Idol of Glass (23 page)

He held her body against him, reveling in the sweat and the spunk that slipped between them, and took her mouth with his in an ardent embrace, rewarded by a slow, sweet kiss that left him breathless.

Hraethe nipped at her bottom lip when she drew back. “Perhaps I should take
your
tongue,” he said with a sensuous growl. “Make sure you don't curse me.”

He'd made another mistake. The soft, supple drape of her body had gone rigid, and her skin prickled against him with anger.

He covered his head with his arms in surprised defense against Shiva's fury as she pummeled his chest with the flat of her hands. “What have I said?”

“I told you, you fool. You talk too much.” She swung off him and restored her garments before gusting from the room like the storm outside and leaving him alone.

Thirty-one: Accession

Jak hadn't slept a wink. Everything had seemed different in Mole Downs. Jak had assured Ahr that it would all be all right, but there had been no chance to talk in private. Ahr was quiet and withdrawn once they'd returned, turning in early and already asleep facing the wall when Jak came to bed. Whether guilt over Ra—or continued resentment over Ra—weighed on her, or whether perhaps Merit's transformation had made her contemplative, Jak couldn't be sure. But Jak hadn't had a moment with Ra in private either since Ra had revealed the extent of her scars and broken down Jak's resistance two nights ago.

Jak had to know where things stood with Ra now. Or let Ra know where things stood with Jak. Too much was unsaid. Jak almost wished the three of them were snowbound at Mound Ahr together as they'd been a year ago when Ra still hadn't fully understood who she was. Together, they would have had to talk it out, and come to some understanding among the three of them of how things were going to be. Jak hated leaving things to fate.

Careful not to wake Ahr, Jak slipped out of bed and down the hall to Ra's room. The light of an oil lamp flickered beneath the door. Ra wasn't sleeping either. Not wanting to wake Mell and Keiren asleep on the gathering room floor, Jak knocked lightly and entered without waiting for an answer. But the knock had been too soft, and Ra hadn't heard. Seated on the end of the bed with her back turned toward the door, she was bent over to adjust a pair of boots. On her back, beneath the neatly tied flow of onyx, was a heavy blue coat, tailored for warmth and the elements. This wasn't the sort of coat one wore to feed qirhu.

“You can't go,” said Jak. “I need you.” Ra's head came up in surprise at the sound of Jak's voice, and Jak stepped back against the door with a cry. “Ahr?” It was impossible, of course, but it seemed to be Ahr—as he'd been before Ra destroyed him.

“Jak.” The apparition spoke with Ra's voice, though with the cadence of a man. “I didn't think I'd see anyone before I left. I've startled you.”

“Startled me,” Jak repeated like an imbecile. “Who—?”

“It's me.” This impossible Ra rose and came forward.

Close to him
,
Jak could see he didn't look so much like Ahr. He had the long nose, the cattish eyes of black, and the thin, burgundy lips of Ra. It was Ahr's renaissance in reverse.

“I'm sorry.” He reached for Jak's hand. “I didn't mean to alarm you.”

Jak flinched at the touch but didn't pull away entirely. “I don't understand.”

“It's simple, really. We imagine ourselves as one thing or another, and so we are. Much like your choice to reject gender.”

“But I'm still me.”

“And I'm still Ra.” He had the same pallid scars on his face, the same bruises and cuts Ra had worn the day before, though much diminished.

Jak searched the obsidian eyes that were the sum of Ra. “But why?”

Ra brought Jak to sit on the bed and knelt before it. “There are wolves at the door, and Rhyman is unprotected. I'm going to take it back. It's mine. And I want them to know it.”

Jak stared at him, too confounded to speak.

He drew Jak's hand to his cheek. “Touch me. I promise, I'm your Ra.” He smiled sadly as Jak's fingers lingered on the hairline marks of his scars. “You've forgiven me so much worse,
lif
. Forgive me for this?”
Lif
—my love. Ra had first uttered the word while Jak resisted being loved, consciously unaware of the childhood memories that had been pushed down until Ra had laid Jak open and made them impossible to hide. Jak had been ashamed, and Ra had swallowed that shame and driven herself mad with it—out of love.

Jak studied the hand, the very same that had touched Jak's body so many times, and interlaced their fingers to bring Ra's to a tentative kiss. “You love me?”

Ra closed his eyes. “
Ahlzel
. Always. You know I do.”

Jak leaned forward and kissed his lips, and they were Ra's lips, soft and sweet—and Meeric. It shouldn't have been a surprise to feel the kiss deep inside, where Ra had never touched. The kisses of the Meer devoured and carried one away until everything else was forgotten.

Jak pulled away from his mouth, gasping for air, and whispered against his neck, “
Ma aovet tene tams
”—the Deltan words Ra had once insisted on:
I want your skin
.

Rising onto his knees, Ra threw off his coat and unbuttoned his shirt, and Jak was shocked to see the firm slope of muscle in place of the generous swell of breasts, but it was unmistakably Ra's body, more ruggedly cut. The oddly beautiful filigree of the scars of Shiva's lashing still framed his chest. Jak's fingers traced the outline of a nipple, the same deep tint Jak remembered. It seemed he was more sensitive there now than Ra had been as a woman, and he tilted his head back and closed his eyes, a soft breath of sound escaping him.

Jak threw both arms around his neck. “You can't leave me. You'll kill me.”

Jak had gone to Ra. Ahr knew it without any Meeric intuition. Ra was impossible to resist. Waking alone in Jak's bed, Ahr tried to ignore this certainty, but the more she tossed and turned, trying not to think of them together, the louder the thoughts became, until she gave up and threw off the covers, and went to Ra's room.

They were there, in Ra's bed. Though Ahr had suspected it, the reality struck her to the core. Her mouth was open, poised on a bitter rebuke, when Ra turned toward the door.

Ahr's bones turned to chalk. It was
he,
and Jak was in his bed. Jak was with
her Ra
.

Jak grabbed for a blanket as though Ahr hadn't already seen what was being presented to Ra. She tried to speak, so angry her mouth wouldn't work. What a deceiver Ra was, playing at the meek and penitent woman and then becoming the zealous devourer, his body hard and insistent as he'd been with Ahr. He was a rabid animal. He was the unrepentant demon who'd taken his
vetmas
from Ahr's body without permission. He'd plumbed her depths, infusing all of her with him, every part of her body his. There was nothing of her he hadn't penetrated with his cock or his mouth. He'd possessed her completely. And now he gave that unspeakable voluptuousness that was his touch to Jak.

But that wasn't what she was angry about. She didn't want
him.
She was angry with Jak.
Jak
was her lover.

“How could you?” The words choked out of her at last. “You let him—
him—
into your body when you wouldn't let me?”

Jak flinched at the accusation. “I haven't. We were only lying together.”

Ahr realized they were only naked to the waist. But what did it matter? “I see. Because you were tired—and you took off your shirt because you were hot?”

“Ahr.” Jak tried to climb over Ra to reach her.

“Don't you touch me.” Ahr held up her hand. “You stay there with him.”

Jak sat back against the mattress. Ahr's words had power. “Ahr, please.”

Letting go of the doorknob she'd clutched until her hand had gone white, Ahr looked once more at Ra—the one who'd taken her, taken from her, and now taken her love. Renaissanced emotion warred in her head as a barrage of words warred with her tongue for release:
Ravager—lover—baby-stealer—RaNa's father—crush your skull!

“You bastard,” she whispered instead. Ra, unbelievably, said nothing. Ahr fixed her gaze on Jak. “I want my things.”

“Your things?”

“My belongings, my mound, my old clothes. There must have been something left of me, and I want it.”

Jak's fingers raked the fine, birch-bark hair. “It's all at Mound Ahr. But please don't do this. Let me talk to you.”

“Talk, Jak!” Ahr laughed. “You're nearly Meeric in your sophistry. I'm done listening to you.”

Jak tried once more to dissuade her. “You can't go out in the storm.”

“I want my things!” Ahr resisted a childish urge to stomp her foot.

“You had a bag with you when you came back from Rhyman.” Jak tried once more to slide out of the bed past Ra, who'd silently drawn his legs out of the way. “It's in my wardrobe. Let me get it.”

“No. You stay with him.” She'd spoken. Jak had to obey.

Ahr went back to their room—
Jak's
room—and yanked open the wardrobe door. Behind the fawn lace dress was a small pack Ahr remembered. She took it out and sat with it between her legs, rummaging through the contents—a toilet kit, a blanket, a length of rope. They'd used that rope to reach the mad Ra in her fortress. Beneath the blanket, she uncovered a pair of heavy canvas bags. She held them in her hands and felt time rip through her. This had belonged to the other Ahr. He'd held them. But they hadn't been his; they were hers. She took them and returned to Jak and Ra.

Jak was fully dressed, putting on the boots that had been kicked off in the overwhelming “tiredness” that had come over them. Ra, beside her, was unchanged, as if he hadn't moved. Ahr brought the open bags to where they sat.

“You've both had my virginity. Here's the price for it.” She poured the bags of coin into each of their laps: gold in Ra's, silver in Jak's. “See how trifling a thing you've conquered?”

Ahr turned to leave, but Ra leapt from the bed with the feral limbs he'd always possessed, coins scattering in his wake, and held her from behind, arms crossed over her chest.

“Let go of me!” Ahr jerked against his hold, but a Meer's word to another Meer apparently held no such sway—at least, not to this Meer.

Ra pressed his head beside hers, something wet on his cheek. “You are worth the
soth
of Rhyman, the
soth
of AhlZel
,
the world. I was never worthy of you. But Jak is an equal jewel. Don't leave Jak. I beg you.” Ahr twisted in his arms, but he wouldn't release her. He turned her instead toward Jak and held her before her most recent betrayer. “Forgive Jak as you forgave me once. Jak is more deserving of it.”

Wrestling against his grip once more, Ahr tumbled into Jak's arms as Ra let her go, looking up into steel eyes as mesmerizing as any Meer's. “Why couldn't you just choose?” Though she'd meant to hold on to her anger, the tears began to flow. “I chose you. You told me to choose, and I let go of half my heart. Don't you know what it meant to me?”

Jak too was weeping, though Jak's were ordinary tears. “I do. And I'm sorry. I was wrong.”

Ra picked up his shirt from the floor and put his arms into the sleeves. “Jak doesn't have to choose. I'm going home.”

“Dammit, Ra.” Jak's grip around Ahr tightened as if holding Ra instead. “You said you'd stay.”

“No,
lif
.” Ra buttoned his shirt and picked up his coat. “I said I'd do whatever you asked of me. I'm asking you not to ask it of me.” Impeccably dressed, he stood before them, the one who'd seen Ahr in the dusty street, the one who'd leapt from his dais to give her body obeisance with his mouth. How cruel of him to take this form now. But he called Jak
lif
.

“You'd go?” Ahr wiped at the tears. “You don't want Jak?”

Ra looked up at the ceiling and drew in a breath. “I want Jak.
Meershivá
, I want Jak.” He lowered his gaze to her once more. “Almost as much as I want you.”

His admission ought to have stung Jak, but instead Jak turned Ahr toward Ra, comforting arms enveloping her. “You don't have to choose, Ahr. Don't let him leave.”

Ahr shook her head. “But I want him to leave.” Her heartbeat quickened as Ra took a step away, buttoning his coat.

“Do you?” Jak kissed her cheek. “Tell him not to go.”

Ahr took a painful breath. “For you?”

“No. For you.”

She shook her head, trying to resist Jak's persuasion, trying to resist her own traitorous emotion. “But I hate him.”

“Do you hate him? Or do you love him so much you had to invent hatred to push him away because I made you choose?”

“No.
No
.” Ahr let out a small moan. Ra was at the door, turning to leave. “It wouldn't be fair.”

“What wouldn't?” Jak rubbed a thumb against her tears. “That the two of you share a love beyond what you can share with me? How could it matter to me, when I'm loved by you both? It takes my breath away.”

As Ra turned the doorknob, Ahr's mouth betrayed her. “Don't go.”

He paused and stood still for a long moment before he turned back, his ebony eyes destroying her as they always had. “Do you want me, Ahr?”

She turned her head, burying her face against Jak's neck. “
Meerrá
, yes,” she moaned. “I want you. I want you both.”

Ra came away from the door and knelt before her, taking her hand. “I need you to know something. Something I should have told you long ago. I didn't know you wanted me to take your veil.” He lifted her palm and pressed it to his lips. “I wanted to see your face. I was mad to see it. But I thought you kept it there. I knew nothing of the customs of my own
soth
. What a fool to live among them for more than three centuries and not know.” Ahr's tears were loosed again. Ra touched her cheek beneath the patch. “Your beautiful eyes,
lif
. Was it because of me? Was it Shiva?”

Ahr nodded and then shook her head. “It was because of me.
Meershivá
, I deserve so much worse.” Her voice caught in her throat, the rest coming out in a hoarse whisper. “I don't know how you can forgive me. For any of it.”

“Ahr.” Ra held her face gently between his hands and made her look at him. “
Mene ahlzel midtlif.
You were forgiven before my body reached RaNa.”