Chapter 8 #2
“If you had deigned to come to my first wedding, you would have known that my bride ran away from me the first time,” Damien replied. “You missed a devil of a ceremony, old friend. I have never been to one like it.”
A chuckle left Evander’s lips, but the sound was hollow.
“And who was the lucky woman who was able to escape you for at least a little while?” he asked.
Apprehension moved through Damien as he looked down at his hands and rubbed them together. He had sent notice of the wedding to Evander, but had left out whom he was marrying on purpose. He had hoped that the mystery would pique enough interest to draw Evander out of his solitude; alas, it had not.
“I am taking your cousin Caroline as my bride,” Damien answered, drawing his eyes back up to Evander’s.
His black brows furrowed, and he leaned forward in his chair.
“You are marrying sweet little Caroline?” Evander asked.
Damien nodded, his mouth set in a grim line as he waited for Evander’s disapproval.
“She is far too sweet for you,” Evander said, that spark of life in him finally growing. “The things you have done… Who you are…”
“Who I am will keep her safe,” Damien said, cutting him off.
“Safe? Safety is an illusion.” Evander’s retort came out so quickly that it caused a hitch in Damien’s breath.
He lowered his head as he pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut as memories of the night Evander was taken erupted despite his attempts to keep them locked away.
“We had promised to keep each other safe, remember?” Evander hoarsely whispered. “You and Adrian both.”
Guilt rose swiftly through Damien, drowning him with the force of a tidal wave.
“I know,” Damien croaked.
There had been no pertinent reason as to why he and Adrian had chosen to stay at White’s instead of meeting Evander at the gaming hell as planned that night. They were young, drunk, and having too much fun laughing about something that Damien had long since forgotten.
Evander had been the strongest of all three of them at the time, and there had been no sense of danger leading up to his disappearance. Or at least that was what they had thought. They had not known that their enemies would stalk Evander and wait for his moment to capture him.
“You have no idea,” Damien said, drawing in a shaky breath as his hands clenched tighter.
“No idea of the lengths Adrian and I went to try to find you. What we did to try to fix our mistake.” He shook his head, clenching his hands tighter until his knuckles turned white.
Knuckles that no matter how much he cleaned, would forever remain stained with blood.
“We went to great lengths,” he repeated after a moment. “Not just Adrian and me. Caroline and Elara searched too, despite your brother’s warnings.”
“And it was their search that found me,” Evander murmured.
“Exactly,” Damien said, his head shooting up as he fixed his friend with an intense stare. “Elara found you, Evander. You came back to your family. Alive.”
Evander let out a weak laugh as he swept a hand down his withered, weakened form.
“Alive?” he rasped, and Damien’s stomach clenched. His friend leaned forward, swaying so suddenly that Damien reached for him, fearing he would fall.
“Do you see what has become of me?” Evander hoarsely yelled. “Have you any idea of the horrors I have been put through? I thought that if I could just survive somehow, I would be able to have my life back, but now I understand.”
“Understand what, Evander?” Damien asked.
“That even though I am alive, I am as good as dead!” Evander erupted, pain making his blue eyes shine in the firelight as his lips curled into a sneer.
“Come back with us,” Damien urged. “Come be with your family. Let them help you!”
Evander’s eyes widened as his brows rose high.
“You think they can help with this?” Evander demanded, waving a hand toward his own emaciated body. “No one can help me. I have become a monster.”
“No, man,” Damien shot back, rising to his feet. “You need to stop that. You need to stop pushing us all away and punishing yourself like this. We care about you. Everything can go back to the way it was.”
“You do not understand!” Evander roared, shooting to his feet.
“All those months, I kept myself alive on an idea... a dream,” Evander said quietly, his gaze dropping to his ruined hands.
“A foolish one. Something I had been reaching toward before everything. I told myself that if I endured it—all of it—I would find my way back. That there was something worth coming back to.”
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh, and the sound of it made Damien’s chest tighten.
“And now I look at what I have become,” Evander rasped. “And I think, God help me, I think she would sooner recoil.”
Damien stilled. “She?”
Evander’s jaw tightened, and he looked away toward the dark window, as if he had not spoken at all. The silence that followed was answer enough.
Then a look of pain drew over his pale face.
“Evander... You should know that we are here for you,” Damien murmured as Evander drew in slow, deep breaths.
Silence stretched through the room. Evander closed his eyes, continued to draw breaths into his far too weak chest. Another wave of anguish washed over Damien as he took him in once more from a closer distance.
Evander was so thin now that he could clearly see the bones beneath his pale expanse of chest.
“You need something to eat,” Damien stated, rising up to his feet. “Something to drink as well.”
“I am fine,” Evander rasped.
“My friend, you are the furthest possible from fine, and I will not see you punish yourself any longer,” Damien replied, walking to the door.
He hollered for the butler until he appeared in the darkened hallway, and Damien ordered him to fetch a meal for the Duke of Redgrave.
By the time he finished, his anger had abated completely, and as he walked back to Evander, he decided to apologize.
It was Evander, though, who was first to say the words.
“I am sorry, old friend,” Evander croaked, reaching a quivering hand up to his forehead. “Despite what I said, I do not blame you. But this is precisely why I have stayed away. I am not a man anymore. I am a beast.”
He let out a weak laugh and shook his head.
“No, a beast at least has strength. I have nothing. I am just a wounded animal that does not understand why it is alive when it should be dead.”
Damien swallowed the pity that rose up in him, knowing it would serve no purpose.
“You can come back from this, Evander,” he stated instead. “You are the strongest person I know.”
A knock came at the door, interrupting their conversation. Damien quickly took the tray the butler offered and closed the door again. He brought it to Evander and placed it on his lap.
“Eat,” he commanded, pointing to the plate of cold ham and sliced bread with his eyes. He wished it were something more sophisticated, but given the look of Evander, he doubted the man even employed a cook at all.
Evander narrowed his eyes at him for a moment, then, after a moment of reluctance, he picked up a thick slice of the ham and tore a bite out of it with his teeth.
“Is this how you convinced my cousin to marry you?” Evander asked with his mouth still full. “Barking orders and force feeding her ham?”
Damien let a dry chuckle escape his lips, relieved that not only was Evander eating, but that he was cracking a joke.
“Precisely,” he quipped, and his tension eased a little when Evander let out a soft laugh before taking another bite.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sat back down.
Damien looked at his friend and felt the weight of what he said earlier pressing against his chest. Evander had clung to the idea of a woman through horrors Damien could barely imagine, and now he was convinced she was already lost to him.
That whatever he had survived for had been for nothing.
There was nothing Damien could do about that, and the helplessness of it weighed heavily in his gut.
“Adrian told me, you know,” Evander said, then swallowed another bite. “Before I left to come here. That you had taken to our sweet cousin. Like a beast stalking its prey, I believe, is what he said. You must truly love her.”
Even though Damien’s heart fluttered, he shook his head.
“Love has nothing to do with it,” he replied. “I owe your family a debt. I did not protect you as I should have, but I will protect her.”
Evander swallowed another bite as his brows furrowed.
“Protect her? From what?” he asked.
Damien shook his head, wishing he had the real answer.
“Something is amiss in her stepmother’s house,” Damien replied. “I do not know what it is, and she will not speak of it, but she needed out of there.”
“You do care for her,” Evander said, as if marveled by the realization.
Damien looked up and somberly shook his head.
“It does not matter. She has agreed to become my wife only for the title of duchess. Not that I blame her. After all I have done, I would not wish to taint her with this darkness inside me.”
For a brief moment, sounds in the room came from Evander’s chewing and the snapping twitches of the burning wood in the fireplace.
“You are not him, you know,” Evander said quietly after a moment.
Damien turned his head, focusing on the fire.
“I hurt people,” he murmured. “It is what I am good at. Just as he was.”
“This is what we both did. We hurt bad people for good reasons,” Evander countered calmly. “Your father hurt you to stroke his sickened ego. You are not the same.”
Damien sat back in his chair and rubbed his hand over his chest. Unlike Evander, the proof of cruelty bestowed upon him ages ago had long since faded. The bruises and bones healed, leaving no scars behind except for the ones that lingered on his soul.
“I hope you are right, old friend,” Damien murmured, still rubbing the spot that his father once used for target practice. “I hope you are right.”