Night Unbound(36)

“You say that as if you know from experience. Did you tell someone in the past?”
“No.” After a short mental debate, he revealed, “Seth did. His wife.”
Her eyes widened. “Seth was married?”
“Once.”
“What happened?”
“She was slain. As were their children.”
“Seth had children?”
“A son and a daughter. His son gave his heart and his trust to a woman who did not keep Seth’s secret. She trusted where she should not have, told a friend, and . . .” Zach shook his head. “It unleashed a storm even Seth could not contain.”
Lisette raised the pasta to her lips and slipped it within.
Zach almost forgot to eat as he watched the rhythmic motions of her jaw.
“Are you as powerful as Seth is?” she asked after a moment.
“No.” Fury filled him. “But I will be.”
“Why are you so angry with him?”
Hard for her not to pick up on, he supposed, since he tensed up and practically snarled every time she mentioned Seth’s name. “Because he’s the reason I was tortured.”
“What?”
“He led the Others to me, knowing they would punish me.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he blamed me for something I didn’t do.”
“I don’t believe that. I can’t.”
Of course not. The Immortal Guardians all thought their leader infallible.
“Believe it.” Glancing up, he saw confusion and disillusionment darken her eyes and sighed. “Sometimes the truth is too harsh to bear even for someone of Seth’s age. It’s easier, in such instances, to believe a lie.”
Lisette said nothing. She seemed stunned by the possibility that her much-revered leader could have accused Zach of something he hadn’t done.
“Is it not easier,” he asked, “for a child to believe that Santa Claus exists than it is for him to believe his parents lied to him and betrayed him?”
“Seth isn’t a child.”
“Nor were you,” he forced himself to say gently, “when your husband turned on you.”
He might as well have slapped her.
She paled. “What?”
“You’re telepathic,” he continued, his voice as soft and coaxing as he could make it. “You must have known something was not right with him long before the night your husband attacked you and transformed you.”
Resentment flared in her features.
“Was it not easier for you to tell yourself it was nothing?” he asked. “That his sudden, violent bursts of temper were the result of too much drink? Not enough sleep? Bad luck at cards? Anything that enabled you to ignore the madness that steadily claimed him?”
At first, he thought she might lash out and hit him.
Then her throat moved with a swallow. “Yes,” she whispered painfully. “How did you know that?”
“I didn’t. I knew only that your husband was vampire and turned you in a fit of madness. I guessed the rest.”
She set her fork down and clasped her hands in her lap, clenching them until her knuckles turned white. “I should have said something.” The pain in the eyes that met his surpassed the physical torment he had suffered these past few months. “If I had told Richart and Étienne what was happening . . .” She shook her head. Moisture welled in her eyes. “I was so ashamed. I begged Father to let me marry Philippe, to let me marry that . . . that monster. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them. If I had—”
“They could have done nothing.”
“They could have had him locked up in an asylum or . . .”
Zach reached over and covered her hands with one of his. “An asylum would not have held him, Lisette. You know that. He was vampire. The attendants would have been human. Their drugs would not have affected him. Their shackles would not have restrained him. They would have been helpless against his speed and strength.” He squeezed her hands. “Had you told your brothers, they would have confronted him and been slain.”
Her hands relaxed beneath his.
“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said with genuine regret. “I merely wanted to help you understand why Seth did what he did, why he was so eager to leap to the conclusion that I had betrayed him.” And Zach had damned near convinced himself to forgive the bastard in the process. What the hell was he thinking?
She unclasped her hands and sandwiched his between her own. “I’m sorry. It’s a sore subject.” A weary sigh escaped her. “I don’t think I’ll ever be free of the guilt of turning my brothers.”
From what Zach had gleaned from his eavesdropping sessions, her brothers had offered her their blood after her transformation in an attempt to hide her condition, not knowing that repeated exposure to the virus in low doses would eventually cause them to transform as well. “Did it never occur to you that your brothers might also harbor guilt?”