9. Monsters of the Deep | Lyra #2
Hadrian shook his head, his dark hair waving as he did. “He would have had to make an agreement with the High King.” He floundered for the rest of the words. “That-that is absurd. He would never put you in the hands of those monsters.”
Lyra’s frustration grew as it pulsed through her veins with each beat of her heart.
It was going to be his word against hers, after all.
“He did.”
“To make a deal with elves would have destabilized our entire northern border,” Caspian said, tilting his head to the side as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“More than destabilize,” Rigel added. “It could have sparked war.”
They spoke over each other in a chaotic mess that it rivaled a hurricane.
Adamaris nodded. “There would be too much at stake.”
Prince Caspian moved to the center of the group and held up his hands, demanding silence.
When the volume in the room lowered and then cut off, he still stood there, hands on his narrow hips, facing Lyra and Drystan.
“What say you, King Drystan?” he asked with a ring of authority. “Do you deny her accusation?”
Drystan analyzed Lyra from the top of her head to the tips of her fins. It wasn’t a condescending look, but a calculating one, like how one might appear before moving a chess piece.
It made her uncomfortable.
He was plotting something, and she realized too late she had played her entire hand already.
Lyra had been wrong to assume he was more brawn than brain. Drystan was cunning in a way that frightened her, because it had been too easy to underestimate him.
He had usurped her father, made a deal with a High King, and somehow orchestrated the allegiance of wulvers.
She forced a swallow.
Drystan was more wicked than she’d ever given him credit for. He had been smart enough to play right into her assumptions about him and use them against her.
Lyra blinked, and when she opened her eyes, she saw him in a new light.
His shoulders stretched wide as he waited for his plans to unfold. He wasn’t expecting anything but his will to be obeyed.
That should have told her everything she needed to know about the outcome of this meeting.
Lyra had crossed the threshold and into certain defeat.
“I do not deny her claims.”
His words were met with an angry silence.
Outrage and betrayal played across the faces of the princes.
Caspian returned to his position in the semicircle, keeping his hands on his hips.
“You entered into a bargain with our enemy? While we were led to believe King Auris was behind her disappearance?” He jerked his chin towards Lyra.
Drystan spread his arms. “There are too many rumors afloat. I made no claim to any. It was Aegir who wove those tales.”
Lyra tilted her head at that name.
Aegir?
“If that is the truth, such a decision should have been brought before the council,” Lir said, with a flash of sharp teeth. “That would have changed the outcome of many things.”
“Would it?” Drystan rose to his full height. “I seem to recall you all willing to go to war before those rumors had even come to pass. Besides, I had enacted those plans long before we sought a coup.”
Lyra’s mind spun.
What outcome had that deceit wrought?
And how long had he been planning this?
And why?
“Decisions of that magnitude demand a discussion,” Rigel added with a shake of his finger. “It is the reason a council is in place.”
“My apologies,” Drystan drawled, looking rather bored. “Like I said, Lyra’s kidnapping was planned before our rise to power.”
Rigel shifted, and the light gleaming off his pearlescent tail shifted the color into a rainbow. “We shouldn’t even be having a meeting now while we’re not a full council.”
His words were laced with venom.
The council would not take lightly to Drystan’s deceit, but they wouldn’t be taking her side now either.
Lyra felt her hold wither away.
She had no voice here, no power, nothing to use to sway them to her side.
She was trapped.
“We’re overlooking critical information. If you made a deal with the High King, then why were you so adamant that she be returned? Was that not part of your arrangement?” Ishmael asked, his brow raising high on his forehead.
Drystan nodded, and Lyra could see his expression change from one of placidity to rage.
“That was my next point of discussion.” He frowned, and his brows tugged together.
“The High King has offended our kingdom by keeping our princess beyond the terms of the agreement. He put her life in jeopardy, and now they think they have some sort of claim on her. They’ve sworn to track her down and retrieve her. ”
Lyra’s chest tightened.
Drystan had heard Wilder swear he would come for her, and was now using it to his advantage.
Caspian’s jaw dropped in shock. “They want the princess returned to the land?”
The chuckle that rumbled through Drystan’s lips set her teeth on edge.
She felt as his gaze raked over her.
“It appears an elf is smitten with her, and wants her for his own.”
The words were spewed with such vitriol that it made her skin crawl.
How dare he reduce the feelings they had for each other to such immature rhetoric?
Wilder loved her. Had fought for her and would do anything to find her.
Lyra’s shoulders rose to her ears as she ground her teeth. “He loves me.”
“He loves you?” Drystan’s brows rose as if tugged by the surface.
“Yes.” Her reply came out like a hiss. “He will come for me.”
Caspian inhaled sharply through his nose.
“We cannot face a war with the elves right now. Not this soon after the coup.” He shook his head, and his white hair fluttered around him.
“It will crumble the already tenuous alliance we have with our people. King Auris, while feared, had garnered an ungodly amount of loyalty.”
“War?” Lir asked incredulously. “We should have her executed for cavorting with our natural-born enemies!”
His voice boomed like thunder, sending tiny rocks falling from the columns.
Execution?
They wanted to see her killed for a position she had been forced to survive in?
Lyra felt rage, white-hot and burning, wash through her veins and coil like a snake around her heart.
If they laid one hand upon her, they would bear witness to the fury they had poisoned her with in the first place.
Drystan bounced his hands, demanding silence. “We will do no such thing.”
“With all due respect, Your Highness,” Rigel said. “It’s not up to you. We have no idea what kind of information she gave to them under the guise of love.”
The door to the council chambers creaked open, and a shadow of wickedness crept in.
Lyra recoiled from the chill that swept through the room and backed into Drystan. He wrapped an arm low around her waist.
The touch of him against her skin had nausea churning in her stomach.
“Scared, Princess?”
She tried to pull away, but Drystan only tightened his hold as Estria floated into the room. Wrapped in a diaphanous violet gown that bordered on black, only the tips of her onyx fins were visible.
“I see you’ve started without me.” Her voice was an uncomfortable slither.
It was oily and venomous and full of dark magic.
Lyra’s mind conjured up images of Jordania. But Jordania had been a different kind of witch.
She was powerful, but she had also healed Lyra. Healed Lyra from the kind of poison that seeps from Estria.
“This is a closed meeting,” Ishmael said, his amber tail jerking in a way that showcased his irritation.
Lyra wasn’t a welcome guest, but Estria was outright loathed.
She turned, spinning in a circle. Her dress swirled like black smoke melding with her black fins, like spilled ink in water.
“I was invited, Prince,” she hissed, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.
Drystan let go of Lyra and announced to the room. “Estria is here to add substance to my claims. She can squash any fear we have of retaliation from the elves.”
“What claims?” Rigel asked, glaring at Estria’s back.
She smirked at Drystan before coming to a lazy hover at his side. Lyra could have sworn the witch ran an onyx talon lovingly down his arm.