The Quest for the Kraken's Ink (Defenders of the Realm Book 4) by Marie-Hélène Lebeault

Author:Marie-Hélène Lebeault [Lebeault, Marie-Hélène]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781998178056
Publisher: Beaches and Trails Publishing
Published: 2023-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Sixteen

The light stones cast a warm glow over the small clearing in the gardens where Herja, Penelope, Kaia, and Wickham sat together. They hadn't meant to gather here, but they had found their way here individually. Now they sat in silence.

Herja wished for a sudden burst of creativity to get them out. Lyra's city was certainly a beautiful place, full of art and fine works… A beautiful prison.

It had been a week since they were brought to this mysterious place, and their anger had changed to resignation.

Lyra gave them everything they wanted, and so long as Kaia was there to reason with her, she even allowed Penelope to visit Raven regularly. Pen had taken to smuggling food to Raven, worried that Lyra wasn't feeding them, but her reports of Raven's demeanor seemed to be fairly accepting.

Raven had had no prophetic dreams, though, and Herja was certain that was a bad sign. Normally she would have thought the opposite, but this wasn't a normal situation.

"Does anyone have any guesses what Lyra actually wants with us?" Kaia asked as she kicked the water.

This little pond had none of the weird mermaid babies in them. Herja was glad—she found it unnerving to look at the beautiful fish and know that they were actually babies. Then, babies weirded her out, if she was being honest. They were cute, yeah, but something about a tiny person who was incapable of rational thought just made her very uncomfortable.

Wickham frowned at Kaia. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, if she really was holding us in exchange for something from Eldavon, they would have at least sent someone to make sure we were all okay by this time," Kaia said. "I don't think she's holding us hostage. Not the way she claims, at least."

"Of course she's lying," Penelope snorted. "She wants nothing from the Crown. She's looking at manipulating us into doing whatever she wants. Just like she's been doing from the very start."

Herja flinched. Even though she agreed with Penelope, they couldn't assume that they were speaking in confidence. Who knew what magical eavesdropping Lyra had on them? She opened her mouth to point this out, but Kaia spoke over her.

"Excuse me for hoping that Lyra doesn't want to just have us kicking around waiting for the krakens to break in," she snapped. "But what does she want? I thought maybe she wanted us to help reinforce the shields. Then maybe to fight the krakens. But she's just keeping us on tenterhooks."

"Maybe so that once she asks us for whatever it is she wants, we'll give it to her because we're so eager to get home?" Wickham suggested.

"Wait," Herja said, lifting her hands. "We can't talk like this. Mermaids have magic we don't know about—she could be listening in on us, or there could be some invisible person hovering behind us taking notes about what we're talking about."

Her companions stared at her like she had grown a second head, but Herja only stared back at them. Lyra was too clever to let them figure out a way to escape without her knowing.

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