Selfish is the Heart (35 page)

“Oh, Invisible Mother, Cassian, I am so sorry. So, so sorry.” Annalise kissed his hand.

He wanted to pull away from her kindness, but forced himself to stay still. She would offer him herself and he would be no fool, refusing. He could no longer afford to be a fool.

“Bertricia said she’d gone to my brother because she thought she could help him. She tried to make me believe I’d sent her into his arms.”

“But he said—”

“With my brother dead, there was only her word. And though I didn’t believe all of it, I did believe she thought she could help him. Ease his burden, somehow, even as she eased her own. That might not have been how she started it, but I believe it was how she meant to end it.”

“With you as her husband, what burden could she have?” Annalise sounded sour.

He looked at her. “I long ago ceased to imagine her reasons. They only hurt me too much. She entered the Order a fortnight after Calvis’s death. She said it was because she’d failed with him and wanted to atone by bringing solace to some others. She found herself well-suited to it.”

“And now she’s back because she finished with a patron?”

Cassian drew a deep breath and got up to pace, his boots scuffing dirt. “No. She’s back now to claim her son.”

“Her . . .” Annalise fell silent.

Cassian faced her. “Bertricia was one of the few I’ve ever seen who took her vows almost immediately upon entering the Order. She was sent to her first patron within a month of arriving. She came to me a month after that, her belly not yet swelling with a child she wanted me to claim as mine.”

He didn’t blame Annalise for looking sick. He’d felt sick then, too. She tangled her fingers together, perhaps to keep them from making fists.

“You didn’t?”

“I’d scarcely been to my lady wife’s bed in months, so consumed was she with fucking my brother,” he said bluntly. “The child wasn’t likely to be mine.”

“It could’ve been your brother’s boy.”

“And it could’ve been her patron’s get,” Cassian said. “She’d not been with the Order long, remember. It’s possible the herbs Handmaidens take had not yet begun their job. And Handmaidens who become pregnant while in the service of a patron give birth to—”

“Blessings.” Annalise put a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. “Oh, Cassian. Oh . . .”

“The boy appears to have my brother’s eyes, but all else belongs to his mother.”

“He has your eyes, then,” Annalise said.

“I don’t know the looks of her patron. He could have his eyes, for all I know.” He sounded angry. Was angry, though not at her.

Annalise rose, then, and went to him. She knew him so well she didn’t touch him. He couldn’t have borne it, a gentle, pitying touch.

“All this time, you’ve stayed here so that you might watch over him?”

“So that I might be able to tell if he belonged to my brother. Or me. Yes. But the longer I waited, the harder it was to convince myself he was indeed my nephew, as much mine as a son would’ve been. Harder still to convince myself he belonged to some unnamed face. The boy is a Blessing, a true Kedalya’s Blessing, and he has a life here in the Order. When he’s of age, he’ll be provided for as handsomely as any prince and set to make his way in the world. Who am I to hold him back from such a future? Who am I?”

She touched him then, and he suffered it without allowing himself to overthink his reasons.

“Someone who loves him,” she said.

He clasped her fingers in his. Pulled her close. Stopped himself from kissing her to look into her eyes, instead.

“She’s back to take the boy for reasons she hasn’t yielded, and I don’t aim to allow her to do it.”

“No blame will come from me on that account. She sounds vile. And I say that not only because she was your lady wife,” Annalise added with a slow smile. “Woman I begin and all that. Her behavior shames us all.”

“You needn’t be jealous. My love for her ended a long time ago.”

Annalise raised a brow. “Good.”

She kissed him, and Cassian found it was nothing to suffer, but to enjoy.

“Am I still banished from your classroom?” she murmured against him.

“Well, yes. This has naught to do with that.”

She tipped her frowning face to his. “No?”

“Annalise, you need to be with a true teacher, one who can challenge you. You’re already far more educated in the Word and the Book than any I’ve ever taught. You should never have been placed in my class to begin with.”

She opened her mouth to say somewhat, but seemed to change her mind. “I don’t want to leave. I doubt there’s anyone who can teach me more than I know, anyway. I would find it more useful to continue assisting you. Teaching others. Especially now . . .”

“Now what?” He asked her, falling into the deep pool of her loving gaze.

“Now that I understand what it is to really believe. I spent my whole life with the Faith being forced into me yet never once really believed it. And now . . . I do.” Annalise had never sounded shy to him. It didn’t suit her.

Cassian studied her face, so earnest and sincere. “Sweetheart, I’m not the man to help you on that path.”

“Don’t be silly. Former priest and all that? You’re perfect, in more ways than one.” She gave his arse a squeeze he’d have laughed at if her words hadn’t so disturbed him.

“
Former
priest,” he told her carefully. “Look at me, Annalise. I am not the man to help you in your newfound faith. I have none.”

She blinked and frowned. “I don’t like you when you make sport of me, Cassian.”

“I’m not making sport. I’m telling you the truth.”

She stepped out of his embrace. “You have no faith?”

He held out his hands, fingers spread. “No.”

“But . . . but you . . .” She stepped back again, and again, expression twisting. “You’re a teacher of the Faith! Your purpose is to instruct novitiates in the Word of the Book, to teach them . . . how can you take on such a task with a clear conscience when everything you tell them feels to you a lie?”

“Teaching the Word is my purpose. It need not be my pleasure.” He reached for her, and she recoiled. He withdrew his grasp.

Her mouth thinned. “I don’t understand you.”

They’d spent some few hours in love compared to the many they’d spent at odds. His own mouth twisted on his reply. “If your lack of understanding surprises you, Annalise, I fear I will find you quite foolish.”

He knew just where to poke her, to prick and stab. To his shame, Cassian discovered he wanted to. He wanted to force her away from him.

“Then I am, indeed, a fool.” Her voice broke and, Void take her, she began to weep. “And I am not at all surprised.”

He could have gone after her. It would’ve taken two of his steps to reach her, one arm’s length to grab. Instead, Cassian watched her go.

He was not surprised, either.

A
s a girl, Annalise once stumbled upon a bright-plumed bird that had flown into a window and fallen stunned to the ground. No bigger than the palm of her hand, all big eyes and gaping mouth, it had peeped pitifully in her cradled hands. Tiny feet, hollow bones, feathers of blue and red and green. She’d never seen so lovely a creature from so close a view.

She held it only for a few moments, long enough to feel the rapid patter of its heartbeat and the scratchiness of its brilliant feathers. It had seemed a precious and wondrous thing, that tiny bird. Recovering its wits, it had struggled in her fist. Rather than hold it tight to keep it, as she’d wanted to, Annalise had let it go.

Perhaps her relationship with Cassian was like that bird. Precious and wondrous and fragile, fighting against being held so tight. Yet she found herself unable to open her fists and let it go.

She found him in his classroom alone behind his desk, the scent of ink still in the air. “Cassian.”

He looked up from the pages he’d been turning. She’d grown overused to his smile upon the sight of her; it stung worse than she wanted to admit to see the old wary coldness in his gaze. He set aside the book and stood.

“I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Yet here I am,” she said. “I’d like to speak to you.”

He didn’t move toward her even a hair’s distance. “You’ve said it all, I think.”

“Then you’d be wrong.” She moved between the rows of desks and stopped in front of his. She wanted to kiss him.

“I stand corrected.”

“Why must we ever be at odds? Why must everything between us be a battle?”

His dark eyes showed no glimmer of emotion. He shrugged. “Perhaps it ought to be a lesson to us.”

“No. I don’t accept that. I won’t.”

“Annalise,” Cassian said, “you have no choice.”

“Is that your answer to me, then? I have no choice? You’ve decided for both of us that we shall remain at a distance from each other? Is that what you . . . want?” She’d aimed to sound strident and managed until the very last, when her voice cracked and broke.

“It was foolish for me to respond to your advances. I know that now, and plead your mercy for it. I ought to have known better. There were other men here who might’ve taken the place of me—”

“I wanted no other man, and you know it. I made that clear from the first. You might’ve refused me, but you didn’t. Because you wanted me!” She forced the words from a raw throat.

He bent his head a little, eyes closing so that he didn’t have to look at her. “Wanting something is not always the best reason to take it.”

“I came here believing in little, and much has changed. Because of you, Cassian. Don’t tell me you haven’t changed as well, for I’ll call you a liar.”

“You’ve already called me a liar.”

Ashamed, Annalise swallowed against the pain. “I misspoke in anger. I beg your mercy. I was wrong to say such a thing.”

“No. You weren’t. It’s true. I’ve been a liar for the past ten years. I’ve lied to the Mothers and Sisters-in-Service who were kind enough to grant me a place. I’ve lied to the novitiates entrusted to me. And most of all, I lied to myself.” He looked at her, eyes bright and hard and cold enough to burn her. “I tried to lie to you, too.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Only because you would not allow it.”

She reached but dropped her hand when she saw he wouldn’t take it. “Are you familiar with the commentary written by Benvolo Deleon?”

His gaze grew wary. “Yes. I’ve read it, years long past now, but of course I did during my training.”

“Deleon interpreted the story of Sinder and Kedalya by saying that when Sinder came upon her in the woods, she asked him his name. Fearing he would frighten her should he reveal his true nature, Sinder first lied and gave her a false name.”

“Deleon’s commentary has wildly been denounced as whimsy. What name would Sinder give? What part would he play? As the Allcreator, he’d made the world. Who would ever mistake him for somewhat he was not? Certainly not Kedalya, unless she were an idiot.”

Annalise continued. “Deleon’s commentary was extrapolated by Garwin Alsider in a pamphlet he distributed himself along with several others.”

“I’m not familiar with Alsider.”

“You wouldn’t be. He was never a priest, just a man who found value in study. He dined out on those pamphlets for many years and was quite popular among certain groups whose common interests featured the Faith. He was a guest of my parents many times.”

Cassian raised a brow. “Your point is to make me aware there are commentaries about which I’m unaware? I assure you, Annalise, I know this. But Alsider’s pamphlets weren’t accepted as canon, therefore they’re of no more value than anything anyone could’ve written.”

“Alsider claimed,” Annalise continued, determined to make her point, “that Kedalya knew Sinder wasn’t telling her the truth. She knew who he was. She allowed the lie because it served them both for him to woo her as another, first. One who was not a god, but a man.”

He stared. “Make your point.”

“Sinder lied to Kedalya to save her from himself and yet she loved him anyway. It didn’t matter what he called himself, or what face he gave her. She loved him anyway.”

Annalise wasn’t on her knees, but she was Waiting. One hand inside the palm of the other, cupping air. She remembered the beat and brush of wings, a rapid heartbeat, the rush of air as the bird flew away.

“You don’t need to save me from you,” she told him quietly. “Because I love you.”

In her dreams, in the fae stories, such a declaration was always met with a kiss and an embrace, with mingled laughter and tears and followed by a wedding.

This was not a fae story.

Cassian said naught. She waited for him to speak, or even to blink, at least to look at her, but his gaze had gone blank and far away. When her ears began to ring, Annalise realized she’d been holding her breath and let it out. Dizzy, she put a hand on the desk. Surely now, she thought, he will reach for me.

“You should go,” Cassian told her.

Annalise managed another sip of air. “No.”

Cassian slammed the text closed, the sound like thunder. “Did you not hear what I told you yesterday?”

“I heard everything you said! Every word!”

Now he moved closer, though not in the way she wanted. He menaced, standing tall above her without touching. His gaze, still cold fire, blazed.

“I do not believe in Sinder and Kedalya. I don’t believe in the Word of the Book, I don’t believe in commentaries. All of it is pretty fiction, made up by men to satisfy their need for explanation. None of it is true. There is this world and the Void and naught else. I do not,” Cassian bit out, “have faith. A priest without faith is naught but a man. And a man without faith, Annalise, is no man at all.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’ve said it.”

She stepped closer, this time to snag his sleeve. Her fingertips ran down the fine cloth to find his flesh at the end of it. “It’s not true.”