The Sea Thy Mistress (20 page)

“Because there’s a little bit less of you to hurt, you stupid bastard!” Selene wanted to hit him. She wanted to drag him in front of a mirror and make him look at the bruises.

He shook his head slightly, covering the lower half of his face with his hand. “It’s just a little bit of peace. Cathmar … everything.” His voice broke. “Cathmar won’t even come to see me anymore, Selene.”

“It might have something to do with the welts on your neck, you know. I also know that Mingan tried to help you, and you wouldn’t talk to him.”

“He tried to feed me some bullshit story about Muire not being Muire.” He came around the counter toward her, hands spread wide.

She bristled. “The same bullshit story
I
tried to feed you, I think?”

He said nothing for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle. “You should go, Selene. I don’t want to ruin our friendship, and you’re distraught.”

“Fine,” she said, picking up her pack. “But I want you to promise me you’ll go down to the ocean at moonrise and summon her. Ask her yourself who it was that came to you that day.”

He closed his eyes. It wasn’t a promise.

She walked through the door, turned, and closed it behind her, unable to breathe until the panel edge cut off her view of his stricken face. She’d scored.

The knowledge tasted like so much rotten meat on her tongue. She wondered if she’d ever walk through that door again.

*   *   *

Well,
Cahey thought,
my perfect record for driving people away remains intact.

He sat down on the floor, his back against the wall, and waited for the Imogen to come.

*   *   *

Mingan’s steed bore Selene back to the independent city of Freimarc with sorrowful beats of his wings. Neither one of them spoke.

Selene’s lover, thoughtful on a faded burgundy brocade couch, looked up as she entered the room. “It did not go well,” Mingan said, standing and crossing the old wooden floor to her. Her nostrils flared at the scent of bitterness that hung around him. Animal pungency tickled her with desire as she stepped into his embrace.

She hid her face against the joint of his arm and body. “It didn’t,” she answered. “He’s far gone.”

She felt Mingan nod.

“I’ll go to him. Soon. When he’s had time to think about what you told him,” he whispered.

His body was hot and hard against hers. She leaned into his unyielding strength, shaking her head slowly, side to side, waiting for her fur to flatten and her ears to lift.
He can be gentle as well as strong, Cahey,
she thought.
I never would have known it, either. Unflinching, brutal, yes—but how different was Muire? How different are any of us?

He stroked Selene’s short mane, whispering words that didn’t mean anything. At last, she stopped shivering and looked up at his face.

“There has been too much sorrow,” he said.

She nodded. “Comfort me?”

The smile rearranged his careworn face into a beacon. “Lovely Selene,” he said. “Your wish is my command.” He bore her up in his arms, and she relaxed in his grip like a trusting cat.

That couch, it turned out, was too far away. She twined her arms around his neck, ever-so-careful of her claws, and raised her mouth to his.

He brushed her lips with his own, if she could really be said to have lips. She felt the shapes of his face outlined against her whiskers and closed her eyes, the better to read the image. She let her tongue come out against him, lightly, and relished the salt of his skin.

He sighed, and she tasted the promise of his breath like a flame.

Thee,
he said inside her. Her mouth curled open in a mating snarl, a low growl rising up her throat. He breathed across her face as if across the mouthpiece of a flute; she turned her head to catch the scent of his exhalation.

Her barbed tongue left a scrape across his face: she tasted blood. He chuckled, still holding her effortlessly in arms as unyielding as a sculpture’s. His right hand slid up along her spine and knotted on the scruff of her neck, drawing gently, firmly, on the loose bit of skin.

Soft as a kitten, she sagged in his arms.

Would that it could be different, my dear,
he said to her.

I’d claw your eyes out and you know it,
she replied, trying not to fight the sensation of her body relaxing beyond her control. She
was
first a cat, after all.

By the shape outlined against her whiskers she knew when he licked his lips, closed his eyes, and bent into the kiss.

*   *   *

Her mouth is slack against his, unresponsive, long teeth white and fine as bone needles pressed against his lip. He would have scars, if he scarred, from trying to kiss her without immobilizing her first, and yet still he longs for the feeling of her body striving against his. He can sense the lively mind quick within her; the fey, divided soul.

He breathes into her mouth.

A low, druggy purr starts in the bottom of her chest. He hugs her against his breast, deepening the kiss, locking his knees to hold them up as his awareness leaves his body and floods into her. She takes him in, draws him deep, leaves him dizzy and entranced.

A long, seeking, dreaming moment, and she gives him back to himself, breath forced out between the razorsharp teeth. He tastes his own blood and presses closer, drawing out the pleasure, taking as slowly as he can bear.

A long time later, he lifts his mouth from hers, eyes still closed, listening to the heavy rumble of her purr. He lets his fingers relax on the back of her neck, and she turns in his arms, cuddling like a kitten against his throat. Her whiskers tickle. “Good,” she sighs, contented.

“Very good indeed.”

*   *   *

He asked the Imogen to use the door, so she comes through the door.

He looks up at her. She tastes his pain in the room. Sweet.

Sweeter than ever.

Thick as incense.

He doesn’t rise. She comes to him and kneels down as he shapes her.

She shivers at the power of his sorrow, his need. She leans into him. Incense.

Her lips brush his skin beside the bruises.

“Not the throat.”

“As you wish it, Lord.” Clawless, human fingers are nimble on the buttons.

50 A.R.
On the Twentieth Day of Autumn

Cats excel at guilt. So Cathmar decided before he even started strategizing that whatever happened was all Selene’s fault. Once he had the plan, he sprang it on Mardoll over breakfast. Her breakfast, eaten while he sat across from her at the laminate table, playing with his bowl of tea. “I’m going out to see Dad today.”

She looked up from hardtack and herring and raised a pale eyebrow. “I’ll come with you, if you like.”

He chewed on the thought while she chewed on her crispbread. She had a little sour cream on her cheek. He handed her a napkin.

Twisting the cloth between her fingers, she waited for his answer.

“All right,” he said. “I don’t know how he’ll be.”

She shrugged. “You think he’s in a bad place. Your moreau friend is working on you to help him. He’s your dad. What else am I going to do?” The smile dimpled her cheek.

He gave it back. “Whenever you’re ready, then.”

An hour later, delayed by a side trip to the livery stable, they rode double down to the sea. The sturdy red mare didn’t mind two slender riders.

They heard the sound of the axe before they came within sight of the cabin. Cathmar, riding before—after a great deal of instruction, Mardoll was finally trusting him with the reins—glanced over his shoulder at Mardoll.

“Chopping wood?”

He was. Shirtless, sweating in the late-summer sunshine, Cahey split logs. Kindling flew from the point of impact. The axehead stuck into the stump. He straightened, releasing the handle, wiped his hair back from his eyes.

A wary expression crossed his face.

Cathmar saw one, two bruises marking his father’s chest. One was faded, nearly gone. The other was darker, recent but not fresh.

Mardoll leaned forward to whisper in Cathmar’s ear. “That looks better than what you described.”

Cathmar nodded. He reined Elder in and waited for Mardoll to slide down before swinging his leg over the mare’s haunches. He dropped her reins on the ground as Mardoll had shown him and reached up to scratch behind the ear Elder swiveled.

“Dad.”

Cahey reeled out a long arm and retrieved a light-colored shirt from a nearby beach plum. “Cathmar. This must be Mardoll.” Buttoning the shirt, Cahey came forward and offered the girl his hand. “A pleasure to finally meet you,” he said.

She dimpled and giggled, glancing over at Cathmar, catching his eye with her smile. “Likewise,” she said.

Cahey released the girl’s hand and turned toward Cathmar. “Come inside,” Cahey said. “Let’s get out of the sun. Does your horse need water?”

Mardoll nodded. “She’d appreciate it, I’m sure. You can’t have a well this close to the sea, though.” Cathmar got the impression that Mardoll was watching Cahey very carefully. Assessing.

Cahey jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s a spring back up the road. We keep the barrels full.” He paused. “I mean, I keep the barrels full.”

He failed to look at Cathmar. “Bucket in the shed.”

The mare watered, her saddle off and her bit slipped, they filed into the house in silence. Cahey started tea. For something to do with his hands, Cathmar thought.

The fussing in the kitchen started to annoy him. “Dad.”

Cahey set down the teapot and came over to the stone slab counter, leaning over it. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

Cahey thought about it for a minute while the silence stretched between them. “I’m sorry, too,” he said, and turned back into the kitchen. Cathmar didn’t miss the darkness surging under the bright irises of his father’s eyes.

That and the quietness behind everything he said scared Cathmar.
I’m glad I came,
he thought.
No bruises. But he’s worse; he’s not better.

Cahey finished making tea before bringing the speckled stoneware pot out into the living room; he poured bowls for each of them and settled down on the red and blue knotted rug in front of the cold fireplace. Cathmar plunked down opposite; Mardoll sat in the chair by the door.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Cahey said, formally, cupping his hands around his steaming bowl.

And that was a bad sign, that formality, treating Cathmar like a guest. Maybe bringing Mardoll had been a bad idea, because Cathmar found he couldn’t ask what he needed to in front of her. About the Imogen, about whether Cahey had been up to the village or seen the moreaux. About what he’d been doing with his time, and why he was still here in this cottage now that Cathmar had moved out.

He couldn’t get around any of those questions, though, so instead he said, “The next time you come up to the city, let me know. You still haven’t seen where I live.”

Cahey glanced sidelong at Mardoll, as if checking her reaction. She stood a little behind Cathmar and he couldn’t have seen her face from where he sat without craning, so he tried to read her expression in his father’s reaction.

“I’d like that,” Cahey said, looking down. “Give me an excuse to come into town.”

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

Cahey sat on a rock overlooking the sea. A small drum rested in the hollow of his crossed legs, and his scarred fingers tapped idly around the edges of it in rhythm to the waves. He felt her coming toward him, of course, but he didn’t turn until the last moment.

“Mardoll,” he said, nodding as pleasantly as he could. “I thought you would have left.”

“With Cathmar? I told him I wanted to talk to you alone, as an interested stranger. I’ll catch up.” The wide collar of her pleated white shift slid down her shoulder. The wind scarfed it between her legs, translucent fabric gliding over her hips and thighs. She tilted her face up to him and smiled, tawny hair tangled by the wind. An elaborate necklace encircled her throat, sparkling with rainbow-hued stones.

She doesn’t look sixteen or eighteen anymore.
He looked away, back out to sea.
Not the sort of thought you want to have about your son’s girlfriend,
he reminded himself.

His fingers ran a shimmer around the edge of the drum. Mardoll scrambled up the stone easily, settling down beside him. Her shoulder didn’t brush his, but he could feel her body heat. “Why don’t you come up to the chapel with me?” she said. “I’d like to hear the story in your words.”

He shook his head. “Anything I could tell you, Cathmar already has.” He gave her a sidelong glance, catching her sea-blue gaze with the edge of his own. She stared at him, a direct and challenging regard that ran straight down his spine.
The only way she could be plainer is if she reached down my pants and grabbed my balls.