Run

LYRA'S POV 

Mara sets a bag by the door without a word.

I stare at it longer than I mean to. Inside, I can guess what's there before I even look — food, a change of clothes, maybe money. Everything a person needs to disappear.

"There's a path behind the house," she says, not looking at me. "It skips the border patrol entirely. You'd have hours before anyone even noticed you were gone."

I don't move.

"I'm not helping you," she adds quickly, like she needs me to understand that first. "I'm just telling you the path exists. What you do with that is yours."

She glances toward the window, where the light outside has gone from gold to grey. "It's almost time. I have to go."

She doesn't wait for me to answer. The door closes behind her, and then I'm alone with the bag, the silence, and every reason I've ever had to run.

I pick it up before I decide to.

My hands know exactly how to do this. Sling it over one shoulder. Check the weight. Move fast and don't look back. I've done it a hundred times, in a hundred different places, and I've never once had to think about it this hard before.

Running would save him. It would save me. That's the only thought that matters. If I'm gone before the rite starts, there's nothing left to prove and nothing left to fail. No false bond. No broken law. No reason for anyone to punish the only man who's ever stood for me.

Leaving is the right thing to do. It's the only thing I know how to do well. Even if it costs me the only warmth I've felt in months.

I think of my mother, who never got the chance to run. She stayed until the truth finally crushed her instead. I've spent three months making sure that never happens to me.

I slip out through the back path Mara described, and for a while my feet move like they've been waiting all day for permission. The trees close in fast, cutting off the last of the torchlight behind me. My legs remember this rhythm better than anything else, the cold air, the uneven ground, I ran like this the night I met Kael.

I don't let myself think about him. Thinking about him is how I get caught.

Then something in my chest pulls tight, sudden and sharp, like a hand closing around a rope I didn't know I was holding.

I stop.

I don't understand it. I haven't felt something like it before. It feels like walking away from something that's already decided I belong to it, whether I've agreed to that or not.

I stand there in the dark for a long moment, the bag heavy on my shoulder, the path to nowhere stretching out ahead of me.

I think about my mother again, and for the first time it isn't her staying that scares me. It's the idea that I might be about to make the opposite mistake, leaving before I even know if this was ever worth staying for. She never got the choice. I do. Standing here isn't weakness. Running might be the easier kind.

Then I turn around.

I walk back the way I came, faster now, the bag falling from my hand somewhere in the dark and I don't stop to find it. By the time the torches come back into view, I'm out of breath, and the chant hasn't started yet, and some part of me is furious at how close I came to letting it start without me in it.

I step into the light before I can talk myself out of it again.

I don't look for him yet. I just keep walking.