Dinner that evening hung heavy with an unspoken weight. Cassian silently picked the fish bones out of my serving, his movements quiet and deliberate, until he broke the silence with a question, as casual as he could manage. "Lyra, sweetheart... what grade are you in these days?"
I froze mid-poke, my spoon suspended over the rice I'd been absently prodding. My voice came out a whisper. "I've never been to school."
His chopsticks slipped from his grasp and clattered onto the table. Every muscle in his body went rigid. He fixed his eyes on me, unblinking. "Why?"
My voice shrank to a thread, barely audible. "After you died... they put me in an orphanage. The director... he took one look at my face and thought he could sell me for a nice price. He said, 'Teach her to read and she'll get too
