24. Lady of the Stars | Wilder
The moon rose full on their second night at the summer cottage, the stars a brilliant tapestry in the sky. Each crash of the sea against the shore had him inhaling a lungful.
The briny air soothed the burn in his chest that her absence had brought. Judging by the symphony of bugs chirping, they were quickly approaching the summer solstice.
It was strange how time moved. Some seconds ticked by with such agonizing slowness he thought they would never end, and yet, in the blink of an eye, she had been gone over a month now.
“I thought I might find you here,” a feminine voice purred from the darkness.
Wilder would have flinched had he not recognized her.
“Jordania? What brings you here?”
Jordania stepped into the glow of the moonlight. She mirrored the night. Her pale skin radiant like the moon, and her dark hair just as black as the sky that held it.
She wore a traveling gown of green. The rich color no doubt blended seamlessly with the forest she had just ventured through.
“Warick and I thought you could benefit from my presence,” she hummed, taking a seat beside him and flouncing out the layers of her skirts.
The sound of his uncle’s name had his upper lip pulling back. “Come to spy, have you?”
“Unlikely. I happen to like the Little Fish.” She snorted and brushed her hair off her shoulder.
Jordania’s use of the nickname she gifted Lyra had sorrow wrapping him in its icy embrace.
He remembered that the witch and Lyra had struck a sort of friendship.
But it didn’t assuage all of his fears where the witch was concerned.
“Why?”
“She’s on the path to do great things, not only in Atlantis but here as well.”
Wilder pondered her words and found himself stroking a thumb over a rock flattened by centuries of water and wind.
“Can you see her?” he asked reluctantly, each word unfurling slowly from his mouth as if they were pulled with trepidation.
Jordania smiled, and it appeared feline the way her lips curled and eyes narrowed.
“I wager I can see her better than Otto, actually.”
Wilder leaned forward as if tugged by an invisible string in her grasp.
“You can?”
Jordania nodded with a chuckle. “Otto’s visions happen as decisions are made. It’s like seeing the bottom of a pond through the ripples of the water. My visions are—stronger. Like looking at the bottom of the pond after removing all the water.”
“Why would you tell me this?” Wilder’s brow rose uncharacteristically high.
“Because you are worthy, my king.” Jordania swept her gaze over Wilder. “And I would like to be of service to you.”
Wilder’s brows pulled together. “I’m no king.”
Jordania clamped her teeth down on her lower lip. “Not yet. But that is your plan, is it not? To challenge your father for the throne?”
“And if I said yes?”
She was quiet for a moment, her shoulders rising and falling with a sigh. “Then I was correct in my assumption and have no regrets in setting a ward around this cottage to keep your father’s guards from coming near.”
Wilder blinked. “Have you looked into that future?”
“Not yet,” she pursed her lips together. “Some things fate does not reveal, no matter how nicely you ask.” Her words were sharp as she tilted her head to the sky as if to curse the moon.
“I thank you for the ward. But I have no real path or plan on how to get Lyra back. You’d be joining an unsteady cause.”
Jordania shifted, digging her hands into the pockets of her skirts before pulling out a small velvet pouch. She handed it to Wilder.
“You just need motivation.”
The pouch felt heavy in his hand, but familiar. He untied the drawstrings and peered inside. His heart leapt from his chest. It was Lyra’s necklace.
“And maybe a peace offering for you to accept me,” Jordania said with a hint of a smile.
Wilder took the necklace, gently stroking a finger over the sapphire shell. He slowly closed it in his fist and held it against his chest.
“I’ll have to tell Warick he was right. How insufferable.”
Wilder didn’t speak, couldn’t speak. Memories of Lyra flooded his mind, anchoring his tongue to the bottom of his mouth.
“You miss her,” Jordania whispered.
“More than air to breathe.”
Jordania smiled. “She’s not lost, merely waiting to be found.”
Wilder blinked his eyes open and clasped the necklace around his neck, tucking the shell beneath his tunic. “Thank you for bringing it to me.”
“I couldn’t let it be destroyed. It’s full of ancient power, older than the magic of our land.”
Wilder tilted his head to the side and lifted the shell up to his line of sight. “What do you mean?”
“There were monsters that roamed these lands before our gods came to be …”
Wilder dipped his chin, knowing that much of their history already.
“Our gods garnered the energy among the ley lines to banish them away.”
“Ley lines?” Wilder asked, his brow furrowing, casting his eyes into shadow.
“They are lines of power that crisscross all over our realm. Things that grow or live in the vicinity of those lines have power as well—like that shell.”
“This necklace has power?”
Jordania pursed her lips, and the movement sharpened her jaw. “I would think so, with the energy buzzing from it.”
“What does it feel like?” Wilder asked.
He hadn’t felt anything unusual coming from the shell at all, except a closeness to her.
“It sounds like a song. A siren’s song.”
That made sense. It came from the sea, from her.
“Are the ley lines only in the sea?”
Jordania shook her head, and her hair waved like a thick curtain in the wind. “No, they’re all over. There’s one that runs right under the ancient willow.”
Wilder had felt the lure of the ley line then. He had always felt that the magic was more powerful there, ancient even.
There was still so much he didn’t know about this land and magic.
“I’ve heard the willow sing,” he said, reminiscing over the lilting lullaby it often sang to him.
“My mother told me it was the gods singing to us,” Jordania said. “A crack in the veil that kept us separated from them.”
“Is that true?” Wilder asked.
She shrugged. “I’ve talked to the willow, but it never talks back.”
“You talk to the tree?” Wilder asked incredulously, his mouth opening in surprise.
“Of course,” she tutted. “Magic is all around us and in all things. Most of it is unpredictable and wild. Everything I do, from scrying to potions, is just asking a question and letting the magic answer.”
Wilder pondered her words. He hadn’t ever thought of speaking to the willow before.
“The ley lines have been very active since her return. That’s where all of their earthquakes are stemming from,” Jordania spoke like she were puzzling the information out aloud.
“Why do you think that is?”
She chewed on her bottom lip as she thought it over.
“Possibly because she has returned, tied to magic that is not of the sea, but of the land. It unbalances.”
A skitter of rocks had them looking behind them at the cliff face as Otto meandered down the treacherous path.
“Oi,” he said. “Is she here?”
Jordania and Wilder shared a look before Wilder answered. “Who?”
Otto trudged a few steps closer, his heavy boots crunching smaller rocks under their wake.
The beads in his white hair gleamed in the moonlight. He smiled a toothy grin when he stopped just in front of them.
“There she is,” he gazed at Jordania. “Our Lady of the Stars.”
“This is who you meant?” Wilder asked with wide eyes.
Otto grinned and crouched into a squat on Jordania’s other side. “You thought I meant Lyra?”
It burned to swallow down his feelings on the matter, but he answered truthfully.
“I had hoped.”
Jordania patted Wilder’s knee. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“She will be a major asset, Wilder,” Otto breathed. “Tell us of what you have seen in the court of late.”
Jordania folded her hands in her lap. “Warick has sown much dissent. The chaos is reaching a boiling point, and the King has done everything in his power to tamp it down. Curfews and increased punishments for those even whispering of rebels.”
Wilder’s mind swirled as if it were caught in a riptide. Cracking down on all the citizens and not just the rebels would ruffle more than a few feathers. It made no sense.
“He’s a fool,” Wilder sighed, shaking his head.
Jordania smiled slyly. “He doesn’t have anyone to trust and is going off of feelings.”
“Where is the council?” Wilder asked.
“Dismantled,” she beamed. “A little bird whispered in his ear, and then treasonous letters were found.” She fluttered her hand in the air like wings. Wilder spied shadows that appeared to be ink stains on her fingers.
“How?” he asked breathlessly.
His father was no fool. They had to be pretty convincing letters and found on a person for him to have taken them seriously.
“Your uncle has spent years away from court and has learned many a new trick.” She flipped a gold coin between her knuckles before disappearing it altogether and showing both sides of her hand.
“You clever little minx,” Otto breathed.
Her smile grew before fading away like smoke on the wind. “I just hope we didn’t act too late.”
Wilder nodded, listening to the rhythmic crashing of waves against the shore. So much had changed, so much was still in the process of changing.
Otto and Jordania talked softly to each other, but Wilder’s thoughts had drifted far away to a kingdom beneath the sea.
Lyra would think the curfews and rigid punishments in the kingdom were light compared to what the females of Atlantis faced, but they definitely weren’t a step in the right direction for the Wilds.
It was the exact opposite of everything he had wanted for his kingdom.
Life was already harder on their poorer citizens or the ones without a title to their name. It would be unfathomable now.
“There’s talk of decreasing food allowances if the rebellions continue …” Jordania’s words were soft, but they hit Wilder hard in the gut. “They might have already begun in my absence.”