She came to my room at midnight.
Not Caden this time — Lyra, dressed in dark training clothes, expression closed in the way it always was but with something underneath it that was working to get out. She stood in the doorway and looked at me and said, without preamble, "Can I come in?"
I moved aside. She sat in the chair — Caden's chair, I thought, then stopped thinking it — and she put her elbows on her knees and looked at the floor for a moment before looking at me.
"I owe you something," she said.
"You don't owe me anything."
"The things I said in the first days. The way I handled your arrival." Her jaw worked. "I have a reason. It's not a good enough reason, but I have one."
I waited.
"There was a woman," she said. "Two years before you arrived. She came to Caden differently — n
