“You run the restaurant,” Lara said.
“The restaurant and the town. Ma’s the mayor,” Regina explained.
A pair of dark-haired children burst through the screened back door, heading for the refrigerator.
“Hold on,” Regina ordered.
The little girl—seven? eight?—turned on her with black, beseeching eyes. “But, Mom, Calder’s starving.”
“Good. It’s almost time to eat.” Regina handed her a platter of deviled eggs and gave a tray of delicately browned crab cakes to the boy. “Take these outside. You can come back in to tell me when the coals are ready.”
The children thumped outside.
“Have a glass of wine,” Regina said. “Or a beer.”
“I’m fine,” Lara said. Out of place and slightly out of sorts in the midst of this cheerful family whirlpool, but otherwise all right.
“I’ll have a beer,” Nick said.
His mother narrowed her eyes. “In your dreams, pal.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Lara asked.
She didn’t cook. But she wanted to fit in.
Regina poured her a large glass of white wine. “Relax.
Enjoy.”
Lara sipped, but she couldn’t relax.
The teenager, Emily, glanced over her shoulder. She was slim and dark-skinned and very, very pretty. “You could give me a hand with the crostini,” she said kindly.
Lara smiled. “I can if you tell me what to do.”
Under Emily’s careful supervision, she assembled appetizers, spreading little rounds of bread with something black that smelled delicious. Focused on her task, she only gradually registered the conversation around her.
“No big deal if I can’t take algebra,” Nick was saying.
“I’m not a brain like Em.”
“You’re no dummy either,” his grandmother said.
“But it’s first period,” Nick protested. “When winter comes, I’ll miss half the classes anyway.”
Lara knew most teens were too sleep-deprived to concentrate first thing in the morning. But . . .
“Why when winter comes?” she wanted to know.
“We take the ferry to school on the mainland,” Emily explained. “When the ice is bad, we can’t get across until later in the day.”
“It’s not safe for the boats to travel in the dark,” Regina said.
Lara frowned. “You don’t have your own school?”
“K through nine. No high school,” Antonia said.
“We’ve got the numbers. Almost thirty now,” said Regina.
“The budget the way it is, the state’s consolidating schools,”
Antonia said. “They don’t want to open another way out here.”
“A lot of kids board off the island during the school year,” said Emily.
“Or drop out.” Nick shrugged. “I can make more money lobstering over the summer than a teacher makes in a year.”
“If that’s what you want to do all your life,” his mother said.
“What if you developed a high school magnet program?”
Lara asked. “Or learning enrichment based on, oh, ship building or marine studies or something. That would help your student retention rate and attract families and money from off island.”
Antonia shot her a sharp look. “You a teacher?”
“No, I . . .” Lara hesitated, her world shifting underfoot.
What was she now?
“She’s an administrator,” Iestyn said.
He was there, leaning against the doorjamb, regarding her with warm, golden eyes.
She shook her head, ignoring the bump of her pulse. “I worked in an office.”
“The headmaster’s office. You know stuff.”
His obvious pride made her flush with pleasure and embarrassment. “I know a little. Bookkeeping. Grant writing.”
“See?” He smiled, making her heart flop foolishly. “Stuff.”
He strolled forward and gave her a warm, firm kiss that did nothing to steady her shaky heart. He smelled like sunshine and the sea.
Regina hummed in interest.
“I need to talk to you,” Iestyn said.
“Wait your turn,” Antonia said.
“Go.” Regina took the knife from Lara’s hand. “Eat, drink, enjoy yourself.”
Lara looked from Emily’s bright, curious face to the unfinished crostini. “But . . .”
“Go on. You’re a guest.”
A guest, Lara thought as Iestyn took her hand, his grip hard and steady, and practically dragged her out to the porch. Of course. That’s exactly what she was.
That was all that she was. She swallowed, stricken.
Iestyn swung her to face him. The sun slanted under the porch eaves, illuminating his handsome face, tipping his hair with gold. “Why did you disappear like that?”
“I didn’t disappear.” She was proud of the way she kept her voice even. “You saw me, I was right here, I—”
He cut her off. “I wanted you to hear.”
“Hear what?”
“Good news. The best.” He lifted her up and seated her on the rail of the porch, trapping her between his long, muscled arms. He nuzzled her jaw. “You know Lucy is a healer, right?”
“I . . .” Lara inhaled, dizzied by his closeness, dazzled by his bright expectation. “Did you show her your burn?”
“What? Oh, yeah.” He eased back.
Lara shivered, deprived of his warmth, as he tugged down the neck of his T-shirt, exposing his throat.
She stared at the smooth white scar, faint against his tan.
“You’re healed,” she said stupidly. “She healed you.”
She pushed back his tawny hair. Even his stitches were gone, his head wound healed as if it had never been.
Lucy had done for him what Lara could not.
Iestyn shrugged, revealing in a single, careless gesture how little the pain and trauma of the past few days had affected him. “She is the targair inghean. But the thing is, she says I’m finfolk. Part finfolk anyway.”
A sliver of ice worked into Lara’s heart. “I don’t understand.”
But she did. Or was afraid she did.
“There are two kinds of merfolk,” Iestyn said. “Selkie, like Dylan, who shed their sealskins to take human form on land. And finfolk, like Morgan, who are total shapeshifters, who can take the form of any creature of the sea.”
Morgan. Lara summoned a vision of the big, brutal Viking with the sea foam hair and golden eyes.
Iestyn’s eyes.
“He looks like you,” she said slowly.
“Actually, I look like him,” Iestyn said. “My mother was selkie. When I Changed for the first time, I took seal form, so I always figured that was it for me. But I guessed I had finfolk blood, on my da’s side. Because of the eyes.”
“You told me your father was human.”
“He was. But Conn thinks maybe Morgan’s sister Morwenna could have been his grandmother.”
Lara’s head spun. “So, Morgan is your . . . uncle? Great uncle?”
“Something like that.”
“Wouldn’t he have known?”
“I don’t think he cared. He and his sister were estranged after she married a human. None of her children could Change. Morgan probably never even thought about grandchildren.” Iestyn shook his head impatiently. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”
The sliver in her chest dug deeper. “What is the point?”
“I told you.” Iestyn took a deep breath. “I’m part finfolk.
Lucy told me that with her help, I can learn to Change.”
Lara stared at him, her mouth dry, her heart beating up in her throat. She had wanted to restore him to his people.
She had hoped to restore him to himself. Apparently she had succeeded beyond her wildest expectations.
“That’s . . .” She sought for a word. “Wonderfu
l.”
“It’s everything. Lara.” Iestyn gripped her arms, the sunlight in his eyes and on his hair, his face lit with joy. “I can go back to sea again.”
*
“It’s everything.” The words rang in Lara’s head, dogged her footsteps, as she trudged back alone to the hotel. “I can go back to sea again.” A bitter little breeze blew, kicking the shining surface of the water into running caps of foam.
She was not running away, Lara told herself, pausing on the bluffs to watch a bird fold its wings and plunge into the sea.
She was merely taking some time to herself to think.
To regroup. No one would even notice she was gone.
She pulled a face. If she were honest with herself, that was part of the problem.
Her problem.
She climbed the drive to the inn under storm-weathered trees, over rolling green lawn. She was genuinely glad for Iestyn. How could she fail to be glad? She loved him.
But he’d never said the words to her. It was unlikely now that he ever would. She would have to find a way to live with that.
Or live without him.
Wearily, she climbed the stairs to their room. The door was unlocked. Kate Begley, she wondered, making the bed?
She almost turned away. She really wasn’t in the mood for company. But the prospect of the cool, white room, of peace and solitude, beckoned too strongly. With a little sigh, she pushed opened the door.
Jude Zayin sat in the rocker by the window, his big, broad-shouldered body dwarfing the chair. Crowding the room.
He looked up at her entrance, his dark face unreadable.
Her heart stopped.
“Hello, Lara,” he said. “I’ve come to take you home.”
Iestyn wandered around the corner of the house, beer in hand, a vague unease ruffling his mood like wind at the edge of a sail. The scent of the salt wood and saltwater blended with the aroma of charcoal-grilled fish.
The tables set under the trees were set with food and surrounded by the Hunters’ extended family.
He liked it all, the view, the smells, the mingling of merfolk and humankind. And felt slightly removed from the scene at the same time. He hadn’t been to a lot of family picnics in the past seven years. Or before then. But he felt instinctively that something was missing.
Lara.
A war of badminton was being waged over a net strung between two trees. Four players of varying heights and skills competed on either side. Iestyn watched as a small girl in a pink dress dropped her racket and burst into tears.
Her father—Caleb Hunter, Lucy’s brother—scooped her onto his shoulders and resumed play, the delighted child now wrapped like a hat around his head.
Iestyn grinned. But Lara wasn’t there to meet his eyes, to share a smile and the moment.
His sense of dissatisfaction grew. He scanned the yard, searching for her.
Conn and Lucy sat in camp chairs overlooking the ocean, Madagh drowsing beside them.
Iestyn dropped to a crouch at their feet, scratching the hound’s graying muzzle. “Hey, boy. Remember me?”
The old dog rolled to his back, wriggling like a pup, his thin tail whipping the pine needles.
Iestyn’s throat tightened. He scratched the hound’s wiry belly. “I thought you would have replaced him by now,” he said to Conn.
The sea lord lived forever. His dogs did not. But there was always a dog, always a deerhound, always named
“Madagh”—hound—at the prince’s side.
Conn smiled his wintry smile. “This one has led something of a charmed life. As, apparently, have you.”
“Yeah.” Iestyn realized, to his horror, that his eyes were wet.
He focused hastily on the dog. “I guess I hoped . . . I thought Roth and Kera might have made it.”
“We don’t know that they did not,” Conn said. “I have never stopped searching.”
“I never stopped hoping.” Lucy reached out and squeezed Iestyn’s forearm. His right arm, the one she’d healed seven years and a lifetime ago, after he stood with her against the demons. “For seven years, I’ve asked myself if I could have made another choice that would have saved Sanctuary.
What happened to you was my fault.”
Silence descended on the hill above the sea.
“You must not blame yourself,” Conn said. “I have never blamed you. It was my decision to send the younger ones away.”
Iestyn cleared his throat. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said to Lucy. He turned to the prince. “Or yours. It was our decision to turn back. My choice. My responsibility.”
What had Lara said? “Sometimes things happen as part of a larger plan, and we just can’t see it yet.”
“None of us figured the ship would go down. Nobody could have predicted I’d turn up now, after all this time.
Maybe it was an accident. Or luck.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it was something else.”
“Destiny,” Conn said.
He met the sea lord’s eyes. “Maybe.”
Lucy smiled. “And here you are, safe and back with us again.”
Back among his own kind, she meant.
Back where he belonged.
Iestyn smiled, but a vague dissatisfaction still gnawed his gut.
“The question is, where will you go now?” Conn said.
He had no idea. His lack of direction had never bothered him before. We flow as the sea flows.
But something was missing. Something was wrong.
Lucy tipped her head. “Won’t you come with us? To Sanctuary.”
Iestyn pictured the green hills and round towers, the magic island set like a jewel between the swaying kelp forests and swirling sky. The work of rebuilding was done, Lucy had told him earlier. Everything was as it had been.
He could go home again. He waited for the rush of relief, the sense of homecoming.
And was surprised to hear himself say, “No.”
“Ah,” Conn said.
The wind whispered from the sea, stirring Lucy’s hair.
“It’s the girl, isn’t it?” she said. “Lara.”
Iestyn ducked his head, feeling about fifteen again. Lucy had been his first love or at least his first serious crush. He suspected she knew it. He was sure Conn did. How could he tell them he was reconsidering his future based on his feelings for a girl he’d known less than a week?
“She saved my life,” he said.
“She also put you in danger,” Lucy said.
“Not deliberately.”
“We have never allied with the children of air,” Morgan said.
The finfolk lord strolled from the cover of trees like a shark emerging from the shadow of the rocks. His hair gleamed pale in the sunlight.
My great-uncle, Iestyn thought, Lara’s words fresh in his mind. He could see the resemblance, a trick of coloring, a similarity in build. But he didn’t feel the connection.
“Because we were neutral in Hell’s war on Heaven and humankind,” Conn said.
“Aren’t we neutral now?” Iestyn asked.
“Alliances change,” Morgan said. “The demons no longer disguise their enmity. Your affinity with this girl now could tip things in our favor.”
Conn raised his eyebrows. “Another shift in the balance of power?” he inquired softly.
Morgan met his gaze. “Why not? I liked the look of that heth.
We could use something like that.”
The undercurrents of the conversation sucked at Iestyn, leaving him edgy and off balance. “Lara didn’t make the heth,” he said.
“But she understands how it was made. How it works.”
Morgan directed another look at Conn. “It would be interesting to learn what else she knows. What else she can do.”
Iestyn gritted his teeth. Lara had run with him rather than let him be used by the nephilim. “Forget it. I won’t let you use her.”
They all regarded hi
m with varying degrees of affront or surprise.
“The pup has grown teeth,” Morgan murmured.
“Your concern for the girl does you credit,” Conn said.
“But her appearance now has implications for us all. We’d be fools not to take advantage of her knowledge.”
“Only if she agrees,” Iestyn said. “If she stays.”
The thought that she might not stay struck at his heart.
“Why wouldn’t she stay?” Morgan asked. “She’s obviously in love with you.”
Was she?
Iestyn’s throat tightened. He gulped his beer.
Was love enough to make her stay?
“Unless you don’t love her,” Conn said, watching him closely.
Iestyn stared morosely at the bottle in his hand. “She’ll never believe it. Not now. Not if she thinks I’m using her.”
“But you’ve told her how you feel,” Lucy said.
“No.”
No promises. No guarantees.
Conn raised his eyebrows. “Then you should.”
Iestyn’s jaw set stubbornly. Lara had told him straight out that she was tired of other people telling her how to live her life. “She ought to be able to decide what she wants for herself.”
“And how can she do that if she doesn’t know that you love her?” Lucy asked.
“She should understand her options,” Conn said.
“She deserves the words,” Morgan said. He glanced toward the picnic table, where his wife Elizabeth chatted with Margred Hunter. “Women need words.”
Iestyn’s chest felt tight. Lara had been so careful not to ask him for promises.
But he could make them, because the words mattered.
Because she mattered.
He wanted her. He trusted her. But he hadn’t trusted his feelings until now.
He regarded the three under the trees, his prince, his friend, his only living blood relative.
“I need to talk to her.”
“She’s gone,” Morgan said.
Iestyn’s blood drummed in his ears. “What?”
“Dylan saw her headed back to the inn. I came to tell you.”
Conn’s gaze narrowed. “Problem?”
Uneasiness gripped Iestyn. That sense of something off, something wrong, swept over him.
“I don’t know. I have to find her.”
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