Page 87 of In Rising Tides

Lyra swallowed down her argument and nodded.

She didn’t want him to put the collar back on her.

They were close to her door, and shadows moved at the opposite end of the hall.

Angler and Fang.

“I’ve got to head to another council meeting,” Drystan raked a hand down his face, exhaustion lining his face. “It’s always something. First, your disappearance and now a missing mermaid from Huron.” He stopped himself before divulging any more information. “You can have any of your sisters for company, but you are not allowed to leave your room.”

She nodded, and he snapped his fingers.

She could feel Angler and Fang as they headed her way.

“Be good,” Drystan bit out before he left.

Angler was gentle as he shut Lyra’s door behind her, but her mind still reeled over what she had witnessed—and what Drystan had said.

Aegir was every bit the monster she had heard he was.

Her stomach cramped when she remembered Sienna’s screams.

There had never been anything like that before in the throne room. Executions, sure, but those were swift. Not a drawn-out display of violence over words.

Lyra wondered if it had been that way the entire time she was gone, and why no one had done anything about it yet.

Flashes of the whip shot through her mind. And a face. A face twisted with rage, just as hers had been.

Lyra swam towards her bedroom door and pressed her palm against the thick coral.

“Angler? Fang?”

One of them grunted in response.

“Can you fetch me Nerida?”

When silence greeted her, she clenched her teeth. “Please?”

“Fine.”

She thought it had been spat by Fang.

Lyra gave up on waiting by the door after a long moment had passed. She curled up on the edge of her bed and thought through what to ask her sister.

Nerida had seemed just as disgusted by the ceremony as she had, but she didn’t know how much her sister would share with her.

If Lyra were being honest, Nerida had always intimidated her. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but there was something otherworldly about her middle sister.

She also lived far away, in their southernmost territory, Naguini, with Ishmael.

They had married when Nerida was quite young.

A knock on the door had Lyra rising as Princess Nerida floated into Lyra’s room.

Silence stretched taut between them, but Lyra didn’t have the energy to force her sister to speak.

She hardly knew Nerida, but what little she did know of her sister was that she was intelligent, her mind as sharp as the talons she drummed impatiently against her arm.

Nerida’s saffron-colored tail pulsed between a rich yellow and a rosy orange depending on the amount of light that hit it.