Page 108 of In Between Death and the Devil

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.

I wanted to trust him. I understood that, despite the fact that he was the Devil, Fen was human and prone to human mistakes. No one was perfect. I’d violated our bond to figure out what he’d kept from me. I even understood why he hadn’t wanted to tell me, but none of that mattered. He’d been careless with Talia, and this was the second time he’d been callous with me. Every instinct I had was screaming at me that I couldn’t trust him.

Tears pricked at my eyes. No matter what I did, I always seemed to end up here, certain that being alone was the only safe course of action. Except that was no longer possible. Fen and I were bonded together, because the realm needed us to be. Its survival depended on us figuring out how to be partners. I wanted that, I just didn’t know how.

“I’m not worthy of you, Maeve. I told you about my wife. I’ve ruined every relationship I’ve ever had. You should be running in the other direction.”

A flare of anger cut through me. “No.”

His eyebrows rose in surprise. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t.” I glared at him. “You don’t get to give up because you made a stupid decision decades ago, and neither do I.” I shoved back at that ugly hissing voice in my head that told me I was making the wrong choice. “The In Between needs us to trust each other.”

“How do we do that?”

“I don’t know. We have to stop letting our past dictate our actions. I’m hoping the Pool of Memory will help me figure it out.”