Sea Lord (24 page)

Iestyn’s face hardened in a curiously adult expression. And then she remembered. He only looked like a

teenager. “The dog did not protect you when Gau attacked.”

No, she had protected herself.

“I’ll be fine,” Lucy repeated. The Hunter family motto, used to guard secrets and deflect concern. She

frowned, curiosity momentarily winning through her longing to be gone. “How much did you see, spying

from the wall?”

“Enough to know you should not be wandering outside the walls alone.”

His concern was sincere and touching. “Conn said I was safe here.”

“You could still get lost or turn an ankle. And then I’d be in trouble. I cannot let you go.”

She raised her chin. “You can’t stop me.”

Iestyn grinned at her, a boy’s grin, teasing, daring. “Will you put it to the test?”

Um, no. For all his wiry build, he was as tall as she was and as leanly muscled as a high school runner.

“How old are you?” she asked.

Another grin. “I’ll tell if you let me come with you.”

She blinked. Was he . . . Could he be trying to flirt with her? There was a complication none of them

needed.

But his friendly smile was balm to her bruised ego.

“That’s okay. I’m not that interested,” she said and set off down the hill.

Madadh ranged ahead, his long tail gently waving like the flag on the back of a bicycle. The wind plucked

at Lucy’s hair and stirred the high weeds of the orchard. The heavy-sweet scent of apples carried on the

breeze.

Iestyn fell into step beside her. “I was twelve when the prince brought me to Sanctuary.”

That caught her attention. “Conn brought you?”

Iestyn nodded. “He paid my father in gold.”

“How did your mother feel about that?”

“I do not know. My mother is selkie.” He slid her a sideways glance. “Like yours.”

“But . . . Didn’t you see her after you came here?”

“No. She did not want me,” he explained simply. “I was conceived in human form, so all the time she

carried me she could not go to sea. She gave me to my father as soon as a nurse could be found. I do

not remember her, and I doubt that she remembers me.”

Like Conn, Lucy thought with a pang at her heart. Poor boy. Poor lost boys. “It must have been hard for

you to leave your dad.”

Iestyn shrugged. “He was sorry to lose me just as I grew big enough to help around the farm. But my

lord gave him enough gold to hire many men.”

They waded through the orchard grass, threaded with wild strawberry vines and jeweled with tiny blue

and white flowers. Fruit still clung to the low branches, dark as garnets, golden as moons, and under each

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tree a ring of wind-falls lay like a necklace.

“I mean, it must have been hard for you emotionally,” Lucy said.

“I could not stay,” Iestyn said.

“Why not?”

“I was near my Change.” He raised his head to watch the hound, trotting out of the trees and up the

slope on the opposite side. “The first time is hard, even when you are prepared. You must generate your

own skin from the inside. It hurts. Like your guts being torn out.”

“But you don’t have to Change,” Lucy said before she could stop herself.

Her lungs squeezed in her chest. Her heart pounded. For a moment she was a fourteen-year-old

runaway again in the seedy gas station outside Richmond, puking her guts into the dirty washroom toilet,

dying on the cold tile floor.

Iestyn turned and regarded her with narrowed golden eyes. “Of course you do. All selkies Change. We

cannot help it. It is our nature.”

Lucy forced herself to breathe. All selkies Change.

She was not selkie.

They hiked up the hill after Madadh, now scrambling through and over the rocks. The climb pulled the

overworked muscles of her thighs, eased the tightness in her hamstrings. The sun poured down like

honey, edging the shadows. The breeze carried the faintest trace of smoke from this morning’s fires.

“So you need somebody with you?” she asked.

Iestyn nodded. “It helps for the Change. And after. The pull of the sea is strong and hard to break. You

need a guide with you the first time out, to help you find your way back.”

“And without a guide?”

He shrugged again. “You stay beneath the wave. Forever, maybe. Unless it occurs to you to come

ashore.”

She tried to guess what would bring a selkie ashore. “Like for food?”

“Er.” Iestyn’s face reddened. “For sex, mostly.”

“Oh.” She swallowed. Of course. Her own mother . . . And Maggie . . .

A long, low howl echoed from the rocks ahead and then another and another in an eerie chorus that

quivered up her spine.

Madadh crouched, ears flattening, hair raising along his shoulders.

Lucy shivered. “What was that?”

“Wolves.”

She stopped dead. “
Wolves?
”

Iestyn flashed her another grin, his embarrassment forgotten. “They are harmless.”

“Harmless,” she repeated in disbelief.

“Aye. Unless you’re a silly sheep.”

He was plainly teasing. She didn’t care. She looked at Madadh, quivering like an arrow in a bow, and

then at the track ahead, winding through the rocks. “So I’m a sheep,” she said. “Let’s go back.”

“
Baaa,
” Iestyn said.

She stuck out her tongue at him. They turned to begin their descent.

And froze as a great gray wolf glided from the shadow of the rocks and blocked their way.

Madadh whimpered.

Iestyn paled. “Shit.”

Fear raked claws down Lucy’s throat. “You said the wolves were harmless.”

“They are.” Iestyn reached down cautiously, never taking his eyes from the wolf, and drew a long black

knife like Conn’s from a sheath at his knee. “These are not wolves. Not anymore.”

Oh, God.

She worked moisture into her mouth. “What—”

“Demons.”

Panic, blinding, bright, went off in her head. She blinked to clear her vision and saw more shapes slinking,

circling on either side, sticking close to the rocks. She clenched her empty hands.

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“Behind me,” Iestyn ordered, his young voice strained. “Do not run. They attack from behind.”

She stumbled to obey. Stones littered the track at her feet. She stooped, grabbing one in each hand, and

faced the head of the path.

The wolf confronting Iestyn snapped and snarled. Threatening. Testing. Lucy almost turned.

And would have missed its two companions as they drifted into sight, silent as smoke.

Her knees shook. Her arms trembled. Madadh growled low in his throat.

Iestyn shouted. “Go! I command you!”

The wolves in front of Lucy bared their teeth, laughing. Madadh bristled and shook.

“Conn,” Lucy whispered.

Regret opened like a chasm in her heart. Her palms were slippery with sweat. She gripped the stones

tighter. She didn’t want to leave him. Not like this, with so much unspoken and unresolved between

them.

The shadow in front of her leaped. She screamed. She had a confused flash of heat, teeth, and eyes

before Madadh lunged to meet it, their bodies colliding with a force that sent them rolling over the

ground, jaws snapping, claws raking.

She heard Iestyn grunt, felt him stagger behind her as he absorbed another attack. Everything was noise

and fear and confusion. She threw a rock and missed. Threw another and watched it bounce uselessly off

the wolf’s side. The circling wolves edged closer. Behind her, Iestyn lurched and thrust. Something warm

spurted over her foot.

She looked down.
Blood.

Madadh yelped.

And Lucy got mad.

Rage flooded her gut, filled her chest, flowed through her trembling legs to stiffen them. She felt it coiling,

writhing and rising within her, broad, slippery ripples of fury rolling through her body to her brain, too

much to control, too huge to contain. Pain knifed her brain, shards of brightness behind her eyes. Flinging

out her empty arms, she shouted, “Enough!”

The word went out from her like lightning and struck the snarling, writhing knot that was Madadh and the

wolf. She heard a cry from Iestyn of pain or surprise, smelled scorched meat and burning hair, watched

horrified as both animals jerked and collapsed.

Oh, God. Oh, God.
Her hands fell. Her breath sobbed.
What had she done?

The hound staggered bleeding to its four feet. The wolf stayed motionless on the ground.

Iestyn drew a sharp breath behind her.

She turned.

The boy swayed above the slumped carcass of the first wolf. Beneath his tawny mop, his face gleamed

pasty white. Blood crawled from a jagged bite on his arm. His knife dangled uselessly at his side.

As she watched, he grinned shakily and switched the bloody blade to his other hand.

“That’s two,” he said.

Lucy swallowed and nodded, trying hard not to throw up.

More shadows boiled out of the rocks. More wolves lurking, circling.

Waiting.

14

THE LONG BLACK SHADOW OF THE KEEP CRAWLED across the cobblestones, measuring

time like a giant sundial.

Impatience surged thick through Conn’s veins. He did not want to be here in the shadows of the

courtyard listening to Griff.

Lucy burned in his brain as she had in his visions, her long wary body and lean, composed face, her hair

as ripe as grain. He carried her image in his mind—Lucy, waking and sleeping, naked and coming. With

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him. Under him.

He was lost in her, as captivated by this mortal woman as his father had been by the sea.

The comparison made him grit his teeth. He was not Llyr, to shuck responsibilities along with his clothes.

And if he had not been so obviously preoccupied this morning—
obsessed, besotted
—perhaps Griff

would not be carrying tales of his wardens conspiring in corners.

“You think Morgan would negotiate with Hell behind my back?”

Griff’s dark eyes were somber. “I do not know if he would go that far. It may be his pledge to your

father still holds him.”

“His loyalty must be to our people. Not the king.”

“Which people? Morgan is finfolk.”

“The finfolk are as much children of the sea as the selkie. If he serves one, he serves us all. We cannot

survive if our loyalties are divided.”

“Are you speaking of Morgan?” Griff asked steadily. “Or yourself?”

Conn drew a short, sharp breath. “My loyalties are not in question. We need children. A child, a

daughter of Atargatis, to fulfill the prophecy.”

“Morgan is concerned a pregnancy would provoke further conflict with Hell.”

The children of fire would not welcome a shift in the present balance of power.

Conn’s hands clenched. His head throbbed. “I will not give her up.”

“Because she carries the bloodline.”

Because he could not contemplate his existence any longer without her, her quiet tenacity, her fierce

sexuality, her eyes, deep and secret as the sea.

“I will not give her up,” he repeated more quietly.

Griff sighed. “Then you must speak with Morgan.”

“Very well.” Another delay to keep him from Lucy. Damn it. “And you can talk to Enya.”

“Enya, lord?”

“Yes.” Conn smiled thinly. “Since you understand women so well.”

“Not that one.” Griff cleared his throat. “Why not let your lady win the wardens over? Surely if they met

her—”

“They despise her because she is human,” Conn said. “All the meetings in the world will not change that.”

“No human in the world can do what she can do,” Griff argued.

“I will not subject her to—”

“
Conn.
”

His name. Her voice. The whisper sailed on the wind, snagging like a barb in his brain.

He jerked, a fish on the line.

Lucy?

His heart hammered. He felt the spider touch of trouble on the back of his neck, a crawling fear inside his

skin, as his gaze swept the courtyard.

“My prince? What is it?” Griff asked.

Conn’s head pounded. The shadows beneath the towers were empty. But the sound of her voice was

fixed in his mind, a jagged silver hook connected to a line as fine as filament.

His tongue felt thick. “Where is she?” he asked hoarsely.

“Enya?”

“My lady.”

Griff’s face creased in concern. “In your solar, I assume.”

No.

Lucy.

Something was wrong.

Conn’s lungs constricted. He stepped into the slanting sunlight, into the warm current of air, following the

tug of his whispered name. The line stretched over the castle walls and away, floating on the wind like a

strand of Lucy’s hair. Fragile. Golden.

Where are you?

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