Sea Lord (26 page)

and empty, as if she had been in bed for days with the flu.

“Shall we build a litter for the
targair inghean
?” someone asked.

“No.” The deep voice stirred her hair. She smelled grime and sweat and the wild salt tang of the sea. “I

will carry her.”

She knew that voice. Conn’s voice. She was sitting on his lap, cradled in his arms. His hard chest moved

with his breath, up and down, like the ocean.

“My prince . . . your hand . . .”

“I will carry her,” Conn repeated in his arrogant, don’t-mess-with-me tone.

She smiled against his shoulder.

The arm that was her pillow tensed. “Lucy.” A single word, hoarse with hope.

She found she could open her eyes after all.

His silver eyes blazed in his hard, haggard face.

Her heart squeezed. Something had happened, she thought. Good? Bad? She remembered kneeling

beside him, and the dog . . .

She moistened her lips. “Madadh?”

Conn’s expression flickered. “Here,” he said.

The hound pushed forward, wriggling. Instinctively, she put out her hand, accepting soft, wet kisses on

her palm. She rubbed the dog’s hard skull, patted its filthy, blood-encrusted side.

She blinked. Its intact hide.

“I don’t . . .”
Understand.

“You healed them,” Conn said, watching her closely. “Madadh and Iestyn both.”

Her chest hollowed. Her blood drummed in her ears. “I didn’t ...”

She stopped, remembering the great golden wave, the rush of power, too huge to contain or control.

“Iestyn reached for you when you fell,” Conn continued, his face impassive. “And when he touched you,

his wounds were healed.”

Her mouth dried. She couldn’t speak.

Iestyn knelt before them, his face white with emotion. He took her limp, damp hand in his uninjured right

arm— she noticed the black half moons of blood under his fingernails—and pressed the back of her

fingers to his forehead.

“
Targair inghean,
” he said in a choked voice.

Lucy bit her lip. “Um.”

Iestyn’s words rippled outward, magnified by the rocks, picked up and repeated by several

people—wardens—standing around. Waiting. What were they waiting for? She recognized Griff, who

smiled at her with cautious pride, and the tall man with silver-blond hair who had called her Conn’s

broodmare.

She lifted her chin. He met her gaze. His eyes were gold, like Iestyn’s. An odd little smile touched his lips

before he bowed his head.

She tightened her fingers in Madadh’s wiry coat.

Griff came forward. He didn’t kneel, as Iestyn had. But he, too, bowed, raising her hand and touching it

to his forehead. “
Targair inghean.
”

“Don’t you start,” she begged him.

“He does you honor,” Conn said behind her.

She turned her head to look at him. “Why? What are they saying? What does it mean?”

“You are the daughter of Atargatis.”

“So?” she asked, bewildered. “We knew that.”

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“The promised daughter,” Conn explained gravely. “The
targair inghean
. The one foretold by the

prophecy who will alter the balance of power and save our people.”

15

LUCY PULLED THE TURQUOISE ROBE TIGHT. SHE didn’t like the way Conn was looking at

her—not as the woman he wanted to take to bed, but as if she were a puzzle he hadn’t quite figured out.

He sprawled in the thronelike armchair on the other side of the bedroom hearth, watching her from

beneath thick black lashes.

Earlier, he had disappeared while the members of his household had bustled around her with hot water,

towels, and tea. They addressed her as “lady” and “
targair inghean
,” but she did not know them. Kera

appeared shaken, and Roth was subdued. None of her attendants comforted her as Conn might have

done or teased her like Iestyn or answered her questions like Griff.

She understood Conn’s need to closet himself with his wardens. Understood and resented it.

Now that he was finally here, she felt like one more item on his To Do list.

Outside the tower windows, the sky glowed pink and orange, bright as the beach roses back home.

She had asked him for time.

But there was no time. The past few days had slipped through her fingers like a rope of fat pearls, each

one precious, perfect, glowing, whole. Now the string was cut, and she could only grab after what they

had shared before it was lost.

What they had shared . . .

She was not his broodmare, whatever those wardens had said. She was . . . what? How did he see her

now? What did he want from her?

His hair was black and shiny from his bath. His face had fallen into its usual, inscrutable lines. Despite his

stretched-out legs and half-closed eyes, she could feel tension emanating from him like the heat of the

fire.

“How old were you,” Conn asked quietly, “when you learned to fear the sea?”

The dispassionate gentleness in his tone tore her apart. She hugged her elbows. “I don’t . . .”

Remember.
The lie died on her lips.

Today she had faced down demons. Surely she could confront a few memories?

She looked at Conn’s face, hard with kingship. She could at least try to be worthy of him and of her new

title.

“Eleven,” she said abruptly. “I was eleven.”

“A difficult age.”

She blinked, trying to picture the immortal lord of the sea as an eleven-year-old boy. “You remember?”

A glint appeared in those silver eyes, so that for a moment he looked like her lover again. “We

have—we
had
—children on Sanctuary,” he reminded her. “Many of them came to us then.”

“So you know preteen girls.”

He did not answer.

“I took childhood development,” Lucy said. “I know adolescence sucks. But while everybody else was

experimenting with nail polish and training bras and sneaking cigarettes in the woods, I was trying to cook

dinner and make good grades so I could go to college like Caleb. And he was gone and my friends were

changing and I hated it.”

“You do not like change.”

She twisted the sash of her robe. “Not really. I mean, as long as things stay the same, you know what to

expect, right? You’re kind of in control. Even if you’re miserable.”

“You did not want to Change.”

“That’s what I just . . .” She dropped the ends of her sash, realization opening like a chasm in her chest.

“Oh.”

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Oh
.

“We bring our young to Sanctuary so they will have someone to guide them through the Change,” Conn

said. His eyes were deep and dark. She wished he would take her in his arms again. But he sounded like

a psychiatrist rather than her lover. “You had no one to prepare you. No one to guide you through your

woman’s changes or your first Change as a selkie. You were afraid.”

Anger, unacknowledged, unexpressed for years, burned in her chest. “That wasn’t my fault.”

“Of course not.”

His dismissal only fueled the fire raging at her heart. “It was her fault. My mother’s. She could have

stayed. She should have stayed with us. With me.”

“She was selkie.”

“She was selfish.” The accusation burst from her aching throat with the force of pent-up grief.

“And you do not want to be like her.”

“No.”

“In any way.”

“I . . .” Lucy closed her mouth. Opened it. “No.”

“She would have come back for you,” Conn said, and his voice was so gentle she almost didn’t care if he

lied. “If she had lived. She would have come back for you and Caleb both at the appropriate time.”

“When you’re a kid, you don’t get the concept of ‘the appropriate time,’ ” Lucy said bleakly. “You just

want your Mommy.”

“It is different for us.”

“Not that different. You miss your father.”

Conn flinched as if she’d stuck him with a harpoon. “My father did not die. He went beneath the wave.”

“And mine went out on his boat and got drunk. Gone is gone. There’s more than one way to be

abandoned.”

“Lucy . . .” Regret weighted his voice.

She shook her head. Her eyes were dry. Gritty. “It’s all right. I’m all right. I’m all grown up now.”

“It may be that your power focused on suppressing your Change,” Conn offered carefully. “And the

exercise of that power, the discipline of your gift, day after day, year after year, has made you strong.”

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Well, that’s what you want, isn’t it?” she managed with only

a trace of bitterness. “For me to be strong. For me to be the
targair inghean
.” She stumbled over the

unfamiliar phrase:
targuhr een-yen
.

His eyes darkened. “I want you to be yourself.”

“Then you should have left me alone!”

Her words reverberated between them. She would have snatched them back if she could.

She stood there miserably. This was not her fault.

Or his either, she admitted fairly. Sometimes being able to see both sides sucked.

“I cannot,” he said grimly.

She nodded, resigned. “Because of the prophecy.”

His eyes blazed. “Because that was not
you
,” he snapped. “Cautious, fearful, unfulfilled, eking out some

dutiful half-life. You are more than that. You deserve more than that.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” she muttered.

Conn flowed out of his chair with a ferocious grace that made her pulse jump. “It is
intolerable
. To

deny your nature . . . To give up your freedom . . .” He broke off.

She gaped at him, and she knew. She knew, and her heart cracked.

“
There is no choice,
” he had told her. “
For either of us.
”

She had not understood then. He was as isolated in his world as she was in hers. As bound by his duty.

As trapped by his destiny.

If she had been his broodmare, then he was, what? The king’s stud?

She set her teeth. He had made her role as easy on her as he could.

Now she could return the favor. She could release him from at least one of his responsibilities.

“Intolerable for me?” she asked softly. “Or for you?”

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His face was hard as arctic ice. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re as stuck as I am. You said so yourself.” “
I am more your prisoner than you are mine,
” she

remembered. “But at least you don’t have to have sex with me anymore.”

She waited for him to protest, prayed for him to object.

He did neither. Only watched her with narrowed eyes.

She hugged her elbows, heartsick and determined in the face of his silence. “I’m the promised daughter,

right? The one in the prophecy. So you don’t need to get me pregnant.”

“Are you barring me from your bed?”

His tone was still measured and even, but there was a turbulence in his storm gray eyes that raised the

tiny hairs along her arms and made her hope.

“Not if you want to be there,” she answered.

“You called my name,” he said unexpectedly.

She blinked.

“Before,” he explained. “When you stood with Iestyn. You called, and I sensed you needed me.”

“I did,” she whispered.

I do.

“There is a connection between us. I do not know what to call it. I have never experienced such a bond

before.” He prowled across the room, stopping in front of her, close enough to touch. “I only know when

the demons attacked and the connection snapped, when I believed that you were taken or dead, the sun

was blotted from my sky and the oceans ran dry.”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, not even air.

“And then I saw you, fair and valiant, pale with fear and shining with power.” He stood so close his

breath stirred her hair. His deep look sizzled along her nerves like lightning. “You fill me. You restore my

sun. You replenish my spirit. You know . . . Lucy, you
know
what I want.”

Her heart shook. Did she?

All her life, she had dreamed of being wanted for who she was. She had never believed in her own

desirability, never felt herself loved.

Never imagined herself the way Conn saw her.

She moistened her dry lips. She had never initiated their lovemaking before either. “Maybe you could

show me.”

“Indeed.” A smile warmed his voice and lingered in his eyes.

His long fingers traced her cheek, cupped her chin. She shivered in anticipation and desire, prepared for

him to claim her. His mouth settled on hers gently, almost delicately, his lips warm and persuasive. The

tenderness of his kiss stole the breath from her lungs and drew her heart from her chest.

He raised his head. “This is not fair.”

Her eyes opened. Her arms tightened around his neck. He couldn’t stop now. Could he?

“What?”

“You should have what you want, too,” he murmured against her lips.

His teasing was new and sweet, but her body had moved beyond laughter. Her blood raced warm and

urgent. She arched against him, feeling his desire hard against her stomach. “I’d say you’re about to give

it to me.”

“This rug, for instance,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. His hand on her hip caressed her lightly

through the slippery silk. He was only touching her with one hand, but every nerve in her body was

dancing and alive.

She glanced down, distracted, at the rich blue patterned Oriental. “What?”