She murmured, acquiescence or protest. “Justin. ”
He raised his head to look her in the eyes. He wanted to give her something. A piece of himself. “Iestyn,” he told her.
“My name is Iestyn.”
She didn’t think, didn’t want to think. No time to consider, no opportunity to be afraid. Only this, his mouth, his touch, his broad shoulders over her like wings. Only now, lying on a riverbank in the rain, free from the Rule and its consequences. She was submerged in sensation, her senses brimming with him, his tang in her nostrils, his taste on her tongue.
His leg was heavy over her thighs. His erection pressed hard and urgent against her hip.
This. Here and now.
He said something — his name? — and she raised her hand to trace the shape of his lips in the dark.
She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to feel. To feel him.
He said it again, softening the J, swal owing the vowels.
Yess-ten. “My name is Iestyn. I am. I was a child of the sea.”
She struggled to surface. “You. What?”
His cal oused fingers feathered her hair. She couldn’t see his expression, only the outline of his head against a backdrop of flame, and the shape of his shoulders, shielding her from the rain. “I was an elemental. Like you.”
An elemental. Like.
She blinked. Not like her. Not realy.
His lips were warm against her neck. She shivered and closed her eyes, her mind slowly returning to her body.
“Are you sure?”
He smiled against her throat, making the nerve endings there jump in delight. “It’s not the kind of thing I’d make up.”
She lay stil, thinking hard. Thinking back. Had he been lying before, then? To her? To Simon?
She opened her eyes. “How long have you known?”
He shrugged, apparently unfazed by her questions. “I just remembered. When we went into the water.”
That moment. That one wild moment of terror and glory, when they’d plunged from the bridge and she’d felt like she was flying.
Not flying. She wil ed her thoughts back to earth. She didn’t have that power anymore. But he.
If he were a water elemental, a child of the sea, that would explain everything: his unfamiliar energy, his impressive shields, his resistance to Miriam’s drugs and Zayin’s magic.
“So I was right,” she said slowly.
He kissed her col arbone. “Right about what?”
Her mind whirred. What if there was nothing wrong with her judgment, her discernment, after al? What if.
A trickle of excitement slid down her spine. “I was Cal ed to find you.”
He raised his head. “I don’t think so. I’m no angel.”
“But you defeated the demon in the al ey. You saved my life on the bridge.”
“By jumping over the side.”
“It was more than that,” she insisted. “Something happens when we touch.”
“Was happening.” His tone was wry. She felt him, warm and hard against her hip. “Until you got distracted.”
She ignored him, resisting the humor in his voice, the tug of temptation in her blood. She had to think.
She’d always been taught that the children of the sea were neutral in Hel ’s war on Heaven and humankind.
Simon had dismissed the merfolk as untrustworthy, irrelevant to the nephilim’s struggle for survival.
But suppose that together, they could be more? The possibility quivered inside her. She could be more. What if her Seeking was in response to a greater purpose, a higher cal ing? Simon would have to acknowledge her value to him. She would be pardoned.
Vindicated.
“Don’t you see? This changes things. Now that we know what you are. ”
“What I was,” Iestyn corrected harshly. “I’m nothing now.”
She frowned, reluctant to relinquish her brief fantasy of being welcomed back to Rockhaven, problem solved. Sins forgiven. “Don’t say that.”
“Lara, when we jumped. ” He rol ed off her and sat staring at the burning river. “Nothing happened.”
She struggled to sit up, recal ing the shock of his touch, the burst of rain and power as they shot from her element into his. “How can you say that?”
“Because nothing happened to me.” Emptiness echoed in his voice. Her heart squeezed in instinctive sympathy.
“The children of the sea are shape-shifters. But in the water, I did not Change.”
The fine hair along her arms rose. Shape-shifters.
Well.
She hugged her knees for warmth, regarding Iestyn’s profile in the sul en light of the fire — strong nose, firm lips, hair flattened to his head by rain and the river. Too beautiful to be merely mortal.
She’d known he was different. She hadn’t considered how different. “Change into what?” she asked cautiously.
“I am selkie. A man on the land, a seal in the water,” he explained. “But I need my sealskin to Change form.”
Her throat thickened. The nephilim could spirit cast into birds. But nothing in her training had prepared her for an elemental who turned into a seal. Or who, um, didn’t.
She swal owed. “Where is it? Your sealskin.”
“I don’t remember.” He turned his head to meet her gaze. In the orange light of the fire, his eyes were like the eagle’s, fierce and bright. “Without a pelt, I am trapped in human form. If I were finfolk. But I am not. Not elemental. Not immortal. I’l grow old and die.”
She sucked in her breath. Some of the nephilim lived two or three hundred years — more than twice as long as humans.
But eventual y they, too, aged and died. “You mean, like me?”
He didn’t answer.
She rubbed her arms. Not quite like her, she realized.
She was Fal en. He was merely. lost.
She licked her lips. “I want to help you.”
“You’ve done enough already.”
The echo of Simon’s rebuke made her wince. “That’s cold.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” His warmth, his regret, sounded sincere. “You got me out of there. And at least now I’ve got my mind and a piece of my memory back.”
“I can do better. I want to help you go home.” The rightness of her decision settled in her stomach.
“I have no home.”
“Back where you belong,” she clarified. “With your own kind.”
He went very stil, his head lifting, like a dog on the scent or a man hearing his favorite song come on the radio.
And then he shook his head.
“Look, I appreciate the thought. But Sanctuary is gone.
Destroyed. If any of my kind survived, I don’t know where they are. I don’t belong with them anyway.”
Her heart thrummed. “I’m a Seeker. I could help you find them.”
“Why?” he asked bluntly.
“You saved my life. Isn’t that reason enough?”
“For you to risk your life?” He shook his head.
“I’l be safe with you.” She hoped. And you will be much safer with me.
“You’l be safe if you go back.”
But not trusted. Not valued. Disgraced. Dismissed.
Demoted.
“If I go back now, I’l be cleaning birdcages the rest of my life.”
“Better me than bird shit?”
Amusement. She stuck out her chin, determined to convince him. “For the moment. Or would you rather hear I can’t live without you?”
“Don’t say that.” His voice was suddenly serious. “If we find them, I’l be gone. Even if we don’t find them, I won’t stay.”