Dark Solace

by Tara Fox Hall

  “I don’t want you to leave. But I can’t forgive you either.”

  “Then what do you want me to do?” I said, exasperated. “Tell me, Theo.”

  “I want you to stay, and for us to go back to counseling,” he said softly. “I meant what I said, when I gave you my word not to ever leave you. I love you. But you broke your promise to me, Sar, and I don’t trust you, not anymore. And I can’t be intimate with you if I can’t trust you.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “I understand.”

  “It matters to me that you told me. It matters that you could have hid this from me, and you didn’t, knowing that I might never find out. Dev, Lash, and Titus would never have told me. Danial would not have either, knowing how much it would hurt me. But you did, because you cared enough about me not to keep this a secret. You told me the truth, when you knew I’d probably turn from you because of it. That means something to me.”

  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.

  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 w
ith 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.”