His golden eyes were unreadable. “And you think your masters at Rockhaven see you as your best self.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it again. “At least they know me there.”
“Wel , they don’t know me on World’s End.”
She realized with a shock of sympathy that she wasn’t the only one venturing into the unknown on this journey. She had admired Iestyn’s confidence, envied his ability to go with the flow. But real y, he was as cut-off, as alone in this, as she. More so, because of the seven years he had lived without sight or memory of his own kind.
“Someone there wil know you,” she reassured him. “This Lucy Hunter. You must have friends who survived. Family.”
“I have no family.”
She knew nothing of the merfolk’s social structure. But he was an elemental, one of the First Creation. “You were born on the foam?” she asked.
“No, I am blood born. My mother is—was—selkie.”
Her heart squeezed. “Did she . . . die in the attack?”
Iestyn shrugged. “I do not know.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I should have said, I do not know her. She did not want me.
I was conceived in human form, so al the time she carried me she could not go to sea. She gave me to my father as soon as a nurse could be found. I do not remember her, and I doubt that she remembers me.”
Lara bristled on his behalf. How could a mother not love her child?
But of course it happened. She herself had Fal en trying to save one of those unloved, unwanted children.
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“At least you knew your father wanted you,” she said.
“My mother paid him to take me. And Prince Conn paid him to give me up. Most children of the sea are fostered in human households until they near the age of Change,” he explained. “My father was sorry to lose me just as I grew big enough to help around the farm, but the prince gave him enough gold to hire many men.”
As he spoke of his childhood, his speech thickened and slowed. He had a faint burr. Scottish? Welsh?
“Your father was human,” Lara said slowly, testing the idea.
Iestyn nodded. “Prince Conn told me my father had finfolk blood, but that could have been because of my eyes.
The color,” he explained. “I have finfolk eyes.”
“You have beautiful eyes,” she said.
He smiled faintly. “Fish eyes.”
“Who told you that?”
He shrugged.
She frowned. “Is that why your mother didn’t want you?
Because your father wasn’t selkie?”
“I doubt she gave my sire a thought once he rol ed off her.”
He met her shocked gaze and smiled faintly. “The children of the sea don’t do commitment.”
A chil brushed her. “They don’t marry? Ever?”
“We take mates,” he offered. “But even among humans, how many couples are together after five years? Or fifty?
What kind of relationship could last five hundred?”
No stabilizing influence in his life, she realized with a trickle of cold. No lasting relationships. This was what Simon had warned her about. Iestyn was a child of the sea, restless, rootless, his loyalties and affections as transient as the tides.
She swal owed. “So you went from your father’s farm to . . .”
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“Sanctuary. Conn col ected us, al the fosterlings, and sheltered us until we could take our proper place and form in the sea.”
She had a flash, a vision, of round towers and green hil s and cliffs rising above the sea, of a great empty hal and a smoldering red fire. “Like Rockhaven. A school.”
“A castle.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Very romantic.”
“It was bloody cold,” Iestyn said. “We slept with the dogs.
And ran as wild.”
She frowned. “But who took care of you?”
“Everyone. No one. It wasn’t a . . . tame childhood.”
For some reason, she remembered the tawny raptor on Moon’s arm, watching her with wicked, golden eyes.
Lara suppressed a shiver, asking lightly, “The Lost Boys in Neverland?”
“More like
“So you must have had a teacher.”
“Eventual y. Miss March.” He smiled as if the memory was a pleasant one.
“Maybe you’l see her again,” Lara offered. “The flyers said there were merfolk on World’s End. Maybe she survived.”
“No. She was human. She died almost sixty years ago.”
Lara jolted. “I forget that you’re immortal.”
“
Their eyes met.
Her lungs emptied. “Because of me.”
Iestyn shook his head. “I’m alive because of you. But we could die tonight. Tomorrow, we might never see each other again. I can’t promise you a future. I can’t promise you anything.”
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Her heart thumped. “Then give me now.”
He watched her with slitted golden eyes. “Is that enough for you?”
“If that’s al I can have.”
“Lara.” His tone was unusual y serious. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You wil .” She steeled herself to accept it. “You can’t help yourself.”
Frustration darkened his face. “What do you want me to say? Tel me what you want.”
Tenderness and impatience tangled within her.
This wasn’t about her. Not only about her, not anymore.
