Page 104 of In Violent Waves

Wilder stopped and turned towards him. “How?” The word came out like a growl.

“She thought she was going to be fancy with a wooden sword, and it slapped her in the face when she failed to catch it.”

The answer had extinguished the fire within him. She would do that. But the anger he had felt when he thought someone had hurt her—he pushed that thought away.

He began striding through the thicket and then through the rolling hills of heather. When he breached the castle, he didn’t slow until he hit the hallway of the healer’s chambers.

The witch was standing in the doorway, waiting. Twirling an ivy leaf in her hand, she sized him up.

“Did the little fish touch her magic?” she purred.

Wilder flinched and clutched her to his chest.

“She doesn’t need me. She needs rest. Take her to her room and have food ready. A ferocious appetite will turn her fearsome when she wakes. She’s not used to the power and isn’t strong enough to wield it.”

Wilder turned without answering and carried Lyra up to her room. He didn’t like the witch calling her “little fish.” But he was relieved that this unconscious state wouldn’t last.

Maelys, Otto, and Ridge followed them. Their purposeful footsteps alerted him to their presence.

“I see why she never touched the thing,” Maelys mumbled.

“It’s because she hasn’t touched it. Now it’s too powerful for her to wield without collapsing,” Otto said.

“Why has she never touched it?” Ridge asked.

“Besides the obvious, that is merfolk not believing their females equal? A sea witch instilled a deep, misguided fear in her,” Otto answered.

Wilder’s ears pricked. “Misguided?”

Otto nodded, his face turned grave. “Her father ordered it so that Lyra wouldn’t wield it against them.”

“Did her father order her kidnapping?”

Otto’s eyes turned glassy. “No.”

“Then who did?”

“I can’t see.”

She slept for two days.Wilder only left her side to eat. But now he was being summoned by his father for the second time, and this time he could not refuse.

Maelys and Daisy volunteered to stay by her side in his absence, and with near-rabid insistence from his mother, he agreed.

The throne room was empty when Wilder stalked through the doors and to the foot of the dais. His father lounged on his throne, but there was a stiff countenance to his jaw and shoulders.

“You’ve summoned me?” Wilder came to a halt at the foot of the stairs.

His father shifted in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“I apologize for my behavior after dinner.”

This had his mother written all over it. Queen Aine had worked tirelessly to bridge the rift between them. What had happened kept that from ever being possible. But he wasn’t about to tell her that.

Time healed all wounds, and as an elf, he would have an immeasurable amount of time to forgive what had happened to him.

It still had not mattered to him that his father had changed. What mattered was the time it took for him to do it and the pain Wilder had endured.

He gave a curt dip of his chin before spinning on his heel.