5. The Long Rode Home | Lyra
The journey took longer than she had hoped. Before long, she gave up completely on swimming and started letting Fang and the other guard drag her between them.
They alerted Drystan to her flagging strength, and he led them away from the stronger current and to a shelf of rock for her to rest. They placed her on a porous stone and then took up a perimeter with the rest of the guards.
Drystan, however, waited beside her while she rested.
Her tail was dead weight, outstretched along the rock. The tips of her fins grazed the silt on the seabed. She stretched her arms above her head, leaning from side to side.
A rainbow parrotfish darted by. The vibrant orange scales on its head clashed with the neon green of its tail. But as it swam through a ripple of light, the colors changed from orange to pink and green to yellow.
It reminded Lyra of the wildflowers that blossomed near the Three Sisters. She longed to stroke a fingertip down soft petals once more, as she had on land.
Lyra rubbed a hand down her side, soothing her sore muscles.
Drystan looked north. A frown pinched his brows together, and he shifted from side-to-side as his tail bobbed lazy strokes.
“It’s an hour or two more, depending on how many times you need to stop.”
Lyra ground her teeth together and then blew the hair out of her face that floated forward.
“I’m not,” she huffed, “used to swimming.”
Drystan nodded with indifference, crossing his arms across his armor-clad chest.
“I assumed as much, given the time you spent on land.”
When she didn’t respond, he filled the silence.
“We’re near the border of Baiae,” he mused, looking towards the clear and warmer waters of the south. “When was the last time you saw Princess Cora?”
Lyra sat up straighter, eyeing Drystan like something a sobek would spit out.
She hadn’t seen her sister Cora, or any of her sisters, in years. Though her last memory of Cora was a semi-pleasant one.
It had been at Cora’s wedding to Prince Hadrian.
Her sister was adamant that the ceremony be held at the palace in Atlantis.
King Auris had raised concerns that the wedding be held in the temple, but with the palace being in the center of their kingdom, it made more logistical sense that it be held there.
Cora had been a force to be reckoned with about every single detail that went into the wedding preparations.
It had been unusual for Lyra to see her usually calm sister raging like a bull shark.
The pieces had fallen into place, though, when she saw how happy Cora and Hadrian were at the ceremony, as if they couldn’t wait to join their lives together.
Her sister had just wanted everything to be perfect. She was marrying Hadrian for more than just duty—but love.
Lyra was old enough at the time to know that weddings weren’t often ceremonies that celebrated love, but were partnerships of obligation.
Hadrian and Cora’s wedding had been different.
King Auris arranged the wedding to establish a foothold in Baiae, but the secret smiles they shared and the lingering kiss that bound them indicated it was also something more.
Lyra understood Cora’s joy over the arrangement. Hadrian was handsome, with a pale-blue tail that matched the crystalline waters of Baiae.
Yet annoyance soured Lyra’s memory when she thought of the ceremony in its entirety.
The tedious religious rituals and the tension that thickened the water.
“I was ten. You know this—you were there.”
Drystan grinned, no doubt his own memories playing out in his mind. He had been a nuisance at the wedding.
King Auris tasked him with monitoring Lyra throughout the ceremony. And Drystan went to great lengths to bully her through all of it.
He’d even covered her eyes when the wedding ended, keeping Lyra from bidding her sister farewell when she left for Baiae.
Lyra’s displeasure at that memory tugged her lips down in a pout.
“You’ll see her soon. She’s on her way to Atlantis now—for our wedding.”
Lyra balled her hands into fists. The weight of the shackles reminded her that she had no freedom here.
No freedom to do what she wanted to do, which was shove him away from her.
“Are we not speaking the same language?” Her voice came out low, despite the venom that twisted her mind.
Drystan arched a brow, cocking his head to the side.
“Let me say it plainly, one more time. I will not marry you.”
Drystan scoffed. “Sure you will, and I’ve gathered the entire council to bear witness.”
She sucked in a sharp breath at the mere mention of the council. They would be a hindrance to her plans of completing a bargain and escaping the bounds of matrimony.
“The entire council?” Lyra questioned.
Drystan’s smile was wicked, and it deepened the shadow in the dimple on his chin. “Yes. All.”
The council consisted of the princes from each territory.
Atlantis’s immense realm included seven surrounding territories, with Atlantis at its core.
From northwest in a clockwise fashion, they were: Huron, Olous, Pavlopetri, Zeal, Naguni, Baiae, and Ithicais.
Each territory was vastly different, from the rocky terrain of Huron to the ancient cypress grove waters of Pavlopetri. They were unique in land and people.
The princes of each territory met often under her father’s rule, and Lyra believed it was that partnership that had kept the sea at peace for so long.
Now that her father was no longer king, would the sea resort to its old ways of war?
It wasn’t unfathomable to think that territories of lesser means, like Ithicais and Huron, would resort to war instead of trade to get supplies from richer territories, like Zeal and Pavlopetri.
It was often whispered that Prince Caspian of Huron was as rough-hewn as the land he ruled. Caspian wed her eldest sister, Marmoris.
The two had been married longer than Lyra had been alive, and her memories of Marmoris were few and far between.
Rumors of Caspian ran rampant in the palace. He was strong-willed and unforgiving.
She’d seen him often at King Auris’s right side, both in meetings and at the lavish feasts her father hosted.
From what she remembered of him, Lyra was inclined to believe the rumors. His long white hair was memorable as he often left it floating, untied, above his shoulders.
The navy of his tail was as dark as the rocks in his territory. But it was the ever-present scowl twisting his features that she remembered the clearest.
The other princes outside of Caspian and Hadrian were vague in her memories, but they were still there, always at her father’s side rendering aid and advice.
Nothing was done in this kingdom without a meeting and approval from them.
“Does the council know about your bargain with the High King?” Lyra asked.
Drystan’s grin fell away, and the gold of his eyes gleamed.
It was answer enough, and Lyra’s lips twitched as she fought back a smile.
“I don’t think they’d take kindly to their future king making a deal with the High King,” her voice had taken on a singsong quality as she basked in her goading.
Lyra blinked, and he was in front of her, wrapping a fist around her wild hair.
He yanked her forward so that they were eye to eye. Drystan squeezed tighter, and burning ripped across her scalp, a few strands of her hair tearing from the root.
The golden amber of his eyes glowed with fury. He took pleasure in angering her.
That much was obvious. So she focused on the pale-pink lines she had carved down his cheek.
“You can tell them whatever your heart desires. It will be a king’s word against yours.”
Lyra pulled against his hold, fighting past the burning to get closer, a mere hairsbreadth from his face.
“I don’t care if you are Ennosidas himself,” she snarled. “You will pay for what you have done.”
His eyes beseeched hers, and he nodded, just once, before releasing his grip.
Drystan stared at the hair still floating between his fingers before shaking them loose. He turned quickly away from her, giving her a glimpse of his back and the shoulders that nearly brushed his ears.
She wished she had said more, wished her magic had replenished so that she could curse him and this entire realm to death and be done with it. But it had not.
“Fang, Angler, see to it that she does not struggle,” Drystan ordered.
Fang and the shark-like guard, Angler, flanked her again.
He had not given the order out of kindness. That wasn’t even a word he understood. It was for humiliation, to weaken her in the eyes of others.
The next hour passed in an endless loop of decaying ships, massive whale skeletons, and undulating pillars of sea kelp.
The smell shifted between death and more death.
Lyra didn’t speak. She picked up murmurings of annoyance about increased ceremonies and some kind of prudish garments, but she blocked them out.
It didn’t escape her notice that Drystan led them away from strong currents, or towards an unusual sight like a wooden chest turned on its side with mortal gold spilling out and a rather lovely statue of a woman with a large vase balanced upon her head.
It was odd, and for a moment Lyra wondered if he had led them away from difficulty and towards wonderful sights for her.
Murky water shifted to crystalline, and it became slightly cooler. They were nearing Atlantis. The pungent smell lightened, becoming more salt than rot.
Drystan slowed, coming up beside her. “Welcome home.”
He gestured with the trident to the kingdom that appeared in the distance.
It was Lyra’s home, or had been.
She knew all the pathways to and from the palace. She knew each spire that speared into the watery light, and the way the visibility of the water shifted between the seasons.
But in her heart, she felt nothing when looking at the place she had been born and raised.
It was strange, given that not too long ago, Lyra had been willing to give up almost anything to return to Atlantis.
But she had lived through so much now. Had found her mom and Wilder. A life she wanted to live.