Damian's Oracle

Hurt, she fled into the cold night air, stopping only when she reached the center of the gardens. Pierre trotted after her. She dropped to her knees and sobbed, unable to control her pain and fear.

*****

Damian started after her, furious. Dusty caught his arm and motioned for those in the library to leave.

"You're a dick. You know how hard it was for her to tell you that?" his closest friend snapped.

Damian glared at him, his restraint on his powers rippling. Long-buried rage was bubbling upward, along with the tiny instinct he'd squashed thousands of years ago.

"I can't believe-"

"I believe her, Damian," Dusty said in a calm voice. "Claire's been on the European front for a hundred years. She just rotated to the southwest on orders that neither you nor Jule nor I issued, and the Tucson sites have fallen like flies. Because of her natural ability, she's been intimately involved in screening new recruits. It'd be easy for her to flag the newbies for Czerno's men."

Dusty's words floored him, and Damian couldn't help but feel hurt that his best friend hadn't told him of his suspicions sooner. He paced, mind racing with memories he could no longer suppress, thoughts of his brother, of Claire, of Darian's death. Sofia's words freed them from deep within his mind, and Dusty's hammering at the facts made it impossible for him to silence them as he wanted to.

I don't know if I trust my wife, brother.

Maybe Darian hadn't been talking about infidelity but about something else. The memories came faster. Darian was chopped into so many pieces that there'd been no body to bury. Not providing his brother a proper burial-the burial of a king!-had sickened him. Almost as bad, how many others had died from the treachery of a single Guardian? How many Guardians had he lost this year alone? How many humans were dead because he lacked the strength to face his instincts?

He roared and slammed his hands on the desk at the far end of the library, unable to stop the images racing through his mind. Claire was all that remained of his brother, and he'd loved her out of respect for a man whose death he'd never been able to accept. Memories of how much Darian loved Claire, of his own nights in her bed, overwhelmed him. That she'd used him, killed Darian …

"Damian." Dusty's whisper brought him out of his mind, and he realized he was kneeling on the floor with his head bowed. "Brother."

He knew Dusty was right, knew Sofia was right, knew he'd known since just after Darian's death that there was something not right about Claire but was too desperate to hold onto the last piece of his brother to face the truth. He was reliving the pain of Darian's death, sickened by his own cowardice. Darian had even tried to warn him, and he'd never wanted to see what was in front of him.