A trick of reflected light made his eyes appear to gleam.
“After three days together, you want commitment.”
“Of course not.” She swal owed the lump in her throat.
He was male. And merfolk. What did she expect? “Just a little communication.” To start.
He nodded slowly. “You want things clear.”
She nodded, relieved.
“I get that. You’re an angel. Everything’s light or dark for you, black or white.”
“I’m not asking you for promises,” she began.
He made a rough sound. “This isn’t about promises. It’s about guarantees.”
The ship jolted into dock.
“I don’t understand the difference.”
“Because in your world, if you do the right thing, you get rewarded. Fol ow the rules, and everything wil be fine.
My world, the real world, isn’t like that. I can’t tel you everything’s going to be al right because I don’t know.”
Hurt bloomed in her chest. Swam in her eyes. But when she blinked, it wasn’t impatience she saw in his face. It wasn’t irritation that ripped that ragged edge in his voice. It was doubt.
Sympathy moved in her, for the boy he had been, for the man he had become, struggling to steer an honorable course without compass or bearings.
“I don’t need guarantees,” she said gently. “I’l settle for good intentions.”
The first car rumbled off the ferry.
F o r g o t t e n s e a 227
Iestyn smiled wryly and stood, carrying the plastic bags that held al their worldly possessions. “Paving the road to Hel ?”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Babe, you’re living proof of that. We both are. We’ve both made what we thought were the right choices for the right reasons. You turn back the ship, or you tie yourself to the fucking mast. You try to save something, a dog, a kid, a sailor you found hanging in the rigging. You put yourself out there, take a stand. And you fail.” His voice rang with quiet intensity. “You Fal .”
Beneath the sunlit surface, his eyes were deep and bitter as the sea.
Her heart wrenched with pity. This was what he believed.
This was why he was drifting. Lost. Not because he was selkie, but because he had lost faith in himself and his choices. Even his loss of memory was another layer of defense between him and what he perceived as his failure.
“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.”
2 2 8
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
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*
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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.
