Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

of his throat.
    “Good-bye, friend,” he whispered hoarsely. “Sleep in peace and dream of rabbits.”
    Lucy sniffed. A single tear dripped onto the back of Conn’s hand.
    And sizzled.
    He caught his breath in pain and surprise as the heat of that single drop pierced his hand like a nail and burned in his palm. Beside him, Lucy glowed, radiating waves like warmth. He grabbed her hand and set it on top of his, their fingers tangling in the dog’s bloody fur. He felt the magic pulse through their link, the scalding current that rose in her roll through him in long, low, billowing breakers, flooding all the arid, empty recesses of his parched spirit. He was drenched, drowning in power. It poured into him, stomach and lungs, mouth and eyes, flowing, filling, surging, spilling in a great golden wave. Dimly, he heard shouting, like rescuers calling from shore, as the flood of power caught and carried him away. He fought to channel the stream that thundered through him, shunting it along the paths of Madadh’s pain, feeling it foam and churn amid the welter of ruined tissue and failing organs.
    The dog yawned, shuddered, lurched. More shouts, more shadows, a flurry of movement along the edges of the current. Magic roared in his head, poured through his veins.
    The wave crashed and shattered in dazzling, jewel-bright splinters of azure and topaz. Lucy cried out and slumped. The ripples of magic drained away, leaving Conn blind and breathless in its wake, the hound Page 87

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    whole and the girl unconscious on the bloody ground.
    Consciousness returned in chinks and chunks, like light fitting itself around a window shade. Lucy sighed.
    Her bed was lumpy. Her cheek pillowed against something hard. Hard and surprisingly comfortable.
    She didn’t want to move. Heck, she wasn’t sure she could open her eyes. She felt weak, light-headed, and empty, as if she had been in bed for days with the flu.
    “Shall we build a litter for the targair inghean ?” someone asked.
    “No.” The deep voice stirred her hair. She smelled grime and sweat and the wild salt tang of the sea. “I will carry her.”
    She knew that voice. Conn’s voice. She was sitting on his lap, cradled in his arms. His hard chest moved with his breath, up and down, like the ocean.
    “My prince . . . your hand . . .”
    “I will carry her,” Conn repeated in his arrogant, don’t-mess-with-me tone.
    She smiled against his shoulder.
    The arm that was her pillow tensed. “Lucy.” A single word, hoarse with hope.
    She found she could open her eyes after all.
    His silver eyes blazed in his hard, haggard face.
    Her heart squeezed. Something had happened, she thought. Good? Bad? She remembered kneeling beside him, and the dog . . .
    She moistened her lips. “Madadh?”
    Conn’s expression flickered. “Here,” he said.
    The hound pushed forward, wriggling. Instinctively, she put out her hand, accepting soft, wet kisses on her palm. She rubbed the dog’s hard skull, patted its filthy, blood-encrusted side.
    She blinked. Its intact hide.
    “I don’t . . .” Understand.
    “You healed them,” Conn said, watching her closely. “Madadh and Iestyn both.”
    Her chest hollowed. Her blood drummed in her ears. “I didn’t ...”
    She stopped, remembering the great golden wave, the rush of power, too huge to contain or control.
    “Iestyn reached for you when you fell,” Conn continued, his face impassive. “And when he touched you, his wounds were healed.”
    Her mouth dried. She couldn’t speak.
    Iestyn knelt before them, his face white with emotion. He took her limp, damp hand in his uninjured right arm— she noticed the black half moons of blood under his fingernails—and pressed the back of her fingers to his forehead.
    “ Targair inghean, ” he said in a choked voice.
    Lucy bit her lip. “Um.”
    Iestyn’s words rippled outward, magnified by the rocks, picked up and repeated by several people—wardens—standing around. Waiting. What were they waiting for? She recognized Griff, who smiled at her with cautious pride, and the tall man with silver-blond hair who had called her Conn’s broodmare.
    She lifted her chin. He met her gaze. His eyes were gold, like Iestyn’s. An odd little smile touched his lips before he bowed his head.
    She tightened her fingers in Madadh’s wiry coat.
    Griff came forward. He didn’t kneel, as Iestyn had. But he, too, bowed, raising her