“Because we stay the hell away, that’s why. We’ve got enough trouble. We don’t need to borrow any more.”
Iestyn’s head felt stuffed with cotton, his thoughts hazy, his mouth dry. “What kind of trouble?”
Soldier’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I thought you were one of them.”
“I’ve been . . . away. Demon trouble?” he persisted.
“Maybe. What do you care? I thought your lot didn’t take sides.” Resentment simmered in Soldier’s voice.
Iestyn shrugged. “Things change.”
He’d changed. The balance of power was shifting, sliding.
Anything—everything—could have changed in seven years.
The thought seeped like ice through his veins, cooling the fire that seethed inside him.
“Can you help us?” Lara asked.
The three men exchanged glances.
“No,” Fremont said.
“Why not?” Iestyn demanded.
Soldier ignored him, speaking to Lara. “Wel , for starters, he’s stil crushing my ribs.”
Lara’s ful , soft lips flattened in irritation. With which one of them? Iestyn wondered.
“Iestyn, get off,” she ordered.
Reluctantly, he complied, offering a hand to the man on the ground.
Soldier brushed him aside, climbing unaided to his feet.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Fine. I don’t need yours either.” Iestyn drew a ragged breath, holding on to his temper with an effort. “But she does.”
Lara’s brows snapped together.
“What kind of help are we talking about?” Fremont asked before she could speak.
Iestyn’s head throbbed. Everything could have changed in seven years. He had no right to drag her with him into whatever trouble awaited on World’s End.
“Your protection,” he said.
Max’s face split in a grin. “Absolutely.”
“Absolutely not,” Lara said. She rounded on Iestyn.
“What are you thinking? You need me to find your people.”
His people. Assuming he was even merfolk anymore.
Assuming they would take him back, take him in, without his pelt.
“Not anymore.” He hooked his thumbs in his front pockets and turned to Fremont. “Where is this World’s End?”
“About three hours north by road, another hour or so on the boat. You can take the ferry from Port Clyde.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Lara said.
She couldn’t depend on him. He must not depend on her.
He steeled his heart against the look in her eyes. “You belong with them.”
“I’m not a flyer,” she said flatly.
Another silence.
“Then they’ll take you back,” he said. “To Rockhaven, if that’s what you want.”
To fucking Axton, he thought. His jaw clenched. Stupid.
It’s not like he could offer her another option. Selkie or sailor, he didn’t have the kind of life he could share with a woman.
Fremont scratched under his bandanna. “Now, hold on. We didn’t agree to anything yet.”
“You don’t want to go back there,” Soldier said.
“There are other communities,” Max said unexpectedly.
“Other schools.”
Iestyn felt a quick clutch in the pit of his stomach. But it was the option he’d wanted for her, wasn’t it? Freedom and a future away from the stifling walls of Rockhaven. He looked at Lara. “Is that true?”
She nodded slowly, her eyes dark with doubt. “I’ve heard of them. Amherst in England, Amarna in Egypt. But . . .”
“You’d be safe there,” he persisted. “Right? With other nephilim.”
“If they’ll take her in,” Soldier said.
“If anybody will take her,” Fremont said. “Travel’s risky.”
Lara regarded him with disdain. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t go with you to the end of the parking lot, let alone out of the country.”
The knot in Iestyn’s gut loosened. Like it made a difference whether she was three hundred or three thousand miles from here. Either way, he’d never see her again. “It will have to be Rockhaven, then.”
“I don’t like it,” Soldier said. “It could be a trap. A trick, to get us to the school.”
“Don’t be paranoid,” Lara said.
Exasperation clawed Iestyn. He was trying to protect her, damn it. Trying to do the right thing. Why couldn’t she shut up and go along?
But he knew. She’d told him last night. “I’m getting pretty tired of other people deciding what’s best for me.”
He made an effort to soften his voice. “You’ll be safe with them. Safer than with me.”
Her brows lifted. “Will I?”
Wouldn’t she?
What did he know about them, after all? They were flyers, drifters, outlaws. He had too much in common with them to trust them. They didn’t care about her the way he did. He was willing to fight for her. To die for her, if need be.
But not to stay.
Sooner or later, Lara would go back to her old life, and he would get on with his.
Such as it was. The thought chilled him.
If she’d just go, leave now, it would save both of them time and heartache.
“Safer than on your own,” he amended.
Something flashed behind her eyes before they cooled.
“You’re not responsible for my safety. Or my choices.”
“I’m not waiting around with my thumb up my ass while you two make up your minds,” Fremont said.
Lara shot him another of those cool gray looks. “So, leave.
We’re not stopping you.”
He wagged a meaty finger at her. “Now, little girl, you can’t come with us if you won’t be nice.”
Her face turned sheet white. “I’m not your little girl,”
she said through her teeth. “And I’m sick of being nice.”
She looked at Iestyn, her chin lifted in challenge. But it was her mouth that got him, soft and vulnerable. “Whatever I want, you said. What if I want to stay with you?”
His blood pounded. The question rippled through him like His blood pounded. The question rippled through him like the echo of a dream, resurrecting memories and images of last night. Lara, sliding into bed beside him. Lara, holding him close as he dreamed. Lara, rocking above him in the dark, her hair like glory and her eyes like stars.
He met those eyes, and he was lost.
Maybe he’d been lost from the moment she’d found him.
Pretty Lara Rho with her composed face and snug skirt, striding down the sun-bleached dock and into his life.
He didn’t need her.
But damn him to Hell, he didn’t want her to go. He couldn’t lose her. Not now.
Maybe not ever.
The thought should have terrified him.
He bared his teeth in a grin. “Then I guess I’m stuck with you.”
*
Lara smiled back, relieved and triumphant. “As long as you realize it.”
Iestyn’s grin sharpened.
She felt a quick quiver of caution. What was she doing, dismissing the chance to return safely home? What would she do when this adventure was over, when Iestyn was gone?
But she silenced the whisper of doubt. She was not a victim or a child. She would figure it out. In the meantime, he wanted her with him.
At least for now.
Fremont shuffled his feet. “Guess you’ll be leaving us, then.”
“Not yet,” Lara said.
Iestyn shot her a quick look. “You want to change your shirt?”
“No, I—”
“You need to hit the road now,” Fremont said. “We can’t leave until you’re gone.”
“Why?” Lara asked.
“Trackers,” Fremont said.
Iestyn glanced at the roofline. “The birds?”
“Guardian spies,” Soldier said.
“We’ve only got your word for it that they’re not after us,”
Fremont said. “I want to watch them follow you out of here.”
“We need something from you first,” Lara said.
The youngest flyer, Max, gave her a tomcat grin. “Name it.”
Iestyn stiffened beside her. But she was too focused on his future to worry about his feelings right now. She turned to Soldier. “You wore a heth once, you said.”
The flyer eyed her warily. “So?”
“How did you remove it?”
He shook his head. “You don’t want to mess with that.
You could get hurt.”
Her gaze dropped to the puckered scar around his throat.
“That’s why I need you to tell me how to do it. I don’t want to cause him any pain.”
Soldier snorted. “It’s not him you should worry about.
You want to be careful, girl. He’s not like us. Once that heth’s off, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”
“I’m not an animal. I don’t need a fucking collar,” Iestyn said.
Soldier’s weary blue eyes met his. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
Iestyn’s muscles bunched. She squeezed his arm, willing him to keep quiet.
“Please,” she said to Soldier. “Tell us, and we’ll go.”
He held her gaze a moment and then shrugged. “It’s your funeral. You can’t cut the cord without breaking the charm first.”
“Break it, how?”
“Any way you can. Shatter it. Melt it.”
“While it’s on my neck,” Iestyn said.
Soldier rubbed his scar. “I didn’t say it would be easy, only that it could be done. If you have the strength and the stomach for it.”
“If you have the balls,” Max said. He looked at Lara. “You could still change your mind, sweetheart. Come with us.”
“Fuck you,” Iestyn said. He looked down at her, his eyes molten gold. “We’re leaving. Now. Together.”
She blinked at his sudden about-face. She almost didn’t recognize this hot-eyed, cold-voiced stranger. But she trusted him. “Fine.”
Taking her hand, he towed her to the Jeep. If the vehicle had had a door, she thought, he would have slammed it.
The engine choked to life.
Iestyn backed out of the parking space, narrowly avoiding the three flyers behind the truck. His face set in grim lines as the Jeep lurched onto the road, picking up speed.
Lara twisted in her seat, pushing her hair from her eyes.
The sky was crossed with phone and utility lines, but between them she could see black specks like flies in a spider’s web.
Misgiving snaked down her spine. “They’re following us.”
“Not for long.”
“I meant the birds.”
He flashed her a look. “So did I.”
The Jeep tore up the old coast road, changing lanes, weaving in and out of traffic. Motels, restaurants, outlet stores streaked by. The wind whipped Lara’s face and rattled the bags in back. She bit her lip, one eye on the quivering needle of the speedometer. The last thing they needed was to be picked up for speeding in a stolen Jeep.
The buildings thinned.
“Hang on,” Iestyn said.
He veered hard onto a wooded side road past split rail fences and straggling stone wal s, rutted driveways and rusting mailboxes.
Another sharp turn. Lara clutched the roll bar as Iestyn drove the Jeep over a ditch and under the trees, crashing, bumping, bouncing through the brush, light and shadow dancing crazily overhead. Her knuckles turned white.
The Jeep lurched and jolted to a stop deep under the cover of a broad, black pine. He turned off the engine. In the sudden silence she could hear the rasp of his breathing and the beating of her own heart.
The scent of spruce wrapped around them.
Iestyn turned his head. In the tree’s shadow, his eyes gleamed like the eyes of an animal, unreadable and intent.
“Come here.”
Tension thickened the air like the smell of broken bracken.
Lara licked her lips. His gaze dropped to her mouth.
“What about the birds?”
“They’ll follow the road.”
“And the demons?”
“What about them?”
She blinked. “They could be . . .” Here? A trace like burning leaves at the back of her palate. A hint of something decaying on the forest floor.
“Miles away,” he finished for her.
The sun slanted through the branches of the pine, sculpting his body in sunlight and deep blue shadow. He stretched one arm along the back of his seat, sinewy, graceful.
Denim pulled taut over his hard thighs and his hard . . .
Well.
Her cheeks flushed. Her heart pounded.
The bruises on his face, the hint of beard roughening his jaw, made him look disreputable. Dangerous. But it wasn’t terror that scrambled her pulse.
Cupping the back of her head, he pulled her slowly toward him. His breath seared her lips. His mouth hovered, just out of reach. She made a small, impatient sound deep in her throat, and he kissed her. Not roughly, with none of the suppressed violence that had quivered in him since the parking lot. But slowly, thoroughly, taking possession of her mouth, using his tongue and his teeth. Blinded, she closed her eyes.
His left hand covered her breast. “Your heart is racing,”
he whispered against her lips.
He filled her head like a day at the beach, hot, salty, golden.
“Adrenaline,” she managed to say.
He twined his fingers in her hair. “Fight? Or flight?”
The tug on her scalp, the pull on her senses, rippled along her nerves. She didn’t want to fight him. “Are you giving me a choice?” she asked, half-seriously.
“You always have the choice.”
She attempted a smile. “Not if you’re holding my hair.”
He twined it around his fist. “Maybe I’m afraid you’ll run away.”
Was he kidding? She’d just dismissed her last, best chance to go home. Every mile, every decision, separated her more irrevocably from everything and everyone she knew at Rockhaven.
“I’m not the one who’s leaving,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
Let it go, she told herself.
But of course she didn’t. “You’re the one on your way to World’s End.”
“That was your idea.”
“Because you need to find your people.”
“I’m not like you. I don’t need others of my kind to survive.”
“It’s more than a matter of survival.” She struggled to explain the precepts she had lived with for the past thirteen years. The nephilim spent their entire earthly existence aspiring to the perfection that had been theirs before the Fall. “Only your own kind can see you as you really are.
Without their vision, how can you become your best self?
The self the Creator intends you to be.”
His golden eyes were unreadable. “And you think your masters at Rockhaven see you as your best self.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it again. “At least they know me there.”
“Well, they don’t know me on World’s End.”
She realized with a shock of sympathy that she wasn’t the only one venturing into the unknown on this journey. She had admired Iestyn’s confidence, envied his ability to go with the flow. But really, he was as cut-off, as alone in this, as she. More so, because of the seven years he had lived without sight or memory of his own kind.
“Someone there will know you,” she reassured him. “This Lucy Hunter. You must have friends who survived. Family.”
“I have no family.”
She knew nothing of the merfolk’s social stru
cture. But he was an elemental, one of the First Creation. “You were born on the foam?” she asked.
“No, I am blood born. My mother is—was—selkie.”
Her heart squeezed. “Did she . . . die in the attack?”
Iestyn shrugged. “I do not know.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I should have said, I do not know her. She did not want me.
I was conceived in human form, so all the time she carried me she could not go to sea. She gave me to my father as soon as a nurse could be found. I do not remember her, and I doubt that she remembers me.”
Lara bristled on his behalf. How could a mother not love her child?
But of course it happened. She herself had Fallen trying to save one of those unloved, unwanted children.
“At least you knew your father wanted you,” she said.
“My mother paid him to take me. And Prince Conn paid him to give me up. Most children of the sea are fostered in human households until they near the age of Change,” he explained. “My father was sorry to lose me just as I grew big enough to help around the farm, but the prince gave him enough gold to hire many men.”
As he spoke of his childhood, his speech thickened and slowed. He had a faint burr. Scottish? Welsh?
“Your father was human,” Lara said slowly, testing the idea.
Iestyn nodded. “Prince Conn told me my father had finfolk blood, but that could have been because of my eyes.
The color,” he explained. “I have finfolk eyes.”
“You have beautiful eyes,” she said.
He smiled faintly. “Fish eyes.”
“Who told you that?”
He shrugged.
She frowned. “Is that why your mother didn’t want you?
Because your father wasn’t selkie?”
“I doubt she gave my sire a thought once he rolled off her.”
He met her shocked gaze and smiled faintly. “The children of the sea don’t do commitment.”
A chill brushed her. “They don’t marry? Ever?”
“We take mates,” he offered. “But even among humans, how many couples are together after five years? Or fifty?
What kind of relationship could last five hundred?”
Forgotten Sea Page 17