Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

Margred said.
    Her husband’s face set like stone. “I’m trying to protect you.”
    “So you keep saying. Or we would have a baby by now.”
    Conn, sensing weakness, pressed his argument home like a sword. “Have your baby on Sanctuary.
    Where you both will be safe.”

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    Margred’s mouth opened. Closed.
    “Want a piece of candy, little girl?” Regina muttered.
    Dylan shot her a warning look.
    “What? We already talked this over,” she said. “I won’t leave Ma. And I’m not ripping Nick away from the only life he’s ever known to hang with the lost boys in Never-land.”
    “All right,” Dylan said. “If—”
    “You need time to consider,” Conn said before they could refuse.
    The lump under his ribs had coalesced into a hard, cold knot. More was at stake here than their human ties or loyalties, than their practical considerations or their pride. More was at risk than their safety.
    The demons were circling World’s End, drawn to the promise of power like sharks to the scent of blood.
    If Conn could preserve Atargatis’s bloodline . . .
    He regarded them a moment: two humans, a selkie who had lost her pelt, and a warden just coming into his power. The heirs of Atargatis. The key to the prophecy.
    The knot in his chest tightened.
    “I’ll leave you to talk,” he said.
    Caleb gave a short nod.
    But at the entrance to the hall, Conn paused. “You should ask your sister what she wants.”
    “Lucy?” asked Regina.
    “She’s not selkie,” Dylan said.
    “She carries the bloodline,” Conn said. “She has a right to choose.”
    “Lucy would never leave the island,” Caleb said. “She almost didn’t go away to college. She’s happy here.”
    Conn raised his brows. “Is she?”
    “Isn’t she?” Margred asked.
    “Ask her,” Conn said again.
    He gripped the door handle when something—a noise, a scent, a sense like a breath at the back of his neck—dragged his gaze upward.
    Lucy stood almost hidden in the crook of the narrow stairs, a hand pressed to her mouth. In the shadows, her eyes blazed.
    His heart leaped.
    Their gazes locked.
    She blinked, and it was as if the brightness had never been.
    Conn swallowed a snarl of disappointment. “A message at the inn will find me,” he said tightly to no one in particular. “When you are ready to talk.”
    Opening the door, he stalked into the night.
    Lucy stabbed her spade into the soil. Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, think I’ll go eat worms
    . . .
    Which was stupid. She knew her family loved her. She loved them. But the silly jingle played over and over in her head like a bad song on the radio, complete with a slide show of scenes from last night.
    The Hunter family had never been big on Sharing Their Feelings. Every child growing up in an alcoholic household learned to protect its secrets. Lucy had spent most of her life avoiding questions from friends, teachers, and well-meaning neighbors. Where is your mother? How is your father? Why did you move back?
    But now the things her family would not say were threatening to split them apart. And the people with the answers, the people Lucy loved, weren’t talking.
    At least not to her.
    She ripped a potato from the garden. The fat root exploded from the ground in a shower of dirt that did nothing to relieve her hurt or frustration.
    Use words , she told her students when they were overwhelmed by the need to scream and kick and Page 22
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    bite. Well, she’d tried, hadn’t she? After Conn had left, she’d gone into the living room to talk to her family. But all her questions, all her overtures, had died a slow and miserable death in the face of their determined noncommunication, killed by Dylan’s stubborn silence and Caleb’s dismissive reassurances.
    She rubbed the potato against her jeans, leaving a long smear of dirt.
    Caleb’s reaction hurt the most. Her brother had raised her from the time she was in diapers until he left on a ROTC scholarship the year she turned nine. All through middle and high school, Cal had still been there for her, making trips home for holidays and school assemblies, sending checks on her birthday. She trusted him with . . . almost everything.
    He didn’t trust her. His lack of faith stung.
    Well, if Cal couldn’t treat her like a grown-up, she knew someone who would.
    She glanced