My Immortal (Seven Deadly Sins #1)(64)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Marley closed her eyes, unable to think, to breathe, to reason, her emotions sporadic, random, vacillating. There were too many things to think about, to dissect, compartmentalize, and the most obvious place to begin was with Marie. "I know… I know. That’s what she said, that she came to love you, but she also felt that you led her down a path of moral destruction. Ultimately she blamed herself."

"I know that she blamed herself and I can’t stand that. It was my fault, it was all my fault. I made a bad bargain with Rosa when I was drunk and angry with Marie, upset that we were being denied a child, disgusted with myself for not being good enough for her, for not being the kind of man she wanted."

"Why did you do it? Ask Rosa for such a… thing?" His answer might scare her, but not knowing was worse. Marley stared up at him, wanting to understand, wanting to hear that his heart wasn’t black and vile and irredeemable.

"I am not even exactly sure anymore," he said quietly. "But I remember how I felt that night, remember the rage I felt that Marie was disgusted with me, that Marie, my own wife, despised me. We had an argument, or rather, I yelled at her, and she gave me that wounded, terrified look she had perfected so well, the one that made me feel like a villain who had kicked his best hunter hound. I had women fawn over me every day, yet my own wife could not stand me. I was drunk, as I often was in those days, and I was frightened that I would pass from life the way my mother and father had, without warning, with little fanfare. I was afraid of death, angry that our child had died without ever living. Angry that with all my money, I could not buy Marie’s respect or affection."

Damien shrugged. "They are not feelings I am proud of now. But I wanted to live forever, to control the world before it controlled me, and I suspect, if I am being completely honest, that I wanted Marie to desire me the way I desired her. Her honesty, her goodness, her morality, all nurtured my respect for her, at the same time I disdained her because of her disgust of me. I was jealous of who and what she was, even as I loved her." He gave a rueful sigh. "I did not choose the best way to express my feelings, did I? And I have lived with my stupid, egregious mistakes every day for over two hundred years."

"Damien." Marley felt her anger deflate, if that’s what it had really been. She couldn’t stay upset with him, not over Marie. She heard his sincerity, felt it, had known that he was suffering from guilt and pain and loss since the very first moment she’d met him. Whatever his mistakes in his long-ago youth had been, he had paid for them over and over. "Damn it, I’m sorry. I’m making it worse and I don’t know what I’m saying. I know you’re sorry… I’ll give you the letters. Maybe if you read them, you can finally get closure. You both deserve it after all this time."

It seemed like she should say more, but her head was still swirling, her thoughts muddled and thick. But her panic was fading.

Damien stared down at her. "You’re amazing, do you know that? Truly amazing, with a huge heart and a compassion that I admire, cherish. I have no idea how to even attempt closure. But thank you, for believing me. Believing in me, and for giving the letters to me. And please… I want you to know that you’re the only woman I’ve loved since Marie. The first woman I’ve had sex with in a hundred years."

Marley blinked, the back of her head still in the dirt, stunned. "And I thought my dry spell was long."

He gave a startled laugh. "It was intentional. I knew that I had to fulfill my end of the bargain, but that didn’t mean I had to take personal pleasure from what I knew was wrong. Maybe that doesn’t make sense to you, but it was my defiance, my way to try and retain some sense of self, some bit of my humanity. The Grigori gave me power over women, to seduce and charm, but I’ve focused my attentions on the shy, the unattractive women, and I… I pleasure them, empower them with their sexuality."

This she didn’t need to know. Her compassion bled out. "That’s very flattering. I’m so glad you shared that with me, glad you empowered me, a shy, unattractive woman."

He made a sound of frustration. "I don’t mean you. I mean other women. You have been a challenge to me from the start… a complete reversal of my experience with every other woman. You were able to resist me, and yet I couldn’t resist you. I told myself no, but I had to have you, wanted to revel in the way you seemed to see me, the man, not the seducer. I thought maybe… maybe you were attracted to me for myself, my personality, not my appearance. Not the demon charm."

So in the end he wasn’t so very different from her after all, wanting love, needing to hear he was worthy. Marley’s heart softened. "I was. I am." She reached out, touched his cheek. "Yes, you are a very attractive man, but what I fell in love with was the inside."

He kissed her fingertips. "I couldn’t tell you, you know. ‘Hey, I’m a demon servant’ isn’t something you blurt out when you first meet someone."

"I guess not." And no matter how much she wished it had never been said, wasn’t real, it was, and she had no idea what to do with that skewer slashed into her beliefs, her life. "So can you tell me how Marie died?"

Looking away, he frowned, hesitated. But then he said, "She found out about me, the immortality, about Rosa, and she was so horrified, she killed herself. She took medicinal herbs, way too many, ten times more than the house slave told her to take, which convinced me it was intentional. She had requested an aid to incite menstrual bleeding… to prepare her womb to conceive again, she told the slave. That doesn’t make any medical sense now, but in those days, it would have. But she took too much, and when I found her, she had bled to death. I have never seen that much blood in my life… it was unreal. The mattress was soaked, sagging with the weight of all that blood. It was everywhere, hot and wet, and sickly sweet in smell, and she was very much dead. And with Marie died my chance for happiness, for redemption." Damien turned back to her, brushing his finger along her cheek. "Or so I thought, until I met you."

What concerned Marley, maybe more than Damien’s relationship with Marie, was what he had done, who he had been, in the two hundred years between Marie and her. She had a sense of him then, and she knew him now, but how had the one grown into the other? "What happened between you and Marissabelle?"

His voice hardened. The tenderness, the sorrow, the guilt that were always present when he mentioned his wife vanished. Marley thought in his expression she saw glimpses of a harder Damien, the one who earned the name Death’s Door.