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have considered them unworthy of notice. But if your
    brother were to have a child—”

    “Or if I did.”

    “Yes. I had hoped—” Conn broke off. He did not indulge in hope
    any more than anger. “The combination of your mother’s blood and
    Margred’s gift might be regarded as an advantage for our people. Or as a
    threat by the demons.”

    “So what do you want me to do? Tell my brother he shouldn’t fuck
    his wife?”

    Conn thought about it. “Would he listen to you?”

    “No.”

    Conn shrugged. “Just as well. Our numbers are declining. We need
    children. We need this child.”

    Dylan sneered. “Assuming he can get Margred pregnant.”

    “Assuming their child is selkie. And female. Yes.”

    “You assume a great deal.”

    Conn’s mouth twitched in a rare smile. “True.” And few of his court
    dared to speak the truth to him. “Yet something draws the demons to
    World’s End. I need you to find out what.”

    * * *

    Dylan stared at his prince, his heart thundering in his ears. For a
    moment he wondered if he’d heard Conn correctly. “That’s a warden’s
    job.”

    30

    The prince’s gaze was clear and light as frost, deep and measureless
    as the sea. “Do you refuse me?”

    “I— No, my lord.” He was startled, not stupid. “But why not send
    one of them?”

    The wardens were Conn’s confidants, his elite. Chosen for their
    loyalty and the strength of their gift, they kept the prince’s peace,
    defending his realm from the depredations of human and demon kind.

    Since he was fourteen years old, Dylan had burned to be counted as
    one of them, to wear the wardens’ mark around his neck.

    It had been a bitter realization to accept he was too nearly human to
    have either their power or the prince’s trust.

    “They do not have your knowledge of the island,” Conn said. “Or
    your connection to it.”

    For some reason, Dylan’s brain presented him with a picture of the
    woman, the prickly one with the ward on her wrist and the tight body
    humming with energy.

    They were not connected, he thought. He had merely had sex with
    her. He had sex with many women.

    And banished the memory of her voice saying, “You’re the first in—oh, a long time.”

    Conn must have taken his silence as dissent, for he said, “You grew
    up there.”

    Dylan dragged his mind back to the tower and the present
    discussion. “Many years ago.”

    “Your family lives there.”

    A touchy point. “They are not my family any longer. I am selkie
    now.”

    The prince regarded him with cool, light eyes. “And yet you keep a
    human habitation not three miles east of them.”

    31

    Dylan flushed. How much did Conn know? And how much did he
    hold against him? “The island was my mother’s.”

    “Your father built and furnished the house.”

    He had not known. He told himself it did not matter. “It’s a
    convenient stopping place, that’s all,” Dylan said.

    “Certainly it will be,” Conn agreed. “You may need to live among
    them for a time.”

    Dylan’s stomach sank. “After more than twenty years, the islanders
    are likely to question my sudden reappearance.”

    “Not so sudden,” Conn pointed out. “You were at your brother’s
    wedding.”

    Something Dylan regretted now. “That’s hardly the same. I didn’t
    have to talk to them.”

    Or his father. Or his sister.

    Sweat broke out on his lip and under his arms.

    “They will want to know why I am there.”

    “The humans have a story, do they not? Of the prodigal son?”

    “I do not think my brother”—the older brother, the good son, the one
    who stayed with his father—“will buy that explanation for my return.”

    “Then you will have to offer him another one,” Conn said coolly.
    “You can think of some excuse that will satisfy him.”

    Unbidden, the woman appeared again in his mind’s eye, her chin
    raised in the moonlight, her panties balled in her fist.

    “Yes,” Dylan said slowly. “I