CHAPTER TWELVE:
Lyra found him in the study before she'd decided what she was going to say, which was probably a mistake, because the words that came out weren't the careful ones she'd rehearsed on the walk down the stairs.
"You lied to me."
Dimitri looked up from the papers on his desk, and whatever he saw on her face made him set his pen down slowly, deliberately, the way a man moves when he senses the ground shifting under him and doesn't want to spook whatever's causing it.
"About what."
"My father." She crossed the room and didn't stop at the desk this time — she came around it, into the space he usually kept guarded, close enough that he had to tilt his head up to hold her eyes. "You told me he owed you money. A debt. That's the word you used. Debt."
Something moved behind his
