Marked in Silver

Chapter 5

For one long, terrible moment, nobody moved.

Selene's eyes went from me, to the open drawer, to the faint bulge of the file hidden inside Kade's jacket, and something in her expression sharpened into focus, the way a predator's does right before it decides the chase is over.

Kade, she said, still watching me, give your father's council thirty seconds alone with our new enforcer.

Mother!

Thirty seconds, she repeated, and it wasn't a request this time either.

Kade hesitated, glancing at me with something that looked almost like an apology, like he hadn't fully decided whose side he was on yet and hated himself for the hesitation. Then he stepped out, and the door clicked shut, and I was alone in a locked room with the woman I now believed had ordered my father's death.

You're very good, Selene said, circling me slowly, the way she probably circled every threat she'd ever dismantled. New face, new scent, clever, that. Witch work, I'd guess, and expensive. Whoever built you a new life did excellent work.

My blood went to ice. I don't know what you mean."

Of course you don't. Her smile didn't reach her eyes; it never did. You have his mouth, you know. Marcus's. I noticed it the moment you walked into that briefing, and I have spent every hour since trying to convince myself I was wrong.

I said nothing. There was nothing left to say that wouldn't be a confession.

Whatever you think you found in these files, she went on, voice dropping to something almost gentle, almost kind, which somehow made it worse, you should understand that some things are buried for a reason. And some girls who go digging for their father's ghosts end up finding a much bigger grave than they expected."

It wasn't a threat. It was a promise, wrapped so smooth and soft it barely sounded like one at all.

Is that a confession? I asked, my voice steadier than I felt.

Selene's smile widened, just slightly. It's a warning, Miss Ashcombe. Or whatever your name really is. I'd take it, if I were you.

She turned and walked to the door, pausing with her hand on the frame.

Oh and Lyra? she said, without turning around, and my whole body went cold at the sound of my real name in her mouth, calm as anything, like she'd known the entire time and simply been waiting to see how long I'd keep the mask on. Welcome home.

The door shut behind her, and I stood frozen in that records room with my father's death in a stranger's jacket pocket, my real name finally spoken out loud after five years of silence, and no way of knowing yet whether Selene Draven planned to expose me to the whole pack or bury me the same way she buried him.

I don't know how long I stood there before my legs remembered how to move. Long enough that the hallway outside had gone quiet, long enough that my hands had stopped shaking and started doing something worse going still, cold, steady in the way they only got right before I did something I couldn't take back.

I found Theo in the courtyard, pretending to check the wards on the guest quarters, and one look at my face told him everything he needed to know before I said a word.

She knows, I said.

Theo went pale under the courtyard lights. Knows what, exactly?

All of it. My voice sounded strange to my own ears, flat and far away. My name. My face. Probably my whole plan, for all I know.

Then we leave tonight. He was already reaching for my arm, already thinking three steps ahead the way he always did. Lyra, if she knows, we can't stay another

No. The word came out harder than I meant it to, and I watched him flinch. She didn't call the guards, Theo. She didn't drag me in front of the council. She warned me, and then she walked away and let me keep breathing in her territory. That's not mercy. That's a woman who wants to see what I do next before she decides how to end me.

Theo stared at me for a long moment, and I could see him doing the same math I'd already finished. Selene Draven didn't waste threats. If she'd let me live long enough to hear one, it meant she still needed something from me first or she wanted Kade to be the one who finally closed the door, instead of doing it herself.

Somewhere above us, on the second floor of the longhouse, a light was still burning behind a familiar window, and I stood in the dark courtyard a long time, watching it, wondering which version of the truth Kade Draven was going to choose to believe by morning.