Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

pinned him with a bright smile. “Have a nice stay on the island.”
     
    “I am leaving tonight.”
     
    Her smile faltered; set. “Oh. Then I guess I won’t see you again.”
     
    Her casual pat on his flank, that tender, careless touch on his thigh, burned like a brand. The mer did not touch. Only to fight, or to mate.
     
    His hands curled into fists at his sides.
     
    “No,” he said.
     
    She turned away without another word.
     
    He stood without moving as she wobbled up the beach, toward the lights and the music, leaving him alone.
     
    25
     

Three
     
    THE TOWER OF CAER SUBAI WAS VERY OLD, mortared with mists and magic. The prince was older still, weary with the weight of years and responsibilities. But as long as he stayed within this tower on the selkie isle of Sanctuary, he did not age. He would not die.
     
    Conn ap Llyr, prince of the mer, lord of the sea, gazed west out his windows, listening to the sea song rise from the rocks below and the north wind pry through the stones like a knife. He could feel the demon’s presence from half a world away, swirling like an oil slick, dark and corrosive, lapping at the island the humans called World’s End.
     
    Conn did not give a damn if the humans were overrun with demons and their island sank into the sea. For millennia, the children of the sea had maintained an uneasy peace with demonkind, a peace struck from pride and self-interest, cobbled together with compromises and broken promises, defended through centuries of violationsand encroachments. A peace he believed would hold.
     
    Until six weeks ago, when a demon had murdered one of Conn’s people on World’s End.
     
    He gripped the edge of his desk, a massive slab of iron and carved walnut salvaged from a Spanish galleon wrecked off the Cornish coast.
    Everything that dwelled in and under the sea, everything that fell below its surface, was his to claim or dispose of. Nine tenths of the earth was in his realm. But the demon eluded him.
     
    He reached outward, his thoughts eddying, circling the darkness, seeking its source, its threat. He might as well have tried to sieve a drop from a current. The demon slipped his grasp, lost in a moving tide of humanity.
     
    Conn bowed his head, failure bitter in his mouth. The hound sleeping at his feet twitched and whined. Beyond his tower windows, the bright sea rolled, wild, wide, and deep, beyond his reach, taunting his control.
     
    26
    There was a time— the whales sang of it— when the sea lords’
    power ran high and full, when the mer were attuned to every creature in and over the sea, when they could summon glaciers or transport themselves in a shower of rain. Even Conn’s own father, Llyr, before he abandoned human form and all responsibility—
    But Conn could not think of the absentee king without anger, and anger was something else he had learned to deny himself. Deliberately, he uncurled his hands, splaying them against the map on his desk.
     
    In recent centuries, the sea kings’ gifts had dwindled as their people’s numbers declined. All that was left for the sea king’s heir was to safeguard what remained with whatever tools he could find.
     
    Footsteps sounded from the tower stairs.
     
    Conn glanced up as Dylan emerged, the top of his head nearly brushing the arch of rough cut stone.
     
    Here was a tool. A weapon, rather. Dylan was ambitious and resourceful, a son of the sea witch Atargatis and her human husband.
    After her death, Conn had taken the boy under his own protection. Dylan had yet to demonstrate any power beyond what every selkie possessed, sexual glamour and a little weather magic. But he had proven his courage and his loyalty; and in the current situation, Conn must use what lay at hand.
     
    “You sent for me, lord?” Dylan asked.
     
    “Yes.” Frustration had made him abrupt. He leashed his tone. “I have something to show you.”
     
    Dylan surveyed the chart covering the surface of the desk. “Since when do we depend on human maps?”
     
    “It suits my purpose,” Conn said.
     
    “Which is?”
     
    Instead of replying, Conn spread his hands over the desk. He concentrated his gift, adding his little findings to the information already imbued in the map. Gradually the image came alive, colors winking into being like stars in the night sky, forming streams and clusters of light.
     
    27
     
    Dylan’s brows flicked up. “Impressive. What is it?”
     
    Conn closed his fists, ignoring the faint,