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A home and a family of my own.
Emma stood on the tumbled shore as the wind whipped the waves to froth and chased the clouds like whitecaps across the sky. The castle on the cliffs reared at her back. She watched her pupils straggle in and around the tide pools, gathering mussels for dinner. Iestyn gazed out to sea with a pensive expression, the breeze snatching at his rags. Roth chased Una and another girl across the rocky beach, waving broad strands of kelp like battle flags.
The students were not really her children. She did not really belong here.
But after several weeks, Sanctuary felt curiously like the home she had always longed for.
Because of Griff. His attention made her feel appreciated, supported, accepted.
Loved.
Emma wrapped her arms about her waist, hugging her happiness to her. He had promised to join them on the beach this afternoon after his meeting with Conn. Emma could not imagine what the two men spent their time talking about. Most lords and stewards discussed land and tenants, livestock and crops. But the island appeared as poorly populated as the castle. She saw no old people and no very young ones. The hills and heaths produced nothing but wild oats and apples, and the only animals she saw, beyond the teeming colonies of seabirds, were small brown wild sheep.
It did not matter. Griff saw to it that she and the children were fed.
Emma had met her employer exactly twice, once when Conn had offered her the post of teacher, and again when she informed him of her decision to stay. The lord of Sanctuary was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen, with hair the sleek blue black of a mussel shell and eyes the color of rain.
He was also the coldest.
However, he told her, in his polite and formal way, that he was pleased to have her here and offered her the princely salary of forty pounds a year. Emma did not see how this bare estate could afford such a sum. But then, she couldn’t imagine how she was to spend it living on this island, either.
Griff told her she had only to ask for anything she wanted. The island, he said, traded for what it needed and could not produce. And despite the noticeable lack of a harbor and his earlier warning about transport lines, Emma noticed there were frequent visitors to Sanctuary. She glimpsed them sometimes in the hall or the corridors that led to Conn’s tower: broad-chested men and women with a great deal of bosom showing. Once she looked up from her teaching to find a woman watching her from the back of the classroom, a woman with Iestyn’s golden eyes and a silver chain like Griff’s about her neck.
For the most part, however, the castle visitors paid little attention to Emma. Clearly, a mere schoolteacher was beneath their notice. And she paid little mind to them. She preferred to concentrate on her students, her students and Griff, shoving away the occasional awareness, a growing sense that something was not quite…normal about her full, satisfying, productive life.
She hugged her elbows tighter against a sudden chill.
Foam burst against the rocks and drained away, revealing the white bones of barnacles and a spill of scarlet weed like blood.
Along the water’s edge, the girls laughed and shrieked as Roth chased them with the flapping kelp. Their screams mingled with the call of the gulls. And then the tenor of their voices changed, became cries of alarm. Distress.
Dread shivered along Emma’s arms. She shaded her eyes against the afternoon sun, squinting down the beach. Something was wrong. Una—
Emma began running, her boots clattering and sliding over the rocks, even before the girl screamed and fell to the ground.
The children stood like sheep around the body writhing at the water’s edge. Una shrieked again, clutching her stomach, her lips drawn back in pain.
Emma’s stomach rocketed to her throat. “It’s all right, my dear. You’re all right.”
But she wasn’t.
Una screamed again, panting like a woman in childbirth, gasping, guttural breaths that ripped at Emma’s heart. Beneath her simple dress, her body undulated. Heaved. A seam split, and fur, pale, brindled fur, poured through the opening.
God. Dear God. The girl was being swallowed alive, consumed by the beast coiling under her gown.
Emma dropped to her knees, fumbling in her pocket for the knife Griff had given to her. Una hissed. The children swayed and pressed closer with pale faces and glittering eyes.
“Get help!” Emma yelled at them. “Get Griff!”
Una moaned and clutched at her. Her nails drew blood.
Emma yanked the knife from its sheath. But she could not see where the girl ended and the beast began, could not risk plunging the blade through the straining fabric into the shifting mass where the girl’s legs should be.
Sobbing in terror, she slid the knife through the garment’s seams, ripping Una free from the constricting cloth.
“Warden’s coming!” Iestyn shouted.
Thank God. Emma spared a glance from Una’s twisting body.
