a time.”

“Why?” I asked, my tone shriller still. “That
could still—”

“Because they may need to work with you to
alter their behavior so that you feel better about your life,”
Carol said calmly. “From listening to you, the problem this time is
not Theo’s, it’s yours. Your feelings of being trapped led you to
having sex with Lash, even when you knew you shouldn’t. And you’ll
continue to feel this way until you resolve those feelings. They
need you to tell them what you told Theo and me today.”

I didn’t answer.

Carol looked at me. “Isn’t it true, Sar, that
in part you did what you did with Lash so you’d drive away some of
your male attention? And it worked. You’ve said only Devlin has
forgiven you for what you did, and you are only intimate with him
right now. Danial and Theo are not being intimate with you since
you were with Lash. And Lash is staying away from you, too, on
Devlin’s orders.”

What she said was true. In a sad and awful
way, I’d almost liked the last two weeks. I’d worked, played with
my children, and had only one man who touched me intimately. It was
nice, not having to satisfy a crowd. And I hadn’t had to have sex
with anyone in that time. Devlin still couldn’t have sex yet. He
was still not healed enough to, or so he said. His eye had healed a
week ago, and I thought it strange that he hadn’t at least
attempted once yet to have me. But that was another whole separate
issue.

“Sar?”

“Yes, it’s true I wanted to get a break from
everyone’s demands. But some of it was that I really wanted to be
with Lash, because I liked him, and I wanted to be with him; to
have it be just us, when he wasn’t dying, and when I wasn’t a slave
to The Lust.”

“Would you be with him, if you could just be
with one man?” she asked.

I blinked in surprise. “There would never be
that choice.”

Carol gave me an expectant look that said
that wasn’t an answer.

“Probably not,” I said, after a moment’s
hesitation. “I don’t want to alienate my children any more than I
have already. If I left Theo to be with Lash, Elle, my daughter,
would probably never speak to me again. My son, Theoron, he likes
Lash, but I’m not sure if he knows exactly what went on between the
two of us. It isn’t the kind of information you ask your son if
he’s aware of. Plus, I know Lash can be violent, and as much as I
like him, he kills people for a living.”

“I know who he is very well, Sar” Carol said,
and a little shudder went through her. “He’s almost as much of a
legend as Devlin is.”

I rolled my eyes mentally as I could tell
from her tone she was looking forward to meeting Devlin. Or maybe
it was her obsession with Ranked men. I’d forgotten until this
moment her interest and knowledge in the Who’s Who list of
killers.

“If you could choose one man to be with,
would it be Theo?”

“Of course. But it’s moot. There is no
getting away from Devlin, Carol. And despite that Danial is angry
at me, and refuses to be intimate with me, he didn’t ask me for his
choker back.”

“So you are taking that his not asking for it
back means he still wants you to be his?”

I gave Carol a partial smile. “Devlin said
that Danial would forgive me, in time. I told him I didn’t think
so, and Devlin just said he thought I knew Danial better than
that.”

Carol got up. “Come back weekly, Sar. Come on
alternate weeks with Theo, and the other weeks, come alone, or with
one of the men we discussed. I’ll call Theo as well, and set up
some lone sessions with him, too. He has some rage to vent out
still, and he should get that out, so we don’t have an outburst
like we had today from him.”

I bent down and picked up Theo’s wedding
band, and slipped it on my thumb. “Okay,” I said, standing, and
gathering up my coat and purse. “Next week, same time?”

“Yes,” Carol said, showing me to the
door.

It was a good thing my insurance through
Danial paid for therapy, I thought as I opened the door to walk
outside. This was going to cost a fortune before it was over.

I decided to walk over to the back of the
house where there were shrubs. I knew better than to just disappear
in front of everyone, on a busy street sidewalk. But with Theo
having taken off in the truck, there wasn’t another option.

“Sar?”

I turned to see Theo coming over to me, a
hesitant look on his face. I turned and waited for him.

He came to stand in front of me. “Do you have
my ring?”

I took it off my thumb, handed it to him, and
he slipped it back onto his left hand.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” he said, and for
a moment, he looked as if he might reach out and hold me, but he
stopped himself, putting his hands back at his sides. Watching him,
I wondered then if Titus, Devlin’s demon sorcerer, had broken the
first layer of our bond.

Theo and I were bound by a dream we had
shared three times. It had made our love deeper, our desire to be
together almost unstoppable. I’d always loved that I shared it with
him, that we were something like soul mates, that our love was that
true. But two weeks ago, when I’d asked Titus to break the bond we
shared, I’d done it because I knew Theo would never leave me while
it held us together. And if things didn’t work out with us, I
wanted Theo to be able to leave me, to find someone he could call
his own. I’d had enough of not having choices. Theo didn’t have a
lot of choices either, but this was one I was going to give him,
even at the risk of losing him. Titus had said he could do it over
months. Every day since then, I’d watched carefully for some sign
of Theo’s love for me lessening. When it happened, I wanted to
know.

“Let me give you a ride home,” Theo
continued. “I know you need to get to Devlin tonight, but I’d like
to spend the time with you, if you want to.”

“That’d be nice,” I said, following him to
the truck.

As Theo drove home, I related what Carol had
said. “She wants them all to come?” Theo said with something like
horror.

“That’s what she said,” I said heavily,
looking out the window.

“Aren’t you going to feel...I don’t know,
awkward?”