Page 42 of Demon's Bane

“Just be honest with me,” I say, quieter now. “We’re not going to figure any of this out if you’re not.”

Slowly, the indecision in her eyes melts into regret and shame and exhaustion, and she lets out a long breath before she speaks.

“Okay,” she says softly. “Okay. I’ll tell you.”

She starts with her trip to coven lands, and the meeting at the Veil with the king and queen and other demons who came through to escort the witches back to the demon realm. Her whole body tenses when she recounts her conversation with the queen, the way she held back the truth of me being here and her own involvement with Esme.

“And that’s not everything,” she says bitterly. “Right before you got here, Seren told me she got wind of someone who may be involved in the thefts. A man named David Galloway.”

Her lip curls in disgust when she says the name, and her scent has an accent of bitter anger to it.

“Who is this David Galloway?”

“A witch. Or, well, a wielder. Same difference. He’s someone who I was… involved with a while back.”

It takes me a moment to grasp what she means, but when I do, a stab of white-hot jealousy lodges itself into my gut.

A former lover.

I swallow back an irrational growl. “And are the two of you still—”

“No,” Joan says with a shudder. “No. That ship sailed a long time ago.”

There’s nothing that would make me think she’s lying, no waver in her words and nothing but more of that bitterness and anger threaded through her scent, but I can’t shake my discontent.

“David was such a piece of shit when we were dating,” Joan mutters. “Always asking questions about the coven, interested in anything I could tell him about them. And I was the fucking idiot who didn’t see through his crap until he dropped me when he realized I was the very last person he should have been asking about the coven. Not when I so very obviously—”

I can’t stop my growl this time. It rumbles through my chest, cutting off Joan’s self-deprecating speech. Her gaze cuts sharply to me, and she must misread what she finds there, because her expression turns guilty and ashamed again.

“Goddess,” she breathes. “All of this looks horrible, doesn’t it? I don’t blame you if you don’t trust a damn word out of my mouth.”

Though I still don’t like that her immediate assumption is to expect mistrust from me, I stifle my rumble of dissatisfaction.

Instead, I look at my mate, really look at her. From the exhausted smudges under her dark eyes to the furrows of worry on her brow to the slack defeat in her posture.

Everything in me aches to trust her.

Everything in me aches to believe her, to set aside anything that still stands between us. Despite the secrets she’s kept and despite everything we still have to unravel, I want nothing more than for us to be on the same side in all of this.

With another ragged sigh, Joan walks to the front windows and looks out on the quiet street. Her shoulders hunch, carrying the weight of everything she’s feeling.

Perhaps I can carry some of it for her.

Perhaps I can be brave enough to trust my stubborn little mate first.

“I believe you.”

The words seem to take Joan by surprise. Her guard’s back up as she turns to face me with wary eyes and crossed arms.

“You do?”

“Yes. I do.”

I take a step closer to her, then another.

I hope the truth of my words is clear enough on my glamoured face. I hope Joan can see that I mean it, and that she’ll be brave enough to believe me.

“I believe what you’ve told me, and I believe you haven’t meant to do harm in any of this. I believe you’ve been pulled into a situation outside your control, and you’re trying to make the best of it.”