“So we’re not perfect,” she said, preceding him to the stairs. “We don’t have perfect knowledge. Sometimes we make bad decisions. And maybe sometimes things happen as part of a larger plan, and we just can’t see it yet.”
“What happened to you as a child wasn’t part of any plan.”
Oddly, the fury pulsing in his voice made her own pain and anger easier to accept. But then, she’d had years of therapy that made it possible to say, “What happened to me as a child wasn’t my fault. Or God’s wil . I don’t blame myself or Him for the actions of one sick, evil man.” She drew a steadying breath as they emerged into the sunlight of the lower deck. “But sooner or later, my choices led me to you. This may not be the reward I was looking for at the time I expected it. But I think I was always meant to find you somehow. To bring you back where you belong.”
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*
*
*
“Lara.” Iestyn stopped, at a loss for words. Her confidence shook him. Her strength awed him. “I don’t have your faith,” he said quietly. “But I admire the hel out of you.”
Somehow she had taken her Fal from grace and the trauma of her childhood to forge herself into the woman who stood before him, brave, clear-eyed, and strong.
He didn’t deserve her.
“Whatever brought us together—choice or chance or God
—I’m grateful.” He rested his hand at the smal of her back to steer her across the ramp to the dock. “But I don’t know if I belong here. I don’t know where I belong.”
She looked back at him, her smile misty around the edges.
“That’s why we came, isn’t it? To find out.”
She made it sound so simple. His gut churned. He scanned beyond her to the ragged line of rooftops climbing above the parking strip. World’s End wasn’t Sanctuary. No seals played in the harbor, no castle stood upon the hil , no shimmer of magic hung like mist around the rocks.
But despite his words to Lara a moment ago, something tightened his chest and his throat. Longing. Anticipation.
A woman swung down from her landscaping truck—
cora’s floras was painted on the side—to sign for a pal-let of mulch being offloaded from the ferry. Iestyn caught a flash of blond braid beneath her cap and stiffened like Madagh spotting a hare.
Lara glanced over quickly. “Is that her? Lucy Hunter?”
He took a second, longer look. Sure, there was a resemblance, but . . . This woman’s face was too ful , her eyes too green. “No.”
“I thought I recognized her,” Lara said. “From your dream.”
F o r g o t t e n s e a 229
She was a Seeker, Iestyn remembered. “You didn’t pick up some kind of vibe?”
Regretful y, she shook her head. “Only with you. Usual y I need physical contact to identify the presence of another elemental.”
His mind stumbled on that
“That’s your plan? Walk around the island groping people?”
“I don’t have a plan,” Lara admitted rueful y. “I was sort of hoping that when we final y got here, it would be like the return of the prodigal son.”
He raised an eyebrow. “ ‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight’?”
Her laughter bubbled, surprising them both. “I was thinking more along the lines of kil ing the fatted calf.”
“Hungry, are you?”
Her cheeks turned pink. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
She was brushing him off. Just the way he’d brushed aside her concerns on the boat.
He hadn’t given a thought to where they would eat tonight.
Where they would sleep.
For years, he hadn’t bothered to plan ahead. Hadn’t needed to think about anyone but himself. The fact that he was now, that he wanted to now, was something else he’d have to think about. Later.
“I’l take you out to eat as soon as we find a place to stay,”
he promised.
She glanced around the emptying wharf. “Shouldn’t we stick around here? In case someone shows up with the welcome selkies banner?”
“Berth first. Search later.”
“It’s the middle of the season,” Lara said. “It might be hard to find a vacancy.”
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He regarded the picture postcard view, the parked cars and storefronts staggering up the hil , the snapping flags and spil ing window boxes. She had a point. He didn’t know much about vacation rentals. But he knew rich people.
Yacht people. There would be a room somewhere, for a price.
He nodded at the big white elephant overlooking the harbor. “So we’l start at the top.”
*
*
*
The Island Inn was undergoing renovations, red-haired Kate Begley told them when she final y answered the bel at the front desk. She was a younger woman, wiry and energetic. Judging from the paint in her hair and under her nails, she was doing at least some of those renovations herself.
“I’d hoped to have more of the guest rooms open by now.
But we do have a king suite available on the third floor,” she said, regarding them over the top of her little black glasses.
“Private bath, great ocean view.”
“How much?” Iestyn asked.
Her gaze flickered to the plastic Walmart bags in his hand.
“The suite lists for three fifty-five a night. But I can let it go for three hundred.”
