A dul throbbing filled his head, like feet rushing up the stairs, like fists pounding at the door, like the beating of his own heart.
Cudd raged inside him like a fever, evil, virulent, shooting out lines of sticky fire. But the demon was no match for them, for Iestyn’s strength and Lara’s words and their combined power.
“Unclean spirit!” Iestyn shouted as the door to the suite burst open. “I cast you out!”
And the fire ripped from his brain and heart and loins and erupted into the room.
He barely noticed.
He crawled across the floor to Lara. She looked like Hel.
Like death. Her face was the color of melted wax, her lashes dark against her pale cheeks.
“Lara.”
A wind whipped through the open door. The fire shrieked and shot toward the ceiling. Heat singed his legs.
Iestyn threw himself over Lara’s limp body, wrapping protectively around her to shield her from the reaching, greedy flames.
Someone shouted, a deep command.
The fire flickered and died.
Shaking, Iestyn pul ed Lara’s body into his arms, cradling her against his naked chest. One blood-streaked hand slipped to the tile, fingers curled upward like the petals of a lily. He pressed his lips to her brow, her cheek, her unresponsive mouth. Not dead, please God, not.
“Lara.” A cry from his heart. A prayer, breathed against the smoke and silence.
When her eyes opened, he buried his face in her hair.
Footsteps crossed the outer room. A light flicked on, slanting across the threshold.
“Well, well.” A male voice, vaguely familiar, almost amused.
A man’s legs in the corner of his vision. “Somebody’s been having fun.”
Stunned, Iestyn raised his head.
And saw Dylan Hunter standing at the bathroom door.
They made, Lara was forced to admit, quite an impression.
Lucy Hunter’s brother Dylan, lean and dark, with brooding black eyes and a pirate’s ponytail. And Morgan Bressay, the finfolk lord — she wasn’t quite sure what finfolk were, and no one bothered to explain — with Iestyn’s eyes in his brutal Viking face. The wardens of World’s End.
Under any other circumstances she would have been even more impressed.
At the moment she was mostly just exhausted.
She’d managed to stay alert and more or less on her feet during the introductions. But after Iestyn had dragged on his jeans and settled back against the headboard of their bed, she’d al owed herself to be coaxed against his side.
Now she drifted, safe and deliciously warm, his chest for her pil ow, his arms holding her close, the murmur of masculine voices rising and fal ing around her like the sound of the sea.
“—must have triggered the wards.”
“—could account for your burn.”
“—knew. a breach somewhere.”
Iestyn’s fingers feathered gently through her hair. She closed her eyes. Just for a moment, she promised herself.
They were silent awhile, or maybe she dozed.
“—what to do with her,” someone was saying.
She stirred.
“—be here without Lara.” Iestyn’s voice was firm.
“The angel,” Dylan said dryly.
“Fallen angel,” Morgan said.
A knock at the door. Lara opened her eyes. And caught them staring at her, these strangers who knew Iestyn. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that she was lying practical y across his lap wearing nothing but his T-shirt.
She tugged the hem down over her thighs.
“That would be my wife,” Morgan said and went to open the door.
Elizabeth Bressay had sleek brown hair, intel igent brown eyes, and a reassuring manner. She cleaned and irrigated Lara’s hand, applied ointment and a butterfly closure.
“There doesn’t seem to be any sensory or vascular damage,” she said. “But we’l want to keep an eye on it for infection.”
Don’t ask, Lara told herself. It doesn’t matter. And a moment later heard herself say, “I’m sorry, but are you. ”
“A real medical doctor?” Elizabeth smiled. “Yes.”
“She wants to know if you are one of us,” Morgan said over his wife’s shoulder.
Lara flushed.
“Oh. I see.” Elizabeth glanced from Lara to Iestyn and back again. But whatever she saw, she kept to herself. “No, I’m human. Quite ordinary.”
“Not ordinary at all,” her husband murmured.
A look passed between them, intimate as a kiss, before Elizabeth turned back to Lara. “Date of last tetanus shot?”
she asked briskly.
“I’m not sure,” Lara confessed.
“Well, stop by the clinic tomorrow and we’ll take care of that. You, too,” she said to Iestyn. “Although Lucy can do more for you than I can.”
Iestyn’s face was suddenly raw and young. “Lucy.”
“Yes, didn’t they tell you? Men.” Elizabeth shook her head.
Smiled at Iestyn with maternal warmth. “Lucy and Conn are on their way here. To World’s End. We’re expecting them tomorrow.”
Lara stood with Iestyn on the private dock that jutted out from the fingers of rock and the shelter of pines. Dylan and Regina’s house perched on a patch of short, sandy lawn above the bay, a traditional New England saltbox with a sturdy central chimney. The spare lines of the house were softened by tubs of blooming flowers and curtains blowing in the open windows. Cars and trucks parked haphazardly in the drive. Three boats were tied to the dock. Cats and children wandered underfoot, of both sexes and various ages, from teenagers to toddlers. She did her best to sort them out, to keep them straight, to match siblings to spouses to children, but they flowed together, sweeping around Iestyn and Lara in a warm, welcoming, undisciplined wave, merfolk and human.
For a people with a low birth rate, there certainly were a lot of them.
Confused and overwhelmed, Lara stuck close by Iestyn’s side, the one familiar face in this sea of friendly strangers.
She had always thought of him as someone fundamental y alone. Like her. Hadn’t he done his best to make her see him that way?
Two lost souls.
She bit her lip, the tiny pain a counterpoint to the pang at her heart.
She knew all about the importance of community. Al along, she’d wanted to restore Iestyn to his own kind, to the protection of his people.
But what they’d actual y found was different. Unlike the nephilim at Rockhaven, the people in this house weren’t bound together by the need for self-preservation or some quest for self-improvement. It was disconcerting to realize that Iestyn had more than a community wil ing to reclaim him. This was a family waiting to embrace him.
Any doubt she might have harbored about that disappeared when the last boat tied at the dock and three passengers disembarked.
Lara squinted, her heart quickening as she recognized the figures from her dream. Iestyn’s dream. A man with eyes like rain, a girl with hair like straw, a dog.
“Is that. ”
Conn ap Llyr, the sea lord, and his consort, Lucy.
Iestyn stiffened beside her. Under her hand, his arm muscles were rigid. His face was white with emotion.
“Go on,” Lara murmured and released his arm. “Go see them.”
With one bright, backward glance like a boy’s, he left her, striding down the sun-bleached dock, not quite running to meet them.
The dog, a massive, graying beast, barked.
The woman raised her head. Lara was close enough to see the emotions flit across her face. Shock. Relief. Delight.