Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

anyone would dare to ask him. He did not talk about himself or what he missed or what he liked. He especially did not talk about his father.
    He looked down grimly at the woman walking beside him with long, free strides. Now that the conversation was fixed on him, she was animated, even attractive, her quiet face bright with encouragement.
    It was her job, she had said, to take an interest. He thought it must be her nature as well.
    But then why did she shrink into herself earlier? Was she so averse to attention? She had a trick of lowering her lashes and ducking her head that made her almost disappear.
    Like magic.
    Not magic, Conn reminded himself. She was human. She could have no understanding of him or his needs.
    “I am never lonely,” he said.
    “You and your father must be close, then,” she observed.
    “Not particularly,” Conn said, his tone cool.
    Her soft green eyes reflected her confusion. “But if he taught you—”
    “I have not seen my father for many years.” Centuries, if he kept track of such things. Which he certainly did not. “He abandoned all claim to affection or allegiance”— or the throne— “when he abandoned us.”
    “ ‘Us’?” she queried softly.
    Conn regarded her with annoyance. “My people.”
    “Your family.”
    He was silent.
    “It’s hard,” she said. “Dealing with a parent who walks out. I mean, I miss my mother, and I don’t even remember her. She left us when I was a baby.”
    Conn frowned. Was she actually offering him sympathy? He was selkie, one of the First Creation. He did not require her pity. “So I heard.”

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    She turned her head sharply.
    “From your brother,” he said.
    Her brow cleared. “That’s right. Have you known each other long?”
    Ever since Dylan’s Change at thirteen, when Atargatis discovered her older son was selkie. She had returned with him to the sea, leaving her human family behind.
    A year later, she was dead, trapped and drowned in a fisherman’s net, and Dylan became Conn’s ward on Sanctuary.
    “Long enough,” Conn said.
    Fog dripped from the trees like tears. The houses grew smaller and farther apart. Rusting vehicles and stacks of lobster traps littered yards like wrecks on the ocean bottom.
    “Did you ever meet her?” Lucy asked abruptly. “My mother?”
    “Yes.”
    “What was she like?”
    Discontented, Conn remembered. As unhappy with the life she had returned to as the one she left. Away from the magic of Sanctuary, in human form, selkies aged as humans did. The years on land had dragged at Atargatis, coarsening her hair, wearing on her spirit, etching lines at the corners of her eyes. But she was still selkie, still alluring, still . . .
    “Beautiful,” he said.
    “That’s it? Just beautiful?”
    What did she want him to say? She was not like the mother who had abandoned her. Not selkie. And not beautiful either. Appealing, perhaps, with her lean, quiet face and coltish grace, but . . .
    “Beautiful and sad,” Conn said. “Perhaps she regretted leaving you.”
    “Maybe,” the girl said doubtfully.
    “You could ask your brother.”
    “After twenty-three years?” Unexpected humor lit her eyes. “I don’t think so.”
    “Your father, then.”
    “We don’t talk about her.” Her shoulders were rigid. She stared straight ahead at the darkening road.
    “We don’t talk about much of anything, really.”
    She was guarded, Conn thought. More comfortable asking questions of him than offering anything of herself.
    He remembered the way she stood apart at the restaurant, an observer in her own family.
    Isolated.
    And vulnerable.
    He could use that, he thought.
    “You can talk to me,” he said.
    Lucy unlocked the front door, uncomfortably aware of Conn on the porch behind her. Her palms sweat.
    Her stomach jittered. For a moment, she was catapulted back to fifth grade, afraid to bring a friend home after school.
    The door creaked open. “Dad?”
    No answer.
    Her stomach relaxed.
    The reassuring aroma of the beef and vegetables she’d dumped into the Crock-Pot that morning rushed to greet her, almost masking the smells of must and old carpet.
    Lucy had come home from college with a bucket of cleaning supplies and a guide to keeping house, as if spotless tile would bring sparkle to their lives, as if she could banish bad memories along with the dust.
    Maybe her efforts could not make up for the years of