Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

“Fine.”
    “I told you I was heavy.”
    Long and lean, rather, with a strength to meet his own. “It is not your weight that disturbs me.”
    “Oh?” She met his hot gaze and flushed. “Oh.”
    The tower door was ajar. He elbowed it open. The air of Sanctuary rushed to envelope them, cool with mist and magic, smelling of time, stone, and the sea.
    She cleared her throat. “You can put me down now.”
    He did not want to let her go. The longer she submitted to his touch, he felt, the more chance she would Page 44
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    accept him. “The stairway is dark. You cannot see.”
    “Oh, and you can?”
    “Yes,” he said simply and silenced her.
    He carried her up the spiral stairs, his shoulder brushing the rough stone wall, her bare feet suspended over the drop. Tall, narrow chinks of light pierced the gloom. In the stillness, he could hear her breathing and the dog’s nails clicking behind them.
    The stairs divided, circling to his rooms on the one side, broadening to wide, flat steps and an arch on the other. She adjusted her arm about his neck, pressing her soft breast into his chest. Anticipation pulsed through him. Almost there. He resisted the impulse simply to throw her over his shoulders and take the steps two at a time.
    “My lord!” The call rang from the hall.
    Madadh growled in soft warning.
    Lucy stiffened and turned her head.
    Conn tightened his hold.
    A broad bulk loomed in the stone archway. Frustration jabbed Conn. But the man who had hailed him was his most trusted warden. No purpose was served by snarling at him. Or by ignoring him either.
    “Griffith ap Powell, the castle warden,” he said shortly. “Lucy Hunter.”
    The warden frowned. “Dylan’s sister?”
    Lucy blinked. “You know my brother?”
    Griff spoke over her head to Conn. “What is she doing here?”
    “Don’t ask,” she muttered.
    Something in her voice, some subtle alteration of her posture, broke through Conn’s lust and impatience.
    He glanced down. Her shoulders were hunched, her eyes lowered. She seemed almost to have shrunk in his arms.
    “My lord, I must speak with you,” Griff said, as if the warden had forgotten his own question. Forgotten the girl’s very presence.
    Conn’s skin prickled.
    “ Don’t ask, ” she had said. Was it possible the words were not simply a comment, but a command?
    Unease trickled through him like melted ice. What did it mean, if she could command the castle warden?
    “She is the daughter of Atargatis,” Conn said, answering Griff’s question. “And my guest.”
    Griff rubbed his grizzled jaw, his dark eyes momentarily confused. “Then she is welcome. My lord, a delegation from—”
    “Later,” Conn said. “She needs fire, food, and clothes. In the upper tower room. See to it.”
    And he would see to her.
    “My lord.” The warden was respectful but firm. “This cannot wait.”
    “I have been gone two weeks.” Conn bit out the words. A blink of an eye in a selkie’s long existence.
    His father had been absent for damn near a millennium and no one was after him to attend to his duties.
    “Whatever it is can wait another hour.”
    “Gau knows that you were gone,” Griff said.
    Conn went still.
    Gau was a lord of Hell, an emissary for the children of fire. Ruthless, humorless, self-important, and dangerous, the demon lord was quick to scent an opportunity or a weakness. He would have seen Conn’s absence from Sanctuary as both.
    Something dark and fierce rose in Conn. “I do not owe Hell an accounting of my whereabouts.”
    “No, lord.” Griff met his gaze, his expression somber. “But Gau requests an audience.”
    “Gau can go to Hell.”
    “He has been to Hell, my lord,” Griff said with grim humor. “Now he is coming here. With a delegation.”
    Madadh’s shoulders quivered as the dog responded to the tension in the air. Lucy’s gaze darted from face to face.
    “He dares much in my absence,” Conn said through his teeth.
    “Perhaps he knew you were returning,” Griff suggested.

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    “Or hoped I would be gone,” Conn said. “Summon the other wardens. Let Gau see our strength.”
    Such as it was, he thought bleakly.
    “Done, lord. Morgan and Enya have arrived already,” Griff said. “The others . . . there may not be time.”
    Strain dug into Conn’s shoulders at the combined