Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

protect you,” Lucy said.
    Dylan raised his eyebrows. The expression made him look fleetingly like Conn. She pressed her hand against the pain in her chest.
    “Protect us, how?” Dylan said.
    Lucy swallowed. “I, um . . . On Sanctuary, I was kind of a link, an enhancement. Like a . . . a channel for the other wardens’ power.”
    Margred’s eyes widened. “You were in the hall,” she said. “The first time I stopped the rain.”
    Dylan stood. Paced. Turned. “When I warded the restaurant . . . That was you?”
    Lucy nodded, her throat tight.
    “Well.” Caleb smiled at her wryly. Admiringly. “The daughter of Atargatis, huh?”
    Tears pricked her eyes. To have him see her . . . To have him accept her . . .
    “Conn knew this?” Dylan asked.
    Pain speared her heart. “ You can be spared least of all, ” Conn had said. “ We need you here. I need you here. I cannot do this without you. ”
    She cleared her throat. “He . . . Yes.”
    “Then I am surprised he let you go,” Margred said.
    Lucy stared at her, stricken.
    “Oh, my God.” Regina’s dark eyes widened with feminine instinct. “He didn’t. He doesn’t know she’s here.”
    “He knows,” Lucy forced herself to say. “We talked before I left.”
    “You mean, you fought,” Regina guessed shrewdly.
    “The important thing is, she’s here,” Caleb said. “She’s home. Where she belongs.”
    Something turned over in Lucy’s chest, like a small animal startled into flight. “Not to stay,” she said. “I’m only here until you’re not in danger anymore.”
    “And when,” Dylan said, “will you know that?”
    Lucy opened her mouth. Shut it.
    Her brothers exchanged a long look.
    “In the military, you have a defined objective,” Caleb said. “Identify the threat, take it out. But you can’t neutralize a threat you can’t see. We don’t know where this demon, Gau, is coming from. How he’ll strike. Which means we’ll be running patrol a long time. You can’t leave.”
    Panic beat strong wings in her chest. She caught her breath in despair. Never leave? Never return to Sanctuary? Never see Conn again?
    But she had always known in her heart that she could not go back, she accepted numbly. She had made her choice. Taken her stand. She was home now.
    She had only herself to blame that it didn’t feel like home anymore.

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    The earth groaned. The tower trembled. Conn shifted his weight on the castle wall, riding the swell like a man on the deck of a ship.
    His world was already shaken when Lucy left.
    The demons’ work would only finish the job.
    He gazed out over the horizon, a void where his heart used to be.
    Griff climbed the wall to stand beside him. “They are gone?”
    Conn nodded without speaking. The ship that bore Iestyn, Madadh, and the others had gradually disappeared from view, fleeing south before the wind he had summoned to carry them away. He had dispatched the ship at dawn, as soon as the first rumble made itself felt through the castle stones. There had been no time for long instructions, no delay for farewells, no interval for Kera’s pleas to stay and aid in Sanctuary’s defense. She was a talented weather worker. Better to preserve her gifts if the island fell.
    At Conn’s insistence, she had boarded the boat, seething with resentment and distress. Iestyn had been pale, Roth subdued. Conn had known the children from the time he had taken them from their human families, from the time they had played with the hound’s many-times-great-grandsire on the rushes of the hall. They carried Sanctuary with them, a few small, precious objects for remembrance. They carried Conn’s prospects for the future and a closely guarded portion of his heart. They carried his dog, tied shivering and barking to the rail.
    It was unlikely that Conn would see them or that they would see Sanctuary again.
    He watched until their sails slipped out of sight, lost in the hazy blue curve of the sea, sailing south toward the Azores. And then he turned and looked to the west, where Lucy had gone, taking his soul and his hopes with her. He watched the ocean where Gau and his cohorts labored under the earth, applying pressure to turn the sea itself against Sanctuary.
    Griff stirred as another rumble vibrated through the stones at their feet. “My prince, you are not safe up here. Come down.”
    Conn shook his head without taking his eyes off the