Conn frowned into his whiskey glass. He had taught himself from his father’s failures, determined not to repeat his father’s mistakes.
Never surrender to impulse.
Never admit emotion.
Never reveal weakness.
Tonight he had done all three, with predictable and disastrous results.
A footfall alerted him he was not alone. His heartbeat quickened. He raised his head, hoping . . . what? That she had come after him?
Griff stood in the room’s archway, outlined in the red glow of the great hearth.
Conn’s disappointment was sharp as the whiskey in his mouth. He raised his eyebrows. “If you’re seeking a partner for the evening, warden, you have come to the wrong place.”
The castle warden entered the schoolroom, avoiding the scattered tables and chairs in the dark. “I found my partner over a hundred years ago. This was her place. I come to sit and remember.”
The man’s unabashed devotion to his dead mate made Conn ashamed of his ill humor. Ashamed and almost jealous. “Were there no selkie females in the hall to provide distraction for the night?”
Griff smiled wryly. “I shepherded half of them into the sea at their first Change. I am too old for them.”
“Younger than I am.”
Griff eased his big body into a little chair, stretching his long legs toward the empty hearth. “It’s not the years, my prince. It’s what you do with them.”
Conn inclined his head, acknowledging the point.
“I am surprised to see you here,” Griff continued. “Or indeed, at all tonight.”
Conn turned the glass in his hand. “My plans for the evening met with an unexpected . . . obstacle.”
Griff straightened. “Gau?”
“A human obstacle,” Conn clarified.
Relaxing, Griff eyed the amber liquid in Conn’s glass. “So you are applying a human solution?”
“It seemed appropriate.” Conn let the eighteen-year-old Scotch roll on his tongue. “Whatever their other limitations, humans make good whiskey.”
Griff gave him a level look. “And is it those ‘other limitations’ that have you drinking alone in the dark rather than enjoying your lady’s company?”
Conn stiffened. He did not discuss his personal life with his wardens. But neither could he permit Griff to lay responsibility for his present dilemma at Lucy’s door. “The fault was not hers,” he said shortly, “but mine.”
They sat in companionable silence.
Griff cleared his throat. “Sometimes women—human women—need work to warm to things.”
Conn raised his eyebrows. “If you are thinking to advise me on my sex life, I’ll need another drink.”
“I am not talking about bed play. Or not only about that,” Griff said. “The girl has been on Sanctuary less than a day. She needs time to adjust.”
Time was something selkies had in abundance. Over the course of his long and careful existence, Conn had grown used to thinking in terms of years and centuries. But the demons’ murder of the selkie Gwyneth and the news of Gau’s visit had kindled an unfamiliar urgency in him.
The demon lord’s visit and his own impatience.
Driven by necessity and lust, he had spoken too soon, pushed too hard, expected too much. Griff was right. Lucy needed time to grow accustomed to the island before she accepted her place here. Before she accepted him.
“How long?” he asked.
“That depends on what you did to piss her off,” Griff said.
The warden’s tone was heavy with humor and knowledge—the consequence of loving a human, Conn supposed. Griff had taken his Emma from the wreckage of her ship on Conn’s orders, lived with her for more than three score years, sired and raised two human children with her.
And in the end, had seen those children grow up and away, had held their mother’s hand and watched her die. That, too, was a consequence of binding your life to a mortal life. A mortal love.
The memory of Conn’s own words haunted him. “I would be faithful to you. There would be no other partners for either of us as long as you live.”
He pushed the thought away.
“How long before your mate . . . adjusted?” he asked.
Griff rubbed his jaw. “Weeks, it was. It would help your cause if you could find the lass something to do. Something useful. Make her feel needed here.”
Lucy’s image, Lucy’s words, rose to accuse him. “All my life, I imagined being needed. Dreamed of being loved for myself, for who I am. Not fucked because of who my mother was.”
Conn took another sip of whiskey to wash the memory away. “I explained the need. She wants no part of it.”
Or me.
“Something else,” Griff said. “We do not need a teacher, but—”
“She’s not taking over the cooking,” Conn interrupted. “She had enough of that where she was.” He looked at the whiskey glass in his hand and set it down. “Let her train with Iestyn and the others.”
Griff’s brow pleated. “She is not selkie.”
“But she has power. Let us see what she can learn to do with it.”
“If you want to please her, there are easier ways. Maybe a gift . . .”
Conn waved the suggestion away. “I already told her she can have anything she asks for.”
“Except her freedom,” Griff said.
Their eyes met. Conn smiled bitterly. “Except that.”
“Then it must be something she cannot ask for,” Griff said. “Something she wants.”
Frustration snapped through him. “How do I know what she wants if she does not ask?”
Griff shrugged. “You must pay attention. Listen. Women like that.”
“Anything else?” Conn asked dryly.
“You might try a cold dunk in the ocean.”
“No.”
“I did not mean the swim will persuade her.” Griff grinned. “But it might help you.”
Conn stood and stalked to the empty fireplace. Never admit emotion. Never reveal weakness. With his back to Griff, he said, “I cannot.”
“My lord.” Griff’s tone was understanding. Sympathetic. “You cannot deny your nature forever. A dip in the sea now and then will not turn you into your father.”
Conn clasped his hands behind him. “She has my sealskin.”
Silence crackled.
“You gave her your pelt.” The warden’s voice was ripe with disbelief.
Conn fought a spasm of irritation. “She could not take it.”
“No,” Griff agreed instantly. “But . . . You need the swim even more, then. If not to cool your blood, then to clear your head. To give her your pelt . . . What were you thinking?”
He had not been thinking at all.
At least, he hadn’t been thinking about her.
Only of himself, his people, his people’s needs.
Somehow, against all reason and every instinct he had for self-preservation, he must find another way.
“Pay attention,” Griff had urged. “Listen.”
Unbidden, another voice whispered in his mind, soft and broken as the sea. “All my life, I dreamed of being loved for myself, for who I am.”
Conn curled his hands into fists. He could try. What did he have to lose?
Except everything.
She had the moon and the dog for company and the wine for consolation.
They were not enough.
Lucy paced from the window to the fire. Inside the robe’s padded sleeves, her hands were shaking. Her throat was raw. Her eyes burned with unshed tears.
If she were home, she would have gone for a run or escaped into her garden, grabbed a book or turned on the TV. Anything to dull the edge of her desire and drown out the busy chatter in her brain. Anything to numb the pain, to blunt the sharp memory of Conn’s words.
“My people are dying. You promise life.”
And the look in his eyes when he said it, that look . . . How could she bear it? He was killing her. He had kidna
pped her and now he was tearing her apart, stripping away her defenses. When they were gone, what would be left?
If you peeled a crab from its shell, it died.
She pressed the heel of her palm to her chest, as if she could hold the pain inside or push it away.
She wasn’t brave like Regina or confident like Margred. She was twenty-three and all alone, and she wanted to go home.
She felt the thud of her heart against her hand and remembered Conn’s body pressed to her body, his desire rising to meet her desire, his heart driving hers. One breath. One beat. One pulse. One heart.
He made her feel things, he made her go places she had not visited for a very long time. Places she’d avoided for most of her life. She was terrified of losing herself in him. Even more afraid she would discover things inside herself she could not bear to live with.
If she did what he wanted, if she submitted to him, how would she ever find herself again?
How would she find her way home?
She shivered and walked to the window. Through the bubbled glass, she could see the wavering shadow of the boat rocking at anchor, a black splinter caught in the silver-webbed sea. The only boat in the harbor. Her only escape off the island.
She didn’t kid herself that she could handle a forty-foot sailboat in a rough winter crossing. But as long as she had the boat, she had options. She had hope. They were near the coast of Scotland, Conn had said. 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.
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. “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.
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