Forgotten Sea by Virginia Kantra Read Free Book Online Page B

the merfolk, lord of the sea. Even now, the sight of him had the power to steal her breath and stir her heart.
    “Or couldn’t you sleep?” he asked.
    She turned away, unwilling to burden him with her growing sense of failure. “I had a dream.”
    His deerhound, Madagh, left his side to thrust a cold nose against her colder fingers. She stroked the dog’s gray, bearded muzzle. It was easy to take comfort from the dog.
    “You could have woken me.” Conn’s voice was too measured for reproach.
    She stiffened anyway. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
    In recent months—since the Thing She Didn’t Think About had happened—he had withdrawn further and further into his duties, burying his own grief in the demands of ruler ship.
    Once he would have taken her in his arms, this selkie male who did not touch except as a prelude to sex or a fight. Now he stood cool and immovable as a statue, separated by his natural reserve and her unspoken resentment.
    “You are my consort.” His tone was patient, controlled. “My mate. What concerns you concerns me. Tel me.”
    She gripped her hands together in her lap. “I dreamed I heard a child crying.”
    Something moved in his eyes, like water surging under the ice. “Lucy . . .”
    “Not a baby,” she said hastily. “A boy. A lost boy.”
    The wind sighed through the garden, releasing the scent of the roses. The bush he had given her threw petals like drops of blood upon the grass.
     “You are upset,” Conn said carefully. “Such dreams are natural.”
    “It’s not that,” she said impatiently. She couldn’t stand to think about that . She could not bear any more of his well meant reassurances. “This boy was lost , Conn. Like Iestyn.”
    “Iestyn is not a boy any longer. He’s been gone for seven years. They all are gone.”
    “I feel responsible.”
    Conn’s face set in familiar, formidable lines. “It was my decision to send them away. My failure to keep them safe.”
    “You sent them away because of me. Because I didn’t stay and protect Sanctuary.”
    “You saved your brothers and their wives and children. You made the better choice for the future of our people.”
    She was grasping desperately at straws. At hope. At control. “But suppose they’re still out there somewhere?  Iestyn and the others.”
    “They would have found their way home by now.”
    “Unless they can’t. Maybe my dream was a . . . a message. A sending.”
    Conn was silent.
    “Is it possible you are focusing on one loss to the exclusion of another?” he asked at last.
    “You think I’m making things up,” she said bitterly.
    “Lucy.” His voice was no less urgent for being gentle. “You are still the targair inghean .”
    Her heart burned. Her throat ached. Locked in her grief, she did not, could not, answer.
    He waited long moments while the fountain played and the wind mourned through the battlements.
    And then he went away.
    Lucy sat with her hands in her lap, staring sightlessly at the sparkling water. She was the targair inghean , the promised daughter of the children of the sea. Long ago, before she had loved him, before he loved her, Conn had stolen her from her human home so she would bear his children.
    “I need you , ” he had told her then. “Your children.  Ours. Your blood and my seed to save my people.”
    She put her head down among the roses and wept.

5
    He was out there somewhere. She could feel him, just like this morning.
    Lara skimmed along the tree-lined walk, her flat shoes crunching the pea gravel. She imagined Justin blundering in the dark, dazed and bleeding, hurt and resentful, a danger to himself . . . or to others. She needed to find him. For his sake. For hers.
    She had to tell  somebody. Tell Simon.
    Her stomach churned. The thought of facing the governors, of Zayin’s scorn and Simon’s disappointment, made her sick inside. But she had no choice. A trickle of sweat rolled down her spine. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
    The distinctive