Page 171 of In Rising Tides

She smiled, and the beauty of it took his breath away. He had been a blind man without her, and now he was truly seeing for the first time.

“I know,” she whispered.

He cupped her cheeks as he laughed.

It was a full-bellied laugh. The kind that brought tears to his eyes and vibrated his chest.

Lyra pressed her head to his chest and clung to him.

“I have missed you,” she said.“Missed this.”

Wilder pulled back. “More than chocolate cake and books with paper?”

“More than cake, but maybe equally much as paper.”Lyra’s grin was feral.

Wilder pressed his lips to hers again and again, before kissing her cheeks and pressing a line of them down her neck. He inhaled deeply again and felt utterly content to hold her on that beach forever.

The universe had other plans.

She cleared her throat, shifting in his arms to tilt her head back.

“What is it?” he asked, his brows knitting together.

She wrapped a hand around her throat.

“The air is uncomfortable.”

Wilder cast his gaze behind them to see Jordania making her way through waves to the sandbar.

“Jordania can fix it,” he whispered. But her frown didn’t budge. “What is it?”

She grimaced, tugging at a lock of her hair. “The bargain has begun to extract its toll.”

“No,” he whispered.

He could feel it then.

The grains of time slipped between his fingers, and there was nothing he could do to hold her.

“I had thought the biggest threat to my life would be Atlantis,” she teased. “Not my ties to the land.”

He gripped her hand. “We can find a way—together.”

A throat cleared behind them, and Wilder looked over his shoulder at Jordania.

Her face was pinched in a way that could only spell out bad news. Wilder’s stomach sank to the sand.

“Jordania,” Lyra said, her voice raspy. “Do I have you to thank for this unexpected visit?”

The tightness with which she spoke hinted at her increasing pain. He would do anything to take it from her. To ease any more suffering he had inadvertently caused.

The witch nodded and outstretched her hand to Lyra. “Unfortunately, that is the end of my good deeds. I cannot change your form, Little Fish.”

Lyra gasped, not at what Jordania had said, but at the sapphire shell she held in her hand.

But the heart Wilder had only just welcomed back turned to ash in his throat as Jordania’s words reached his ears.

“What do you mean youcan’tchange her form? There’s a potion.”