The Sea Thy Mistress (26 page)

The almost lie stung her, close enough to an untruth to
hurt,
but she thought it needed to be said. Worse was the way Cahey closed his eyes, face falling slack, head rolling back on the long neck in exhaustion. “Fuck,” he whispered.

“Shhhh. He’s not mad at
you.
Listen to me. He almost walked in on the two of you this morning. He…” She couldn’t look at his face and talk at the same time. “Love, he heard. He knows. Whatever it is, he knows she made you do it.”

He sighed, but he let her pull him down until he leaned back against her, sitting on the floor. “Selene,” he said. “I owe you—and Cath—so many apologies. You were right. What I’ve been doing is … well. Bad for me. Stupid. To say the least.”

“You’ll stop?”

He considered long enough to get her hopes up before he shook his head.

She growled at the back of her throat.

“
What
do you think you’re doing with … that woman? That creature? Whatever she is?”

He nodded helplessly. “Destroying myself.” A long silence. “But what I’m buying is worth it. I think.”

“All right, Cahey.” Her tail twisted. “What are you buying, that’s worth your soul?”

He took a deep breath and told her.

She shoved him away, far enough away to search his face, and then she pressed her face into her hands and sighed hard before looking back up at him.

“You stupid shit,” she said.

It wasn’t the answer he was expecting.

A rich, irritated sigh hissed from her. “Cahey, you beautiful idiot. What gives you the right to put her through the agony you had to go through? And—moreover—what makes you suppose Astrid wouldn’t cheerfully have died for
you
?”

He didn’t have an answer in the world. She waited for a little while in the silence before she grabbed him by the arm and stood him up. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going up to the chapel.”

50 A.R.
On the Twenty-eighth Day of Autumn

Selene had left him there alone to think, she said.

Think. The last thing I need to do right now.
Cahey pushed his gathering doubts aside.
Stick with your decision. It may have sucked, but consider the source.

He stood in front of the central statue, Muire’s statue, watching the sun grow lower over her shoulder. He’d teased her, once, about the statue’s face being reversed, for she had sculpted it in a mirror. It troubled him to realize that when he pictured her now he saw this image, and not what she had truly been.

There was no sound of the door opening, no shift in the light, no sense of presence behind him. The voice made him jump.

“I’ve been looking for you, Cathoair.”

A rough voice, familiar in its softness. He had dreamed, when he still slept, about that voice, like a hand riffling the fine hairs at the back of his neck.

Shuddering, Cahey turned away from the statue of his goddess and toward the door of the chapel.

The Grey Wolf lounged, lean and fierce, against ivory stone. He straightened and drifted into the chapel, cloak flowing around him like a shadow. “Cahey.” As he came forward. “How I have envied you all these years.”

“Envied me?” He placed a hand on the hilt of his sword. He saw Mingan’s smile—–
satisfied,
he thought—at the gesture.
Yeah. I can learn.

Mingan nodded, a single arrogant inclination of his head. “Envied you—the taste of her skin, of her sex, the strength of her body against yours. Envied you her love, her passion. Envied you … every inch of her.”

Only when he felt the pain did Cahey realize that he had bitten his cheek. “I have none of those things.” He detested the quaver in his own voice. His hand didn’t move off Alvitr’s hilt.

“But you
did
have them,” the Grey Wolf answered, a step closer.

Cahey remembered an alleyway, the taste of Mingan’s mouth, the sun-heat of his body. A fever and a chill crawled up his neck as he met the other’s starlit regard. He did not speak.

“And you never had the slightest clue how precious a thing you let go.” Mingan’s voice was mocking. “I have the taste of you, you know. But
you
were nothing compared to
her
.” The Wolf licked his lips with a berry-red tongue. “Draw your sword, boy, if you think you can best me. Draw your sword in hate, and I will
tell
you why you hate me.”

His hand clenched on Alvitr’s hilt, but Cahey didn’t pull her from her sheath. He realized, seeing how the cloak hung in heavy folds around the Grey Wolf’s form, that Mingan was not carrying his own blade.

“She forgave you,” Cahey said.

Mingan came a step closer, sweeping across the softly colored paving stones. His voice was low, provoking. “She had no power to forgive me. My sins were beyond her compass. And you— You never did, boy. So now because of it I own your son. He’s down there now, waiting for me to come back to him, to be what you have not.”

“Shut up, you son of a bitch!” The sword was in his hand before he had a chance to think about it.

Mingan threw back his head and laughed. He spread his arms wide and came three steps closer before he sank down on his knees.

Laughing. As if to say,
Oh, how little you know what truth you have spoken.

Cahey advanced, leveling Alvitr at Mingan’s throat. But the Wolf only knuckled his eye and said, headshaking, “My mother was a giantess. And she spawned
monsters.
Think thou art my match?”

The Wolf reached out, catching Cahey’s sword in his gloved hand. Blood smeared the edge of the blade. Mingan leveled the tip of his rival’s sword at his chest.

“There,” Mingan said. “Thrust. Between the second and third ribs, brushing the lung, piercing the heart. It will suffice, with a blade like that, even for such as I.”

Cahey’s hand knotted on the hilt of the sword. He felt his lips drawing back from his teeth.

“Thrust!” Mingan cried. He pushed the blade against his breast, a trickle of blood darkening his shirt. “An you hate me, child, claim me. Take me if you want me. I am yours!”

A shiver ran through Cahey’s arm. His knuckles gleamed pale on the hilt of his blade. He groaned between his teeth and turned his face aside, feeling the slight resistance of Mingan’s body before the razorfine point of his sword.
Nothing. A gesture. And he’d be dead.

“Thrust!” Mingan screamed. “I wounded you. I took from you. I rendered you powerless and I raped you, boy.
Kill me now!
You hold my surrender!”

A gesture, and it would be over. Hate, fear, shame—all silenced. His body tensed behind a lunge.

Which did not happen.
Silenced. Yes. As they stayed so silent the last time I killed to shut them up.

The sword fell from nerveless fingers, ringing on the stone between them. Cahey sank to his knees, and from there curled into a ball.

“I am sorry,” the Grey Wolf said, standing in a charcoal-smudge swirl of cloak. “For everything I did to you, I am sorry now.” He came the two steps closer and knelt down beside his brother, laid a hand on Cahey’s shoulder.

Cahey coiled tighter, shaking. He was silent for a long time. “Leave me,” he whispered at last.

The Wolf shook his brindled head, slanting red light casting gleams off the silver ring twisted through his ear. “I cannot do that,” he said. “Cathoair. There is something you still must learn, to be truly einherjar.”

Cahey drew his knees up to his face. Mingan laid a gloved, bloody hand on the other’s shoulder. “Surrender,” he said. “That which I have given you,” he continued, “you must give as well.”

Silence was his answer.

“What I did to you was wrong,” he continued. “Wrong, and meant to break you.” He bent down, gathering Cahey in his arms and drawing him close. “I felt your pain when I kissed you, and I thought I could ruin you and then she would be mine.”

“I don’t break,” Cahey said into Mingan’s shoulder.

“My brother,” the Grey Wolf said, smoothing his hair. “Not yet, at any rate.”

“You’re no different,” Cahey answered, although he did not draw back from the embrace. “You’re the same old monster. Brother.”

“I’ve heard that before,” said Mingan. “There’s one way you can find out for certain what I am.”

Cahey recoiled, shoving himself away, sprawled on the floor with his back against the dais and the statues. “Light,” he said. “No!”

“Surrender,” replied the Grey Wolf, still crouching. “I am not that I was. Open yourself, and I will show you what I have become. I give you my soul, little brother.”

Bottomless terror surged up in him. “I want you out of me,” he whispered. “I do not want you in me anymore.”

The Grey Wolf laughed at him. “It’s not me that you hate, Cathoair. It’s what I showed you about yourself. That you
like
to be mastered, though you both desire and fear it. That you seek blame and deny responsibility. You were hurt gravely, boy, and you were too strong to let it destroy you or turn you into something vile. So you fight that hurt by choosing never to surrender, although you crave the release surrender brings.”

Cahey shook his head.

“You’re einherjar now, Brother. Act like it.” Mingan hesitated, as if waiting for a reply. None came, and he finished his argument with a final weapon. “When have you ever said ‘no,’ lad, and meant it?”

Again, the silent refutation.

“Ah,” said the Grey Wolf, bending razory lips in a smile, “deny. But you are in me, and I know you. You were beaten; you were taken against your will. How can it not have scarred you?”

Cahey shut his eyes against the words, but he did not stop his ears.

Mingan did not hesitate. “And to recompense, you seek control over yourself and others, never understanding that the path to healing lies in surrender, that your heart craves peace and certainty. Heythe—Gullveig—you cannot bend her, Cahey; you cannot control her. As I am older and stronger than you, she is older and wilder than I. And
never
has she done any man’s will.

“And Muire…” Mingan gasped with bitter laughter. “If you could but surrender yourself to the sea, you could have her. But there is no trust in you, and no faith, and no healing. And thus, you are worse than useless to us.
Brother.
”

Something glittered in the Grey Wolf’s eyes. Sorrow, Cahey realized. Unshed tears, unrequited love. All the loss he himself felt, and more.

Mingan spoke softly when he continued. “Because you cannot forgive yourself, and you cannot release the pain of what was done to you.”

I’m glad it hurts him.
Cahey started to his feet. “What do you know about rape, you bastard?” he snarled, leaning down and grasping Mingan’s black, silver-shot braid in his fist. The silver band that bound it slipped and strands coiled loose. The Wolf did not resist, even when Cahey yanked on it for emphasis with every breath. “Other than dealing it out? What do you know about being eleven and pretty and having nowhere to run?”

“I know a little about being taken,” Mingan interrupted. Something about his voice killed Cahey’s in his throat, and that somehow doubled his rage. Cahey drew back his hand and struck Mingan across the mouth, all of his weight behind it. Blood spattered. Sickness burned in his throat.
I’m just like my father. All I know how to do is hurt things.

Mingan closed silver eyes and tilted his head to the side, baring his throat. “Strike,” he said. “Unleash at me your vengeance on all those you were unable to defend yourself from. It’s deserved, Light knows.”

Cahey roared. He hauled his rival to his feet by the hair and spun, throwing him across the chapel.

Mingan fell against the benches, rising again with pain. Cahey stood, panting, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Pick up your sword,” Mingan said. “If my death is what it takes to heal you,
pick her up
!”

Cahey bent down and grasped her by the hilt. He took several steps forward; his rival stood unblinking. Raising the blade, he leveled her at Mingan’s neck and drew her back in a slow, unwavering arc.

“I am not your father,” Mingan said. “I am not a stranger in an alley. I am your brother and your ally. I wronged you, and for that I am sorry lo these many years gone by. I am deserving of thy justice.”

Cahey froze, on the verge of uncoiling, his pose echoing that of the statue behind him. His face contorted in fury and agony, his hand clenched on the hilt of his sword.

“I bare my throat to thee,” Mingan said on a breath. He tilted his face away from the blade, exposing the tender curve of his neck.

A long, soft moment passed. And Cathoair looked from his blade to the arc of the Grey Wolf’s neck, and let Alvitr sag until she scratched the stones.