Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

children of fire have grown strong, while the children of the sea have declined in numbers and in magic. The daughter of the prophecy could prove their salvation. Or the weapon of their destruction . . .

Prologue
    CONN AP LLYR WALKED THE BROKEN SHORE OF the crescent island, just out of reach of the seductive curl of the water, ignoring the siren call of the waves and the lap of the surge like the tempo of his blood. He needed the sea like he needed a woman.

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    But he could control his needs. He must. Let his father, Llyr, wallow in the ocean’s seductive embrace.
    Conn had held himself above such things for a very long time.
    Yet sometimes in the evening, he left his tower to walk with his hound among the rocks and tide pools at the water’s edge.
    The sun slipped in the bronze sky, staining the pewter water to gold and veining the clouds with fire.
    Conn lifted his face to the raw western wind. He could have sought or summoned a partner. There were females on Sanctuary eager to satisfy the moods and needs of its prince.
    But that was indulgence, too, another slide into sensation, another plunge into loss of control. Unlike his father the king, Conn could not afford to expend himself and his energy on passing pleasure.
    The dog ranged up and down, head low. The water shrugged. A line of foam rustled to shore, whispering for Conn’s attention. In the time before Conn’s father’s time, when the flood of magic ran full and hot, the sea kings had grasped and wielded power like a sword. But the gifts of the merfolk had declined with their numbers. Conn’s own magic was a subtler thing, pale and shapeless as water, that trickled through his clenched hands.
    Which was why the vision burning in the tide pool at his feet almost tripped him up.
    Light struck the surface of the water and blazed. The pool caught the colors of the sky, orange and gold.
    Power shimmered in the air. The hound whined.
    Conn narrowed his gaze as the glare resolved itself into a female shape. A girl, with long bones and strong shoulders and hair as thick and pale as straw around a lean and quiet face.
    Well.
    Conn frowned. Not selkie. He would have known one of his own. There were only a few thousand of his people left, enough to recognize, barely enough to rule.
    Not even particularly beautiful.
    Human, he thought. And therefore unimportant.
    But then why had his gift shown her to him?
    Her image shimmered, trapped in the safe, shallow little pool like a fish caught by the retreating tide, oblivious to the rich dark depths of the ocean teeming yards away.
    She meant nothing, Conn told himself.
    She was nothing.
    But her vision refused to go away.

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    CONN AP LLYR HAD NOT HAD SEX WITH A MORTAL woman in three hundred years.
    And the girl grubbing in the dirt, surrounded by pumpkins and broken stalks of corn, was hardly a reward for his years of discipline and sacrifice.
    Even kneeling, she was as tall as many men, long boned and rangy. Although maybe that was an illusion created by her clothes, jeans and a lumpy gray jacket. Conn thought there might be curves under the jacket. Big breasts, little breasts . . . He hardly cared. She was the one. Her hair fell thick and pale around her downturned face. Her long, pale fingers patted and pressed the earth. She had a streak of dirt beside her thumb.
    Not a beauty, he thought again.
    He knew her name now. Lucy Hunter. He had known her mother, the sea witch, Atargatis. This human girl had clearly inherited none of her mother’s allure or her gifts. Living proof—if Conn had required any—that the children of the sea should not breed with humankind.
    But a starving dog could not sneer at a bone.
    His hands curled into fists at his sides. In recent weeks, the girl’s vision had haunted him from half a world away, reflected in the water, impressed upon his brain, burning like a candle against his retinas at night.

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    He might not want her, but his magic insisted he needed her. His gift was as fickle as a beautiful woman.
    And like a woman, his power would abandon him entirely if he ignored its favors. He could not risk that.
    He watched the girl drag her hand along the swollen side of a pumpkin. Brushing off dirt? Testing it for ripeness? He had only the vaguest idea what she might be doing here among the tiny plots of staked vines