Sea Lord (18 page)

If she drifted out to sea, there was a chance she would be spotted and rescued. All she needed was an

opportunity.

An opportunity and the courage to trust herself to the sea.

“
You do not have the courage,
” Conn had said.

The memory rose hot in her face, burned in her breast.

She drew a shaky breath. She needed air. She needed . . . She fumbled with the window’s iron latch.

Pushing open a square of leaded glass, she craned to catch a glimpse of the dinghy on the beach below.

A movement on the rocks dragged at her attention. She looked and looked again, and the breath she had

taken hitched in her throat.

Conn stood at the meeting of sea, stone, and sky, a lonely figure sculpted in taut, clean lines of marble

and moonlight. Naked. His shoulders gleamed. His muscles were fluid as the waves, his hair as black as

night, as he gazed out to sea. Something in his posture, some shadow on his face, pierced her heart. She

closed her eyes, but she could still see him burning at the water’s edge, weary, proud, and alone.

So alone.

He was shattering everything she believed about herself, everything she had built or tried to hold on to.

He was breaking her heart.

Blindly, she turned from the window, turned from him.

And nearly tripped on the sealskin at her feet. Her heart jumped into her throat.

The pelt gleamed in the firelight, dark as night with hues of amber and gold.

Lucy bit her lip. She couldn’t leave something so personal lying like a rug on the floor. Conn had urged

her to think of it as a coat, but she knew better now. Tentatively, she stooped and took the sealskin up,

bundling it into her arms.

The fur whispered against her breast. “
You hold my life in your hands as surely as you hold the fate

of my people . . . I need you.
”

Her chest tightened. Her fingers flexed. Her gaze went back to the window.

She thought she could summon the courage to go.

Page 61

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Could she find the courage to stay?

10

THE MORNING WAS HEAVY WITH FOG AND FORE boding, slicking the old stones like rain,

echoing through the corridors and courtyards like a gathering army.

Lucy, hurrying after Iestyn, felt as if she were drowning, swallowing lungfuls of cold, damp air. Her feet

slipped. Her heart pattered. She was
so
in over her head. Madadh slunk ahead of them along the curtain

wall, a lean gray shadow.

Iestyn had told her nothing when he appeared at her door earlier with a cup of hot tea and another bowl

of salty oatmeal. Only that after breakfast she was “wanted in the inner bailey.” Whatever that meant.

Wherever that was.

“This way,” Iestyn said.

Her heart pattered in nervous anticipation. A great double archway opened onto a square of short, dense

grass. The walls rose smooth and gray all around, punctuated by towers. Water flowed from a curved

pipe in the wall and splashed into a deep, round basin of stone.

She recognized Roth on the low stone bench, legs apart and knees on elbows like a football player sitting

on the sidelines. Waiting with him was a man.

Her heart stumbled.

Not Conn.

The castle warden, Griff Somebody.

Lucy deflated like a day-old party balloon.

He inclined his head. “Lady.”

She nodded back, unsure what she expected or what he expected of her.

“I trust you slept well.” His eyes were tired and kind, with laugh lines at the corners.

In that great empty room, in that vast empty bed, with the sea snarling below her window all night . . .

“Yes.” Her voice was scratchy. She cleared her throat. “Thank you. Where is, um . . .”

“The prince asks your leave,” Griff said, mercifully anticipating her question. “Important matters require

his attention this morning.”

Which put her, of course, in the not-so-important category. Should she be offended? Or relieved?

She attempted a smile. “So you’re my babysitter.”

“Something more than that.” His voice was dry. “I am overseer of Caer Subai. I serve at the pleasure of

the prince.”

Oh, dear. Had
she
offended
him
?

Around his neck he wore a silver chain and a flat silver disk like Dylan’s engraved with three connecting

spiral lines. What had Margred called it? The warden’s mark.

“I didn’t mean your work isn’t important, too,” she said hastily. Whatever it was. What did wardens do

anyway? Was he like a prison guard? “Just that you’re stuck with me.”

Roth snorted.

Griff silenced him with a look. “It is our privilege to have you join us.”

“Where’s, um, Kera?” she asked.

“Kera’s talent is beyond my training,” Griff said.

Lucy moistened her lips. “Training for what?”

“Magic,” Iestyn said.

“The prince thought we might help you become more familiar with your gift,” Griff explained.

Yes.
A surge of instinct, sharp as hunger, lurched in Lucy’s gut.

No, no, no.
Fear and memory smothered her lungs, tightened her throat.
Force exploding through the

cabin. Objects hurtling, clattering, crashing. Things shattering. Glass. Her mind.

She drew a deep breath. Held it, until everything inside her was forced back into its proper place.

Page 62

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“Thanks, but I’m not . . . I can’t really do anything.”

His eyes were kind and dark and fathomless as the sea. “Magic is not something we do, lass. It is what

we are.”

She swallowed. “I don’t know what I am.”

“Perhaps it is time to find out.”

Her panic resurged. Maybe her life B.C.—Before Conn—wasn’t all that great, but it was
her life
. Over

the years, she’d whittled and shaped herself to fit her family’s expectations, to take her place in the

close-knit island community. If she learned too much, if she changed too much, could she ever go home

again? What if her family and neighbors couldn’t accept her? Would she be able to reinsert herself back

into her old life, like a square peg forced into a round hole?

Would she even want to?

“I can’t do anything,” she said again. And then, more honestly, “I don’t want to do anything.”

“You could watch,” Iestyn said.

In the silence, the gurgle of the fountain seemed very loud. Outside the castle walls, a sea bird cried.

Lucy’s heart hammered in her chest.

Griff and the boys regarded her with varying degrees of interest and expectation.

No pressure there, she thought.

She didn’t owe them anything. She was here because Conn had kidnapped her. And however

disappointed she had been not to see him this morning, whatever claims he made about her mother or

their highly unlikely future children, she didn’t owe him anything either.

His voice drummed in her ears. “
Your brother knew what he risked and what he rejected. You do

not.
”

Lucy frowned. Maybe she owed this to herself.

If she had no magic, would they let her go?

Her gaze met Griff’s. “Show me.”

“Weather working is the simplest gift and the most common,” Griff lectured in his deep, easy voice. The

boys sprawled on the bench and on the grass, clearly bored with a lesson they’d heard too many times

before. Lucy perched on the wall bordering the fountain, out of reach of the water, her hands folded in

her lap. “The first to come and often the easiest to master.”

“Except for sex,” Roth said.

Griff shot him a sharp look. “Which no woman will be learning from you, laddie. Seeing as you haven’t

mastered the art yourself.”

Iestyn grinned.

The bigger boy flushed to the roots of his dark hair.

“Water,” Griff continued, “is our element. So sensing water, feeling it, affecting it, is our power on the

earth and over the earth and underground. There is the water you can see and touch—liquid water, rivers

and rain and clouds. But it is the water you cannot see that creates the rain and clouds, that cools and

warms the earth and sustains all life. This is the water you must know and control if you want to work the

weather.”

His explanation sounded oddly like a fifth grade science lesson on the water cycle, Lucy thought. No

wonder the boys looked bored. She was having trouble concentrating herself. The day was so gray, and

Griff’s voice droned on. “
Rising air . . . absorbing heat . . . energy . . .
”

She shook her head. Not enough sleep.

“Feel the pull from the earth,” Griff urged, quiet as a mourning dove murmuring from the trees on a long,

slow, summer afternoon. “Feel the flow of rising water.”

The sky brightened and darkened. A peculiar little wind swirled the waters of the fountain and

disappeared. No one else spoke. Nothing happened.

Lucy leaned her head against the stone and closed her eyes. Tired. She didn’t have to do anything. She

didn’t want to do anything.

“Follow the vapor, feel it cool,” said Griff.

Page 63

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She shivered, cold. Too cold. Too wet. Behind her closed eyelids, she pictured Maggie standing in the

hall the morning after Caleb brought her home, the wind blowing through the front door and her arms

outstretched to the rain. Remembered the tingle of electricity in the air and along her skin, the feeling of

fullness in her chest, the heaviness in her head. She felt high, dizzy, as if she floated miles above the earth.

Currents flowed, droplets flashing like a shoal of silver fish. She opened her mouth to breathe. Pressure

there
. A push.

A
pop
.

A warm shaft of sunlight fell on her face.

“Well done,” Griff said softly.

Lucy opened her eyes. Blinked.

The waters of the fountain sparkled. They all looked at her: Griff with an arrested expression, Roth

wide-eyed, Iestyn with open admiration.

She shivered. Not with cold this time.

“What?” Her voice was shrill. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Well, it was not me,” Iestyn said. “I was trying to make rain.”

“I wanted sun,” Roth offered.

Griff’s eyes narrowed. “Did you, now.” Not-quite-a-question.

Her heart thudded.
It wasn’t me, it couldn’t be.

Could it?

The possibility gnawed at her insides. She felt like that Spartan boy who stole a fox and hid it under his

tunic. Either she exposed herself or she let herself be torn apart. Neither seemed like a very good option.

“Nothing happened,” she said. “Not really.”

Griff’s forehead creased. “Likely not. This being your first time and all.”

She sat very still, barely breathing, trying hard not to remember Margred in her wet blue dress, standing

in the blowing rain.

Griff sighed. “I must go.”

He paused, as if he was waiting for her to say something.

Lucy bent her head, studying her clasped hands in her lap as if she’d never seen them before. As if they

belonged to somebody else.

Maybe they did. She bit her lip.

Roth stood.

“Stay,” Griff said. “I do not want to see any of you anywhere near the hall while the delegation is here.”

The delegation.

A chill silence settled over the small courtyard, unrelieved by the singing, sparkling fountain. Lucy’s peace

fled. She had forgotten the demons were coming.

Maybe she wanted to forget. Not that anyone had asked her to face demons.

Thank God.

Roth apparently did not share this perfectly healthy attitude. “I can handle myself.”

“You cannot handle Gau,” Griff said. “The demons are coming here as a show of strength. We do not

respond by exposing our youngest and weakest.”

“But we are at peace,” Iestyn said.

“For now,” the warden responded grimly. “That did not stop them from murdering our Gwyneth.”

Lucy sucked in her breath. Conn had said the selkie could be killed, but . . .

“
Murdered?
” Her voice rose. She bit her lip again, from embarrassment and because she really didn’t

want to know.

Griff gave her another long, assessing look. “This summer. On your island, on World’s End. I thought

your brother must have told you, seeing as he was so involved.”

“No.” She felt numb, absorbing this fresh shock. She knew the case, of course. It had been all over the

news, all over the island. An unidentified tourist from Away had been tortured, killed, and dumped on the