Novels by Amira Lords

CHAPTER NINE: He didn't answer her question. Instead, he set his glass down and walked toward the hallway, and after a moment, Lyra followed.The photographs lined both walls, floor to ceiling in places, more than she'd counted on her first pass through the house. Winter light on bare rock. A summer haze softening the peaks to something almost gentle. One frame, older than the rest, slightly yellowed, showing the mountain from a distance with a house at its base — small, wooden, smoke curling from a chimney.Dimitri stopped in front of that one."I grew up there," he said. "At the base of that mountain. Not here. Not in this life."Lyra hadn't expected him to just give it to her. She stayed quiet, the way she'd learned to stay quiet with nervous vendors who needed silence to keep talking."There was a house," he said. "My mother kept a garden that never should have grown anything, not at that altitude, but she made it work anyway. Stubborn, the way you're stubborn." His eyes didn't l

CHAPTER EIGHT: The dress was already laid out on the bed when Lyra came out of the shower — black, simple, the kind of expensive that didn't announce itself. She hadn't picked it. Rosa hovered near the door with an expression that was trying hard to be neutral and not quite managing it."Mr. Voss has guests tonight," Rosa said. "He'd like you to join.""Would he like it, or does he expect it?"Rosa's mouth twitched — not quite a smile. "With him, ma'am, there's rarely a difference."Lyra dressed anyway. Not because she'd been told to. Because she wanted to see who came through that door badly enough to make Dimitri clear his own schedule for them.There were three of them, seated already by the time she came down — the study doors thrown open, the long table set with more silver than Lyra had ever seen outside a magazine spread. Dimitri stood when she entered, and something in the room shifted with him, three sets of eyes recalibrating around the fact of her."My wife," Dimitri said.

CHAPTER SEVEN: The lock on unit 214 wasn't the kind you bought at a hardware store.Lyra stood in front of it for a full minute before she touched it, some old instinct telling her that whatever was on the other side of that door had already changed her life once — through her father's hands, through his silence, through a name he'd written down without asking her permission — and it was about to do it again.She'd told Rosa she needed air. She'd told the driver she wanted the address on the matchbook without explaining why. Nobody had stopped her, which unsettled her more than if they had. Either no one thought she was worth watching that closely yet, or someone already knew exactly where she was going and had decided to let her go.The key was in her father's coat lining too, taped flat against the seam where she'd almost missed it. It turned smooth and easy, like it had been used more recently than she wanted to think about.The door rolled up on a space smaller than she'd expecte

CHAPTER sIXThey arrived a little after ten the next morning — June first, dragging two suitcases she'd clearly overpacked, then Theo trailing behind her with his backpack and the stuffed fox he pretended he'd grown out of and never actually let go of. Lyra was on the front steps before the car had fully stopped.Theo hit her at a run. She caught him, felt the solid weight of him against her ribs, and for a second the whole house — the lock, the photograph, Calder Mace's face in black and white — receded to something manageable."You have a gate," Theo said, muffled against her shoulder. "With, like, actual guards.""I noticed that too."June came up slower, scanning the front of the house the way she scanned everything now — for exits, for tells, for the thing that didn't fit. She'd been doing it since their father died. Lyra hated that she recognized the habit so well, because it was hers."You look tired," June said, which was June's way of asking if Lyra was okay."I'm fine. Come

CHAPTER FIVE:The east wing had a lock on the outside of the door.Lyra found it on her third pass through the hallway, running her fingers along the doorframe the way her father had taught her to read a room — not with your eyes, he'd said, with your hands. Your eyes lie. Your hands don't. She'd thought he meant it as a life lesson. She was beginning to think he'd meant it as a survival skill.The lock was new. The brass was unscratched, the keyhole clean. Someone had installed it recently — within weeks, maybe days. Which meant someone had known she was coming before she'd known herself.She stood in the hallway for a long moment, her hand flat against the wood, and thought about what it meant to be prepared for.Her room was at the end of the corridor, separated from the east wing by a sitting room she hadn't been invited into and a door that had been left open just enough to seem like an accident. The room itself was large and quiet and smelled faintly of cedar. A window looked ou

CHAPTER FOUR:The ring was too big.Lyra noticed it the moment the officiant stepped back — a heavy gold band that kept sliding toward her knuckle, threatening to drop onto the courthouse floor. Dimitri had noticed too. He'd reached over without a word, pressed it back into place with two fingers, and held it there for exactly three seconds before letting go.That was the whole ceremony.No flowers. No music. No one on her side of the aisle. June had wanted to come, had grabbed Lyra's arm that morning with wide, frightened eyes and said please don't go alone, and Lyra had kissed her forehead and told her to stay home and watch Theo and not open the door for anyone. She'd said it like it was nothing. Like she was leaving for the grocery store.She had not cried. She was very proud of that.Now she sat in the back seat of Dimitri's car, watching the courthouse steps disappear behind tinted glass, the ring still spinning slowly on her finger. The city moved past in streaks of grey and ye