She raised her brows with a noncommittal expression, and he realized that he would get no confirmation from her. She seemed to know whereof he spoke, but that was the most she would give.I can do nothing for you,she’d said once.
She had done something.
But it hadn’t been enough. Where had she been when he was first faced with the choice from Lucifer? Why hadn’t she stopped him then?
Wayren was looking at him, almost as if she could read what was in his mind. “You had the choice then, Dimitri. You made the decision of your own free will.”
“I was weak. He took advantage of my weakness,” Dimitri replied. But even to him, the words sounded hollow. Even then, he’d known there was something wrong. Something evil. He’d hesitated, yes, but then he’d allowed himself to be tricked, manipulated in a moment of desperation. For all he knew, Meg might have lived anyway. For all he knew, Luce had known it then, as well.
“Aye, Dimitri. He did. That is what the Fiend does.” Despite her words, Wayren watched him with a calm, peaceful expression. “He makes it easy to see his way. He takes advantage.”
Just as I did.
The image of Maia’s face, slack with pleasure, filled with her own sort of peace, slid into Dimitri’s mind. He shoved it away.
It was too late. He’d lied when he told Maia nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
“And so now all of my years of self-denial are for naught,” he said. “It’s over.”
She looked at him searchingly. “Is that so?”
“Of course it’s so,” he replied, more angrily than he’d ever spoken to her. “How can I expect to break the covenant, to distance myself from the devil, if I act like the demon he turned me into? If I take from people, feed on them, pull their very life from them, how can I ever become human again?”
“So you’ve fed on a mortal, for the first time in decades, and you believe that action has destroyed your chance to be released from the Fiend? Oh, yes, I can see that a century of self-denial has already gotten you so very close to your desire.”
He glared at her mutely. She was looking at him with a sort of arch expression that he’d never seen before. “You don’t understand,” he said tightly. “Ifedfrom a person. I drank her blood. I…” His voice trailed off as saliva filled his mouth. Even now, he could hardly control the physical reaction of his long-denied body. He could still taste it. Feel the energy, thelifeflowing through him. “It’s a violation. A sin.”
“Sin, Dimitri, is nothing more than the absence of love.” She held his gaze with hers for a long moment.
An absence of love.He snorted. “Taking the essence of life from someone is nothinglessthan an absence of love. A rape.”
She held his gaze unwaveringly, then shook her head slowly. “Has denying yourself all those decades done anything but make you a cold, hard, empty shell? Hardly a person at all.”
To his shock and eternal mortification, Dimitri felt a stinging in his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose fiercely before any tears could form. “My…dislike of social engagement has nothing to do with the problem at hand. I’ve never been…particularly social.”
“Have you read the story I gave you?” Wayren asked.
Dimitri frowned, blinking hard. “The fairy tale about the beast? A bit of it. I found nothing of relevance.”
“Indeed?”
Impatience flooded him, and he made a sharp, frustrated gesture with his hand. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. I thought…” He shook his head sharply, pressing his lips together.
“Dimitri of Corvindale,” Wayren said. Her voice had gentled. “If you want to become truly human again—no longer bound to the Fiend—first you must allow yourself to live again. To feel again.”
“Feel?”he snarled.
“Do you? Or do you snarl and growl—as you’ve done here today—and then run in the opposite direction whenever something begins to soften your heart?”
“Earls don’t run,” he snapped, but something shifted deep inside him.
She smiled. “No, not this one. Instead you lock yourself away within a barricade of stone walls so none can touch you, so you can keep yourself from feeling anything.”
It was safer that way. Easier. Less complicated. “I lock myself away so I can study.” But even to him, the words sounded false. “I don’t like to be bothered.”
Wayren gave him another of those sad, soft smiles. “But that’s why men are here. Tobebothered. To feel. To live. Tolove.And…to be loved. That is what makes you different from every other creature. And that is what makes man ultimatelymorepowerful than the Fiend. Do you not see? He’s taken your soul, and with it, he’s taken your very humanity. The very part that could save you.”
