Page 2 of In Rising Tides

Above her, the seagulls circled and dipped lower. With each pass, they let out shallow cries, most likely drawn to her despair.

Her mouth was drawn up tight, but there was no denying the quiver of her chin as she scoured the shoreline for Lyra.

Ridge brushed a hand against her lower back. The swirls of black ink on his dark, grooved skin drank in the dying sunlight. His gaze flicked between Wilder and Maelys, gauging who would need more support.

Wilder let himself fall backward into the sand. The setting sun burned behind his closed eyes. He was so exhausted already, and he didn’t know how to do the next part without her.

“Drystan took her,” he croaked.

A cry slipped from Maelys, and Ridge tugged her into his arms as she sobbed.

An image of Lyra’s face as they dragged her away pierced Wilder’s mind. He clamped his jaw shut to stop the surge of bile from spewing through his lips. The despair on her face mirrored his own.

The despair and fury at what happened to them. It was fire through his veins, reigniting his desire to get up. To move. To save her.

“I only saw the sea … swallowing you both,” Otto explained.

The beads woven through his hair gleamed an almost identical silver to the silver lining his eyes. That wasn’t the first time Drystan and his allies thwarted his friend’s sight, but it would be the last.

Wilder shook his head, dragging the wet strands against the sand. Tears of anger and sorrow mingled before slipping from his eyes and streaking down the sides of his face. They disappeared in the briars of his crown.

“You wouldn’t have been able to stop it,” Wilder said, doing his best to assuage Otto’s guilt. “I wouldn’t have listened.”

Otto’s swallow was audible as he hung his head. “She would have.”

He was right. Lyra was adamant that anything that involved her be shared, especially after that nasty fall from her horse on their journey to the Wilds.

It seemed like forever ago that he had been her captor. But in the blink of an eye, she was so intricately woven into the fiber of his being. Into the tapestry of his entire life and theirs.

This would not be the end of their lives together. He would do whatever it took to have her returned to him. They hadn’t come close to finishing what they had started.

His heart constricted in his chest when he thought of her saying those words.

She loved him, and it was all he could do in that moment to keep from collapsing at her feet and vowing his life to hers.

Maelys batted her hair out of her face and glared up at the seagulls. They flew to a nearby rock and perched there. She leveled her shoulders as she pulled herself together.

“Wilder,” she whispered and moved closer, collapsing beside him. She gripped his fist like an anchor. “What do we do?”

“We’ll get her back,” he said without hesitation.

Ridge cleared his throat and squatted down on his haunches before offering Wilder a hand up. “And how do we go about that? We can’t exactly walk there.”

Wilder took a deep breath, feeling the entire universe settle upon his shoulders.

He didn’t know how to get her back, but he would do whatever it took. Bend the universe to his will to have her returned to his side.

Lyra savedhim.

Used her one chance at freedom to save his life. Lyra despised Atlantis and dreaded what the sea would bring when she returned to break the bargain.

She should have used her power to keep herself from that fate when the opportunity arose, and yet—she’d saved him.

Now she was a mermaid again.Would the magic of her bargain force her to stay in that form until the underwater part of the tithe was unbound?

Her bargain had been to undo the tithe first, and then they would return her to her form.

The clock must have been forcibly started. She must undo the Tidal Tithe soon, or the bargain with the High King would take her life.