• Nobility, but with no ability to rule her father's city-state due to a patriarchal society and an inability to use magic.
• World was destroyed; Wave learned a lot about who she is as a person and what's important to her. When her world is restored, she's distraught to have left behind the people she'd met and the freedom she'd gained.
• After returning home, Wave is married to one of the nobles of Coriolis within a month.
• CW: mental/emotional abuse; click to reveal

  Wave's new husband had also survived the fall of the worlds and uses his knowledge of her time outside to manipulate/coerce her into acting in a way he thinks is befitting his wife. It's gross.
• Wave gives birth to a daughter; shortly after, her father passes away and she and her husband ascend to the throne.
• CW: mental/emotional abuse; click to reveal

  After realizing that Dusk has just been manipulating her and has no intention of ever helping her leave Coriolis again (the carrot he's been dangling this entire time), Wave decides it's time to take matters into her own hands and starts formulating a plan to take her own countermoves against Dusk's machinations.

Wave comes from a place called Coriolis, a large country formed of city-states referred to as Sectors and ruled by a kinglike figure going by the name Adonis (it's a hereditary thing). Coriolis is a land of magic, which suffuses the country and tends to naturally pool at giant, ancient trees known as Veloi trees. Mages that can tap into this magic are similarly referred to as Veloi, and they are the lifeblood of Coriolan nobility. Wave is the daughter of the (now-former) Lord and Lady of the Second Sector, Rigel of the Dawn and his wife, View; however, she was born without the capacity to use magic (uncommon, particularly in the nobility, but not unheard of), so she grew up with the knowledge that whoever she married would take over ruling their realm.

When Wave turned 21 and hadn't found anybody she wanted to marry, a potential match was made for her with Adonis's nephew, Dusk. On her way to the capital city to meet him, though, Wave's world was attacked and ultimately destroyed. Outside of Coriolis, Wave was for the first time expected to stand on her own two feet--she learned to fight, to fly ships, to barter and haggle and arrange her own affairs. After a time, she and her traveling companion, Scar, ran into a few other people... one of them being the man she would wind up falling in love with.

Ailanne wasn't exactly the most moral person in the worlds, being an assassin-for-hire in his own world, but as they ventured together he seemed to grow a little more mellow, while Wave found that she could be a little more vicious than she'd ever known before. The two of them balanced each other, and they spent a long time wandering the worlds hand-in-hand and following their heart's desire.

And then Wave woke back up in Coriolis on the side of the road, with everyone telling her that she'd simply been missing for two weeks while their world went on as though nothing had happened.

The problem with returning to Coriolis was that nobody knew how much she'd changed in the time she'd been gone. While Wave had been gone for nearly two years, everybody in her world still saw her as the 21-year-old who had originally left the Second Sector. Worse, she was still slated to meet with Dusk--and as Ailanne had gone back to his own world (ostensibly), she had no way of refusing him. Coriolis is a country of magic; Wave, in their eyes, needed somebody to protect her, and Dusk was a notably powerful mage who would both take care of her and ensure the line of succession continued unbroken.

Wave still might have been able to refuse. It would have been difficult, considering she'd known that her marriage would be the "most important" contribution to their society she would make and she did feel a sense of duty to her parents... but it was still a possibility. What changed her mind was Dusk's proposal to her: He had survived the fall of Coriolis as well, and he had traveled through different worlds. He was happy to be home and didn't want to leave again, but he understood that she wouldn't be happy there. “Let me help you,” he said. “You’ll get what you want, to go back out into that world, and I’ll stay here. Your father will have an heir and your mother will be taken care of, if he passes before her.”

Within a month of returning home, the two of them were wed.

Unfortunately, Dusk had no intention of following through on his word. Even in their first conversations, he would craft his sentences to make her second-guess herself, to make his actions seem entirely reasonable as he presented her with an outrageous demand. He ignored the boundaries she had, and when she tried to assert herself and tell him his actions weren't acceptable he gaslighted her to make his actions seem like an honest mistake rather than intentional offense. As time passed, Dusk pushed Wave to mold herself into the sort of wife he sought, deliberately creating distance between her and her loved ones by asking for her "help" in making allies along the Second Sector's noble families, telling her that the sooner he'd established himself, the sooner she'd be able to leave without it raising suspicions. He pressed the issue of an heir from multiple directions, then made his case, speaking in the same earnest, reasonable way he always did as he broke her down to the core.

When Wave gave birth to their first child, a daughter, he denied her yet again, gently explaining that only a son could inherit the throne. They'd have to try again before she could leave Coriolis for good.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Something about Dusk's refusal made her realize that he'd tricked her and that he had no intention of helping her to leave--and that even if he somehow hadn't been lying to her, she would still be trapped there for a couple of years at best. Wave lost herself that night; she spent the next year and a half in various states of dissociation, halfway lost in her memories of her time outside Coriolis. It almost didn't even come as a surprise when her father passed away suddenly, when her mother stepped down from her position, when she and Dusk ascended to the throne and became the Lord and Lady of the Second Sector before her 24th birthday.

If asked, Wave probably wouldn't even be able to explain what it is that made her tune back into the world. Perhaps something in Dusk's general demeanor, or maybe seeing one of the men he was meeting with one day... but Wave realized that beyond everything that had happened between them personally, it was very likely that he'd been lying and manipulating the rest of Vairenn's court as well. She became convinced that her father's death wasn't accidental at all, but had been timed to throne Dusk immediately after securing his legacy via an heir. And if Dusk had had her father killed... It would take time, but she'd find a way to drag the proof into the light--and if their world wouldn't do something about him, then she'd take his life herself. If Dusk had had her father killed, all bets were off.

At least, they would have been, had she not been pulled to the Nest first.