Chapter Seventeen
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
The midday meal was a gathering of all the nobles of the court, including Jileana’s father and five of her brothers, Silan, Lalo, Misan, Kidas, and Gruen.
Lalo, Misan, and Gruen seemed a little more laid-back than their surly elder brother, Silan.
The jury was still out on the remaining one who seemed to be watching him with sharp eyes.
Jaykun watched the proceedings around him quietly and with a careful eye.
He decided he liked her brothers after only a short while of watching them.
They were clearly careful and thoughtful where their brother Silan was headlong and headstrong.
Also amongst the attendants was a beautiful woman with sea-green hair and fey features, including pointed ears. It was instantly obvious, even to him, that she was not a selkie. And when Jileana’s eyes settled on her, she went hard with instant tension at his side.
“Oh no!” she cried softly. “I had forgotten!”
“What is it?” he asked her quietly.
“The siren ambassador!”
At her words he began to share her tension.
The idea that this woman could open her mouth, sing a few notes, and ever after hold him in a thrall of love made his soul go cold.
He had been in the thrall of love once before.
He would never wish to be so stricken by that emotion again—and left blind to the faults of his partner because of it.
He did not want a woman to have the power to manipulate him at her whim. He could think of no worse fate.
“We must visit my mother after this,” she said anxiously. “Surely she has a spell that can counteract the effects of a siren’s call.”
“A wise plan. I am not comfortable being within earshot of her.”
“For now it is best we do not draw any attention to you,” she said.
But as luck would have it, attention quickly turned solely to him.
Jalaya was utterly fascinated by him and would hear nothing from anyone else at the table.
The “table” was a cleared, raised platform of stone around which everyone sat cross-legged.
Servers circled the table with trays full of various selections and allowed for each individual to choose what they wished and how much of it they wished.
Jalaya focused completely on Jaykun, laughed at him, lavished him with her attentions.
It wasn’t long before Jileana realized Jalaya was flirting with him—and an even shorter period of time before jealousy set in.
It wrapped itself hard and fierce around her heart and she shocked herself with the level of hostility she suddenly felt toward the empress.
What was wrong with her? she asked herself.
She had wanted Jaykun to find a useful position in the empress’s attentions, had she not?
Had they not come here with the sole purpose of striking an accord between Jalaya and Jaykun?
But an accord was one thing, a flirtation something else entirely. Did the empress not see that Jaykun was hers? But if the empress decided she wanted Jaykun, what power did either of them have to refuse her? It was her court, her power, her rules. They would merely be pawns in her game.
Suddenly Jileana wished she had never brought him here. It would have been better if she’d just stayed in the world of humans for another month than risk him to sirens and bring him to Jalaya’s attention. Gods, what had she been thinking?
She had been trying to hold on to him at any cost, she realized with dawning comprehension.
They’d had only three days before she brought him here, and she had not been ready to let him go.
She had swiftly become addicted to having him in her life.
She had felt changed ever since meeting him.
At first she had thought it was because the Overworld was so different and new—so exciting.
But now she realized he had been a key factor in that excitement.
Oh, she would have found everything to be just as wondrous but her pure passion had been all Jaykun’s doing.
The understanding left her a little shaken.
She had known things with Jaykun were different—exciting and more than a little bit wild—but this was the first time she had considered there might be more to it than just simple good feelings and good times.
It was the first time she had considered there might be any depth to the relationship beyond what they were feeling at any given moment.
But what truly made the comprehension dreadful was the understanding that Jaykun would never want anything beyond what they were already sharing.
She didn’t know why he closed himself off, but he most definitely shut down whenever it came to his emotions.
Perhaps it was because of his curse, because of the limitations set upon him by Weysa.
Yes, she was sure that was it. He was not free to give himself, and so he did not wish to engage in any behaviors that might bring another’s feelings into the mix, that might leave someone else vulnerable and hurting, because he was unable to give himself completely.
But Jileana did not need completeness. She did not need all of him in order to be happy.
She would be content with exactly what she had right now: time with him, in his arms and in his bed.
True, she knew his attention to her could not last; he had a duty to perform and he could not be swayed from it, be it for circumstance or for his honor.
He would honor his bargain with Weysa until the end.
Were he free of the curse tomorrow she believed he would still fight in Weysa’s name and for her cause.
He was a warrior at heart and a principled one at that.
And Jileana would follow him. She knew in a heartbeat that she would leave her world, leave all of her friends and family behind, just to follow Jaykun into the world of humans.
And she knew his goals might take him far from the ocean, that she might be cut off from all ocean water for long periods of time—months …
maybe even years—if she followed him. Still she did not care.
She would riot mind. She would easily trade away the comforts of the ocean for the comfort of his arms.
But right now there was a danger far more serious than being separated from the ocean.
If Jalaya formed an attachment to Jaykun, if she set her sights on him, there would be a great deal of trouble to be had.
And now Jaykun was stuck within Jalaya’s reach for the next three weeks.
How were they to avoid her, and avoid her attentions?
Disturbed, Jileana found herself leaning into his body, settling her weight against him, and setting her chin on his shoulder.
To her pleasure, he reached up and buried a warm hand in her hair, petting her absently as he talked with the empress of the selkies.
Whatever Jalaya’s intentions were, Jileana took comfort in the thought that it was very unlikely that Jaykun would go along with those intentions.
Not unless he was given no choice. And maybe not even then.
She simply did not know. The best idea would be to remove him from the equation as often as she could.
But she didn’t see how that was possible.
It was a dangerous quandary for them to be in.
“Tell me … are all human men as intelligent as you are?” Jalaya was asking him.
“No. Not all. Haven’t you ever been to the Overworld?” Jaykun asked her.
“I have … once, when I was very young. I spent a full month in the world of men. I wanted to see what it was like for myself. I also was trying to escape the demands of my family.” The empress gave Jileana a knowing wink.
“But that was almost two hundred years ago and I was not impressed with men at the time.”
“In some ways men are greatly different than they were two hundred years ago; in others they are ever the same.” Jaykun was silent a moment. “I do not think you would like the Overworld much. This place is idyllic compared to the Overworld. Were I another man I might never wish to leave.”
“But you are not that man?” she asked curiously.
“No. I have too many responsibilities awaiting me in the Overworld. My brothers as well. And I am bound by my goddess to serve her. Also, I search for my lost brother.”
“Lost brother? How was he lost?”
Jaykun hesitated. His first instinct was to avoid talking about his curse and what he and his brothers had done to prompt it.
But this was not the Overworld. It was a different place, a place set apart from the world of humans.
In the end, he gave her a quick retelling of the tale, ending with each cursed brother’s fate.
“Each of us was consigned to punishment by a different god. Weysa thrust my brother Dethan into the bowels of the eight hells. Hella chained my brother Garreth to a frozen mountainside. Lothas chained me to a star, and Sabo buried my brother Maxum beneath the soil. Maxum is the only one who has not been freed from his curse and we search for him everywhere we go.”
“And what will you do if you find him?” Jalaya asked him, suddenly seeming less open to him, less flirtatious.
Her body language had changed significantly.
This hardly surprised Jaykun. It was nerve-racking, no doubt, to be close to someone who was so damned by the gods.
It amazed him that Jileana did not react similarly.
Perhaps it was for the best. He had not been blind to Jalaya’s flirtations and interest. He had just avoided opening a tricky can of worms.
“Bring him up out of the ground. Hope that we can free him from his curse somehow. We haven’t thought that far ahead. We must find him first before the rest can be worried about.”