Page 187 of In Violent Waves

Lyra turned to face them. “I did not come here of my own accord. Wilder kidnapped me under orders from the High King.”

Titania gasped, and Baelwyn glowered.

“Tell me that isn’t true?” Titania shifted scornful eyes to Wilder.

He couldn’t meet them, but he nodded.

“If there was ever a time for you not to follow an order, that would have been it,” Baelwyn grumbled.

Wilder’s eyes slid shut. “It was my duty.”

Lyra watched the exchange with a snarled expression and squeezed her arms across her chest.

“How many atrocities have you committed under the guise of ‘duty’?”

Wilder flinched at her question, and her arms lowered to her sides.

“Lyra,” Titania whispered. “There is much more to his story than that.”

“I know his story. It’s similar to mine.”

Wilder had opened his mouth to reply, but Odette opened her eyes.

She must have squeezed Lyra’s fingers because she jumped away from the bed before returning.

“Mother?”

Titania was weeping, tears running in rivulets down her cheeks as she stared at her waking daughter. Baelwyn had a strong arm wrapped around his wife, not for moral support, but to keep her on her feet.

“Alyra …” a voice croaked with a dry and disused throat.

Lyra clung to her mother, but her other hand clutched the charm that hung from the silver necklace she never took off.

That name, Alyra. He never knew that her name had been shortened.

And apparently, she hadn’t known that either.

“That was my name,” Lyra whispered.

It broke something in Wilder to see her reduced to such anguish, and he had nothing to offer her—or nothing that she would allow him to give.

With that thought, he slipped out of the room, giving Lyra and her family privacy.

Lyra lay beside Odette, speaking into the early hours of the morning. The sun was rising outside when she had fallen silent. She had told her mother everything.

Every miserable second of her existence had led to this moment. And her mother listened, not once shying away from the darker parts of Lyra’s life.

From her killing that boy to poisoning the maid who turned over her books. Sneaking away from the castle for weeks until King Auris dragged her back in nets made of acid kelp that would melt away her flesh when she struggled too much.

The time he thought he could cut the power from her and had her strapped to a table as he cut perfect lines between her ribs that protected her heart. She stabbed Marina with her sharp nails after she had touched her shell necklace to change the dressings after her torture. All the cruel tendencies she was partial to after the treatment she had suffered under the king.

Odette had remained quiet or asked, “What else?” to keep Lyra talking.

She stroked her daughter’s auburn hair and pressed kisses into the crown of her head. It had probably felt like waking from a nightmare to set eyes on her infant daughter, who was now well into womanhood.

When Lyra had told her about her engagement to Drystan, Odette had stiffened. Lyra turned to look up into her mother’s eyes and saw the words written in them. Drystan’s father had been one of the mermen who had dragged Odette to the surface and left her there.

The very fate that Odette had begged not to include Lyra in was already in motion, and her mother had been trapped here, helpless.