Chapter 10 We who have not sinned
We who have not sinned
Will bear the punishment of those who have
~ Unknown
The night was late. The square had grown quiet, for the most part. There were those who still drunkenly roamed the streets and lazily chased giggling women into the night, but none could escape the need to eventually sleep. Including us.
I stood at the open window of our second-story room at one of the only inns staring into the disheveled alley below where two men argued over something trivial. I doubted they could even understand each other’s drunken slurs, but it was mildly entertaining.
Behind me, Vidar was undressing. He’d managed to get a room with a brass tub.
I assumed it had been stolen because it didn’t match the rest of the rugged decor.
The mattress was on a simple wooden frame.
The floors were worn, stained, and full of dents and scrapes.
The window had only one shutter on it and the fireplace hadn’t been cleaned in ages.
Piles of ash sat around it like someone had simply moved it aside. The tub, however, was quite nice.
I turned to look at Vidar as he tested the water with his hand. He and Mullins had been hauling buckets of it from downstairs for nearly an hour and in that time, any warmth had been leeched out of it. But I didn’t mind.
I watched as he unbuckled his belt and began removing his pants and leather boots.
I took my time admiring his physique once there were no more clothes to obscure it.
He’d lost a bit of weight since we left the north, but it only made his muscle tone stand out like his skin had tightened over his toughened frame.
Cocking my head, I licked my gaze slowly up his body, savoring the look of him.
When he noticed, his mouth curled into that smirk. The one I hated not too long ago.
“Get a good enough look, love?” he said, his voice low and smooth. “Or should I refrain from getting in the water for a bit longer?”
I shrugged off my linen coat and tossed it on the edge of the bed as I gradually moved toward him. I reveled in the way he ogled me as I slid out of my britches and then pulled my bloody blouse over my head. My braid fell to the top of my hips as I left a trail of clothing on the floor behind me.
Outside, I feigned being human. I willed more color into my skin and less silver into my eyes.
With Vidar, I could shed it all. He knew what I was.
He knew every ugly little detail of my body and my soul.
I was a canvas of scars that told every hardship I’d faced.
The crescent bite where a shark nearly ripped out my lungs.
The lashings on my back. The scar across my throat and a hundred other small marks.
They were all remnants of the things that tried to destroy me and failed.
But the one that mattered was the one stretching from my ear to the corner of my mouth. The one that was made with a bronze blade. The one Vidar gave me. I had once thought it a curse to be constantly reminded of the day it all fell apart, but now I knew it was the day it all came together.
Vidar let his gaze roam over every bit of me before our eyes met again. He held out his hand, beckoning me closer and slowly, the two of us stepped into the tub, each settling opposite the other. The water was lukewarm at best after sitting near the fire, but we both thought it a luxury.
I longed to change, though. I longed to feel my fins and cut through the water like I used to. I hadn’t been able to do so in months without wondering if something was coming to collect me.
Closing my eyes, I sank deeper into the large, clawfoot tub, and leaned back against the edge with a moan.
I listened as Vidar dipped a cloth into the water and began scrubbing his skin.
We both fit in the water quite easily, but our legs met in the middle.
I absently let my foot roam across his calf and up the inside of his thigh until I felt his sizable cock against the ball of my foot.
He grew instantly harder when I stroked him and I grinned, lifting my head to meet his gaze.
He was staring at me with a sultry smile so I stroked him again, testing his control. I watched him suck in a breath as if I’d hit a nerve, but then he reached down into the water and wrapped his fingers around my ankle, stopping any further goading.
“Talk to me,” he said, catching me off guard.
“What do you mean?”
Lifting my leg partway out of the water, he ran the wet cloth over my skin in a slow, gentle manner from my ankle to my knee.
“That siren. She had hate in her eyes.”
“I’m Kroan. Most sirens hate us.”
“Why?”
“Because we have a violent history. You cannot tell me religion has not demanded your kind do horrible things in the past. Humans have many beliefs. The Kroan are Daughters of Akareth. We believe anyone who does not serve the father is a blasphemer. I wasn’t around during the purge, but it was talked about when I was growing up. ”
“The purge?”
I cleared my throat, settling my arms on the edge of the tub.
“Aeris is an Yri. A race of sirens I thought no longer existed. They had no god. They did not believe in Akareth let alone serve him. It was rumored that they did not even need to breed to have children. That they did not get called to the depths to be impregnated by our god. They claimed the ocean gave them children, which of course was heresy. Truth, evidently, is heresy.”
“Truth? So they do not need a man or anything else to give birth?”
“No. Many sirens need only be ready for their belly to grow offspring. I learned that when I was banished and I met Meridan and her sisters. But Kroans believe otherwise.” My eyes wandered to the hearth for a moment, soaking in the dancing flames as I recalled the stories.
“It was foolish of me to think no Yri survived, I suppose. It was a whole population, after all. But, growing up, we were all told the Yri had been burned from the world.”
“What happened?”
“The Kroan descended on them in a battle that lasted less than a week. The Yri were not fighters. They had no song. They did not feed on humans the way others do. They were shamanistic and spiritual, so when my people attacked them, it was not a fight. It was a massacre. The Kroan are strong. Aggressive. We’re taught to fight early and we’re taught everyone is the enemy.
The Yri had very few warriors whereas Kroans are not given a choice.
We learn to fight and kill or we die. A whole clan of sirens was slaughtered almost overnight.
My people intercepted them in their migration and ambushed thousands over a bloody few days, skryll after skryll. ”
Vidar lowered my leg into the water and mimicked my posture, resting his arms on the edges of the tub. I watched him, waiting for him to say something, but he remained silent. He had no right to judge me. Of all people, he had no right.
“When did the purge happen?”
“Nearly sixty years ago. My mother was a part of it. She had plenty of stories to tell. Were I born sooner, I would have been a part of it as well. I would have thought I was doing the right thing because that is what we’re taught.”
“And Meridan’s people? Why were they not treated the same?”
“The Naros also serve Akareth. They must. Deephome is too close to the depths not to feel his presence. Or… the presence of something.”
“How many of you serve him?”
“Many. Or many pretend to out of fear.”
Vidar dipped his hands into the water and scrubbed his face. “Fear is the greatest power to have over someone.”
“Until it isn’t. Everyone gets tired of being afraid eventually.”
“Your history seems just as grim and twisted as ours. There have been many massacres in the name of religion throughout our history. And in the name of other, pointless things. There is no reasoning when all who fight believe there to be only one path. And behind it all, someone is always pulling the strings, playing us all like figures on a game board.”
Looking at Vidar eased some of my disgust. I never thought being close to him would feel like a salve on a festering wound, but it did. He soothed the ache in me in the most demanding, forceful way. The exact way I needed.
Slowly, I crept forward, easing closer to him until my chest was pressed against his and my legs were straddling his hips to accommodate the new position.
“What do you believe in, Vidar Woelfson?”
“I believe in no god. I make my path and I am responsible for every choice. Every mistake.”
“And do you take comfort in that?”
“Great comfort. When you know your life is in your hands, it’s liberating.
Devastating at times, but worth the freedom to choose.
It is a great burden to bear knowing you are fully responsible for your future, but it is a burden I gladly carry.
It’s a coward’s way out to blame your actions on a higher power.
To blame your failures on something else and to rely on that thing for your successes. ”
My fingers slowly crawled up his chest to the jagged scar that stretched down his sternum.
“But control is a lie,” I muttered, coiling my fingers around the necklace that now held his pendant around his neck. “I could so easily take that freedom from you like my mother did when she made you kill your father.”
“But you can choose not to,” he whispered, grabbing my wrist and easing my hand away from his chest. “And that is not the will of a god. That is you. We chose not to kill each other when everything in this world was driving us to do so.”
I met his eyes, sinking deep within those umber depths. They lit up against the firelight, making his eyes look full of flames.
“I would never hurt you,” I whispered. “Not if it is my will controlling my hand. You know that, right?”
He sat up, lifting his head toward me. “Then say you love me.”
The statement caught me off guard. I blinked at his words, finding them to be almost amusing.
“You know I—”