Chapter 4

Lyra's POV

The guards didn't speak to me.

They walked ahead, boots striking stone in unison, and I followed because there was nothing else to do. My legs carried me forward on their own, the way they always did when someone with authority pointed in a direction.

The dove-gray dress brushed against my knees with every step. So soft it felt wrong against my skin — like wearing something that belonged to a different kind of girl. A girl who got gifts without paying for them.

The corridor turned. We passed the kitchens, the pantry, the servants' hall where I should have been sleeping. They led me underground. Down a narrow staircase, then a corridor lit by a single bare bulb, walls slick with condensation and smelling of earth and rust. A heavy iron door. And beyond it, a room I'd never been allowed to see.

Arabella stood in its center.

She wore a white nightgown, her dark hair loose and tangled at the ends. In her right hand she held a riding crop — not the ornamental kind she kept in her room, but the real thing, leather tongue curled at the tip, stiff with use. Her face was calm. Composed. That was what made my blood go cold.

"Well," she said. Her eyes crawled over me, head to toe. "New clothes. Aren't we special." Her lip peeled back from her teeth. "What did you say to him?"

Him. I didn't know who she meant. My silence was habit — muscle memory, survival instinct carved into my bones by years of practice. I dropped my gaze to the wet floor.

The first blow caught me across the shoulders.

I didn't scream. Pain ripped white across my vision, sharp and crackling, and something warm and wet ran down between my shoulder blades. The fabric darkened where the blood soaked through. The beautiful fabric. Already ruined.

"Don't play STUPID!" Arabella's voice cracked high and raw. "I am the alpha's daughter! I'm the one they should notice! He should want ME—" She circled me, the crop twitching in her fist. "And instead he won't stop talking about you. Do you know what he did today? He said he's BUYING you. Taking you away." Her face contorted. "What did you do? What tricks are you using, you mute little bitch?"

Buying me. Taking me away.

The words snagged in my mind like thorns. Who — the northern alpha? The man from the parlor, the one who'd lifted me from the ground with one arm like I weighed nothing? Why would someone like that want—

The second blow hit harder. My knees buckled and I crashed to the floor. My palms scraped wet stone. Blood dripped from my back onto the gray skirt, blooming in dark flowers.

"I didn't do anything."

The words came out before I could stop them.

Hoarse. Scratchy. A stranger's voice from a stranger's throat. I hadn't spoken in — how long? Months. Maybe a year. The sound of my own voice startled me worse than the blood running hot down my spine.

Arabella went still.

Then her mouth stretched into something between a smile and a snarl. Her eyes lit up — not with anger anymore, but with something worse. Delight. "Did you just talk BACK to me?"

She shoved the crop into the nearest guard's hand. A man twice my size, with arms like slabs of meat and a face that held nothing. "Beat her," Arabella said. Her voice was shaking — not with fear, but with the exhilaration of permission. "Beat her until she remembers her place."

The guard didn't hesitate.

The first strike from his arm was nothing like Arabella's. It cracked across my ribs with the force of a man trained to hurt. I doubled over. The second caught the same spot on my back where her crop had already split the skin open — fresh pain layered on raw pain until I couldn't tell where one wound ended and the next began.

Three blows. Five. Seven.

I curled on the floor with my arms cradling my head, teeth clenched so hard I tasted iron. The wet stone pressed cold against my cheek. Above me, Arabella made a sound — a small, satisfied exhale, the kind someone makes watching a fire catch.

The dress was soaked through now — red from collar to waist, the dove-gray fabric turned the color of rust. The bone buttons dug into my stomach as I pressed myself flat against the stone, trying to become small enough to disappear. Each blow drove the air from my lungs. Each pause was worse than the blow — the silence before the next one fell.

I thought of the road in my dream. The bundle in my hands. The open sky.

Then I thought of nothing at all.

"Stop."

Arabella's voice. Sweet now. Honey over poison.

She crouched beside me. Her perfume — jasmine, expensive, nauseating — mixed with the copper smell of my blood. She tilted her head, studying me the way a child studies an insect it's about to crush.

"You weren't thinking that just because he said he'd take you away, you're suddenly safe?" She reached out and lifted my chin with one manicured finger. Her nail dug into the soft skin beneath my jaw. "Don't worry, little Lyra. You're not going anywhere."

Her hand flicked. A signal.

Guards hauled me upright. My arms were wrenched behind my back, shoulders screaming. My vision pulsed dark at the edges. Then something cold and sharp pressed against the hollow of my throat — a blade, its edge kissing the thin skin above my pulse.

"Kill her," Arabella said. She smoothed her nightgown like she was preparing for company. "Dead girls don't cast spells. And he won't start a war over a corpse."

The guard repositioned his grip on the handle. Adjusted the angle. Professional. Unhurried. As if this were a chore and I were livestock.

He drew his arm back.

I heard the blade cut the air before I felt the wind against my throat. A rushing sound, final and absolute.

I squeezed my eyes shut. My mother's face flashed behind my eyelids — not as she'd looked when they dragged her away, but as she'd looked in the only memory I still had of her holding me. Smiling. The bluebells on her handkerchief.

The door exploded inward. Wood splintered. Hinges shrieked.

"STOP!"