Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

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    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
     
    SEA LORD
     
    A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
     
    PRINTING HISTORY
    Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / May 2009
     
    Copyright © 2009 by Virginia Kantra.
     
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    eISBN : 978-1-101-04747-7
     
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    To Michael .
    I couldn’t do this without you .
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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    First of all, thank you to Cindy Hwang and the wonderful team at Berkley.
    Thanks to my fabulously supportive agent, Damaris Rowland.
    Thank you to my wonderful first-draft readers, Kristen Dill and Melissa McClone.
    Huge thanks to my family, who deal patiently with blank stares, interrupted phone calls, humming, and dead-lines.
    And finally, thanks to twelve-year-old African AIDS victim and activist Nkosi Johnson for these words:
    “Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are.”
    So, in one moment,
    Or almost one, she was seen, and loved, and taken
    In Pluto’s rush of love. She called her mother,
    Her comrades, but more often for her mother.
    —OVID, METAMORPHOSES
     
    I tell you naught for your comfort,
    Yea, naught for your desire,
    Save that the sky grows darker yet
    And the sea rises higher.
    —G. K. CHESTERTON, “THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE HORSE”
    IN THE TIME BEFORE TIME, WHEN THE DOMAINS of earth, sea, and sky were formed and fire was called into being, the elementals took shape, each with their element: the children of earth, the children of the sea, the children of air, and the children of fire.
    After earth had flowered and life crawled from the sea, humankind was born.
    Not all of the elementals were pleased with this new creation. The children of fire rebelled, declaring war on the children of the air and humankind. The others, forced to cohabit with the mortals, withdrew—the fair folk to the hills and wild places of earth and the merfolk to the depths of the sea.
    Yet there are still encounters between the elementals and humankind. Of such meetings, souls are redeemed and lost, wars are waged, great art is created, empires are raised. Of such meetings legends—and children—are born.
    The whaleyn sing of a prophecy, that a daughter of the sea witch Atargatis will one day alter the balance of power between the elements. Over the centuries, the