A correct answer. A new door. Lyra stepped out of the metal chamber and into a darkened room. Strips of lights burst to life around the edges of the room, illuminating a windowless space with lush carpet and fabric on the walls.

A theater, Lyra realized. There was a large movie screen to her right, framed by curtains. They were a dark golden color, the velvety fabric on the walls and ceiling a deep forest green. Lyra stepped forward, then turned and stepped down. The floor was leveled—four levels, each bare of theater chairs.

The metal chamber closed, and an instant later, an old-fashioned projector whirred to life near the back of the room. A film began to play, text appearing on the screen.

PLEASE CIRCLE THE BEST ANSWER.

Lyra barely had time to decipher those words before the image changed to what looked like a multiple-choice test. There was no question listed, only answers. Each answer contained four symbols. One—choice C—had already been circled. Lyra tried to memorize the symbols in the correct answer, tracing them in the air with her index finger, committing them to memory.

 

 

The film jumped to a scene from a black-and-white movie. A wooden rocking horse rocked back and forth in an empty room, and then the camera turned, panning to reveal—

A man sitting with his feet up on his desk. He was smoking a cigarette, his shadow stark on the wall behind him. This isn’t from the same movie, Lyra realized. On the screen, the man took a long drag from the cigarette, and then his lips moved.

There was no sound. Whatever they were supposed to glean from this display, they were going to have to do it without the benefit of dialogue.

The man on the screen snubbed his cigarette out, and the film jumped to reveal a new scene. Yet another movie. This one was in color. A woman with a feminine bob said something to a man with slicked-back hair. Still no sound. The woman’s expression was haughty. The man’s was sizzling, as she plucked the martini from his hand and downed it in one go. He leaned forward and brought his lips within inches of hers.

The danger of touch… Lyra hated that she couldn’t forget those words. She hated that Grayson had seen them. She looked away from the screen and flicked her gaze toward Odette. Anywhere but at Grayson.

Odette’s hazel eyes narrowed slightly, causing Lyra to look back at the screen as the cuts between scenes began coming more rapidly:

Four desperados sauntering away from an empty saloon.

A close-up of a woman’s hand purposefully dropping a diamond earring into a sink.

A man in a white suit lifting a gun.

Lyra’s stomach clenched. She hated guns. Hated them. And it was just her luck that the makeshift montage lingered longer on that scene. The man with the gun pulled the trigger.

It isn’t real. Lyra went very still, barely even breathing. I’m fine. There’s not even sound. Everything is fine.

And then the camera panned to a body, to pooling blood and unnatural stillness, and nothing was fine. The flashback took hold of Lyra like a shark dragging down its prey. The memory pulled her under. There was no fighting the undertow, no way to resurface.

“What begins a bet? Not that.”

She hears the man, but she can’t see him. There’s silence, and then—a bang. She presses her hands to her ears as hard as she can. She’s not going to cry. She’s not. She’s a big girl.

She’s four years old. Today. Today is her birthday. Another bang.

She wants to run. Can’t. Her legs won’t move. It’s her birthday. That’s why the man came. That’s what he said. He told her preschool teacher that he was picking her up for her birthday. He said that he was her father.

They shouldn’t have let him take her. She shouldn’t have gone. “You two look so much alike,” they’d said.

She should run, but she can’t. What’s happening? She brings her hands away from her ears. Why is it so quiet? Is the man coming back?

The flower he gave her is on the floor now. Did she drop it? The candy necklace is still clenched in her hand, the elastic wound through her finger so tightly it hurts.

Trembling, she takes a step toward the stairs.

“Lyra.” A voice washed over her, familiar in all the right and wrong ways, but even that voice wasn’t enough to bring her back.

She’s walking up the stairs. There’s something at the top. She steps in something wet—and warm. She’s not wearing shoes. Why isn’t she wearing shoes?

What is on her feet?

It’s red. It’s too warm and it’s red, and it’s dripping down the stairs.

“Look at me, Lyra.”

The walls. They’re red, too. Red handprints, red smears. There’s even a drawing on the wall, a shape like a horseshoe or a bridge.

You’re not supposed to draw on walls. That’s a rule. It’s so red. It doesn’t smell right.

“Come back to me. Now. Look at me, Lyra.”

She’s at the top of the stairs, and—the red liquid isn’t coming from something. It’s someone. Her father-not-father. It’s him. She thinks it’s him

—except he’s not moving, and he doesn’t have a face.

He blew off his own face.

She can’t scream. Can’t move. He doesn’t have a face. And his stomach…

Everything is red—

Fingers worked their way through Lyra’s thick hair, to her neck—skin against her skin, warmth. “You will come back to me, or I will make you come back to me.”

Lyra gasped. The real world came into focus, starting with Grayson Hawthorne. All Lyra could see was his steady eyes, the lines of his face, sharp cheekbones, stone-cut jaw.

All she could feel was his hand on her neck.

The rest of her body was numb. She shook, her arms and torso vibrating. Grayson’s hands moved down to her shoulders, his touch warm against the skin bared by her ball gown—so warm and steady and gentle and solid and there.

“I’ve got you, Lyra.” There was no arguing with Grayson Hawthorne.

She let herself stare at him, breathed in and smelled him. Like cedar and fallen leaves and something fainter, something sharp. “The dream always stopped at the gunshot,” she said, her voice barely even a whisper. “But just now, I flashed back and—”

“Hush now, child.” That was Odette.

“I saw his body.” Lyra had never realized that. Even with the dreams, her brain had still been protecting her, all this time. “I stepped in his blood. His face was gone.”

She’d seen it in the flashback, the way she only ever saw things in her dreams.

Grayson’s right hand cupped her chin. “I’m fine,” Lyra choked out.

“You don’t have to be fine right now.” Grayson’s thumb lightly stroked her cheek. “I have spent my entire life being fine when I wasn’t. I know the price. I know what it’s like to bear that price with every cell in your body. It isn’t worth it, Lyra.”

He said her name exactly right, and Lyra’s heart twisted. She wasn’t supposed to understand Grayson Hawthorne, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to understand her. She’d tried so hard—for years, she had been trying. To be fine. To be normal. To convince herself that it was ridiculous that one dream, one memory, could change her in such a bone-deep, life- shattering way.

You don’t have to be fine right now.

“There were two gunshots.” Lyra wasn’t fine, but at least her voice sounded a little steadier. “He shot himself in the stomach first. He drew something on the wall with his own blood.”

“Your father.” Odette did not phrase that as a question. “The one who had dealings with Tobias Hawthorne.”

At the name Hawthorne, Lyra pulled back—from Grayson’s grasp on her shoulders, from his touch on her face. Odette’s words were a reminder of who Grayson Hawthorne was and every reason she had not to touch him. If she’d been able to run until her body gave out, she would have, but locked in this room, all Lyra could do was make her way back to the

projector. Just focus on the game.

“What are you doing?” Grayson said, his voice softer than it had any right to be.

“I missed the end of the movie. I’m starting it over.” Lyra wasn’t sure how to rewind, but she saw two buttons. One had the play symbol painted underneath it, a recent addition to a vintage machine. The other small button wasn’t labeled.

Lyra hit the unlabeled button. The wall to her left began to part, the two halves moving in opposite directions, slowly receding until they were gone. Lyra took in the sight beyond and realized that the theater room was much, much bigger than they’d realized—and the newly revealed space was nowhere near empty.