Terran glanced sideways at me. “No. I imagine it hasn’t.”
There was something in the way he said it… “That sounded suspiciously like a compliment.”
“It was.”
Even his compliments were gruff. I laughed aloud then. “You are a strange one, Prince Terran.”
“And you are not at all what I expected, Lady Lyra.”
I wasn’t certain what to make of that.
“I’ve made arrangements for us to travel by boat. My father’s land trackers are too skilled to avoid for long. You have a disguise, I assume?”
I hid my surprise. “I do.”
“Wear it. Meet me at the eastern quay, beside the fisherman’s shrine.”
It was time to return to Aetheria. Without further comment, I turned from the peaceful, yet violent, scene below as wave after wave crashed against the Gyorian shore.
Terran grabbed my wrist, stopping me.
“And Lyra.”
I looked up into a pair of bright-green eyes, as turbulent as the sea but still somehow as grounded as their owner’s clan.
“When we reach Aetheria…” His gaze dipped to my mouth, lingering. “We finish what we started.”
21
TERRAN
The ship’s captain had trained in Thalassaria many moons ago, before the Gate’s opening. Though Gyorians were still welcome in Elydor’s southernmost kingdom, they were becoming less and less so as my father’s policies discouraged everything from trade to knowledge sharing. The old queen, though no lover of humans, refused to take a stand against Galfrid, angering my father. How he and the new queen, Nerys, would fare was still unknown.
But I had more pressing problems.
Namely, being stuck on a small ship with only its captain, one more reticent than even the most stalwart Gyorians, and Lyra. I’d paid him handsomely to ensure no others sailed with us, but as the morning dragged on, unless I wished to remain in a cabin so small, I couldn’t do much more than sleep in it, it was evident we couldn’t avoid each other.
“He talks less than you,” Lyra said.
We stood at the bow of the ship, scanning the horizon.
“Chaleo is a vaelith whose Fading time has come.”
“You obviously trust him. Most would not wish to smuggle their prince away from its king.”
“He bears no love for my father. With Thalassari deep in his lineage, an expert sailor, he once refused my father’s bid to serve him.”
We fell into an easy silence.
Too easy.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Have you thought much on the topic?”
“Of you sleeping?”
“Aye. Or in my bed. Though I will admit, the cabins are smaller than I’d like?—”
