Virginia Kantra - Forgotten Sea

She stiffened anyway. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

In recent months — since the Thing She Didn’t Think About had happened — he had withdrawn further and further into his duties, burying his own grief in the demands of rulership.

Once he would have taken her in his arms, this selkie male who did not touch except as a prelude to sex or a fight.

Now he stood cool and immovable as a statue, separated by his natural reserve and her unspoken resentment.

“You are my consort.” His tone was patient, control ed.

“My mate. What concerns you concerns me. Tel me.”

She gripped her hands together in her lap. “I dreamed I heard a child crying.”

Something moved in his eyes, like water surging under the ice. “Lucy. ”

“Not a baby,” she said hastily. “A boy. A lost boy.”

The wind sighed through the garden, releasing the scent of the roses. The bush he had given her threw petals like drops of blood upon the grass.

“You are upset,” Conn said careful y. “Such dreams are natural.”

“It’s not that,” she said impatiently. She couldn’t stand to think about that . She could not bear any more of his wel meant reassurances. “This boy was lost , Conn. Like Iestyn.”

“Iestyn is not a boy any longer. He’s been gone for seven years. They al are gone.”

“I feel responsible.”

Conn’s face set in familiar, formidable lines. “It was my decision to send them away. My failure to keep them safe.”

“You sent them away because of me. Because I didn’t stay and protect Sanctuary.”

“You saved your brothers and their wives and children.

You made the better choice for the future of our people.”

She was grasping desperately at straws. At hope. At control. “But suppose they’re stil out there somewhere?

Iestyn and the others.”

“They would have found their way home by now.”

“Unless they can’t. Maybe my dream was a. a message.

A sending.”

Conn was silent.

“Is it possible you are focusing on one loss to the exclusion of another?” he asked at last.

“You think I’m making things up,” she said bitterly.

“Lucy.” His voice was no less urgent for being gentle.

“You are stil the targair inghean .”

Her heart burned. Her throat ached. Locked in her grief, she did not, could not, answer.

He waited long moments while the fountain played and the wind mourned through the battlements.

And then he went away.

Lucy sat with her hands in her lap, staring sightlessly at the sparkling water. She was the targair inghean , the promised daughter of the children of the sea. Long ago, before she had loved him, before he loved her, Conn had stolen her from her human home so she would bear his children.

“I need you, ” he had told her then. “Your children.

Ours. Your blood and my seed to save my people.”

She put her head down among the roses and wept.

H e wa s o u t t h e r e s o m e w h e r e. S h e c o u l d feel him, just like this morning.

Lara skimmed along the tree-lined walk, her flat shoes crunching the pea gravel. She imagined Justin blundering in the dark, dazed and bleeding, hurt and resentful, a danger to himself. or to others.

She needed to find him. For his sake. For hers.

She had to tel somebody. Tel Simon.

Her stomach churned. The thought of facing the governors, of Zayin’s scorn and Simon’s disappointment, made her sick inside.

But she had no choice. A trickle of sweat rol ed down her spine. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

The distinctive pitched roof line of the headmaster’s residence poked over the trees — six chimneys and a weathervane shaped like an eagle.

Simon Axton lived alone in the original Colonial farmhouse, set apart from the other school buildings behind the main hal. Lara had been invited inside exactly eight times. To the sunroom to take tea with her cohort on graduation day. To the book-lined library for cocktails with the schoolmasters and other proctors over the holidays.

Once or twice to bring Simon a file he’d left at the office.

Lara approached the front porch, her steps slowing, anticipation burning a hole in her gut. Too late, she realized she should have cal ed. But what would she say?

What could she say? She was supposed to be in her room.

Simon’s cool dismissal pounded in her head. “If you’re quite satisfied, I believe we’re done here. ”

The thought of his displeasure dried her mouth. She stared up at the darkened windows, listening to the whisperings and rustlings and cracklings of the overgrown garden. A soft thump sounded from the back of the house, some smal, nocturnal animal hunting in the night.

Her heart thudded.

Suck it up , she ordered herself. Get it over with.

Straightening her shoulders, she marched toward the steps.

That noise again, like a prowling cat or a raccoon testing the garbage cans or.

She caught her breath. Or like an escaped patient, skulking in the bushes.

Goose bumps rose along her arms. She stood frozen, her mind racing, her breath whooshing in and out of her lungs.

He couldn’t be.

Here?

Maybe. Why not? How far could he get, with a skul fracture and the heth around his throat?

She thrust her hand into her skirt pocket, wrapping her fingers around the knife — his knife, Justin’s — and was instantly electrified as if she’d grabbed a live plug. Her nerves sizzled.

Like a bug flying into a bug zapper.

She strained her senses.

There? Almost. Almost. There .

A whisper of warmth, male, animal, alive. A swirl of wild energy, around the corner, behind the house. Intangible.

Unmistakable.

Justin was here, somewhere nearby.

Clutching the knife like a divining rod, she plunged into the darkness at the side of the house, stepping over beds of hostas and lilies of the val ey, creeping under the black and staring windows. It was like her Seeking — was it only this morning? — or the game she’d played as a child. Warm.

Cold. Warmer. Hot.

She shivered. A dangerous game, with high stakes and an unpredictable playmate.

Warm, warmer .

A thick oak raised its arms over the backyard, obscuring the star-strewn sky. She stepped into the mottled light, her gaze scanning the dappled ground, the silvered plants, the velvet shadows. Against the foundation, the door to the storm cel ar yawned open, a gaping black hole.

HOT .

The knife burned in her pocket. The air left her lungs.

There. Sprawled across the stone threshold, one arm reaching for the wooden door as if to shut it behind him.

His hair was bleached, his skin pale in the moonlight. The bandage on his forehead was dark with blood.

Justin lifted his head and met her gaze, his eyes nearly black in the shadows, burning with intensity. “Help. me.”

She inhaled through her teeth. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Like a fox, bloodied and desperate, run to earth under the farmer’s house.

Incredibly, he smiled. Or was that a distortion of the moonlight? “No,” he whispered agreement.

She took a cautious step forward, keeping her ankles out of reach. “You need to go back to the infirmary.”

“Can’t. breathe.”

“It’s the heth.”

He stared at her dumbly.

“Cutting off your air.” He must be very strong — or stubborn

— to have overcome both Zayin’s binding and Miriam’s sleep spel.

It was clear, however, that he’d reached the end of his rope.

Literal y. His breath wheezed alarmingly. His head sank back to the ground. His body was cut in two by the shadow of the cel ar, his legs disappearing down the stairs.