Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

in the library or visitors to a house where somebody has died.
    Lucy’s heart squeezed with terrible grief. Somebody had died. Conn. She had not been able to feel him, touch him, sense his presence, since they had turned the flood the night before. The golden cord that stretched between them had snapped completely, leaving her cut off. Adrift.
    “. . . dissipated in the Atlantic,” Caleb said. He looked up and saw her. His face sharpened with concern.
    “Lucy.”
    Dylan turned.

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    Her gaze sought his, an impossible hope raging like a fire in her chest. “Any word?” she begged.
    “Anything.”
    Dylan shook his head, his eyes black with regret. And she remembered that he, too, had loved Conn, had known the selkie prince since he was a sulky thirteen-year-old boy.
    Regina nudged Nick, who jumped off the couch. “We don’t have school today,” he announced.
    “Because of the snow and, like, the evacuation and stuff. So Danny and me are going sledding.” He cocked his head. “Are you sick again?”
    Lucy opened her mouth, but to her horror no words came out.
    “She’s just tired,” Regina said, ruffling her son’s hair. “Come on. Let’s make Miss Lucy some tea.”
    He trotted after her down the hall, and Lucy walked across the room and into her brother Dylan’s arms.
    United in grief, they embraced for the first time. His body was hard and lean and spare, like their father’s.
    “I’m sorry.” Dylan’s voice was hoarse.
    She shook her head wordlessly. He patted her back awkwardly, briefly, before releasing her to follow his wife and son into the kitchen.
    Lucy stood bereft in the middle of the living room. Margred watched her, her dark eyes deep and sympathetic.
    “You did good,” Caleb said quietly.
    “I feel so empty,” Lucy whispered.
    He enveloped her in a hug. He smelled of uniform starch and spruce and snow. Caleb smells. World’s End smells.
    “It always feels like that after a battle,” he said. “Even when you win.”
    But they hadn’t won, she thought numbly, resting her head against his shoulder.
    Her family was safe, for now. World’s End was safe. Gau was defeated, buried under sea and stone.
    But Lucy had lost.
    She’d lost Conn.
    The week wore on, measured by the deepening ruts in the snow and the thickening ice layer around Lucy’s heart.
    Island life resumed, marked by the rotating flyers in the window of Wiley’s Grocery and the changing daily specials at Antonia’s restaurant. Ferry and cable service were restored.
    Lucy’s classroom filled with squirming bodies and the smell of wet coats and boots. Regina and Margred went shopping on the mainland for maternity clothes. Caleb rescued cars from ditches and checked on the elderly in the cold. Dylan walked the frozen beaches, casting for signs of Sanctuary.
    Cora opened her eyes and smiled at their father.
    Everything went back to normal.
    Lucy’s life went back to normal.
    A life without Conn in it.
    She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. Her days were haunted by thoughts of Conn, her dreams by the falling towers of Caer Subai.
    Grief, Regina told her, dropping by the house with a pot of Antonia’s minestrone.
    Shock, Caleb said, when he came by after school.
    Stress, Dylan concluded, his mouth compressed in sympathy.
    Their well-meaning concern battered at the ice encasing her poor, bruised heart and scraped her nerves raw.
    She fled to her garden for solitude and solace.
    But the ground was hard and barren, as frozen as her heart. Frost lay on the pumpkins and the broken stalks of corn.
    She turned from the untidy rows, desolation blooming in her chest.
    Someone was watching from the edge of the field. Her heart thumped. A man, taller than Dylan, broader than Caleb, watching her with an intensity that charged the air like a storm.

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    Something stirred in Lucy like the trickle of ice, like the melting of her heart. Her throat tightened. The blood drummed in her ears like the sea.
    He strode across the field, his boots crunching the frozen furrows, a lean gray shadow trotting at his heels. Madadh.
    Madadh and Conn.
    The ice shattered, and Lucy burst into tears.
    She stumbled forward, meeting him halfway. He caught her close, his breath warm, his arms strong. He was real and warm and solid and alive.
    She clung to him, sobbing. “I