Page 67 of In Rising Tides

Her throat and tongue scorched as if set on fire.

Fear slashed like jagged ice through her veins, freezing her mouth open in a silent scream as she clawed with talons at the black barbs that wrapped around her throat.

The steely points bit into her flesh, and crimson bloomed in a cloud around her.

“Stop!” Drystan ordered as she kept frantically ripping at the collar.

Off.She needed it off.

He was upon her in a second, launching himself over the table and scattering the papers. His jaw clenched so tightly that the muscles bulged.

“You’re mutilating your flesh!” he yelled at her.

She opened her mouth to beg, but again, no sound came out.

A white-hot poker shoved its way past her lips and down her throat every time she even thought about speaking.

Lyra pleaded with her eyes for him to release her from this monstrosity.

Drystan stared back and gripped her hands, pulling them down.

“I will remove the collar,” he said.

She froze, her eyes beseeching his.

There was more he wasn’t saying, something horrible he was on the verge of telling her.

“But you have to promise to obey.”

There it was.

That order had her locking her muscles into place.

A steel vice wrapped around her chest and abdomen, the muscles rigid and unmoving.

Pain slashed across her jaw as she ground her teeth. Iron flooded her tongue as blood pooled in her mouth. Her nostrils flared, and she flexed her fingers as the desire to pummel his face overwhelmed her.

Drystan misread her posture as agreement instead of what it really was—the calm before the storm.

She held very still, wrath pouring from every facet of her being.

How dare he collar her like a pet? Silence her as if she were unworthy of a voice?

“This is for your protection,” he said softly. “And obeying me will keep you safe.”

Lyra’s eyes pleaded with him, but she knew it was futile. She would never obey him, and he knew it, too.

“We will finish this meal,” he said and nodded for her to sit.

The guards didn’t back away and tentatively stayed beside her as if she would disobey again.

Fang had the decency to look down, as if he were unnerved by what they had done to her.

Lyra stared at Drystan from beneath her lowered brow.

“We can make this pleasant,” he said. “You can have as many of your sisters visit you as you’d like. They are all in Atlantis for the ceremony today. But you are not to leave the walls of this palace. Nor are you allowed entry into the library.”

I have to fulfill a bargain or the world will pay,she wanted to scream at him. But she could do nothing with this collar on.