Page 177 of In Violent Waves
Her life felt complete now that she had pet a unicorn.
“Who are you talking to?” Maelys asked, tightening her scabbard back around her waist.
“A unicorn.”
Maelys started laughing so hard she bent over at the waist. Ridge appeared out of the tree line and stalked towards them.
“What’s so funny?” He had the expression of a man who had hoped that laughter wasn’t about him.
“Lyra,” Maelys breathed in between laughing. “Said she was talking to a unicorn.”
Ridge chuckled then, but Lyra crossed her arms over her chest and leaned to the side, jutting her hip out.
“What is so funny? I did!”
Maelys straightened and wiped the tears from her eyes. Silently, Wilder and the others appeared, looking dirty but happy.
“Why is Maelys crying?” Dust asked.
“She was laughing at Lyra because she saw a unicorn,” Otto confirmed.
Maelys froze. “She really did?”
“We were out there for hours,” Wilder growled, turning to Otto.
“You don’t like to know.”
Lyra looked from person to person. “What is happening?”
Dust cracked a grin and shook his head. “We were out looking for a unicorn all morning. They’re practically impossible to find, and Wilder has been looking every time we’ve come here for the last, I don’t know how many years.”
“One hundred. One hundred years.” Wilder continued glaring but shook his head. “Let’s pack up and head out before the wulvers decide to follow us.”
Lyra smirked at Wilder as he passed, and he returned it with one of his own.
“You didn’t tell me,” Lyra said, stepping behind him and following back to the center of camp.
“Tell you what?”
“That the unicorns existed. I told you about all those books I read,” Lyra replied.
Wilder halted, and she stopped with him. “I didn’t know if they truly were real and didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
He jostled the pack on his back, and the flap covering the contents shifted enough that she could see the twine of a rope.
“Were you planning on catching it?”
Wilder’s eyes never left her face, and they even seemed to soften. “Maybe.”
“Why?”
“So that you could see it too.”
The rest of the journey to the Mannereds passed uneventfully—it came as a surprise and a relief to Wilder. Lyra rode alone in the carriage, but as expected, she did not stay quiet.
From flowers, birds, or rock formations, she pointed everything out with childish wonder. Dust and Oak found it endearing, Ridge and Maelys were used to it, and Otto gestured to everything he thought she would admire but had missed.
Wilder stayed quiet, enjoying the companionship of those around him while staying trapped in his thoughts. His feelings towards Lyra had shifted—that much was obvious. She wasunexpected. Had leapt into his life as gracefully as a wildfire, consuming everything in her path.
