The expulsion hadn't cleared my system; it had just shattered my foundations.
As I lay in the slush, the copper taste of my own internal hemorrhaging filling my throat, Lyra didn't stop. She crawled back over me, her white hair swaying like shroud-cloth. Her fingers, thin and cold as icicles, locked around my neck again.
"Finn... he was going to take me to the Southern Isles," she whispered, her voice a dry, papery rattle that made my skin crawl. "He saved every silver coin for a ring, Luna. And you... you ate his heart. You ate us."
"Lyra... I’m sorry," I gasped, the words bubbling through the blood in my mouth.
"Sorry doesn't bring back the morning," she shrieked, her nails digging into the fresh wounds on my throat.
A pulse-round hissed overhead, hitting the obsidian pillar behind
