Chapter 20
LYRA
He wasn’t coming.
Which meant I needed to return to the palace in disguise.
At least this time, I knew the Stone’s location, even if taking it by force from Terran no longer sat well.
It wouldn’t be the first time my personal feelings about a mission threatened to interfere with its execution, but this one was unique in more ways than one.
Nestled into the side of a cliff overlooking the churning sea below, The Siren’s Rest was located at the edge of Grimharbor. I sat in its hall, listening to the crash of the waves below as the sound mingled with the low murmur of travelers and smugglers, Gyorians mostly.
Out of nowhere, a hand appeared on the table in front of me. Before I could react, a small piece of parchment was left behind. I spun in my seat, the hooded figure already heading deeper into the inn.
I reached for the parchment.
Room thirty-six. Don’t make me come get you.
Terran.
I should have recognized his assured gait. Why I wasn’t appalled at his tone—just the opposite—was something that could be explored at a later time. It seemed as if a disguise wouldn’t be needed after all.
Leaving a coin on the table, I stood and made my way to the third floor. Before I could even knock, the door opened, as if Terran knew I would follow. And quickly.
“Your flair for dramatics is most unexpected,” I said, Terran only pulling down his hood after the door was closed. Ignoring the flutter in my chest at seeing him again, I waited for Terran to explain himself.
“When you’re fleeing your father’s men, and said father is the king, one tends to be overly cautious.”
My eyes widened. “He knows it was you?”
“Suspects, I suppose. He sent his men to ‘detain me for questioning.’ I thought it prudent to leave.”
It was worse than I’d imagined, though not surprising.
The moment he’d taken the Stone, the wards on the crown would have told Balthor exactly who had breached them.
Terran had spoken of hiding the relic, confronting his father, teasing out the truth.
Noble, but na?ve. The only question had been how quickly he would act. Now I had my answer.
“How did you get away?”
Terran’s expression nearly made me laugh, despite the situation we found ourselves in. Exasperated, as if to say, How do you think? he declined to actually answer.
The king’s guards were the most well-trained of all Gyorian warriors. Terran, it seemed, was even more so. Kael had warned me of the fact, though I thought his words were exaggerated. I had never seen Terran’s display of skills personally to verify their strength myself.
Despite the urgency of our situation, the air suddenly shifted between us. This wasn’t just about the Stone. Terran knew it. I knew it. But the stakes were too high to allow the way he looked at me now to affect our plans.
“We don’t have time for games,” I said, confident he’d been about to say something inflammatory.
“Then perhaps don’t look at me as if you missed the feeling of my fingers wrapped through your hair.”
The effect of his words was instantaneous.
“I looked at you in no such way.”
“Mm, I could disprove it easily.”
“How?” The question was out of my mouth, Terran provoked, before I thought better of it.
“By tearing off every layer of your clothing, and defenses. Your body doesn’t lie.”
No, it doesn’t.
“I think we have more important matters to discuss.”
Sighing, as if reluctantly resigning himself to the truth of my words, he wandered toward the window, looking out at the very rocks below I’d been staring at when he first approached.
“You’ve set off a chain of events that can’t be undone by coming here, Lyra.”
Although that was the entire point of this mission, I refrained from saying as much.
“You’d have preferred to allow your father to descend into a madness that would cause a war? Already, he’s isolated Gyoria, angered even his strongest allies, and destabilized Elydor in a way that hasn’t been seen since—”
He turned to me. “Your king opened the Gate?”
“With permission from all three clans,” I reminded him.
“None expected the humans to be given land to settle here. That was Galfrid’s doing.”
“I won’t argue this with you. ’Tis clear we have different views on the matter.”
“You think?”
His scowl made me smile. “Like a trexan that guards its den as fiercely as it hunts.”
“Call me soft again, Lyra. I will enjoy proving you wrong.”
His words sent a tingle from my toes to my very core. I would enjoy it as well but had to stop allowing Terran to know that.
“So sensitive, for a Gyorian.”
I goaded him, and Terran knew it. Instead of taking the bait, he turned back to the window.
“I’ll go with you, to speak to my brother.”
My heart leaped at the victory, one more hollow than it should be.
I hated lying to Terran about the true purpose of my mission.
But that, I reconciled, was a matter between brothers.
I’d been tasked with bringing the Stone of Mor’Vallis to Aetheria.
That it was carried by one of the most fearsome Gyorian warriors of our time was a matter for Kael and Galfrid to reconcile.
“And my king?”
“I imagine speaking to him will be unavoidable.”
A victory, to be certain. But we needed to get there first.
“I assume your father’s men are searching for you?”
“Aye.”
“My presence hasn’t gone unnoticed here,” I said, joining him at the window.
Terran glanced sideways at me. “No. I imagine it hasn’t.”
There was something in the way he said it… “That sounded suspiciously like a compliment.”
“It was.”
Even his compliments were gruff. I laughed aloud then. “You are a strange one, Prince Terran.”
“And you are not at all what I expected, Lady Lyra.”
I wasn’t certain what to make of that.
“I’ve made arrangements for us to travel by boat. My father’s land trackers are too skilled to avoid for long. You have a disguise, I assume?”
I hid my surprise. “I do.”
“Wear it. Meet me at the eastern quay, beside the fisherman’s shrine.”
It was time to return to Aetheria. Without further comment, I turned from the peaceful, yet violent, scene below as wave after wave crashed against the Gyorian shore.
Terran grabbed my wrist, stopping me.
“And Lyra.”
I looked up into a pair of bright-green eyes, as turbulent as the sea but still somehow as grounded as their owner’s clan.
“When we reach Aetheria…” His gaze dipped to my mouth, lingering. “We finish what we started.”