Page 4 of In Rising Tides

Worse still was the change—an abrupt, forced return to her true form.

Lyra’s tail ached as it fully reformed. Every scale pierced her flesh like serrated blades carving their way outwards.

Salt scalded her eyes, like a punishment for daring to look upon the land.

She screamed and raged against the magic. Her body burned as if it were set aflame with her fury. But water shoved its way down her nose and throat.

It doused the fire in her veins completely. Like sticking a torch into a pot of water. It snuffed out as fear overrode her mind.

Saltwater scorched her lungs, obliterating the air that had once been there.

The sea was reclaiming her.

Lyra panicked, fighting to reach the surface and take a deep breath. Her lungs rioted, screaming for air as the need swallowed her thoughts. She was dying. Drowning in the water she’d been born in.

“Breathe,” Drystan commanded.

Hands seized her, holding her down as she struggled to remember how to move her tail instead of kicking her feet.

It took a moment for his words to penetrate the thick cloud of panic that blotted out her senses.

“Inhale, Lyra. You are of the water. It will welcome you back.” Her blurry eyes burned as she focused on his face behind the golden helm. “Don’t fight what you are.”

The words pierced her heart, shattering what remained of the crumbling organ.

Lyra didn’t want to be back. She found everything she had been too afraid to dream of. Her equal in a man who loved her for the person she truly was and not for what she could offer him.

Realization washed over like a wave upon the shore.

For that love, she was here now.

Her choice.

Lyra had gone willingly to keep him alive.

A world without him in it was not a world she ever wanted to be a part of.

Forcing herself to be still, Lyra pushed through the terror and the agony that was plunging her into a trench of inescapable darkness.

In her mind, she repeated the only thing that would keep her together.

She would see him again.

A sneer pulled back Drystan’s upper lip at her obedience. The sharp points of his teeth glinted in the watery light that slanted through the distant surface above.

He examined her as she hovered before him. Her tail swishing back and forth in lazy strokes kept her upright.

Muscle memory had taken over. Her mind knew this form as intrinsically as the salt in the water.

“I have missed you,” he purred, reaching out to stroke a taloned hand down her face, his other hand gripping the trident so tightly his knuckles flashed white.

His hand upon her flesh made her stomach heave. The last of the human food in her gut churned as it dissolved in the acid.

There was nothing left of the land in her. Nothing left but the love she embodied for her life above the water.

Drystan’s gaze turned brittle as it settled on her lips.

He had seen her wield, saw what she was capable of if she opened her mouth and unleashed the power that threaded through her heart. But the power was still spent, the thread muted and nearly invisible when she reached for it.