42. Ocean Side | Lyra
Ablade slid through her ribs and pierced her heart in a bitter slowness that took her breath away. With each heartbeat she spent on the shore, she was dying. And she hadn’t had the heart to tell him.
As soon as she had washed up on that beach with fins and not feet, she realized she could not stay.
“I will be yours for the rest of our lives,” she whispered. “I promise. But right now I have to make sure we get to have a life.”
Each breath was excruciating.
She was surprised it wasn’t written all over her face, the pain she was in.
He kissed her again, and she let him, let his lips on her take away the burning in her chest. She swallowed him down.
Feasted on his lips and tongue.
She was a starving woman, and he was a delectable meal. She was thirsty, and he was water.
She had gills, and he was the sea.
They broke apart, and she could see the tears trailing down his cheeks. She wiped one away with her fingertip before putting it on her tongue.
Wilder groaned, and his eyelids drooped.
“You’re making this impossible,” he said between clenched teeth.
He tasted of cool, deep waters, and it sparked something deep in her soul.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, feeling the tightness return to her chest.
A vice cinching tight with every breath.
He pulled her to his chest once more, and she let him. “At least let me know you will be alright if you return. Did we stop your wedding?”
Lyra reeled back. “You knew?”
“I’ve had Jordania and Otto keeping an eye on you down there.” Wilder grinned sheepishly.
“Fill me in,” she breathed, and it scalded her throat. “Quickly.”
Wilder nodded.
“As soon as they took you, I left for the Wilds. My plan was to launch an invasion, but the High King denied my claim.”
Lyra grimaced, remembering that excruciating detail. “I had heard.”
Wilder cocked his head to the side. “You did?”
“There is a witch in the sea, Estria,” Lyra couldn’t help the peeling back of her lips as she said her name. “But she told me you had accepted his refusal and,” she pressed a hand to her burning throat, “given up on me.”
Wilder shook his head vehemently. “No,” he stroked a hand down her cheek. “Never. Otto struck me.”
“What?” Lyra’s eyes widened to the point of pain.
He chuckled weakly. “He saw that your life hung in the balance and that if I had challenged, you would be executed. So he knocked me out cold.”
Wilder pointed to the spot between his jaw and chin where Otto had struck him.
Lyra pressed her lips there with a smile. “Remind me to thank him for that later.”
“Yes, well. I woke up imprisoned on treason charges and utterly hopeless to save you, so I wasn’t very grateful at the time.”
Lyra’s lips thinned. “How did you escape?”
“Maelys and Ridge orchestrated a rescue. Used something called Dragon’s fire they nicked from some ruffians.” Wilder’s grin was wicked. “It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Dragon’s fire?”
“I don’t know what it is, but it was loud and hot,” he laughed. “Something they stole from human alchemists in Badenvaria.”
Lyra’s chest ached, and with every breath, it felt like burning nails raking down her throat. Her head was light as if it were about to float away. Darkness shimmered at the edge of her vision.
“We received word about the humans before we left. I know they seek to stop me.”
Wilder grimaced, and his teeth flashed a brilliant white against his tan skin.
But Lyra continued. “We think they’re siphoning the magic from the mermaids they keep from the tithe.”
“That would make sense,” Wilder mused. “The reports that come out of Badenvaria are astonishing. They attacked your scouts and won, did they not?”
Lyra exhaled as she flexed her fingers. “We heard of that as well.”
“What else?” Wilder asked with a quirk of his brow.
“Our kingdom is unstable. Aegir is gaining power, and without Drystan on the throne, I don’t know how we’ll be able to stop him.”
Wilder tilted his head to the side, and his eyes scoured her face. “You sound as if you want Drystan on the throne?”
Lyra struggled for the words to explain. Wilder’s expression darkened as his brow lowered.
“You were willingly going to marry him, weren’t you?”
Lyra’s nostrils flared as she pursed her lips. “I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t break the tithe without security, and that security came in the form of marriage. You don’t know what it’s like down there.”
Anger pumped through her veins, scorching her skin.
Time was running out. The words turned to sand in her throat, and she coughed.
Wilder’s scowl vanished as he held her.
Lyra shook violently as she coughed up lungfuls of water.
Wilder slammed his palm against her back, helping as much as he could.
“Lyra,” worry clung to his voice.
She wiped the salt from her lips and trembled.
“I can’t stay,” she rasped out.
Wilder gripped her chin and pulled her face to his.
“Just unbind the tithe and come back to me.”
Pure love radiated from his gaze as his eyes beseeched her.
They were as blue as the sky, and when she inhaled, she smelled the trees in the Valewood and the branches of the ancient willow.
He was home to her.
“Even if I have to marry him?” she asked, her lower lip quivering.
Wilder smiled, and a hint of sadness tinged the blue of his eyes. “You belong to no one.”
She had been so sure she could do this, return to the sea and save the world. But looking at him now, accepting that he had to let her go, all she wanted to do was curl up into a ball and die.
He pressed his lips to hers, and she savored the feel of him one last time. His arms slipped from around her too soon, and she felt the chill of the air against her skin and scales.
“Break the tithe and come home,” he said. She could see the resolve settle in his shoulders as he rocked back onto his haunches. “I’ll have everything ready for your return. I promise.”
She felt the absence mark her soul, a dark shadow that had wormed its way into her chest.
Lyra sat on her hip, stretching the length of her tail behind her as she faced the sea again.
“It’s not goodbye,” she whispered more to herself than to him. “I am always with you.”
“Remember,” he said, voice hard.
She looked over her shoulder at him, and it stole what little breath she had left.
His face was hard. Little lines marching across his forehead. But his eyes were a brilliant blue, like the clear sky above the sea.
“There’s not a place you could go that I will not find you.”
He pointed to his chest, where his heart beat behind muscle and bone. The anguish on his face nearly crumbled her strength.
Lyra smiled past the burn in her eyes and the vice around her chest. She dove headfirst into an oncoming wave.
Her scream was drowned out by the water as she forced herself to swim away from him, from home.
The water was ice cold against her raw throat as she screamed until her body trembled.
She forced herself to keep swimming deeper and deeper into dark, icy water.
This was Huron.
Lyra was on the border of their northeastern territory.
Mountainous rocks rose from the depths. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and swallowed the lump in her throat.
Atlantis—she needed to get back to Atlantis and unbind the tithe.
The water here was frigid, and the darkness from the mountains blocked out most of the bleak rays from the surface.
An intense beam in the distance caught her eye, and she swam towards it. Her throat was still raw, but did not burn as it had on the sandbar.
Lyra pressed her fingers to her lips as she remembered how his lips had felt on hers and the taste of him.
“Princess Lyra,” a masculine voice boomed.
She jerked to a halt, scanning her surroundings for the voice.
A guard rounded a boulder. His chest plate was carved with the Ithicais seal, and his tail was emerald green.
“The entire kingdom has been looking for you.” His words came out without any feeling, and Lyra didn’t know if she should trust him or not.
His helm blocked out any identifying features and made it difficult to read his expression.
“Would you mind removing your helmet?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.
The guard obliged, and Lyra was relieved to see his golden hair. He must be one of Drystan’s.
“I don’t know what happened,” she whispered. “One moment I was there and the next—I was gone.”
He dipped his chin, but his eyes never left her face.
In fact, he seemed to be looking for something.
“Are you injured?”
She shook her head and felt her necklace shift on her chest. She placed a hand atop it and could have sworn she heard Wilder.
“Do you require any assistance moving? Or can you follow me to Prince Caspian’s estate?”
A deep breath worked its way out of her chest, and she moved towards the guard.
When she trembled, he frowned and extended his elbow.
“Allow me,” he offered.
He was strangely kind, but for once she didn’t mind the help.
The thread of magic around her heart flared, and it was a brilliantly blinding gold in her mind’s eye.
“You should feel better soon,” he muttered, pulling her along. “The magic has always been healing here.”
Lyra’s brow arched. “It has?”
He nodded. “There used to be an ancient temple here, older than the ones in Zeal.”
“How do you know that?” Her nose scrunched at his words.
The guard, whose name she still hadn’t caught, chuckled. “My Mormor used to tell me outlandish tales. Probably wasn’t an ounce of truth in them.”
“What is your name?” Lyra asked, caught off guard by the immediate kinship she felt with this merman.
“Finn, Your Highness.”
“Finn,” Lyra smiled despite the sorrow that still clung to her like a second skin. “What else did your Mormor tell you?”
He shook his head with a chuckle. “You’ll think her mad, and she probably was. She wrote books.”
Lyra gasped and covered her mouth. “You shouldn’t tell anyone that. She could be killed!”
The light dimmed in Finn’s eyes. “She’s long gone, Your Highness.”
“Oh,” Lyra breathed, relieved that Finn’s Mormor would not be in any danger. “I’m so sorry.”
Finn nodded as he led her around a pillar of rock that appeared to have symbols carved into it.
It should have interested her, but the weight of her choice was dragging her down. It was a sadness she could feel bone deep.
It was a sadness that would inhibit her from doing what she came to do if she allowed it.
“Can you tell me some of her stories, Finn? I’m in need of a distraction,” Lyra sighed, holding onto her necklace.
She didn’t hear Wilder’s voice this time, and it opened a hole in her chest.
“Of course, but you know they’re just the ravings of an old mermaid?”
Lyra nodded, and Finn leveled his shoulders, preparing to launch into old tales.
“The temple here was actually erected for a goddess. Her name lost to time, but she had two sisters …”
Lyra felt the thread within her flare.
Tiandra’s temple.
There was a temple here to Tiandra.
Finn gestured to a pillar that was too symmetrical to be natural.
“See that column there,” he led her towards it. “The rock on this side was part of an altar. That’s why it’s so smooth. Someone removed the writing that had been there long ago.”
Lyra reached out to brush her palm along the stone.
It buzzed with latent energy, and she froze, not daring to pull away.
This was the place.
This is where she needed to unbind the Tidal Tithe.
“Finn,” Lyra looked over her shoulder. “Do you mind giving me a moment?”
He frowned, tilting his head to the side.
“I would like to pay my respects,” she said, and then quickly tacked on, “to the ancestors.”
Finn shrugged and headed a few paces away with his back to her.
Lyra pressed her forehead against the rock.
She didn’t have to marry Drystan first. She could break the tithe now with no one the wiser and then flee back to shore.
But that would leave Drystan to deal with the aftermath.
Drystan and her sisters and Marina to deal with Aegir’s poison.
Her stomach twisted as she thought of abandoning them.
If she didn’t break the tithe now, she really would be abandoning them—in death.
She reached for her magic as she pulled the words Nerida had given her out of the recesses of her mind.
Lyra imagined they were a twisted version of the original bargain the land and sea had made.
Crown of land and Crown of sea
I untie the bargains of our kingdoms eternally …
Lyra plucked the thread of gold in her heart as she whispered the words onto the stone.
It heated beneath her hand so quickly that she flinched, drawing her hand to her chest. It throbbed as if it had been burned.
Fuck.
She’d said the words wrong.
Lyra had said bargains, not bargain. She misspoke.
“Princess,” Finn said with a hint of worry.
As she turned towards him, the dim light vanished completely.
The ground shook violently, rocking the pillars. Silt floated up from the seabed, and tiny rocks rained down on them.
Lyra had nothing to hold onto as her body was jostled around, her vision blackening at the edges.
“Princess Lyra!” Finn shouted.
But it was too late.
Darkness didn’t just surround them.
It had taken her.