Page 112 of In Rising Tides

Lyra felt the tension in the room rise as if the water had warmed.

“It will kill her?” Drystan asked, voice hollow.

It came from one position. He had stopped pacing.

Nerida sighed, and it, too, sounded empty, like she didn’t feel relief from exhaling.

“I’m afraid it already is. She is weakening. Her limbs are growing thin, and her face is gaunt. The bargain is siphoning her life-force. Surely you noticed by now?”

“I thought it was because she was unhappy. I hadn’t realized—” there sounded like anguish in his voice. “This is my fault.”

Nerida shifted beside Lyra, and she imagined it was because her sister was gaping at Drystan.

“I put her into their hands.”

The moon rose full on their second night at the summer cottage, the stars a brilliant tapestry in the sky. Each crash of the sea against the shore had him inhaling a lungful.

The briny air soothed the burn in his chest that her absence had brought. Judging by the symphony of bugs chirping, they were quickly approaching the summer solstice.

It was strange how time moved. Some seconds ticked by with such agonizing slowness he thought they would never end, and yet, in the blink of an eye, she had been gone over a month now.

“I thought I might find you here,” a feminine voice purred from the darkness.

Wilder would have flinched had he not recognized her.

“Jordania? What brings you here?”

Jordania stepped into the glow of the moonlight. She mirrored the night. Her pale skin radiant like the moon, and her dark hair just as black as the sky that held it.

She wore a traveling gown of green. The rich color no doubt blended seamlessly with the forest she had just ventured through.

“Warick and I thought you could benefit from my presence,” she hummed, taking a seat beside him and flouncing out the layers of her skirts.

The sound of his uncle’s name had his upper lip pulling back. “Come to spy, have you?”

“Unlikely. I happen to like the Little Fish.”She snorted and brushed her hair off her shoulder.

Jordania’s use of the nickname she gifted Lyra had sorrow wrapping him in its icy embrace.

He remembered that the witch and Lyra had struck a sort of friendship.

But it didn’t assuage all of his fears where the witch was concerned.

“Why?”

“She’s on the path to do great things, not only in Atlantis but here as well.”

Wilder pondered her words and found himself stroking a thumb over a rock flattened by centuries of water and wind.

“Can you see her?” he asked reluctantly, each word unfurling slowly from his mouth as if they were pulled with trepidation.

Jordania smiled, and it appeared feline the way her lips curled and eyes narrowed.

“I wager I can see her better than Otto, actually.”

Wilder leaned forward as if tugged by an invisible string in her grasp.

“You can?”