Page 18 of In Rising Tides

Lyra’s face pinched with a scowl as he ripped a makeshift trident from the ground and crumbled it in his grip. Pieces of the splintered driftwood floated to the seabed and were swept away with a powerful thrust of his tail.

“Religious zealots,” he muttered under his breath, wrapping a hand around her arm and pulling her along again.

Lyra opened her mouth to question his meaning, but the fury that radiated off him had her swallowing her questions.

The journey took longer than she had hoped. Before long, she gave up completely on swimming and started letting Fang and the other guard drag her between them.

They alerted Drystan to her flagging strength, and he led them away from the stronger current and to a shelf of rock for her to rest. They placed her on a porous stone and then took up a perimeter with the rest of the guards.

Drystan, however, waited beside her while she rested.

Her tail was dead weight, outstretched along the rock. The tips of her fins grazed the silt on the seabed. She stretched her arms above her head, leaning from side to side.

A rainbow parrotfish darted by. The vibrant orange scales on its head clashed with the neon green of its tail. But as it swam through a ripple of light, the colors changed from orange to pink and green to yellow.

It reminded Lyra of the wildflowers that blossomed near the Three Sisters. She longed to stroke a fingertip down soft petals once more, as she had on land.

Lyra rubbed a hand down her side, soothing her sore muscles.

Drystan looked north. A frown pinched his brows together, and he shifted from side-to-side as his tail bobbed lazy strokes.

“It’s an hour or two more, depending on how many times you need to stop.”

Lyra ground her teeth together and then blew the hair out of her face that floated forward.

“I’m not,” she huffed, “used to swimming.”

Drystan nodded with indifference, crossing his arms across his armor-clad chest.

“I assumed as much, given the time you spent on land.”

When she didn’t respond, he filled the silence.

“We’re near the border of Baiae,” he mused, looking towards the clear and warmer waters of the south. “When was the last time you saw Princess Cora?”

Lyra sat up straighter, eyeing Drystan like something a sobek would spit out.

She hadn’t seen her sister Cora, or any of her sisters, in years. Though her last memory of Cora was a semi-pleasant one.

It had been at Cora’s wedding to Prince Hadrian.

Her sister was adamant that the ceremony be held at the palace in Atlantis.

King Auris had raised concerns that the wedding be held in the temple, but with the palace being in the center of their kingdom, it made more logistical sense that it be held there.

Cora had been a force to be reckoned with about every single detail that went into the wedding preparations.

It had been unusual for Lyra to see her usually calm sister raging like a bull shark.

The pieces had fallen into place, though, when she saw how happy Cora and Hadrian were at the ceremony, as if they couldn’t wait to join their lives together.

Her sister had just wanted everything to be perfect. She was marrying Hadrian for more than just duty—but love.

Lyra was old enough at the time to know that weddings weren’t often ceremonies that celebrated love, but were partnerships of obligation.

Hadrian and Cora’s wedding had been different.

King Auris arranged the wedding to establish a foothold in Baiae, but the secret smiles they shared and the lingering kiss that bound them indicated it was also somethingmore.