2. Pain | Lyra
There was only pain, unrelenting pain.
The fleeting euphoria that followed the use of her magic couldn’t come close to soothing the sorrow shredding her soul.
Worse still was the change—an abrupt, forced return to her true form.
Lyra’s tail ached as it fully reformed. Every scale pierced her flesh like serrated blades carving their way outwards.
Salt scalded her eyes, like a punishment for daring to look upon the land.
She screamed and raged against the magic. Her body burned as if it were set aflame with her fury. But water shoved its way down her nose and throat.
It doused the fire in her veins completely. Like sticking a torch into a pot of water. It snuffed out as fear overrode her mind.
Saltwater scorched her lungs, obliterating the air that had once been there.
The sea was reclaiming her.
Lyra panicked, fighting to reach the surface and take a deep breath. Her lungs rioted, screaming for air as the need swallowed her thoughts. She was dying. Drowning in the water she’d been born in.
“Breathe,” Drystan commanded.
Hands seized her, holding her down as she struggled to remember how to move her tail instead of kicking her feet.
It took a moment for his words to penetrate the thick cloud of panic that blotted out her senses.
“Inhale, Lyra. You are of the water. It will welcome you back.” Her blurry eyes burned as she focused on his face behind the golden helm. “Don’t fight what you are.”
The words pierced her heart, shattering what remained of the crumbling organ.
Lyra didn’t want to be back. She found everything she had been too afraid to dream of. Her equal in a man who loved her for the person she truly was and not for what she could offer him.
Realization washed over like a wave upon the shore.
For that love, she was here now.
Her choice.
Lyra had gone willingly to keep him alive.
A world without him in it was not a world she ever wanted to be a part of.
Forcing herself to be still, Lyra pushed through the terror and the agony that was plunging her into a trench of inescapable darkness.
In her mind, she repeated the only thing that would keep her together.
She would see him again.
A sneer pulled back Drystan’s upper lip at her obedience. The sharp points of his teeth glinted in the watery light that slanted through the distant surface above.
He examined her as she hovered before him. Her tail swishing back and forth in lazy strokes kept her upright.
Muscle memory had taken over. Her mind knew this form as intrinsically as the salt in the water.
“I have missed you,” he purred, reaching out to stroke a taloned hand down her face, his other hand gripping the trident so tightly his knuckles flashed white.
His hand upon her flesh made her stomach heave. The last of the human food in her gut churned as it dissolved in the acid.
There was nothing left of the land in her. Nothing left but the love she embodied for her life above the water.
Drystan’s gaze turned brittle as it settled on her lips.
He had seen her wield, saw what she was capable of if she opened her mouth and unleashed the power that threaded through her heart. But the power was still spent, the thread muted and nearly invisible when she reached for it.
“The journey will not be an easy one,” he said to her. “It will be even more difficult if you try to use your power.”
The threat was as clear as the day had been before the terror of the last hour.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lyra seethed, holding her chin high.
He may have been the king of the seven seas, but he would always be Drystan to her.
Drystan scoffed, removing the helm that covered his face. He appeared different from the last time she had seen him. The angles of his face were sharper, but his eyes appeared haunted.
There was a depthless quality to a color she couldn’t quite make out yet. Her body was caught in a riptide between what her mind wanted and what the sea demanded.
Drystan flicked his eyes to the guards and then spoke so that only she could hear. “I am not the enemy you think I am, Lyra. You would do well to remember that.”
He threw the words out like a hook on a reel, but a bone-deep exhaustion was already beginning to take root. Her limbs drank in the seawater, and the salt in her pores bound her to this place once more.
With her silence, he approached cautiously, like one might a cornered animal. “I know you must think my decisions harsh?—”
Lyra glared at him and pictured ripping his tongue out of his mouth.
Fire rolled down her arms, surprising her as it collected on the tips of her fingers before bursting outwards.
Her nails ripped through her skin, elongating and sharpening into steely points.
Without hesitation, she struck, lashing her claws across his face.
His flesh parted easily and collected beneath her nails.
She wanted to do more lasting damage, to give him the same silver scars that lingered on the inside of her arms.
But Drystan was a warrior and much too fast. He grabbed both her wrists in his fist. His grip was as heavy and unbreakable as iron.
The tips of the trident pricked the smooth skin of her chest as he pressed it into her flesh.
Sharp words were spat from the guards who leaned away from them. They were furious, yes, but also—scared.
They were terrified of her and her power.
“The land hasn’t softened you,” Drystan said with wry amusement, easing the trident away from her. “Good.”
His blood floated between them, swirling in the current like crimson smoke.
Lyra inhaled deeply, savoring the taste of it. His blood was not light like shallow water. No, it was rich like the water near fertile reefs.
“The land made me stronger,” she breathed.
Shackles replaced Drystan’s fist, and Lyra flinched as the weight of actual iron settled against her wrists. The guards moved away just as swiftly as they had come.
Drystan cocked his head to the side and studied her with an otherworldly stillness. Through the crimson, he looked every bit the monster she knew him to be.
His broad chest was covered with scaled golden armor. He looked like a portrait in a storybook. But he wasn’t a knight come to save her.
No, he was the beast that had stolen her away.
“Sadly, those are for your protection.” He frowned at the shackles on her wrists and then leaned in close. “We are not among friends here. Behave.”
He leaned back, letting his gaze drag over her body—from the lavender shimmer of her tail to the diamond-studded kylix cupping her breasts.
The magic was so thorough that not a thread of her human attire remained. Her auburn curls floated freely around her face, freed from the gravity of the land.
Drystan reached out as if he would wrap a curl around his finger before he spoke. “I can’t wait for us to return home, my love.”
Lyra scanned their surroundings to avoid the longing in his gaze.
The water was oppressive. It pressed upon her, crushing the fight in her chest under a boulder of dread.
Her body recognized this place long before her mind put the pieces together.
It wasn’t the forced return to her form or the enemies surrounding her that had anxiety coiling around her like a snake.
No—it was this place.
They were in Ithicais—Drystan’s territory.
She had been here once before. Her memory of it was foggy and twisted with terror.
Ithicais was the westernmost territory of Atlantis, bordering the coast of the Emerald Isle. It was also home to the sea witch, Estria.
It was her cave Lyra had been brought to, and the truth of her magic had been carved from her like an offering.
Lyra dove deep into the recesses of her mind, pulling out every bit of viable information she had tucked away of their realm, specifically that of the map of their kingdom she had studied with the fervor of a caged creature yearning for escape.
Drystan had snatched her from the coast of the Mannereds, which lay almost too far south for Ithicais’s reach, if her memory was correct, which meant they must be somewhere near Baiae.
Its territory to the south of Ithicais and was ruled by no other than Prince Hadrian, her sister Cora’s husband.
“Let us proceed,” Drystan ordered with a snap of his fingers. “Assist her.”
Cold metal yanked her out of her misery as the guards wormed their gauntlet-covered hands beneath her arms and hauled her between them.
They were massive in this form. Their tails nearly doubled the size of hers.
The one on her right had scales of pure silver, like that of a great white shark, while the one on her left bore a tail of olive-brown like the kelp that grew in Atlantis.
She shivered against the iciness of their golden armor, but they did not notice her displeasure.
They tugged her roughly east, passing shipwrecks torn apart like carcasses—bows split wide like fractured ribcages. The water here was sickly green, more swamp than sea, with rot heavy in the lazy current.
It appeared haunted, as if the ghosts of drowned mortals lingered behind the blades of kelp forests.
Ithicais was known for its sudden shallow waters, and therefore, an abundance of ships met their demise here.
Rotting wood and the bright-green algae that had devoured the wreckage over centuries lay heavy on her tongue.
Lyra cringed at the awful taste and smell.
This place was worse than any story she had ever been told. And King Auris had told her stories of the monstrous creatures that roamed these waters, drawn in by the magnitude of fresh food.
Sobeks, as he’d called them, were massive reptilian beasts with elongated snouts, crushing tails, and teeth meant to tear through stone.
As a child, she often had nightmares of those beasts, fearing that they lurked in the shadows of her room or beneath her bed.
But as she grew, she suspected his stories were embellished to keep her from venturing outside the allowed territory.
Either way, it was successful. She’d never ventured farther than her favorite reef, and any time she glimpsed the murky water of the west, she scurried back to clearer water.