Chapter 29
It was early evening before I was able to talk to Fen. He’d been in the Dungeon working with souls all day and I didn’t want to disturb him.
“Hi,” I said when he opened the door to his office.
I sat on the couch with a book, my legs tucked under the dress I’d changed into.
I’d wanted something comfortable that made me feel powerful.
The deep green fabric wrapped around me in a soft embrace, while the gold embroidery at the waist and shoulders gave just enough edge to the design to make me feel regal, like a woman who could own her mistakes while also demanding respect.
“Hi.” He looked wary, the gold flecks in his eyes swirling like they did when he was agitated, but oddly fresh. Like he’d recently taken a nap.
My brow furrowed. He was usually exhausted by this time of day. What had he been doing?
He walked woodenly to his desk, and I pushed the thought away, not wanting to get distracted.
“I owe you an apology for earlier. For abusing our bond to sate my curiosity and anxiety. I overstepped and violated your trust. I’m sorry, Fen.” My words sounded formal; I’d carefully rehearsed them all afternoon, but I was proud of myself for not stuttering.
“Thank you,” he said after a moment. He looked pained by my admission. “I—”
“I’m not finished.” My pulse raced as I stood, abandoning my book.
He closed his mouth and nodded, regarding me warily.
“You dismissed my questions in a way that was callous and cruel. You said I was being paranoid, that I was imagining things. I could have expressed myself better, but I didn’t imagine anything.
You are keeping something from me. You have the right to, you don’t owe me an explanation for everything, but you should have handled it better.
If we’re going to be partners, you need to do better. We both do.”
Fen sighed and ran a hand over his face. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Maeve. I…” He looked lost for a moment. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” His apology made me feel a little better, but it did nothing to bridge the gulf between us. I was still hurt, despite what Titus had told me, but I’d worry about that later. “Will you take me to the Pool of Memory?”
“Now?” His eyebrows rose.
“Yes. I’m ready for the first trial.” My resolve on that score hadn’t changed. I wanted to face whatever the Pool of Memory had to show me, sooner rather than later.
Fen hesitated. Our bond was closed so I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. “I want to show you something first. Will you come with me?” He rounded the desk and held out his hand.
It was my turn to hesitate. I didn’t want to delay, but I hated the distance between us. And I was a little curious. “Alright.” The feel of his hand against mine was a surprising balm. The contact settled something inside of me. Was it because of our Death Chord? Or did I just miss him?
Fen led me through a shadow portal to the largest cave I’d ever seen.
At least I thought it was a cave. Unlike the Guardian’s resting place, this looked more terrestrial.
The ground was littered with groupings of small rocks and boulders that glittered softly.
The ceiling was too far above our heads to make out, despite the cluster of floating lights above our heads.
A wall directly behind us curved around until it disappeared into the distance, and a gently sloping path traveled away from us further than I could see.
“This place must be as big as one of the castles,” I said, craning my neck around trying to take it all in.
“It might actually be bigger,” Fen said. “We’re on an island separate from the castles. It’s one of many.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the In Between didn’t used to be dark all the time. When I became the Devil, it was light for part of the day, and you could see the islands from the windows.” He led me down the path.
“When did it go completely dark?” I asked.
“About fifty years ago.”
I shivered. I couldn’t imagine the In Between as anything but dark, yet the idea of losing something like the sun was bleak.
After a few minutes of walking, we came to a low wall with an open gate.
My mouth dropped open when we passed through.
On the other side was a garden. There were plants everywhere, some confined to neat beds and others climbing rocks or running wild across the ground.
Except I’d never seen plants like this before.
Many of them seemed to be made out of living shadows, with flowers made of shards of light.
Others were more terrestrial, but instead of green they were made up of many shades of gray. It was both otherworldly and beautiful.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“It’s a private garden for Death and the Devil. My predecessor cultivated most of the plants you see here.” He let me wander for a few minutes, admiring the different specimens.
My favorite was a vine with tiny jewel-like flowers in bright colors, like miniature flames. The entire thing sparkled from every angle.
“That was one of my predecessor’s favorites,” Fen said. I could hear a smile in his voice. “This was one of the first things he showed me when I became his Successor.”
“It’s beautiful.” I wondered if he’d created everything himself with his shadows, or if Death had helped him.
“Maeve,” he said after a moment of silence. “About what Talia said…”
I looked up to see him struggling for words. “Titus told me what happened.”
“He did?” Fen went pale.
“He told me about how the group dynamics changed when he joined your inner circle. And that you slept with Talia and things deteriorated with her after that. He didn’t tell me why you slept together because he didn’t know, but he explained how hard it was on all of you.
Why it’s so hard for you to talk about.” I sounded calmer than I felt, but I didn’t want to spook Fen.
I wanted him to tell me why he’d slept with Talia.
Fen sighed, as if my knowing that much was both troubling and a relief. “Does Titus still think it’s partly his fault?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not. It’s mine.” He shook his head. “For the first year after I became the Devil, I used sex as a way to destress. I wasn’t interested in a relationship, I was after a purely physical release, and I had no shortage of partners.”
I clamped down on the jealousy that poured through me.
Reacting like that would get me nowhere.
The fact that he’d had other partners was not news.
It shouldn’t have mattered, even if some of them were still around.
Oh Gods. Were they? Sleeping around seemed like a stupid thing to do in a place with such a limited pool of people whose lives were incredibly long.
“You slept with your Tempters?” I couldn’t keep the judgment from my voice.
“No, I didn’t want to sleep with people who worked directly for me, that I had power over. So I slept with Judges.” His face twisted in an apology.
I gave him a withering look. Great. So, a bunch of people who hated me knew Fen in a way I didn’t. I crossed my arms. “Go on.”
He looked at me like I might explode at any moment, but he continued. “Whether they were trying to spy for Death or just wanted to sate their own curiosity, I don’t know. I didn’t care. But it was empty. Meaningless.”
It was petty, but it made me feel a little better.
“And worst of all, it was manipulative. Most of them weren’t interested in me as Fen, they wanted to have sex with the Devil, and I encouraged that.
I played to their expectations.” He scratched at his beard.
“It makes me sick to think of it now, but I didn’t grow a conscience for a whole year.
When I finally did, I stopped and swore off sleeping with people who didn’t know the real me. ”
“But that eliminates everyone except your inner circle.”
“Yes. Until you arrived.” He glanced at me nervously, and I softened.
He’d waited over a hundred years for me to arrive. That was a long time to be alone. “So, how did you end up sleeping with Talia?”
He was quiet, as if trying to find the right words. “It had been a particularly bad time. Too many souls, too few Tempters. We were all running ourselves ragged. I’d known for a while she had feelings for me. One night she offered me comfort, and in a moment of weakness I took it.”
I tasted something sour.
“She was so kind, I thought maybe I’d been going about things the wrong way. Maybe companionship had been what was missing. Even though she worked for me, I liked and trusted her to call me out when I needed her to. Maybe she was what I needed. I knew immediately after that it was a mistake.”
I had the sudden urge to cover his mouth to stop him talking. I didn’t want to hear anymore, even though I’d asked for it.
He looked off into the distance, unable to look at me. “I tried to let her down easily, but I fumbled it and she was devastated. I’d… underestimated her feelings for me. She had every right to be angry. I took advantage of her when I shouldn’t have. I deserved it when she left.”
He sounded like me with his self-loathing, but all I could think about was what it must have been like for her.
I’d been in her place. Colt might not have respected me the way Fen had Talia, but I knew what it was like to think someone felt one way about you because of how they behaved only to find out you were wrong.
How it felt to trust someone with yourself only for them to be careless with you.
My old insecurities reared up hard and fast. If he’d done it to her, what was stopping him from doing the same thing to me?
No matter how hard I tried to banish the thought, it refused to leave me alone.
It didn’t matter that Talia and I were different.
Fen and I had a Death Chord binding us together, and I’d felt how much he wanted me through our bond.
But what if it was temporary? What if I replaced Death and he decided he didn’t want me after all?
Maybe he was incapable of companionship.
The parade of ugly questions in my head was endless.