Her Secret (33 page)

I felt a rush of feeling for him. “Yes, if
you’ll wear it.”

“Why would I get one and not wear it?” Devlin
said angrily. “I tell you something meaningful, and instead of
happiness, you give me sarcasm.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean
it like it sounded.”

Devlin didn’t reply.

We sat in silence for a minute or two. I
broke first. “Look, I’m sorry. Don’t be angry, please.”

“I’m not angry with you, Love, just on edge.
What do you want to talk about?” Devlin said, leaning back on the
couch and giving me a bemused glance.

“Tell me about yourself. I know very little
about you.”
That was good, anyway
. “I do love you, but that
is for what you’ve done for me, been to me, since I had Theoron,
and for what you’ve done for Danial—”

“What do you mean?”

“You protected him down through the years,
didn’t you? You were hard on him because of Anna, but you kept him
from being harmed. Danial can be tough, but he’s not ruthless
enough to have lasted four hundred years without someone watching
out for him.”

“You are astute for a woman,” Dev said with a
tiny bit of respect. “Yes, that’s true.”

I glared at him. “I’ll pretend you didn’t say
that. The dark ages are over.”

“Alas, they are,” Devlin said with a mock
sigh. “But I remember them with nostalgia.”

“You’re not that old, Dev. But please tell me
of your past, if you would.”

He caressed me gently. “Of course. What do
you want to know?”

“Tell me what really happened with Anna. I
was told by Theo that Danial seduced her and you never forgave him.
That ever afterward, you tried to seduce anyone he loved.”

“That is all true,” Devlin said coolly. “And
that’s it, in a nutshell. What details are you looking for; how I
found out about them?”

“No,” I replied, blushing. “But you wouldn’t
share her with Danial, yet you want to share me. What changed your
mind?”

“You want assurance I don’t love you less
than she,” Devlin said. “Be assured I do not.”

“Tell me what happened.”

He took a breath and began. “Simply put, we
loved the same woman. She’d sworn herself to me and Danial was
jealous, so he seduced her. I found them together. We fought, and I
almost killed him. We didn’t speak for a decade, until after I had
become Ruler, and she had died. I’ve been taking my revenge on him
ever since.”

“I’m sorry for you both,” I said softly.

“I was angry for a long time, Sar. I’d never
met a woman like Anna. Losing her was like losing all I had left
that meant anything to me. I was filled with rage at the unfairness
of having eternity and not having the person I wanted most of all
to share it with. I channeled all of my anger and hate into
becoming Ruler.”

“Once you had, why not make up? Danial was
the only family you had left. And there must have been many women
you tried to ease your loneliness. Why not be comforted?”

“Danial did not want to make up, and neither
did I; we were both too angry.” He held me close. “There were
always women, but I didn’t want to be loved or have anyone look at
me with affection or tenderness. I didn’t want to love anyone ever
again. I found my pleasures in other ways, some of them cruel. As
the years passed, then centuries, I let other women into my heart,
even loved some of them a little. But no matter my precautions,
eventually they all turned. After they changed, we separated. A
great part of sex for me is the blood exchange, Sar. And vampire
blood is bitter.” He sighed miserably. “But most of all they
weren’t her, none of them.”

Unbidden thoughts rose in my mind that I
wasn’t her, either. Doubt filled me that Devlin would care about me
at all, if not for my blood. More heart wrenching was wondering if
he would have come back to save me if I hadn’t reminded him of his
lost love. I kept silent.

Devlin paused for a few moments, then said,
“And the sunlight clasps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea.
What are all these kissings worth if thou kiss not me?”

I drew his lips to mine gently, and gave him
a light kiss. “I will always want to kiss you.”

“I hope so,” he said, hugging me. “That was
Shelly.”

“For being brothers, why are you and Danial
so different?” I asked.

“We are not so different, save in sexual
desire,” Devlin replied, then let out a wicked laugh.

“Your views are different from Danial’s,” I
amended firmly. “He devotes his life to his business, and you
devoted yours to Ruling. I remember your words to Danial on my
behalf. Although you used the law for your own ends, you took your
position seriously. At least, you made me believe you did.”

“I always did,” Devlin replied, nodding.
“Those in power have a responsibility to those under them not to
abuse that power. Tyrants get overthrown.”

“We talked once about what you’d do if you
were facing an attack. You said you’d kill a few innocents to save
the lives of many. Danial said he’d leave instead.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“He said he would do what the woman he loved
wanted, that fighting over a piece of ground was not worth dying
for, that people always died in wars and you couldn’t save
them.”

“Sounds like him,” Devlin said, rolling his
eyes. “Ever the pessimist.”

“Not to me,” I said, looking at him
carefully. “To me, it sounds like you. What I might have expected
you to say. And your answer was more what I expected him to
say.”

Devlin looked at me for a long moment.
“Perhaps you don’t know either of us that well.”

“Perhaps I don’t know you,” I said quietly.
“But I want to.”

He sighed. “There are reasons for his
answer.” He paused for a long moment. “Did you never wonder why
being brothers, we look so different; why I’m fair, and he’s dark?
Why our bodies you have come to know so well are markedly different
in some ways?”

I had never thought about it, but now that I
did, it all came together instantly. God, I should have figured it
out years ago. “You aren’t full blood brothers.”

He nodded. “We are half-brothers, Sar. Danial
had a different mother than I.”

“You’re older.”

“Yes. When I was changed, I was thirty-five
to Danial’s thirty—”

“He told me he was changed at thirty-five!” I
exclaimed, shocked. “He wasn’t?”

Dev laughed. “He so wanted to be like me. No,
he was younger.” He paused. “We have different backgrounds because
of having different mothers. All our mortal lives, we were
separated by class.” He turned sad. “I was the legitimate heir, the
spitting image of my father. I was trained from birth to rule men,
to study strategy and tactics, and to learn the finer arts, like
music, reading and writing. My father had no title, but he was the
liege lord’s strategist. He taught me all he knew, including how to
seduce women, and I took my first one when I was sixteen, much as I
took you that first time we were together.”

“Danial’s mother was not only the most
beautiful woman in her village, but also the most comely within the
territory. She had the misfortune to be both beautiful and poor.
She was only sixteen when she caught my father’s eye. He took her
as his mistress almost immediately, despite her objections. Danial
looks much like her, with her dark hair and eyes, though he has the
same general build as I do, from our father.”

“Danial had none of my training, Sar, none of
my education. Despite that my father supported him and his mother,
he didn’t have an easy time of it. He knew who his father was, as
did everyone, but my father would not acknowledge him publicly.
Despite my father’s objections, when he was five, I took him under
my wing and taught him what I could. My father frowned upon our
relationship. He thought only of what Danial was to him, not what
he could become someday.”

“God, how awful. No wonder Danial is the way
he is.” I wiped my filling eyes. “He always declined to answer my
questions about his parents and his past, saying he didn’t want to
remember. He even did that with his birthday.” I wiped again at my
leaking eyes.

“Don’t cry,” Devlin said gently, putting his
arms around me. “He’s a happy father now, and soon to be Oathed
again. Danial needs your love, not your pity.”

“Can you fill in more of the blanks for me?”
I asked.

Devlin nodded. “If I know the answers.”

“Why didn’t your father accept him? I
understand class hierarchy, but when it comes to sons,
didn’t—?”

“Because of his eyes,” Devlin said sadly. “My
father had other children out of wedlock. The ones with
gold-colored eyes he did acknowledge. Danial had the misfortune not
to inherit my father’s favorite attribute.” He squeezed my hand.
“There is no more to say about it other than that was unfair and
evil.”

Hopefully, Dev’s dad was roasting in hell. “I
know the story of how you were attacked. If you were a higher class
than Danial was, how did you both end up doing guard duty
together?”

“The prisoner was a visiting Duke’s son,
accused of rape and murder. He’d been found with the body of my
father’s favorite maid, the knife still in his hand. In those
times, an upper-class man harming a lower-class woman was common,
and usually unpunished. But my father was annoyed with the loss of
one of his choice conquests, and he asked that I go to give
account, to make sure the man was punished. He put me in charge of
the group.”

“Were you Captain of the Guard, or
something?”

Devlin rolled his eyes. “You say that as if I
had been having fun playacting. Believe me, overseeing guard duty
was deadly serious in those days.”

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

“I didn’t have a title, other than what could
be loosely translated into “The Leader,” Devlin said with a smile.
“It was just another rung on the ladder on my way to the top.”

“What happened to the murdering asshole?”

“When we were attacked, he was killed.”
Devlin’s tone turned full of hurt and bitterness. “Danial went
back, as you know. I knew that there was nothing for me back there,
that my father would never accept what I had become. I learned
later that my father had been hung. The Duke suspected my father
had planned the attack to cover the nobleman’s murder, that he’d
had me kill him in revenge. As for my mother, she married another
man to save herself from ruin.”

“Did you have a wife, or someone you cared
for?”

“No, I had never been married,” Devlin said,
shooting me an uneasy look. “I had several lovers at that time, but
no one I loved. I’d wanted the woman Danial married for myself, but
I had known that I couldn’t have her as he could, as she was below
my station. My father wanted a good match with a family that would
pay a large dowry. As it was, it was good I was turned, as my
father planned to choose a wife for me in the coming summer. And
then I would not be with you now.”

“So you never married Anna?”

“No,” Devlin admitted, clearly upset. “She
wanted to. I Oathed her instead, believing she was safer.” He
paused. “I should have. She would have been so happy.”

I wiped away a single tear that had traced
its way down his cheek. “I’m sorry, Dev. I don’t mean to pry.”

“I don’t mind telling you, Sar,” he said, his
tone rough with emotion. “It’s just that no one has asked me about
my human life before, not even Anna.”

Cleave came out and showed a slip of paper to
Devlin. “Any corrections?”

I looked at the drawing in Devlin’s hands.
Cleave was a good artist. His drawing depicted a stalking grizzly
with red eyes, snarling, its paw ready to strike. It was twice the
size of the pendant on the choker.

“Very nice,” Devlin said. “Put it on her left
hip.”

Cleave led me in to a brightly lit adjoining
room, and had me sit in what resembled a dentists’ chair. I
blinked, trying to let my eyes adjust.

“Pull down your jeans on that side a little,”
he asked as he laid out needle tips in plastic packaging and mixed
up the inks. “That will be enough.”

I pulled them down and leaned on my right
side. Cleave used the paper to transfer the image to my hip, as
Devlin pulled up a chair to watch.

Cleave was a professional. First, he did the
outline, then the details, and then he filled in the rest. The
entire process took about an hour. As Devlin had said, there was
some pain and blood, but not much. The overall sensation was as if
someone was lightly sanding my skin. Occasionally there was a
sharper poke, especially when he did the eyes and the bear’s fangs.
We didn’t talk, as the noise from the needle gun was constant and
loud enough to make conversation difficult. As I watched, the bear
slowly appeared on my skin.

Cleave got up. “You’re all set.”

Dev’s bear snarled on my hip. It seemed to
move as I moved. I ran my hands over it lightly, the skin red,
raised, and sore to the touch. “It looks like I could wipe it
off.”

“Guaranteed not to,” Cleave assured me. “You
need any touch ups, you just come back with Dev.”

Dev had gotten his wish
. “Thanks.”

“Enjoy,” Cleave said, giving us a smile. “You
want salve?”

“Just a little,” Devlin replied. “For
tonight, if it bothers her.”

“Here.” Cleave handed me a tiny jar which I
put it in my purse.

“You want payment now or later?” Devlin
said.

“Now is good,” Cleave replied.

Devlin handed him three hundred dollars from
his back pocket. “Enough?”

Cleave took it, nodding. “Always good doing
business with you, Dev.” They clasped hands. “Have a safe trip
back, and like I said, come back if you need a touch up.”

“Thank you,” I said, giving him a smile.

“Sure thing, Honey,” he said, winking at
me.

He stood in the doorway as we got in the
truck, and Devlin started it. “Stop back in when you have more
time!” Cleave shouted, waving.