Page 45 of In Violent Waves

“Mhm.”

It felt heavy.

They had seemed on equal footing before they stopped in the clearing, but now it feltoff. Lyra thought back to their agreement to try.

“Do you speak to the animals or do you command them?”

Maelys’ brows hit her hairline. “I don’t ‘command’ them. Animals do whatever they want.”

Lyra nodded, thinking through that answer.

A flock of birds settled in the tree nearby, and she studied them. Shiny black feathers, with a streak of reddish-orange on their wings.

“That’s a red-winged blackbird,” Lyra murmured to herself or Maelys if she was actually listening.

“They like you,” Maelys replied.

“They do?”

Maelys picked at a leaf and shrugged before looking up at the birds. “Animals have a way of knowing what lies within the soul, and you smell like the wind off the sea. They like the wind.”

Lyra’s brow furrowed. That was similar to what Wilder had said she smelled like.

She leaned closer to Maelys and sniffed.

“Did you justsmellme?” Maelys scrunched her nose with disgust and leaned away.

Lyra huffed with a shrug. “I tried to. I couldn’t smell anything.”

“Well, that’s a relief! Don’t do that—it’s weird.”

A frown marred Lyra’s face. “Everyone else has told me what I smelled like. Why shouldn’t I smell you?”

Maelys shook her head and chuckled.

“We’re elves. We don’t smell you on purpose. Our senses are stronger. But you trying to smell us—it’s not the way.”

“The way?” Lyra asked slowly.

“Yeah. You know? The way things are done. Decorum and all that.”

“Oh,” Lyra muttered.

A divot formed between Maelys’ brows. “Surely there’s a way of doing things where you’re from.”

Lyra snorted. “Yeah, whatever the mermen tell you to do, which usually means you are to be seen and not heard.”

Maelys reeled back at her words. “What?”

Lyra looked around at the darkening forest and shivered.

“I mean, where I come from, the males rule everything. And the females do as they are commanded.”

Maelys’ mouth dropped open in shock or horror, or both, from the looks of it.

“I had heard stories, but I thought it was just propaganda.”

Lyra pressed her lips into a grim line and shook her head.