Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

in the kitchen.”
     
    Dylan frowned. He hadn’t. All his attention had been on Margred.
    When he looked at his sister, when he even tried to look at her, his gaze slipped away. She was like an ice sculpture, colorless, opaque.
     
    “She is not interesting to me.”
     
    “Don’t you think that’s kind of strange?”
     
    “Only by human standards.” Yet he could look at his brother. “When I see her— sometimes when I even think about her— I get a headache,”
    he confessed. He felt it now, again, an odd pressure building like a headache in his skull, tempting him to avert his gaze, his focus, to something, anything else. “It’s almost like a glamour.”
     
    “A what?”
     
    “A spell, you would call it.” His mouth felt dry. “To make you look away. But this— this is different.”
     
    Regina’s brow pleated. “Could your sister be selkie?”
     
    His stomach revolted. His temples pounded. Everything in him rejected the very idea.
     
    “No,” he said positively.
     
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    “Why not?”
     
    He reared his head like a harpooned animal. “I would know. My people would know.”
     
    “But you said yourself you don’t know her very well,” Regina said reasonably. “Maybe while you’re here you could spend some time—”
     
    “No.”
     
    “Why not?” she asked again. Stubborn. Irresistible. Hopeful.
    Human. The sight of her caused a fissure in Dylan’s chest as deep and painful as the dissonance in his head.
     
    “Because we won’t be here long enough.” He faced her, his mouth a tight, grim line. “I am taking you to Sanctuary.”
     
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Thirteen
     
    REGINA REGARDED THE BROODING EYES AND set mouth of the man she was falling in love with and felt a surge of exasperation.
    Never mind the choices his mother had made when he was thirteen.
     
    “Running away is not a solution,” she told him.
     
    “I am not running away.” His voice was flat. His eyes were stormy.
    “I am taking you where you will be safe.”
     
    “To Sanctuary,” she said.
     
    He nodded once, as if he didn’t trust himself to speak or her to hear.
    Regina’s stomach gave a warning flip. He wasn’t going to give her anything she didn’t ask for. Not information or anything else. Even last night, she’d practically had to beg him to make love to her.
     
    Well, that had to change. Maybe he didn’t love her, but he wanted her. And she had some pride, after all.
     
    But right now she had more important things to worry about than her pride.
     
    She set her jaw. “Where’s that?”
     
    “It is an island off the Hebrides. The coast of Scotland,” he explained. “You will be safe there. You and the child.”
     
    “His name is Nick.”
     
    She was fascinated to see a flush spread across his hard cheekbones.
    “I meant the child you carry.”
     
    Right. Potential Super Selkie Baby. Regina suppressed a sudden pang. She couldn’t let her own growing feelings for Dylan blind her to his true priorities.
     
    “I can’t just leave,” she protested. “I have . . .” A jumble of images and concerns pressed on her: Nick, her mother, the restaurant. “A life.”
     
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    “I’d like you to keep it.”
     
    Fear feathered her nerves; shortened her breath. She shook it from her head. “I have responsibilities.”
     
    “Your first responsibility is to the child.”
     
    Her heart beat faster. “I have two children,” she reminded him.
     
    “You would not have to leave Nick.”
     
    At least he remembered to use her son’s name this time.
     
    “Damn straight,” she said.
     
    “He can come with you,” Dylan said.
     
    “You.” Not “us.”
     
    “To Scotland,” Regina said.
     
    “To Sanctuary.”
     
    “No. No way. I can’t just uproot him. His home is here, his friends, his school . . . Everything he’s ever known.”
     
    “He is young. He will adjust.”
     
    “Like you did?”
     
    He hesitated. “Yes.”
     
    She didn’t buy it. “You were thirteen. And selkie, as you’re so fond of pointing out. Are there other humans on this Sanctuary of yours? Other children?”
     
    Dylan shifted his shoulders, staring out at the tilting headstones and blowing grass. “Not many.”
     
    Uh-huh. “Any?” she pressed.
     
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    His eyes were black with suppressed emotion. “He would be safe there,” he said, which was no answer at all.
     
    “There’s no reason to believe he won’t be safe here, is there?”
     
    Dylan was silent.
     
    Her heartbeat