14. Collared | Lyra
Exhausted and angry, Lyra dragged herself from bed. She had been used as a pawn time and time again. And she was sick of it.
The watery light that seeped into her room let her know it was still early morning, so she pulled herself out of bed and readied for the day.
Lyra had just put the finishing touches on her hair when the Fang and Angler appeared and led her to the dining chambers of King Drystan.
Lyra refused to call him that out loud, and they seethed at her lack of decorum.
Angler had bitten back a snarl when Lyra refused to use Drystan’s new title. It was an affront that still bothered him, judging by the glares he kept throwing over his broad shoulder at her.
She met each one with a bored look, practically daring him to say something. The latest frown would come any moment now, and she had decided to give him the push he needed to say something dumb.
Sure enough, he flicked a menacing glare her way as they turned the last corner before reaching the door at the end.
“Would you like to swim backwards?” she goaded. “So you can stare the entire time. I know my beauty is legendary, but surely you’ve seen a mermaid before?”
Angler’s nostrils flared before he looked forwards again. With no response from him, she looked to Fang at her side.
Drystan was smart to surround himself with guards from his home territory. How she had overlooked him bearing any kind of intelligence before now was beyond her.
Each of his moves that had come to light had been expertly calculated.
“Are you under orders not to speak to me?” she asked Fang.
His short blond hair gleamed as they passed under a chandelier of glowing tentacles. “No, Your Highness.”
“Then why did he not respond?” Lyra jerked her chin towards Angler.
“Because he didn’t have anything nice to say,” Angler replied.
Lyra grinned, pleased that she’d been successful.
Fang leaned closer and lowered his voice to a whisper, “He’s just mad you spent all night with Lady Marina, and he did not have the pleasure.”
Lyra’s brows shot up, and she covered her mouth to keep from gasping.
Fang brushed a finger across his lips and straightened right before Angler shot yet another glare over his shoulder.
Interesting.
For the stoic opinion she had concocted of them in her mind, they were downright predictable.
Strums of music floated along the current, and Lyra strained to hear. They were coming from the room they were ushering her into.
The smell of shrimp and sea cucumbers reached her nose, and she inhaled deeply. She had eaten a meager dinner of hard salt bread with a few spoonfuls of roe, so naturally she had woken up starving.
Which probably only aided her sour mood. She still struggled with thoughts of abandonment and still felt powerless to fulfill her bargain.
When they entered through the arched doorway, Angler peeled off and stood behind Drystan, who was seated at the colossal, onyx table.
It wasn’t the same table she had sat at with her father. The previous sparkling, pink coral table had been replaced with a slab of onyx and basalt. The porous stone had been sanded down into a single smooth piece that was now covered in a variety of seafood.
Shrimp the size of her fist rested on beds of kelp. Sea cucumbers had been minced into bowls of oat-like soup.
It was a practical magic that kept the liquid inside. A magic that’s usefulness was often overlooked by everyone but the mermaids who made it possible.
“Good morning, my love,” Drystan crooned as he read over documents and sipped from a cup made of emerald crystal glass.
Lyra frowned at his nickname for her and plopped down in the chair opposite him.
“Eat,” he ordered without looking up from his work.
She didn’t deign to respond and merely crossed her arms over her chest while glaring at him.
He glanced over the stiff parchment in his hand, no doubt spelled to keep the water from ruining it, and looked at her.
“Please,” he tacked on, realizing at last his tone had been sharp.
Lyra continued to glare, but pulled a bowl of soup towards her. Using her sharp nails, she speared a shrimp from the plate nearby and bit into it with a loud crunch.
Drystan stared with a slightly bemused expression before he turned his attention back onto the parchment.
Lyra ate hungrily while analyzing the room for any other changes. The oval-shaped room had mostly remained the same, with light flooding in from the open ceiling, and archways of coral still covered in barnacles and small, fan-like plants.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked, setting the parchment down and placing a plate on top to keep it from floating away.
Lyra shrugged, her mouth still full of shrimp.
“I was told Marina stayed late into the night.”
He winced, as if he realized too late that he had given his spying away.
It wasn’t surprising that he had been keeping tabs on her, but it was annoying.
“Is that a problem?”
Drystan’s gaze swept across her unbound hair and the few braids she had plaited, to the lilac kylix she had donned this morning. Her mass of hair floated around her head and shoulders, undulating with the rocking current.
She had absolutely refused to put up her hair, and without the arrival of any servants, there was no one there to make her feel guilty about not doing so.
“It was merely an observation,” he replied. “Did she fill you in on the happenings at court during your absence?”
Lyra nodded and brushed back a braid from her face.
“Good,” Drystan replied with a curt nod. “You’re going to meet the Tidal Master today.”
She shook her head and pushed the cucumber soup away. The gelatinous soup tasted sour on her tongue.
It had been one of her favorite dishes, but now the mushy, salty flavor was bland compared to everything she had eaten on land.
What she would do for cake and roasted meat bordered on obscene.
“I won’t be doing that,” she murmured, resting her chin on her hand.
She met Drystan’s gaze with utter boredom. Part of her wanted to push his boundaries and see how much he would put up with, and part of her just wanted to argue and fight.
Drystan glared at where her elbows rested on the polished stone table.
“I’m afraid you don’t have much of a choice. He’s in charge of all ceremonies, including weddings.”
He threw the words at her like a weapon, but she was prepared for this. This was a tired song and dance that she knew the steps to.
“How about I tell you what I am going to do today, and you can just nod your head in agreement?” she replied, running a fingertip along the rim of the cup in front of her.
It made no noise beneath the surface, but Lyra imagined what the shrill ringing would have sounded like had she been on land.
Ire flashed like flames in his eyes as Lyra began doling out orders before he could stop her.
“I am going to the library to see if our poorly stocked shelves have also suffered under your rule. Then, if I get bored, I will go to the reef without guards before having lunch and taking a nap.”
She left out that she was going to scour those shelves for anything to help her break the tithe.
An outrageous snort slipped from his lips.
“Absolutely not. Aegir has banned mermaids from all the libraries across the kingdom.”
Banned? He had banned mermaids from knowledge?
That was an atrocity.
An atrocity she would correct immediately.
“Did you forget that I am not just any mermaid but the Princess of Atlantis? If I want to enter that library, I will.”
“You are to be my wife, and I prefer for you to remain alive, so we will follow the rules—for now,” he said, the last bit under his breath.
Lyra’s lips pulled back in a snarl. The points of her sharp teeth gleamed in the morning light filtering down from the open ceiling.
For now?
And why had he allowed any of this in the first place?
“For the last fucking time—I will not marry you!”
She slammed both hands down on the table and pushed herself up, her lavender tail twitching back and forth as her shoulders trembled from the anger quaking through her.
“I despise you. I loathe the water that touches your flesh. And if I had it my way, I would kill you this very instant. I am not yours. Nor will I ever be. I will enter the library if I like, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
The fury that surged through her kept her vision pinned on the male in front of her and not Fang, who had silently slipped behind her.
Drystan’s eyes darted to her side, a flicker of something unreadable there as he raised his hand.
Lyra followed his sight—a moment too late.
Angler had the collar around her and buckled in place.
Green, iridescent light flared, locking the collar around her neck without a physical seam. It had been imbued with magic.
Lyra screamed—but no sound came out.
Her throat and tongue scorched as if set on fire.
Fear slashed like jagged ice through her veins, freezing her mouth open in a silent scream as she clawed with talons at the black barbs that wrapped around her throat.
The steely points bit into her flesh, and crimson bloomed in a cloud around her.
“Stop!” Drystan ordered as she kept frantically ripping at the collar.
Off. She needed it off.
He was upon her in a second, launching himself over the table and scattering the papers. His jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles bulged.
“You’re mutilating your flesh!” he yelled at her.
She opened her mouth to beg, but again, no sound came out.
A white-hot poker shoved its way past her lips and down her throat every time she even thought about speaking.
Lyra pleaded with her eyes for him to release her from this monstrosity.
Drystan stared back and gripped her hands, pulling them down.
“I will remove the collar,” he said.
She froze, her eyes beseeching his.
There was more he wasn’t saying, something horrible he was on the verge of telling her.
“But you have to promise to obey.”
There it was.
That order had her locking her muscles into place.
A steel vice wrapped around her chest and abdomen, the muscles rigid and unmoving.
Pain slashed across her jaw as she ground her teeth. Iron flooded her tongue as blood pooled in her mouth. Her nostrils flared, and she flexed her fingers as the desire to pummel his face overwhelmed her.
Drystan misread her posture as agreement instead of what it really was—the calm before the storm.
She held very still, wrath pouring from every facet of her being.
How dare he collar her like a pet? Silence her as if she were unworthy of a voice?
“This is for your protection,” he said softly. “And obeying me will keep you safe.”
Lyra’s eyes pleaded with him, but she knew it was futile. She would never obey him, and he knew it, too.
“We will finish this meal,” he said and nodded for her to sit.
The guards didn’t back away and tentatively stayed beside her as if she would disobey again.
Fang had the decency to look down, as if he were unnerved by what they had done to her.
Lyra stared at Drystan from beneath her lowered brow.
“We can make this pleasant,” he said. “You can have as many of your sisters visit you as you’d like. They are all in Atlantis for the ceremony today. But you are not to leave the walls of this palace. Nor are you allowed entry into the library.”
I have to fulfill a bargain or the world will pay, she wanted to scream at him. But she could do nothing with this collar on.
Just the idea of wanting to speak had the burning spearing down her throat again.
The thread around her heart had vanished entirely. The collar had taken more than her speech. It had stolen her voice.
She needed to play the game to survive.
Lyra’s throat constricted as she bit back her pride.
It tasted horrible.
“Sit,” Drystan ordered again.
Lyra’s back met the chair. The bite of the cold against her flesh distracted her from maintaining her mask.
She couldn’t wipe the glare off her face.
“I know why you want access to the library. You seek to find a way back to the land,” he sighed. Her frown faltered. “You’re in such a hurry to return to the land, a place that used you and abandoned you.”
Drystan plucked the floating papers from around him and arranged them into a neat pile. “But it’s no matter. I will seek retribution for us.”
Lyra’s head tilted to the side, the only movement that aptly displayed her curiosity.
It was a mistake.
Spikes on the collar pricked her skin, and she righted her head at once.
“I don’t know if I should even be telling you this,” he paused, as if thinking it over. “But alas, I received word that the elf prince,” Drystan hissed, lifting a paper and studying it. “Has been imprisoned for conspiracy to assassinate the High King.”
Her heart plummeted into her stomach, and she clenched her hands into fists to remain unruffled.
Drystan chuckled and licked his lips. “Trying not to appear too curious, are we?”
She didn’t—couldn’t—move as her vision tunneled.
Wilder had tried to formulate a new plan to save her. He loved her.
Drystan’s attention on her narrowed before he looked to Angler next to her. “The punishment for that is death.”
He crumpled the paper in his hand, and the magic that kept it from water was destroyed.
It turned to soggy mush in his hand before being swept away into pulpy pieces by the current.
Lyra’s eyes widened a fraction.
“This displeases you?” Drystan grinned.
When Lyra didn’t react further, his face twisted with glee.
“It seemed too quick a death for me, too.” He sighed as if this were all a great inconvenience. “I’ve sent the wulvers to dispatch him. By the end of the week, your elf will be dead by my hand.”
Lyra gripped the underside of the table to keep from outwardly reacting.
The wulvers had failed to kill Wilder before. They would do so again.
Otto would tell them the wulvers were coming. And Wilder was smart, so smart and clever, he would escape before his father’s judgement.
“It’ll be very easy to do,” Drystan muttered, talking more to himself than to her. “Locked in that magic-less dungeon.”