Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

uncomfortably they bore with each other or his control.
    “We closed the door,” he said grimly. “Hell has opened a window.”
    “Unless the vent was already there,” Enya said. “We do not know everything that goes on in the deeps.”
    “The eruption could be merely a warning,” Morgan said.
    “Not a warning,” Conn said. “A threat. We must deal with it.”
    Gau’s words seared his memory. “ Give her to us, or we will destroy Sanctuary. ”
    He would never give Lucy up.
    He listened to the wardens squabble like seabirds on the cliffs.
    He had hoped that they would have weeks or months before the demons moved against them. Time to be together. Time for Lucy to understand her gift.
    She was operating solely on instinct and raw power. In healing Madadh and in closing the portal, she had channeled that power through Conn. She needed to learn control.
    Morgan said something that made Enya flush and snap at him.
    Yet perhaps Lucy’s ignorance was also her strength, Conn reflected. Deprived of training, she had no preconceptions of what she could or could not do. Her power, like her loyalty, was not dictated by logic or duty.
    Lucy’s magic sprang from love. From passion.
    That love had saved his hound. Her love had rescued Conn from the gate of Hell.
    Griff rumbled, intervening in the wardens’ argument. Conn listened to them debate, aware as always of the tensions that flowed below the surface, threatening to pull them apart.
    He needed Lucy’s magic to save his people. But how could she save them unless she accepted she was one of them?
    She loved him, Conn reminded himself. She had said so. For now, that must be enough.
    He must rein the council to the crisis at hand. Conn looked at Ronat. “How active is this vent?”
    “I cannot say, lord. I sensed the plume, but I could not approach the chimney. It was too deep for me—more than a mile below the surface.”
    “Could the finfolk go there?” Conn asked Morgan.
    “I could,” Morgan said.
    “Then—”
    The door swung open. A shaft of sunlight spilled across the floor. Lucy followed it in.
    For a moment Conn simply enjoyed the sight of her, long and lean and graceful, bathed in light.
    Then he saw her face, and his heart clenched like a fist.
    “What is it, lass?” Griff said. “What’s the matter?”
    She stumbled from the beam of light, moving stiffly, blindly, like an old woman. “Gau.”
    Conn surged from his seat to catch her.
    “What?” A voice behind him.
    “Where?”
    Lucy raised her drowned green eyes to Conn. “In the fountain.”
    He supported her forward, his heart beating again.
    “A vision,” he said with relief.
    Gau must have taken advantage of the opening in the fountain to bypass the wards. At least the demon had not harmed her physically.
    Lucy clutched his arms. “I have to go home.”
    Conn stiffened. She was distraught. She did not mean it. She could not leave him. “No.”
    Lucy trembled.
    He didn’t understand.
    “Gau threatened my family. I have to go home.”

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    A muscle bunched in Conn’s jaw. “You cannot leave Sanctuary.”
    Despair tore her. “You don’t understand. I saw—”
    “Visions can lie,” Conn said patiently. Implacably. “Gau lies.”
    “Gau is on his way to World’s End!” The words burst from her.
    “Then he will be there before you,” a voice drawled.
    Lucy turned her head to identify the speaker. Morgan, with the white-blond hair and eerie yellow eyes.
    “Whatever you imagine you can do,” Morgan said, “you are already too late.”
    Too late. Horror shook her. The internal scream started again in her head.
    Conn pierced the warden with a look before turning back to Lucy. “Dylan is there,” he said soothingly.
    “And Margred. They will protect your family.”
    Lucy’s visions rose like smoke, searing, dark. They choked her. “That’s not enough. They need a warden.”
    “Dylan is a warden.”
    “Dylan’s only one person.”
    “I will send the whaleyn to him with a warning.”
    She stared at him in disbelief. “My family is in danger. My brothers. A boy you’ve known since he was thirteen. And you’re going to send a warning ?”
    Conn’s mouth compressed. “Your family accepted their danger when they refused to come to Sanctuary.”
    “Conn.” Her voice caught. “You must help them.”
    His face hardened. “My duty is here.”
    “What about my duty?”
    “You