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.”
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An elemental. Like . . .
She blinked. Not like her. Not real y.
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.
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
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.”
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“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
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.
She hugged her knees for warmth, regarding Iestyn’s profile in the sul en light of the fire—strong nose, firm lips, F
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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.
