Page 37 of In Rising Tides

His magic fed their small fire and sent a large column of blue flames to the sky before he could wrangle himself back under control.

Maelys stared at him, horror draining the color from her face. Her smattering of freckles stood out starkly now against her bone-white skin.

“Why?” Ridge asked, a line forming between his brows. “What would King Oberon get out of that?”

“A common enemy,” Baelwyn answered grimly.

He had put the pieces together faster than any one of them had.

Wilder nodded.

An owl hooted in the distance, and a log split in the fire, before Wilder finally spoke again.

“He believed my hatred towards Lyra would drive me back into obedience like it had—the first time.”

“The … first time?” Maelys’ voice was but a whisper. “You couldn’t possibly mean?—”

“My father orchestrated all of it. My kidnappings and hers.”

He shrugged off his words, but it didn’t stop the pain of saying it out loud from worming under his skin and burrowing into his chest.

Wilder had finally learned the truth and knew why he had been kept hostage for so long. His father had arranged it all.

Maelys and Ridge looked to Otto for confirmation, and he dipped his chin.

Betrayal and horror marched across her face. Ridge’s jaw had unhinged as he stared with widened eyes.

“It wasn’t my story to tell. And he wouldn’t have wanted to know,” Otto offered as an explanation.

The anger Maelys sent in his direction was palpable.

Ridge’s jaw snapped shut, and Maelys continued seething. “You could have filled the rest of us in. That treachery goes beyond our Prince. It impacts our entire kingdom!”

Otto had the decency to look ashamed as a blush crawled up his neck.

“What would you have me do?” he asked, turning his palms skyward.

“Intervene!” she yelled. “By choosing not to act, you’re becoming complacent in the face of this wickedness.”

Wilder shook his head. “That’s enough, Maelys. He did exactly what he should have done. What I would have ordered him to do.”

Maelys alternated her shock between the both of them.

“That’s not how this works,” she gestured between all of them. “We should have been alerted to this treachery. We should have been given a choice.”

Wilder stared at the fire, trying not to hear the truth of her words, trying not to feel the air against his skin, or smell the lingering smoke in the air.

Lyra would have told him the same thing. Shehadactually told him a similar thing once.

She should be here—challenging his every choice and questioning his every word.

Instead, she stood alone before a council that would call cruelty divine.

Everything appeared so clear to him now.

King Oberon had mistaken control for order.

Wilder had mistaken ignorance for choice.