Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

“If you’re seeking a partner for the evening, warden, you have come to the wrong place.”
    The castle warden entered the schoolroom, avoiding the scattered tables and chairs in the dark. “I found my partner over a hundred years ago. This was her place. I come to sit and remember.”
    The man’s unabashed devotion to his dead mate made Conn ashamed of his ill humor. Ashamed and almost jealous. “Were there no selkie females in the hall to provide distraction for the night?”
    Griff smiled wryly. “I shepherded half of them into the sea at their first Change. I am too old for them.”
    “Younger than I am.”
    Griff eased his big body into a little chair, stretching his long legs toward the empty hearth. “It’s not the years, my prince. It’s what you do with them.”
    Conn inclined his head, acknowledging the point.
    “I am surprised to see you here,” Griff continued. “Or indeed, at all tonight.”
    Conn turned the glass in his hand. “My plans for the evening met with an unexpected . . . obstacle.”
    Griff straightened. “Gau?”
    “A human obstacle,” Conn clarified.
    Relaxing, Griff eyed the amber liquid in Conn’s glass. “So you are applying a human solution?”
    “It seemed appropriate.” Conn let the eighteen-year-old Scotch roll on his tongue. “Whatever their other limitations, humans make good whiskey.”
    Griff gave him a level look. “And is it those ‘other limitations’ that have you drinking alone in the dark rather than enjoying your lady’s company?”
    Conn stiffened. He did not discuss his personal life with his wardens. But neither could he permit Griff to lay responsibility for his present dilemma at Lucy’s door. “The fault was not hers,” he said shortly, “but mine.”
    They sat in companionable silence.
    Griff cleared his throat. “Sometimes women—human women—need work to warm to things.”
    Conn raised his eyebrows. “If you are thinking to advise me on my sex life, I’ll need another drink.”
    “I am not talking about bed play. Or not only about that,” Griff said. “The girl has been on Sanctuary less than a day. She needs time to adjust.”
    Time was something selkies had in abundance. Over the course of his long and careful existence, Conn had grown used to thinking in terms of years and centuries. But the demons’ murder of the selkie Gwyneth and the news of Gau’s visit had kindled an unfamiliar urgency in him.
    The demon lord’s visit and his own impatience.
    Driven by necessity and lust, he had spoken too soon, pushed too hard, expected too much. Griff was right. Lucy needed time to grow accustomed to the island before she accepted her place here. Before she accepted him.
    “How long?” he asked.
    “That depends on what you did to piss her off,” Griff said.
    The warden’s tone was heavy with humor and knowledge—the consequence of loving a human, Conn supposed. Griff had taken his Emma from the wreckage of her ship on Conn’s orders, lived with her for more than three score years, sired and raised two human children with her.
    And in the end, had seen those children grow up and away, had held their mother’s hand and watched Page 59

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    her die. That, too, was a consequence of binding your life to a mortal life. A mortal love.
    The memory of Conn’s own words haunted him. “ I would be faithful to you. There would be no other partners for either of us as long as you live. ”
    He pushed the thought away.
    “How long before your mate . . . adjusted?” he asked.
    Griff rubbed his jaw. “Weeks, it was. It would help your cause if you could find the lass something to do.
    Something useful. Make her feel needed here.”
    Lucy’s image, Lucy’s words, rose to accuse him. “ All my life, I imagined being needed. Dreamed of being loved for myself, for who I am. Not fucked because of who my mother was. ”
    Conn took another sip of whiskey to wash the memory away. “I explained the need. She wants no part of it.”
    Or me.
    “Something else,” Griff said. “We do not need a teacher, but—”
    “She’s not taking over the cooking,” Conn interrupted. “She had enough of that where she was.” He looked at the whiskey glass in his hand and set it down. “Let her train with Iestyn and the others.”
    Griff’s brow pleated. “She is not selkie.”
    “But she has power. Let us see what she can learn to do with it.”
    “If you want to