5. Chapter 5 #2
Right. Easy. I didn’t give myself time to second guess his direction, just trusted that he could support my weight as I slid, swung my legs, and fumbled my way off the horse.
He leaned down and held on to me until I’d gained my balance again. “I probably could have given you better direction,” he admitted with a bit of self-recrimination in his tone.
“It’s fine,” I said, not bothering to look back at him.
I was too preoccupied with the way the mossy earth felt soft beneath the soles of my shoes as I took a few steps.
The air was thicker and cooler than it was in Eldmere, and the way the sunlight filtered down through the leaves overhead, dappling the ground with spots of light, created a kind of beauty I’d either never known or forgotten.
I walked several steps and then fell to my knees, pressing my hands into the earth, appreciating the way the soil molded to my palms. This wasn’t stone.
It was vegetation. It was living things, thriving plants, and I could have sworn that I felt a vibrant, living energy penetrate my palms, weaving up my arms and into my whole body.
I leaned forward until my forehead rested against the earth, wanting to be closer to it, close enough that I could take it in and remember it forever.
I breathed deeply, in and out, over and over as silent tears slid from my eyes and into the foliage beneath me.
I’d missed so much, longed for so many things over the last ten years, and this was one of them.
The scent of the ground was heady and calming.
I’d been able to smell a fair number of things from my tower balcony, but it had been nothing compared to the experience of having my nose pressed into the soil as its aroma saturated my lungs.
I sank down further until I was lying on the ground completely, my stomach, chest, and the full length of my legs flush with the ground.
TAVRIC
I didn’t know what to think of this creature—this maiden I’d pulled from the ocean, this young woman who so clearly longed for freedom but was terrified it would be snatched away at any moment, this girl who now lay snuggled against the earth as if she had been deprived of living things for a long time.
Who was she, and why was she here? And what was it about her sudden presence that I found comforting? Perhaps it was her lack of pretense. Maybe it was just that I wanted to shield her from whatever she’d run from.
Whatever it was, I was grateful she was here. After hearing the news of Princess Saria’s impending visit, I’d jumped at the chance to leave the castle, especially since the days I was able to do so were becoming fewer and fewer.
I spent a good portion of my life trying to avoid crowds, noise, and all the other things that grated on me. Often I felt desperate to simply be left alone. Yet as I sat on the ground with a tree supporting my back, I had no wish to run from this odd little mermaid. Instead, I wanted to know more.
Eventually, she rolled over onto her back with her arms splayed out to her sides as she looked up at the canopy of leaves above.
She looked small, here under the large trees and expansive sky.
There was no reason I should have invited her to stay at the palace, but something about the smallness of her and the loneliness of finding her abandoned in the middle of the ocean had caused a fierce protectiveness to rear up inside me.
“Miss Lyrielle?”
She looked over at me, a bright smile lighting up her whole face. “You can call me Lyri.”
The sweet innocence of the invitation made my heart lurch a bit. “Very well. May I ask you a question, Lyri?”
“Of course.” She rolled to her side and pushed up so that she sat facing me, her thick hair falling out of its braid.
“Where did you come from?”
Her smile dipped and her eyes dimmed. “I told you. Eldmere.”
“Where is that?”
“It’s a village in Branfrie, near enough to the sea that I could smell it but not see it. The capital was a half-day’s journey.”
“What sea?” I knew it wasn’t the Lantis Ocean. I could understand how she might confuse an ocean with a sea if she didn’t know the geography, but I knew every kingdom and village that bordered the Lantis, and Eldmere was not one of them. Neither was Branfrie.
“Lockmere.”
I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of it.” I scrubbed at my forehead and blew out a frustrated breath. “Tell me again. How did you end up in Lantis?”
She looked off, distress tugging on the edges of her face. “I don’t know.”
“What happened right before I found you in the water?”
She looked back at me and took an unsteady breath. “I fell from the tower.”
I blinked several times, stunned by the answer. “You fell from a tower?” She’d mentioned a tower last night, but I thought I’d misheard her or that she’d been babbling nonsense.
“Yes.”
All right. Perhaps she had hit her head. Maybe she was knocked unconscious from the fall. “But…what were you doing in a tower?”
“It’s where I lived.”
Odd. “How did you fall?”
She shook her head and looked down, but I could still see the way her cheeks paled. “It was foolish of me. I’d practiced climbing the stone walls inside the tower many times. I was good at it, but I’d never done it with the full weight of my hair pulling on me, so when I climbed down the tower—”
“Wait,” I said, holding up a hand and trying to wrap my mind around what she was saying. “You were climbing down the outside of the tower?”
“Yes, to get down.”
“Why didn’t you just walk down?”
Lyrielle blinked up at me, as if confused that I would question her circumstances. She tilted her head as she looked up at me, like my reaction was new and unexpected. After several moments of hesitation, she said slowly, “The tower was where I lived all the time.”
“Right…” I prompted, still not understanding what that had to do with her apparent need to scale the outside of a tower in order to leave it.
“What I mean is…I never left,” she clarified. “I stayed in that tower all day of every day of every year since I was nine years old.” There was a hollowness to her voice as she said it that sent a chill through my bones.
My mouth gaped and my face went slack as confusion morphed into doubt and then settled on utter horror. My jaw flapped uselessly several times before I got one word out. “Why?”
She gave a small shrug. “Those were my aunt’s rules. She was trying to protect me.”
“From what?” I asked.
“From everything and everyone.” Lyrielle looked down and plucked a few tiny flowers from the ground.
Last night when I’d pulled her from the ocean and she said she was trying to get away, I thought she’d encountered ruffians of some sort.
I thought it had only been a temporary danger that she’d fled from.
Never would I have imagined that this maiden had been imprisoned by her own family member.
And though the way she said it made it clear that she had resigned herself to her aunt’s reasoning long ago, I could also tell that it had never been all right with her.
“How old are you now?”
“Nineteen.”
My fist clenched. Ten years. “You never left?” I had to ask, hoping she’d give me a different answer this time.
“Never.”
“What of your aunt, did she leave?”
She gave a little nod, chin tilted up in defiance even as her jaw tensed and the remnants of pain and betrayal made her eyes glisten. “There was one door. She would lock it from the outside when she left.”
I tried to hide my disgust, but I was certain I failed. “And when she was there? Could you not leave when she slept?”
“She would move her bed in front of the door. Every night, I hoped she’d somehow forget, but of course that never happened. She would move it into place, always with a smile and a placating word about how I must be protected.”