Bound by Sin (23 page)

“No one can break the lure of a siren's call,” she said almost apologetically. “But it might surprise you to know that many sirens do not use their song to call a mate to them. We prefer to know we can obtain the affections of a man without thrall. There is more of a victory to it that way. The thrall is often a measure of last resort. It can be as hollow for us as it is for the subject. Although, the subject does not feel hollow.”

“No, just abandoned by love once you are through with him and discard him.”

“Mmm. True. We have little use for men outside of breeding partners. All the more reason we do not like to use the thrall. We are not cruel, you know. We are not all selfish. No more than those of any other culture.”

Jileana released a snort, the sound making it clear she didn't believe the siren in the least. It was a sentiment of pure prejudice and the first time Jaykun had seen a behavior like it from her. She was so open and warm and inviting in all other ways, it was almost alien on her, to see her acting so caustically.

“Well, I am comforted by your assurances,” he said amiably.

“I have never seen a man in the selkie court before. I am sure there have been men brought across the portal before, but none have made it into the empress's purview during my stint in her court, and I have been here for several decades. Indeed I have been here so long I am accused by my people of being more selkie than siren.”

That made Jileana frown. “The sirens act with prejudice against you even though you are here on their behalf?”

“Some see me more as a traitor than as an ambassador. We have very narrow-minded peoples on both sides of the island. You see, I am not entirely welcome here, and I am no longer entirely welcome amongst the sirens. So I find myself without a homeland.”

“And yet you are supposed to negotiate between our peoples?”

“The selkie queen and the siren queen view me as useful, and in the end, that is all that matters. As long as I can relate the truth of their words without prejudice to cloud the issue, then I am still of use to them both.”

“Spoken like a true diplomat. Both courts are fortunate to have you,” Jaykun said.

“I hope so. As long as I can be useful, I will continue to serve. The day I no longer feel that I am is the day I will return home and try to find my place back amongst my people. Perhaps I will then mate with a man and have a daughter.”

“It is a wonder you don't do that now,” Jileana said. “Couldn't you have a child even while in service?”

“And raise her where she would be despised just for being a siren? Do you think that wise?” Falin asked knowingly.

The grim set to Jileana's mouth was all the reply that was needed.

“Well, perhaps things in the future will change,” Jaykun said. He did not elaborate since he wasn't sure if the empress had told the siren ambassador of her plans yet. It was not his place to do so. Nor did he want any of the credit for the idea. It would have more value if it was perceived as having come from the empress's own mind. He only hoped that a new accord with the sirens would mean a positive future between selkies and sirens. Perhaps, with time, prejudices could be set aside and a trust could be established between the two peoples.

“Perhaps it will,” she agreed.

“But what is it you want of me?” he asked her directly. “Or is this just a desire to get to know me?” It was obvious by his tone that he did not believe that was all it was.

“I have no immediate need of you,” Falin said. “But who knows what the future holds? So it is in my best interest to get to know you a little. To find myself on your good side, as it were.”

“Ah. More marks of a good diplomat: Always keep channels open for future use. Make no enemies and make many friends.”

She smiled. “Exactly. But that does not make my friendship seem any less sincere, I hope.”

“Not at all,” he assured her.

“Good. Then will you walk with me awhile?”

Jaykun hesitated. He could feel the anxiety emanating from Jileana. She was afraid. Afraid of him being exposed and vulnerable. He didn't know what it would take for a man to fall under the thrall of a siren. A single note? A refrain? An entire song? What did it take?

He was not inclined to find out the hard way.

“Thank you, but we have somewhere we need to be,” he said. He could feel the relief washing through Jileana. He almost chuckled. He wondered again if she realized how easily she could be read. The siren's knowing smile only solidified that understanding. But clearly Jileana didn't care. All she cared about was getting him away from the siren as swiftly as possible.

“Until another time, then,” Falin said before turning her back to them and walking away.

Jileana did not sigh with relief, however. She would not be content until Jaykun was out of earshot of her. To that end, she grabbed his arm and pulled him off the cliff ledge, sending him down into the water gracelessly. She didn't give him time to get into a proper diving position, but luckily the dining cave was only a short distance from the water. Unlike her, he did not have an inborn righting mechanism that allowed him to hit the water perfectly each time, so his landing was a little rough.

Once they were beneath the water, she immediately cut a path ahead of him, swimming down toward a familiar cave: the cavern of her mother, the sea witch. It was clear that Jileana's magic was rudimentary at best, especially compared to her mother's. She did not have the ability to protect him from the sirens' call.

“I'm sorry,” her mother said with a concerned little frown some minutes later. “There is no protection against the sirens' call, save deafness. I could take away your hearing, but—”

“No!” Jaykun cut her off sharply. “That is definitely not an option.”

“Then you have no recourse other than to trust the siren at her word.”

“Trust a siren?” Jileana scoffed at the notion.

“Why do you distrust them so much? Why all this open hostility?” Jaykun had to ask her. “Is it just a general racial prejudice or have you been slighted personally in some way?”

He could hear her grinding her teeth, could see her temper simmering beneath the surface. Had he been asked a day ago he would have said she wasn't capable of anger. Now she was literally seething with it.

“I don't want you vulnerable to her! Is that such a crime? I would think you would want the same thing. Or do you like the idea of becoming her puppet?”

Jaykun bristled at the very notion. “I do not. I have been a puppet to love once in my life and I will never be one again.”

That seemed to cool her temper, and a wave of curiosity washed over her. “How were you a puppet to love? What happened that has closed you off to the feelings a good and natural love can provide you?”

“There is no such thing as a good and natural love. All love is like the sirens' call: blind and weakening, and a large percentage of it is false.”

“That isn't true! Why would you feel in such ways?”

“Why do you hate the siren?” he shot back at her.

She bristled and it looked for a moment like she was going to answer him, but then she turned sharply away from him and with a few quick steps dived back into the water, leaving him alone with her mother in the underwater cave.

“I don't understand,” he said with a shake of his head. “Everything I know about her tells me she is an open and fair-minded creature. This hatred toward the sirens baffles me.”

“Then perhaps I can enlighten you. Jileana has several brothers, as you may or may not know.”

“Yes. I have met them.”

“Did she also tell you that one of them was killed while on sentry duty at the selkie-siren border?”

“No, she did not,” he said with a deflated little sigh. So that was why there were only five of them at the midday meal.

“There was a raid across the boundary…It was long ago before there was a true working peace between the two sides of the island. My son…He was a strong warrior. Proud. Unable to back down from a fight. Besides, the sirens don't only take human lovers. They've been known to take selkie males prisoner and woo them into becoming the fathers of their children. At least they did in the past. My son figured he would rather die than become a siren's plaything. And so he did.”

“And now your daughter hates the sirens.”

“ ‘Hate' is too strong a word. She believes in peace. She knows it was a long time ago. But she does not trust the sirens. Not with the well-being of someone she loves.”

Jaykun did not rise to the bait of that observation. He chose to ignore it. Love? What love was there between Jileana and him? She knew what he felt, knew he would never let himself be distracted by fanciful notions like love. She was smart. She had to know it would be an unwise waste of time and emotion for her to fixate on him in such ways. He dismissed the idea outright.

He walked to the edge where the cavern met the water, watching the reflection of the light on the water as it danced along the top of the cavern around him.

“I suppose there are many selkies who have reason to despise the sirens for similar reasons. My solution to the empress's troubles with the sirens could be rife with risk. One altercation is all that is needed for the sirens and selkies to devolve into war.”

“Your solution?” the sea witch asked.

Again, he was not willing to share information without the empress's permission. “Tell me, where would Jileana go if she were upset? Does she have a favorite place?”

“She does. There is a cove just beyond the cliff face, around to the left side. Just follow the beach and you will come to it.”

“Thank you.”

“Jaykun,” she stayed him just as he was about to dive into the water.

“Yes?”

“Be careful with my daughter's feelings. She is open and loving and the most kindhearted person I have ever known, but she has never known the pain of unrequited love and I would spare her that.”

“She knows I cannot feel love for her,” he said uncomfortably. He didn't want to be having this conversation. He wanted to say it was none of her business, but it was. Jileana was her daughter and she was looking out for her.

“Cannot or will not?”

“What difference is there between the two?”

“One is out of your control; the other is within your power. If she thinks you are capable of love, she will want to convince you of it. She has grown up in a loving environment, however suffocating for her at times. She will want to share that love with you. She knows the rewards that come with love and she will want you to find them.”

“Rewards?” He scoffed. He couldn't help himself. “Love brings no rewards. It is an illusory thing poets and bards made up to lure coin from a listener's pocket.”

Ravi's laugh was soft and light. “Only a man who has loved with all of his heart could possibly be able to feel so much contempt for the emotion. You were betrayed, were you not?”

“I do not wish to discuss this with you,” he bit out.

“Tell my daughter the truth of why you have closed yourself off. Make sure she understands. Only then will she be able to protect her heart from the hardness of yours.”

Jaykun dived into the water.

J
aykun found the cove right where Jileana's mother had said he would. And sure enough, there she was, sitting in the sand where the inlet met the water, her legs in the gently lapping waves. The cove was very similar to the one where they had first met.

“I understand now why you despise the sirens so much,” he said gently when she looked up and saw him approaching her.

“My mother told you,” she said, a statement rather than a question.

“Yes, she did.”

“It was a long time ago. Please don't mistake me…I would like for there to be peace between the selkies and the sirens, if for no other reason than to keep my father and other brothers safe.”

“Your willingness to forgive past transgressions speaks very highly of you.”

“Forgive maybe, but not forget. I will never forget that the sirens are not to be trusted and neither should you.”

“Believe me,” he said softly as he knelt down beside her. He took her chin in his hand and tipped her head back until she was looking directly into his eyes. He wanted her to believe the next words that came out of his mouth. “I will never trust a woman who seeks to manipulate me through love. In fact, it is the very core of everything I abhor.”

She drew her bottom lip between her teeth. “Tell me, why do you hate the idea of love so much?”

He frowned. His instinct was to brush the topic away, to change the direction of the conversation. But then he remembered what her mother had asked of him, and he could see the wisdom in being completely honest and open with her. He had to make her see as clearly as he could why love between them was impossible.

“I have told you the tale of the journey my brothers and I went on that gained us our immortality, yes?”

“Yes.”

“What I have told no one is what happened the day before I left. Not even my brothers know this.”

“All right,” she said carefully, already feeling in her soul that she was going to wish he had never experienced what he was about to relay.

“But first I must go back to when I was but a boy. I was only nine the first time I saw Casiria across the town green. She was the palest, prettiest thing I'd ever seen in my life. All delicate features and white-blond hair that trailed down her back. She had fair blue eyes as well, so light they seemed to jump out at you when she looked at you. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life. I imagined she was a fairy queen come to live amongst mortals.”

Jileana laughed and he grinned a bit bashfully. “I fell in love with her on the spot. I continued to love her with utter devotion into our adolescence. My brothers would tease me for being infatuated, but I didn't care. I knew she was perfect and I had to have her at any cost. My brothers didn't understand. They even cautioned me, claimed she wasn't as perfect as I thought she was, that she didn't deserve me or my devotion to her, that no woman did. I ignored them. They didn't believe in love. They didn't believe in devoting themselves to one woman and one woman only. They did not feel romantically inclined toward anything save their swords. I fancied myself embroiled in a love for all time.”

“And Casiria? How did she feel?”

“She basked in my attentions. Blossomed beneath my love for her. She swore she loved me for who I was and that she would love me for all time. We were young and idealistic. I thought I could make it work. I would earn my living as my brother Dethan's second in command and come home to my loving wife whenever I could. But it did mean leaving her alone for long periods of time. Her loneliness grew over the years. She said she missed me and our love more than anything. She immersed herself in raising our sons and I thought she found satisfaction in that.”

“You thought?”

“I found out differently when I last came home to her. My sons were left with a neighbor the night I was to set out with my brothers on our adventure to find the Fount of Immortality. My wife said this was so we may have our farewells in private. It was not the first time she had done this, and though I would miss them and wanted to see them, I would miss her and her bed quite sorely as well. You see, I did not believe in taking other women to my bed during those long months away from her. I loved her too truly for that. All other women paled in my eyes. And I believed she was just as faithful to me.

“So my wife arranged for a peaceful night for us together before I left her for my journey, and we made love. She was so beautiful…always so beautiful,” he murmured, his mind clearly recalling that night. “I had told her never to worry, that if anything ever happened to me she would be taken care of. As my widow, my brothers would see she was settled with the bulk of my fortune and she would fall under their protection the rest of her days. My sons would be cared for and well raised in my absence.” He frowned. “I had told her this to give her peace of mind and comfort, to help her know that although my life was a dangerous one, she would always be safe and comfortable.” He rubbed at his neck wearily with a hand. “She waited until I was relaxed before she fed me wine laced with some sort of drug. I was soon barely able to move, and then she let a man into our home who took a dagger to my throat and came very close to killing me. They both attacked me. But even drugged as I was, I was too well seasoned a warrior, far better able to handle myself than they were. I killed the man right off, and in the scuffle, I thrust the dagger they had planned for me into Casiria. As she lay bleeding to death, I asked her why. With more venom than I thought possible, she told me she hated me. That she had fallen in true love with the man…I don't know who he was or even what his name was. She said she had never loved me. She had used me to get a comfortable life and a secure future. When she realized she could have my fortune and the man she had been having an affair with, they began to plot my death. But they depended too much on that drug. Still, they very nearly succeeded.”

“And you never told your brothers?” she asked, completely horrified at the absolute betrayal. No wonder he had no faith in love any longer!

“I had intended to. I buried the bodies of my faithless wife and her lover and hired someone to care for my boys, then left on the journey as scheduled. Many times along the way I thought to tell my brothers of Casiria's betrayal, but I was too embarrassed and ashamed to share the degradation with them. Especially since they had often spoken against Casiria, had cited several times when they felt she was manipulating me to get her way. In hindsight, I could see they were right. She had used my devotion for her again and again to get what she wanted.

“So, you see, I do not believe in the love of a man and a woman. I believe in familial love, the bond between brothers and mothers and fathers, but bonds without bloodlines to connect them cannot be trusted.”

“But that's so untrue!” she cried. “Just because one woman proved herself to be faithless does not mean all women are thus. It is unfair of you to judge us all by the actions of one inconstant woman.”

“Perhaps,” he conceded, “but it doesn't change how I feel. I will never love a woman again and I most certainly will never entrust one with my life or my heart.”

“And yet you trusted me enough to follow me here. You trusted me enough to let me into your bed. Surely you are capable of more than you are giving yourself credit for.”

Jaykun frowned at her logic. It was true. He had allowed her close in spite of his better judgment. But letting her into his bed was a far cry from letting her into his heart.

“I am telling you this story so that you understand why I will not let a woman get that close to me again. So that you might protect yourself from disappointment. I do not wish for you to expect more of me than I am able to give.”

“I'm sorry, but that just isn't possible,” she said with a stubborn frown. “I disagree with you. I think you are able to give a great deal. It is just a matter of what you
want
to give. And you do not want to give trust. The fact that you loved Casiria tells me you are more than capable of love. It is simply that you are too burdened by your pain to allow love back into your heart.”

Jaykun pushed away from her, standing up in the water and pacing away from her. “You aren't listening to me.”

“I am. I'm just hearing something you don't want me to hear.”

“I want you to keep your distance from me so you don't get hurt! You have too kind and open a heart, Jileana. It will only get you hurt if you entrust it to the wrong person.”

“That implies there is a right person to entrust it to. Which is it? Trust no one or trust only certain someones? And why can't that certain someone be you? You have a kind heart as well. Would our hearts not be safe in each other's company?”

“Jileana, stop!” His hands clenched into fists, his body bunching tight with tensed muscles. “I cannot love you! Do you understand that? Giving your heart to me will be a waste of your time and a sure path to pain and heartache! I will never care for you the way you wish me to!”

“It sounds to me like you are caring about me a great deal. You are caring enough to try to protect me.”

Jaykun cursed. “Is there nothing I can say that you will not take in a positive light? I am trying time and again to warn you away and you are taking it as some kind of great sign that I care for you!”

“Don't you?” she asked, her iridescent green eyes looking at him with open curiosity and more than a little hope.

Panic swept through Jaykun and his first reaction was to crush the source of his vulnerability. “I do not. You are a means to an end, Jileana. You brought me here to meet your empress, and outside of a little bed sport, that is all I needed you for. When I return home, I promise you, I will not give you or this place a second thought. I'm sorry if anything I said or did led you to believe otherwise. I tried to warn you.”

His words stung her; there was no denying that. But she also saw them for what they were: a defensive gesture. He said he was trying to protect her, but what she saw was Jaykun trying to protect himself.

“So you did. But regardless of your warning or your intentions, I have come to care for you, Jaykun. Maybe that makes me a fool in your eyes, but I would rather love you in vain than not at all. The gods know you deserve to have someone love you. You deserve something good to offset all the pain you have suffered…still suffer. Thank you for sharing your story of Casiria with me. It means something to me that you trusted me with something you didn't even trust your own brothers with.”

“I didn't tell you because I trusted you!”

“Didn't you?” She turned it around on him. “The biggest betrayal of your life and you chose to share it with me and no one else. If that isn't trust, then I don't know what is.”

“I told you to warn you—gah!” He threw up his hands in frustration with her. Was there nothing he could say to deter her? She was so relentlessly loving and open, it utterly baffled him. Wasn't she afraid of being hurt? Did she have no sense of self-preservation whatsoever?

“You think you told me to warn me, but what you did was share a part of you that needed sharing. Desperately so. How can you possibly heal from something so damaging all on your own? You need someone to help share the burden of that kind of pain. I am happy to be that person.”

“You don't understand,” he said tightly. “I don't want to heal from this!”

“No, you don't. Because to heal from it would mean opening yourself up to possibilities again, and you are afraid of those possibilities.”

“I fear nothing,” he said, although there was no power to the declaration. Possibly because they both knew it was a lie.

“You fear me. Me and my heart.”

“Stop,” he whispered.

She came up close to him, leaned her body against his, and lifted her hand to run her fingers through his salt-riddled hair. The sun gleamed off it, adding light to the dark gold locks. He looked like a strong warrior god. A male version of Weysa. Full of conflict and searching for a resolution to that conflict. Only, for all the wars he fought outside himself, it was the inner turmoil that gave him the most trouble.