Page 20 of Bound by Sin


  “Stop it! Stop this right now, Silan, or I swear I will go to the Overworld and you will never see me again!” Jileana cried out.

  Floating back dazedly, Silan put a hand to his ringing head and looked angrily at his sister. “You wouldn’t dare!” he hissed at her.

  “Wouldn’t I?” she retorted, moving to Jaykun to touch the injury to his arm with gentle fingers. His arm was hanging almost uselessly at his side, but it would heal in time. Faster with Jileana’s tender care. “Are you all right?” she asked worriedly.

  “You know he can’t hurt me,” he reminded her gently.

  “That’s untrue. I know this hurts a great deal. Pain and death are different matters. Father, keep Silan under control or I swear it will be the last you will ever see of me.”

  “You would give up our beautiful world just to be with this inferior creature?” Silan ground out in disbelief.

  “Jaykun has nothing to do with it. He has made me no promises of a place in his life. Quite the opposite, I assure you. No. If I leave, it will be because of you and others like you who are intent on driving me away. This world holds little beauty in it so long as you have a hand around my throat and suffocate the life out of me. Father, you are little better. You give him free rein. You even encourage him. The only one who seems to understand this is Mother.” She swam away from them, pulling Jaykun along with her. “Until you learn how to better behave, you will keep your distance from me! You are not welcome in my home room, Silan! Do you understand?”

  “Father! Are you just going to let her leave like this?”

  Jileana’s father just gave a silent shrug of his shoulders. “She will do as she pleases whatever I say. We will see her later tonight. We can discuss it further then.”

  “Discuss?” Silan said in disgust. “What is there to discuss? You are her father and she lives under your roof. She must do as you demand.”

  “Silan, I said we will discuss it later!” Jileana’s father said, raising his voice in temper.

  Silan subsided at last, but it was obvious he was none too pleased about it. He glared mutinously at Jileana and Jaykun the entire time they swam out of sight.

  “I’m so sorry,” Jileana said after several minutes, her voice low and contrite. She hovered over Jaykun’s injury, speaking a soft magic to stop the bleeding.

  “There is nothing for you to apologize for,” Jaykun assured her.

  “There is. Silan’s behavior is inexcusable. He thinks he owns me. He thinks he can map out my entire future for me…that it is his right to do so.”

  “Clearly you have other ideas.”

  “Yes. I do. I wish I did not live under my father’s roof, but I cannot leave until I am mated. You see, each level of the caves is occupied by a specific house of the nobles. The higher the caves, the higher the nobles’ standing in the eyes of the empress and the court. My father comes from an ancient bloodline, almost as ancient as the empress’s. That and his role as captain of the empress’s army puts him high in the houses. It also makes his daughter a valuable item. For as long as I can remember, men have tried to win me over. Win me so they may enter my father’s great house.”

  “Barban?”

  “He is but one. The most persistent one. Mainly because my brother has made it clear that he would be very much in favor of the match. My father has done nothing to discourage it either.”

  “And when do they consider your wishes in the matter?” Jaykun asked.

  “They never do. They never will.”

  “Is that why you came to my world? To be free of them, if only for a little while?”

  She nodded and then swam upward, her hand holding his, her feet kicking in strong, graceful strokes. Not another word was said until they broke the surface of the water and took strong breaths of the air. Jaykun did not need to breathe air while underwater, but it still felt more right to take in the air through his lungs. More natural. The habit of a lifetime.

  “I wanted to know what it would be like away from them. I knew it could only be for a week, until the moon waned, but still, a week of reprieve from this was like the richest of gemstones would be to someone of your world. Priceless and coveted. To me, anyway. Most selkies want nothing to do with the Overworld. They are afraid of it. Here the selkies are protected from all outsiders. The only dangers here are the sirens and perhaps a few civil factions trying to go to war amongst themselves, as you learned from the empress. Maybe a sea beast here or there, or the grots. The selkies think the world of man is the root of all danger and all evil. They don’t see beyond that. They don’t see that there is just as much danger here as there is there. And your world…your world is so diverse. Oh, I know I saw only some of it…but that’s the adventure of it. I’ve seen only a small part of it. I want to see more. I want to see all of it! And I know it would take me a lifetime to do that. But what a lifetime that would be,” she said wistfully. “So full of adventure and newness at every turn. It’s the life that you have, isn’t it? It’s what you do. You go to all kinds of lands and see many strange people and places. I envy you your life.”

  “Do not envy me,” Jaykun said harshly. “My life is nothing you would want for yourself.”

  She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes on him. “I know parts of it are unbearable,” she said. “I am not ignorant of that. But surely you must enjoy some of it. You must take some kind of pleasure in it.”

  The truth was, he hadn’t taken much pleasure in his life lately. He had borne it. Had walked numbly through it, doing what he was required to do. The only joy he’d had was being with his brothers again. But even that was curbed by the knowledge that there was still one brother missing, one brother living in unending torment somewhere, buried deep within soil and bedrock in a place unknown to them, suffocating and being crushed under the weight of the world again and again and again. It made Jaykun’s nightly torment seem trivial in comparison.

  Until he had met Jileana. Suddenly there was light in his world. A type of pleasure that he had all but forgotten. The type of pleasure that could make a man afraid. Afraid to lose it. Afraid to believe in it. He suddenly turned from her, unwilling to look at her. He had nothing to offer her. He had nothing to offer anyone, least of all himself. His life had ended with a single swallow of forbidden waters and this…this existence had sprung up in its place. He had thought he wanted immortality. Now all he wanted was to live a normal, peaceful life…and to die a normal, peaceful death.

  But his wants weren’t worth thinking about. His was a cursed existence and nothing was going to change that. Certainly not by wishing his life were otherwise. All of his wishes had long since been superseded by the wishes of another…of a goddess.

  Jaykun began to swim. He could see the cliff face in the distance and he aimed himself toward it. The churning of his arms, the force of propelling himself through the water, made his heart pump harder and faster. He needed it, needed the violence of it. He didn’t know if she was following him, didn’t really care in that moment. All he knew was the need to move hard and fast however he could, and it was difficult to do that in the water.

  So he swam. Arm over arm over arm. Swam until his body hit the wall of the cliff face. Then he dragged himself onto the nearest ledge, and he would have begun to climb just as blindly as he had swum, but suddenly there was a great weight on his arm and he was being dragged about until he was looking down into her concerned face.

  “What is it?” she asked him. “Jaykun! What is wrong?”

  He was heaving for breath, water streaming from his hair still, his body being baked by the brightness of the sun. Off in the distance he could see the wall of grey denoting the storms that protected the island, but where he was standing was as clear and warm and sunny as any high summer day. He found himself inanely wondering if the seasons turned cold in this idyllic place where people lived in the cool waters and ran naked under the sun.

  “Does winter ever come here?” he asked.

  “What?” she asked, sur
prised and confused by the question. “What is winter?”

  “Does it ever grow cold or snow here?”

  “It is always the same here. The storms come from time to time. What is snow?”

  He smiled at that and looked down into her pretty, upturned face. He reached for it, touching gentle fingers to the sweet curve of her cheek. “Snow is when the rain freezes and turns to ice.”

  “Oh. Mother can make ice. She has a spell for it. I think I might know it. Does it fall in big blocks, or is it small like drops of rain?”

  “Small like the drops of rain. You’ve never seen snow?”

  “No. It sounds painful.”

  “No. Snow can be light and soft, and it can be very beautiful.”

  “Oh. I would like to see snow,” she said with a beatific smile. “When does it come?”

  “With winter. You see, where I come from, in the Overworld, we have seasons. Four of them. Summer, which is warm and sunny like this. Autumn, when the air grows colder and the leaves of the trees die and fall off in preparation for winter.”

  “They die? Oh, that sounds terrible,” she said with a frown.

  “They have to. But don’t worry. The trees are only going to sleep a little while. That is when winter comes. It grows cold…so cold your breath freezes on the air. Then soft snow comes and lays white over everything. Every road, every house, every tree…until all you see is a great, vast, blinding blanket of white. The children come and play in it and their laughter can be heard for great distances. We build fires and stay warm next to them. Men and women cuddle up close for warmth and make love to bring fire to their blood.” He reached for her and drew her close to his body, demonstrating by holding her close and warm.

  “Oh,” she breathed, “that sounds wonderful.”

  “It is. There’s nothing like it in the world. And then the snow melts and spring comes. The trees wake up and grow new leaves. The flowers bloom and fill the air with the smell of freshness and new life. Then summer comes and it all begins again.”

  “Snow. I want to see snow,” she said excitedly. “Why has no one ever told me about this before?”

  “So you’ve really never been to the Overworld before this?”

  “Never. I was too young. We can’t pass through the portal until we’re of a certain age. It keeps our children from passing through unexpectedly. The storms keep us in just as they keep others out.”

  “And you just reached this certain age?”

  “Well…no…it was a few years ago. But I confess, it took me a while to be brave enough to venture through the portal. But once I did I saw you and thought what a wondrous world it must be, to have such people in it that they burn like the stars. After that I wasn’t afraid.”

  He laughed at that. “Had anyone else seen me they would have been terrified of me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. I thought you were beautiful. That was before I understood how much it hurt you, though. I don’t think it’s beautiful any longer.”

  He realized then how beautiful he thought she was. Not just aesthetically beautiful, but straight through to her very core. And in his world, a world ugly with war and political machinations and people bent on killing one another, that meant a great deal to him. It was something incredibly rare and special. Sure, she was a selkie and that made her rare to begin with, but it went beyond that. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw such beauty. Real beauty—not a beauty he had created in his mind, blinded in every way to the flaws within. He could see her flaws—things like her impulsiveness and her stubbornness. He was not imagining her to be something perfect and beyond reproach, and he was glad of that. It told him he was truly seeing her. But at the same time it scared him, truly rocked him to his core. He didn’t know what to do with these feelings. They had no place in his life. He could offer her absolutely nothing of value and she deserved to be given everything the world had to offer her. She deserved better than him.

  Jaykun forced himself to let go of her, to turn away from the comfort of Jileana’s arms around him, and he picked his way over to and then up the cliff face, using handholds and footholds and all the strength in his body to propel himself upward in hard surges of movement. It was what he liked to do when he was troubled. He liked to force his body into activity, sometimes until he collapsed with exhaustion. He didn’t see that being possible here, so he took advantage of what he could when he could. He climbed all the way to the uppermost level of the honeycomb of caves and then a bit farther until he was standing at the very top and looking down upon the entirety of the selkie world. He breathed the air in deep, only partly aware of Jileana coming to stand beside him. Then he turned around and faced the island itself and for the first time saw the sprawl of lush trees and vines, and heard the chittering of insects and the rustle of wild things in the underbrush.

  “So this is what the sirens want so badly,” he said. “I can see why.”

  “Yes, it is very beautiful, but it is also very dangerous. I wouldn’t want you to go into the island. If you should come upon a siren…” She bit her lip anxiously. “Promise me you won’t go in there.”

  “I have no reason to go in there and I am not foolish,” he reassured her, reaching to brush a soft thumb over the rise of her cheek, his fingertips lingering in her hair. “I promise you, I will be careful.”

  “Thank you,” she breathed. “I wouldn’t be able to bear it if you were lured by a siren and were…It is a false love and the sirens don’t care about the suffering of the men they leave behind. They don’t care about them at all. All they want is a means of getting their daughters. Otherwise, they have no use for men.”

  “The selkies sing too, yes?” he asked suddenly. “I seem to recall hearing you sing and it being somewhat…otherworldly.”

  “We do. We sing to cast certain spells. Like the healing spell I sing for you each night to help speed your healing.”

  “I knew you were doing that. Somewhere inside me I knew, because I was healing faster and with less pain than I was before you came along.”

  “Diathus loves her selkie children. She has given them the sea witches—selkies like my mother and me who can cast certain magics. You could say we are Diathus’s priestesses.”

  “Like our mems. Our mems are priestesses for the other gods. They have healing gifts and other abilities as well. We also have mages, but they are not as connected to the gods as the mems are usually. Are the sirens the children of Diathus as well?”

  “No. Though they live near the water, they turn away from Diathus. It is Jikaro, the god of anger and deception, whom they worship.”

  “Jikaro is part of Xaxis’s faction, as Diathus is.” At her questioning look, he explained about the war between the two factions of gods.

  “This war between the gods is a terrible thing,” Jileana said, shaking her head, “and it is dangerous for us to get involved.”

  “I cannot help but be involved. I have been commanded to interfere on Weysa’s behalf. I wish I could live in ignorance of the war like so many people do; it would make for such an easier, more blissful life. But that is not to be and I have not been that lucky. But I asked for my own fate. I deserve nothing less.”

  “How did you ask for it? Are you going to tell me why it is you must suffer so?”

  He looked into her eyes and gave her a grim smile. “I thought I could force the hand of the gods. I took from them something they were not willing to give. My brothers and I drank from the Fount of Immortality without the permission of the gods and we have been punished for it. I spent untold years chained to a star, burning endlessly like a molten cinder. I have since been freed of it, but as you see, it is my lot to be reminded of my punishment every night so I will not forget where hubris can lead.”

  “Jaykun,” she said softly. “When will it end? When will it be enough? You have spent years suffering…When will the gods be satisfied? I cannot believe they are so cruel!”

  “Believe it. You see it night after night with your own ey
es.”

  Jaykun dropped to the ground, sitting at the very edge of the cliff, letting his legs dangle in the open air over the side. Jileana joined him, doing the same.

  “I know I do,” she said then, “but I also believe the gods are capable of great benevolence and forgiveness. I have to believe that. They have forgiven me so often….Why can they not forgive you?”

  “Forgiven you?” Jaykun asked, his fingertips on her soft, beautiful face once more. “What could you possibly have done that would anger the gods?”

  “I…I am defiant of my father when I should be a better daughter. I fight with my brothers endlessly. We have always done so for as long as I can remember and it should not be so. I love them, I do, but I just can’t seem to get along with them. It must be some intrinsic fault of mine. I am stubborn and willful. And I…I am ungrateful of the safe haven Diathus has provided for the selkies. I…I dream of leaving this place, of finding a home in the world of human men and women, of adventures beyond the safety of these caves and waters.”

  “Hmm. These are grievous sins indeed,” Jaykun said gravely. But his eyes were lit with humor and she could see it.

  “You mock me,” she scolded him with a playful push against his shoulder.

  “No, indeed I do not. I can very clearly see why you would require forgiveness. But I can also see that if you were not so driven I…I would never have gotten the opportunity to see and know you. So you must forgive me if I do not mind your sins.”

  She gave him a sly smile. “This is very true,” she said. “Very true indeed. So you are saying that you are glad to have met such a wantonly disreputable female such as myself?”

  “Very glad. And if you are disreputable, what does that make me? I have sinned far more grievously than you ever will.” He said the last more seriously than he had intended. But it was a serious topic, despite their making light of it. It was the be-all and end-all of his days. Everything he did, everything he was, was because of the sins he had committed against the gods. The only thing he had that did not touch upon that taint was…