52. Fish Can’t Hear
Wilder led them to a small pond near the cottage to catch their dinner. Lyra didn’t have the heart to tell him that this was second nature to her and that they didn’t need the pole.
She had swapped her cotton gown for another, similar one she had found at the bottom of the trunk. This one was a dark gray that had a hem of ruffles.
Wilder wore a dry white tunic and linen pants. Every so often, when the light hit him just right, Lyra could’ve sworn she’d seen red crisscrossing his back.
“What do you think?” Wilder asked, as they crept through a hedgerow and the pond appeared, flanked by large willows and fragrant cedars.
“It’s nice,” she replied. “And there are fish here?”
Wilder nodded. “There used to be quite a bit. But I haven’t been here in ages, so I’m sure the occupants have multiplied greatly.”
Lyra glimpsed the turtles on the banks and the bubbles that popped at the surface. Again, she didn’t have the heart to tell him he was wrong.
The turtles might have decimated a good portion of the fish, and the lack of birds didn’t bode well either.
The reeds waved in the breeze as Wilder cast their line. Lyra sat on the ground beside him. The grass on the bank was soft, and there were colorful wildflowers blooming throughout. Such charming peace exuded from this place.
“So you’ve seen what most of the Wilds have to offer. Will you tell me about Atlantis?” Wilder prompted, taking a seat beside her and keeping an eye on his line.
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Friends? Siblings?”
Lyra sighed through her nose. “The closest things to friends I have are Marina and Seraphina. The two women who were with me the night you kidnapped me.”
“Oh, right,” Wilder bit back a smile.
“I guess you could call them friends. But they’re not friends in the same way that you have Maelys, Ridge, and Otto. And as far as siblings go, I have six older sisters.”
“All females,” Wilder said in surprise.
“It’s ironic King Auris only sired daughters when they have no place in our kingdom except as bargaining chips or pawns,” she mused.
Wilder furrowed his brow and recast his line.
“What do you mean?”
“All of my older sisters were married off to bordering territories when I was still quite young. My engagement was even planned from infancy. But there was a large age gap between me and my next oldest sister.”
“How big?”
“Eight years. When I was ten, she was married off.”
“That’s so young.”
“Mhm.” Lyra sighed through her nose. “I’m not exactly sure why I wasn’t married off as soon as I turned eighteen, as well. Except maybe it was because I was my father’s favorite—or that I needed to become stronger to survive my fiancé.”
Wilder turned to her then. “Is he that bad?”
Lyra gestured to the scars on the inside of her arms. “He’s the worst sort. More muscle than brains, he is cruel, and the only thing he truly loves is himself. He turned his mother over for reading ‘illicit material’.”
“I just can’t imagine why they would want their females to suffer,” Wilder murmured.
Lyra shrugged. “Control, maybe? I don’t know. There’s no mention of the three sisters, either. They stripped that tidbit from all our books, paintings, and rites. But then again, we can’t partake in that, anyway.”
Wilder shook his head, and Lyra sighed.
It fell silent before he asked, “How are Seraphina and Marina different from my friends?”
Lyra frowned, thinking back over her bond with the two of them.
“I would say I’m closer to Marina than Seraphina. But we were raised much differently. Her father was kind despite her being a female, and therefore, she’s always been a bit different.”
“How so?”
“Well, she—she asks a lot of pointed questions.”
Wilder snorted, and Lyra glared.
“It’s not like that. She has this way of riling me up and getting me into trouble.
” She didn’t know how to explain it to him other than to give examples.
“When I was fifteen, I found a book on elves that a library guard hadn’t put back in the right place.
Well, actually, Marina is the one who found it and showed me, and the one who caused a distraction so that I could slip out unnoticed. I devoured that book.”
Wilder smirked. “We have no books about elves,” he mimicked her.
She grimaced. “Sorry about that.”
He shook his head and smiled. “Continue.”
“I read all about the wars between your kingdoms, the different types of magics, and even your holidays. Ostara sounded exciting, and I dreamed of dancing in a ballroom.”
She sighed and closed her eyes, remembering how it felt to spin around her room in Atlantis.
“Seraphina and Marina were the only two who knew about the books. One of them tipped the maid off who cleaned my room. She found the book and the others I had stashed and turned them over to my father. I was punished, and the books were destroyed.”
Wilder ground his teeth and shifted narrowed eyes to her. “That’s dreadful.”
She nodded and sucked her lips into her mouth.
“Months later, when I ran away, one of them told my father where I had gone. It’s things like that.
I’ve come to realize they’re not genuine.
At least, not in the sense that yours are.
Maelys would have never ratted you out, and Otto or Ridge would have given you sanctuary. ”
“They are good friends.”
He cast the line out again, and a cloud floated across the sun, casting them in shadow.
“Maelys tended to my back when I was returned from Igneous’ clan. Otto and Ridge refused to leave my side until I was healed and even sometime after that.”
“Your back?” Lyra questioned, sitting up straighter.
“I don’t like people knowing, usually.”
“May I see?”
He sighed and leaned forward. “Just don’t—scream.”
His words had her stomach flipping. What could be so bad he thought she would scream?
Lyra pulled the hem of his shirt up and did, in fact, want to scream.
Puckered red skin in varying lengths and depths, by the coloring, crisscrossed his back in a gruesome pattern.
Scars the width of her finger looked angry and swollen.
While longer scars bordered on violet in color and violent in nature.
It made her chest ache and bile burn the back of her throat as she thought about what tremendous pain he had undergone.
“Who did this?” she asked as calmly as she could, but there was no hiding the tremble in her voice.
“Mainly, Igneous—the alpha. But at times, he allowed others to join in.”
She dropped his shirt and clenched her hand into a tight fist. She wanted to kill them. Kill them all for the violence they had waged across his skin.
Their experiences had been similar, although they had coped in vastly different ways. He wasn’t a monster like she had been told the elves were. Not even close.
Monsters don’t apologize or admit when they are wrong. But it was more than that; she realized his past and his father’s opinion of him were his driving force in life.
Every decision he made was weighed against it. Much like her every decision was weighed against her father’s promise of freedom.
They were two sides of the same coin.
“It makes sense now,” she said.
“What does?”
“Why you seemed so familiar to me the first time I saw you.”
He turned and grinned at her. The emotion in his gaze was unbearable as it cracked her open and threatened to spill every emotional thought she had brewing.
Lyra cleared her throat. “Um, you won’t catch any fish with that.”
Wilder frowned, looking at his pole. “Why is that?”
“The turtles have eaten most of what was in this pond. That’s why there are no birds.”
“So now what?”
“I’ll catch us something from the ocean,” she offered.
Wilder followed her back to the seaside and watched as she held her dress up and waded into the surf. It was familiar to her, watching the ripples under the surface and then spearing a hand in.
It didn’t take her any time at all until she was walking back to the shore with two cods.
“Impressive,” he said with raised brows.
“I’m starving,” she replied with a grin.
“Let’s pick some vegetables and I’ll cook us dinner.”
She stared at him, and he stared back. “What?”
“You can really cook?”
He laughed and took the fish from her. “Of course, can’t you?”
She shook her head. “We don’t ‘cook’ underwater.”
He laughed harder. “So, what can you do?”
Lyra shrugged. “I can put together a salad, I suppose.”
The garden was in complete disarray. Weeds and overgrown herbs, vegetables, and even a few fruits.
Wilder had deposited the fish in the kitchen and stood staring with a perplexed expression at the chaos.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.
But Lyra stood staring in wonder. It was perfect and magical, this garden.
“I see some kale,” she gestured to the mass of furled green, “and some carrots, it looks like.”
Wilder waved to the garden. “Then have at it.”
She giggled and began foraging for their meager salads.
Back in the kitchen, Wilder prepped their fish, skinning the scales and removing their innards.
“We just eat them raw,” Lyra added as she hovered over his shoulder, watching.
“You also lived under the water and had razor-sharp teeth.”
“That’s true.”
“Do you miss it?” he asked, without looking at her.
“Sometimes. I miss the water and my sharp teeth and claws. But I don’t miss the rules and the dreariness. Everything is so full of life and color here.”
“What’s the court like?”
“Abysmal,” she uttered. “Scheming, corruption, and cruelty. I’m sure we’re aptly described in your books.”
He nodded then. “Like we were in yours.” Wilder threw the fish into a pan that rested atop a flame.
“I have seen nothing of the sort from the elves.”
Wilder snorted. “We’re far from perfect, and you would have quickly realized that had we gone on an actual tour.”
“I suppose even the humans could say that, too. Everyone has their issues.”
“Very wise, Princess,” Wilder replied with a smile. “What have you read about the humans?”
“Not much. But my experiences with them were terrifying.”
He ran a hand down her spine before pulling her to him and pressing a kiss to her head. “I am sorry for that.”
“You saved me.”
“You were only there because of me. Not all humans are that way from my experiences, but from what I have heard about Badenvaria—well, you never want to go there. No creature leaves there.”
She nestled into his side and breathed in his familiar scent.
A small part of her wished they could stay here—like this forever.
It was the closest she had ever felt to being home.