The House Of Gaian

shouldn’t be up yet. You need to rest.”
    He smiled and shook his head. “My shoulder and back were burned, not my legs. I needed to move, needed the fresh air.”
    Jenny turned back to the sea, felt the warmth of his hand when he rested it on her shoulder.
    “If you’re going to brood and feel guilty, I can remind you of all the people who wouldn’t have survived if you hadn’t used the sea to defend us against the Inquisitors’ warships.”
    “Will you also remind me of all the people who didn’t survive?” Jenny asked softly. “There are empty chairs around the tables in this village, Mihail. There are empty chairs around the tables in the other Clan houses.”
    “That wasn’t your doing, Jenny.” Mihail squeezed her shoulder. “Murtagh made a point of telling me the Fae who were flying around those ships weren’t killed by the sea. Arrows killed them. Or fire if they were splashed when one of those pots of liquid fire struck a ship. They fought for themselves and their land and their way of life just as much as they fought to help us. Just as we would have fought to help them.”
    The words washed against a different kind of pain, a different kind of grief, trying to break through and smooth the rough edges of emotion, like the sea’s relentless dance with stone.
    “Murtagh said he tried to tell you this, but you weren’t ready to hear it, weren’t ready to accept it. Will you listen now, Jenny?”
    Tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. “The anger and the grief that swelled the sea and created that storm ... They were mine. They came from me.”
    “So did the love.”
    She obeyed the pressure of his hand and shifted to face him. “I know what I gave to the sea. What I chose to give to the sea. I didn’t choose love.”
    “You didn’t have to choose. It’s part of who you are.” He released her shoulder to rub the back of his neck, and his voice ripened with frustration. “I know the sea, and I know you—and I know how the sea feels when you channel your gift through it. Mother’s mercy, we’ve sailed together enough times. How could I not recognize the feel of you in the water?” When she just stared at him, he swore. “Sometimes you can be as stubborn as stone. So tell me this, Jenny. If there wasn’t love in that storm, how do you explain the two children? A sister and brother. They were on the ship the Inquisitors burned. The children
    ’s parents threw them off the ship while it burned and broke up around them. Threw them into the sea, doing the only thing they could to spare their children from burning.
    “Those children were too young to survive in the sea. They were too far from land and any help, and they were in that storm with nothing but the sea around them. They should have drowned, Jenny. And yet, when the selkies swam out to look for survivors, they found those two children riding the swells. They said there were currents in that water like they’d never felt before—currents that constantly pushed upward, under those children, keeping them in that place where water meets air. The selkies used those currents, pushing the children to one of the boats that had come out to help. When the children were safely on board, the currents disappeared. The selkies didn’t know what to call it. I do. That was love.
    “And what about the rest of us? We rode through that storm, too, and we came to no harm. Because the part of you that you never have to think about kept guiding the sea around our ships. Swells that would have destroyed a ship if they’d crested, never crested. We sailed through mountains of water that didn’t tumble in on themselves until the ships were past them. That wasn’t luck, Jenny. That was love. You have to know that. This fight isn’t over, and the day may come when you need to shape the sea into a weapon again to save those you hold dear. I’d take that burden from you if I could, and do it with a glad heart, but I don’t have your strength and I can’t command the sea the way you do.”
    Mihail put one arm around Jenny, drawing her against him. “So you have to know, sister dear, that if you give the sea your fury to fight against the enemy, love will always flow under it to protect your friends.”
    Jenny broke, weeping bitterly as she clung to her brother. It felt as if the sea crashed inside her, fierce waves breaking the foundation upon which she’d built her life, the security she’d always had that her creed was her