Chapter 5: The Second Future

Lyra

"Do it again."

I look up from the bed. Cassian is standing in the tower doorway, alone. No Bram. No guards. His coat is wrinkled, his hair is a mess, and there's dried blood on his knuckles that I really hope isn't Corin's.

"Do what again?" I ask.

"Read me." He steps inside and shuts the door behind him. "Properly. Deliberately. Skin to skin."

I stare at him. "You said no. You said it like a threat."

"I changed my mind."

"That's a big change in twelve hours."

"Yes, I noticed." He drags a hand down his face. He looks about a hundred years old. "Corin's in the infirmary. The healer says there's nothing wrong with his body, but his mind is like a house someone broke into and rearranged. He keeps describing my murder. Every detail. The lantern colors. The sound of the knife."

"Whose knife?"

"He says it's yours." He holds my gaze. "Silver. Long blade."

My stomach flips. That's the knife in my vision. I never told anyone it was silver. "So he saw the same thing I did."

"That's the problem." He starts pacing. "Either you told him, which you didn't, because you've never met him. Or you planted it in his head, which you didn't, because Corin's memory has a seam in it, and I saw your face when you found it. Or —"

"Someone put the same vision in both of us."

"Yes."

We look at each other. Neither of us says the obvious thing.

Which means my vision might be fake, too.

"So test me," Cassian says. "Find out if what you saw in the cellar was real."

"Cassian, I can't tell you if it's real. I only see what your mind believes."

"Then tell me what my mind believes."

He pulls off his black leather glove, slowly, one finger at a time. His hand is big and scarred and steady. He holds it out to me, palm up.

"I'm not asking you to trust me," he says. "I'm asking you to look."

I hesitate. I've never chosen to touch a living person before. Every time it's been an accident.

"You realize this is the second-worst idea you've ever had," I mutter.

"What was the first?"

"Keeping me alive."

His mouth twitches. It's almost a smile. It's the first one I've seen, and it wrecks me a little.

I lay my hand in his.

Click.

---

Smoke. Heat. The stink of burning cloth.

I'm in the burning city again, but I'm not looking through his eyes anymore. I'm behind them, standing next to him, like a ghost at his shoulder.

Cassian is on his knees. The banners are on fire above us. His chest is soaked in blood.

And in front of him stands a woman with a silver knife.

Here we go again.

But then the woman moves. She doesn't strike. She drops the blade and throws herself down beside him, both hands pressed against his chest, and her voice cracks across the smoke. "Stay with me. Stay with me, you stubborn — Cassian, look at me."

It's me.

I'm holding him. I'm shaking. I'm pushing my hands against the wound so hard that my arms are red to the elbows, and he's staring up at me with those winter-gray eyes, dazed and disbelieving.

"Lyra," he breathes. He's alive.

I saved him.

The relief is so strong I almost cry.

Then the smoke ripples.

The image shivers like a stone dropped into water, and a second Lyra flickers into being, standing over him with the silver blade raised, her face frozen in horror. Two versions of me, in the same place, at the same time. One kneeling. One standing. One with her hands on his heart. One with a knife in them.

They slide over each other like wet paint.

"Why did you do this?" whispers Cassian.

And it isn't clear which one he's talking to.

The whole thing tears apart at the seams.

---

I come back to my body sitting on the floor of the tower room with my forehead on Cassian's shoulder.

He's holding me up. His arm is around my back. I don't remember him doing that. My nose is bleeding on his shirt.

"Lyra." His voice is rough. "Lyra. Talk to me."

"Give me a second."

"You went limp. I thought —" He stops.

"That I'd died?"

"Yes."

I let out a wet, shaky laugh. "Wow. And I thought you wanted me dead."

"I don't know what I want," he says, so quietly I almost miss it.

The words hang there. I should move. His arm is warm, and he smells like cedar and snow and something darker that makes my pulse skip, and I am absolutely not going to think about that.

I sit up. He lets go. Slowly.

"Well?" he says.

"It changed."

"What changed?"

"The vision." I wipe my nose. "It wasn't the same as before. It started the same way. You were dying. But this time, I didn't kill you." I look up. "I saved you."

His whole body goes still.

"I had my hands on your chest. I was begging you to stay awake. You were alive." I swallow. "And then, right in front of me, it split. There were two of me. One saving you. One with the knife. Both at the same time."

"That's impossible."

"I know."

"A future can't be two things."

"Unless it is two things." I pull my knees up. My hands won't stop shaking. "Remember what I said about my power? I don't see what's going to happen. I see what you believe is going to happen."

"Then what does that mean?"

"It means part of your mind believes I'm going to kill you." I meet his eyes. "And part of it believes I'm going to save you."

He stares at me.

Then, very slowly, he looks away.

It's the answer. I can see it in the way his jaw locks. In the way his hands curl into his knees.

"Which part is which?" I ask softly.

He doesn't reply.

"Cassian."

"My mind," he says at last, "was trained to believe in evidence. In logic. In what can be proved."

"And the other part?"

"My wolf hasn't stopped saying your name since midnight."

I'm not going to blush. I refuse.

I blush.

"So there's more than one future," I say, hurrying past it. "And someone wants you to believe in the bad one. That's why Corin remembers it. That's why I saw it in the cellar. Someone's been pushing the wrong version into people's heads. Which means —"

"It can be changed." He says it like he's testing the words. Like he's afraid to put weight on them. "We still have two days."

"Less. Forty hours, roughly."

"Then we use them." He gets to his feet. He's back in command, and I can see him building the wall again, brick by brick. "Until I know who's behind this, you stay in this tower. The guards outside will be men I've chosen. Not one of them will have contact with the Oracle. Bram will bring you food himself."

"You're going to hide me from your own advisor?"

"I'm going to hide everything from my advisor." His gray eyes cut to mine. "Do you understand? Nobody speaks about this. Not to Seraphine. Not to the Council."

"You believe me."

"I believe there is a problem." He pulls his glove back on. "That's all I can say."

"You could try trusting me."

He stops at the door.

"I could," he says, without turning. "That's what frightens me."

The door shuts. The lock turns.

I sit alone in the dark, listening to his footsteps fade down the stairs, and my heart is beating in an odd, stupid, hopeful rhythm that I do not have time for.

---

I wake before dawn to a cold room and the strangest feeling.

Something is here.

I sit up slowly. The candle has burned down to a puddle. The window is a gray rectangle. Nothing has moved. The door is still locked. I can hear the guards breathing on the other side of it.

Then I see the pillow.

The one beside mine, the empty one, where nobody slept.

There's something lying on it.

Long. Slim. Catching the first weak light. It's a knife. A dagger with a silver blade as long as my forearm, and a plain black hilt wrapped in leather.

I know it. I've seen it.

I've seen it in two visions, once dripping blood, once lying abandoned on burning ground.

But I have never held it. I have never owned it. I have never, ever seen it in real life.

My whole body goes cold.

The door is locked. The window is forty feet above the courtyard. Nobody came in.

And the silver blade from my vision is lying next to my head, still warm, like someone had just put it down.