Page 72 of In Violent Waves

Lyra focused back on the king before her. She had to tilt her head to stare into his eyes, but with her clenched jaw and frosty gaze, she let him know it did not make her feel inferior.

“I do not touch it.”

The king tilted his head at that. “Does it not live within you?”

Lyra’s nostrils flared.

The maneuvering here was different from in Atlantis, and it was so quiet, not a shifting foot or the unending pull of the current.

“It does. But that does not mean it should.”

“Interesting,” he stroked his chin, “is that why you won’t use it now? You could but speak the words and return home.”

All this talk about her power had her heart racing, the golden thread of magic pulsing with each beat. Lyra could only shake her head.

“What could I offer you to wield it?”

Lyra swallowed and breathed through her nose.

This was dangerous, extremely dangerous.

One did not make deals with the elves. Hell, one should not even be conversing with them.

“Nothing.” She shook her head.

She needed to get out of here. This had been a rotten idea. She should have taken her chance with the humans or lived wildin the forest over this. She should have escaped when she had the chance.

Oberon circled her before heading back to his throne. He sat with a graceful flourish before addressing her again.

“Ah—it’s because you don’t know how. You never learned.”

Lyra’s heart stopped, and the very air vanished from her lungs. But she had mastered her face into one of boredom, like she had done for years and years surrounded by her father’s court.

She learned not to give anything away, even if he was right.

Lyra had never learned to wield and was afraid even now that it would kill her the moment she tried.

“What if I told you that I could teach you not only how to wield it, but that I could also grant you your true form and thus return you to the water?”

Her eyes narrowed on his face, his magnificent and wondrous face.

“How?”

He smiled then, knowing he held her interest. He offered her exactly what she wanted—a way home.

“There has been an imbalance of power for far too long between the humans and the merfolk. Help me right it, and I will grant you your freedom and your form back.”

She feigned a chuckle and tugged at the silk fabric on her thigh. This was all a ruse. A cruel trick. She could never return, and she would never be free.

It wasn’t possible. She hadn’t completed the tithe—there was no going back. This is what every book warning her about the elves had said about their impossible bargains.

“I didn’t complete the tithe,” Lyra replied.

King Oberon crossed one long leg over the other and stared at her with the maniacal delight you see when someone knows they are winning.

He had her, and he knew it.

“You mean the tithe that is disrupting the delicate balance of magic? The very thing I want you to undo?”