Selfish Is the Heart Read online

  The house was more a hovel than anything, two tiny rooms with an arch between them and outdoor plumbing in the yard behind. No wonder Calvis looked so rough. Cassian sat, careful not to snag the hem of his tunic on the wood sticking out from the seat.

  “Look at you.” Calvis lit the bowl and waved the fragrant smoke forth before breathing deep. “Land Above, I can’t get used to it.”

  Cassian ran a hand over his newly bald head, still smooth. “It does feel strange.”

  “Cold?”

  “Yes. That.” More than that. Watching the dark strands pile up at his feet while the priest ran the razor over his skull, Cassian had felt distanced. Aloof. Only after, staring in the looking glass at his strange reflection, had he understood for the first time how it felt to be different than his brother.

  “Nobody could mistake us for each other now,” Calvis told him. He quaffed from the jug of worm and handed Cassian the bowl.

  Cassian held it in his palms and breathed, knowing his brother would expect him to put it aside. Smoke coated his throat, his lungs, and he held it in until his head buzzed. Calvis stared.

  “Nobody,” Calvis said again. “By the Arrow, Cassian, you’ve done that before.”

  Cassian had, in fact, partaken of both herb and worm many times, just never with his brother, who couldn’t be trusted to keep himself together when he was indulging. It had always seemed more important to be sure one of them remained sober than for Cassian to participate in his brother’s vices.

  He returned the bowl. “Yes.”

  Calvis snorted low laughter and pulled up a chair across from his brother. “You have unplumbed depths and secrets from me?”

  “No secrets.”

  Calvis shook his head, watching his brother with grave eyes. “Would you tell me of the rituals of the priesthood?”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Then, my brother, you have secrets.”

  “Would you tell me who’s hired you to kill for them?”

  Calvis lifted a finger. “If I tell you the names of those who pay for my skills, you might be called to testify against me. I can’t have that.”

  “So you have secrets, too.”

  “A thousand of them, brother, and more. Which I’ve never denied. Drink up.”

  They both drank, then smoked. Calvis brought out a platter of stale bread and hard cheese, but flavored with intoxication, the food was delicious. They laughed and joked, much like they’d done as boys. It was the closest Cassian had felt to his brother for a very long time.

  Later, both of them so tired as to have thrown themselves across Calvis’s bed, Calvis ran a hand over Cassian’s head. The sensation of his fingers rasping over stubble still invisible sent a chill down Cassian’s spine, and he drew away. Calvis rolled onto his back.

  “No mistaking one for the other,” he said again.

  “No. But those who know us wouldn’t confuse us, anyway.” Cassian yawned, thinking of how he should return home, how Bertricia would be waiting for him to visit her upon the morrow, and how he had duties to fulfill at the temple. He tried rolling onto his side to get up, but fell back with a laugh.

  “Stay here,” Calvis said with a glance. “You can’t possibly walk the distance tonight.”

  “No.” Cassian yawned again, eyes closing. “Though I fear the journey might be even worse in the morning, with daylight splitting my head.”

  Calvis laughed. The bed shifted. Cassian felt the weight of his brother’s gaze and turned onto his side to face him. Head to head, foot to foot, with a handspan between them. This, too, they hadn’t done since they’d been boys.

  “I’ve missed you,” Calvis said.

  “You went away, brother.”

  “I came back,” Calvis pointed out. “I was never gone for long. I could never be gone for long.”

  Cassian didn’t say that Calvis had gone away and come back, true, but it hadn’t ever been the same once he’d left. “Nothing stays the same, you know.”

  “Ah, but once we shared everything. A womb, a room. Clothes. Once we ate from the same plate, drank from the same cup. Wore the same face.” Calvis’s palm passed over Cassian’s head again, then pulled away. “I thought we’d always have that, at least.”

  Cassian yawned again, jaw-cracking. “You’ll ever be my brother. You know that.”

  “Ever and always?” Calvis asked.

  “Of course.”

  The bed shifted as Calvis turned once more onto his back. “Cassian, would you love me no matter what I did?”

  It was too late and Cassian too drunk for this sort of conversation, but he struggled up onto one elbow anyway. “I do love you. Of course. And I suspect you’ve done much.”

  Calvis looked at him. “Becoming a priest doesn’t mean you condemn me for what a brother would forgive?”

  “No. Of course not. Well”—Cassian paused, struggling to think around the fog of herb and worm—“I suppose I should say no, that now I’m a priest I should urge you toward redemption. That I should send up supplication for the saving of your soul.”

  “You don’t think my soul worth saving?” Calvis sounded amused but looked sad.

  “I don’t think you’ve done anything that would endanger your immortal soul.”

  “Ah. The taking of coin in exchange for taking of life isn’t enough?”

  That was a tricky question, one Cassian should’ve known the answer to and would have, had the asker been any other but Calvis. “Were the men you killed villains?”

  Calvis shrugged. “To those who wanted them dead, yes. I’d imagine so.”

  Cassian chewed on his answer in an attempt at speaking coherently. “Murder is wrong.”

  “I know that,” Calvis said, annoyed. “Sinder’s Balls, Cassian. I do know that.”

  “I can’t condone it, but I can’t condemn you for it. Because you are my brother, and yes. I love you, no matter what you do.”

  Calvis rolled onto his side again to stare. “You’d not say such a thing if you knew all that I’d done.”

  “Worse than murder?” Cassian looked dubious.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s worse than killing?”

  Calvis shook his head, and the sheets beneath his head rumpled. He yawned, eyes closing, and Cassian thought perhaps his brother was feigning sleep to avoid the question. Which might not be a bad idea, his weary mind thought as his eyes closed, too. Whatever could be worse than killing was naught he wished to learn of his brother.

  When the knock came at the door, Cassian didn’t get out of his brother’s bed to open it, but when the soft scent of perfume wafted over him, and a low, throaty feminine laugh tickled his ear, he sat straight up. Too late. The woman in the bed had her hand on his crotch, her mouth on his ear. Her tongue traced a delicious pattern on his skin, down his throat, which she nipped. She laughed when he pushed her away.

  She looked at Calvis. “He doesn’t look so much like you.”

  “Believe me, he’s not very much like me at all.” Calvis stripped off his shirt and joined them on the bed. “But you won’t care about that, sweetheart. Will you?”

  “I daresay I shall not,” she purred, and reached again for Cassian.

  Head heavy and drunk, Cassian was slow moving but managed to hold off her grasping hands. “What’s this?”

  “Consider it a gift, little brother.” Calvis had stripped out of his trousers, too, and lay back against the shabby wooden headboard, idly stroking his cock.

  It was far from the first time Cassian had seen his brother naked, and not the first he’d seen him with a woman. If he hadn’t been so intoxicated, he might’ve tried harder to push her away again when she slipped into the space between him and Calvis and nudged at Cassian’s jaw with her chin so that she might again press her lips to his flesh. Her hand found his thigh, moved higher.

  He was a man, after all.

  “You didn’t lie, love. You and him are not a thing alike.” The woman said this afterwards, from across