Page 23 of Bound by Sin


  “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.

  Jaykun 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 t
hat 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.

  He said he didn’t want to trust. He said he didn’t want to love. But she saw both of those statements for the lies they were. He wanted very much to trust and love; he was simply afraid to do so. Afraid whomever he chose this time would be just as bad a choice as Casiria had been. No, it wasn’t her he didn’t trust…It was himself.

  Jileana lifted up onto her toes and pressed a kiss against his stiff lips. He could have pushed her away, could have stormed off. But he did neither. That only served to reinforce her beliefs. He wanted more than he was admitting to. And she would be there to offer up whatever he was willing to take. Because even though it had been just a matter of days, she was aware of just how deeply she had come to care for him. To love him. He was a magnificent man, a creature unlike anything she’d ever known before. Oh, she knew men, knew their ways, but she had never met one so noble or so kind. So like her father and yet so much better than him at the same time. She couldn’t have explained why she viewed him in a better light, only that she did. And she did not see him as faultless. He had a great many flaws. But she realized they made him who he was, made him the man she loved.

  But she would not confront him with her deepest feelings. He wasn’t ready yet. She had the whole of the next three weeks to win him to her and she would do so in small increments. She could not make him love her, but she suspected she would not be forcing his hand in the matter. He longed for someone to disprove his theories on love…He simply wasn’t yet willing to acknowledge that.

  “Enough, now,” she said then. “I can see we are merely going to disagree over this. Let us put it aside. You have warned me away and I have heard you. You can be satisfied that you are no longer responsible for my feelings in this matter. There. Does that make you feel better?


  Honestly, it didn’t. And not just because Jaykun knew she was merely placating him. Even if she wasn’t, if she had been seriously put on her guard, she might now act differently with him. She might no longer be the open, warm, and delightful creature he had come to know. The thought saddened him profoundly. He did not like the idea of being the one who cast shadows over her personality, shading it from the bright sun she usually lived in. He would always give off a tremendous light when he burned, but he preferred to think of her basking in that light, not hiding from it, guarding herself from it, shielding herself from it.

  Damn it! Why couldn’t he make up his mind about this? No. No, his mind was made up. She had been warned and it was no longer his responsibility. She was a grown woman in charge of her own feelings.

  But again, he found no comfort in the thought.

  —

  Both Jaykun and Jileana had a great deal on their minds, so the rest of the day passed in relative quiet. She showed him more of her world, and they pretended talk of emotions and trust had never transpired. After a while it became less uncomfortable and he once again found himself genuinely enjoying being in her company. He should have felt even freer now that he had made himself clear to her. Freer to act however he wished without fear of her reading too much into it.

  But he did not. She was not to be trusted, he thought with bemusement. She had made her position quite clear and he needed to be on his guard against her.

  But for now he relaxed and found himself enjoying her again. When she laughed, it was with commitment, with all of her heart and soul, and it made him smile every time. The sun would shine on her and highlight all her darkly beautiful features, making her seem brighter and happier still. Then all the innocence she had gained from the light of the sun would be silkily tarnished all of a sudden when she leaned her sultry curves up against him and slid along him like falling water. But she did not cool him off as falling water might; she scorched him instead, as if he had been put in a pot and set to boil. She made him hard both on purpose and when she wasn’t meaning to. He couldn’t help himself. She was a remarkable creature through and through, and as sexy as the day was long. And for him, a day was very long indeed.