Chapter 10

"How do you have this number." Lyra's voice came out steadier than she felt, which surprised her almost as much as the call itself.

"I have a great many numbers, Lyra. It's a small convenience of three centuries spent paying close attention to the world." Cassian's voice carried an easy, unbothered warmth that somehow made her skin crawl worse than if he'd threatened her outright. "I'd much rather we not spend our first real conversation discussing logistics."

Kael had gone rigid beside her the second she'd said the name aloud. He mouthed something urgently, put it on speaker, and she fumbled the phone, hands still unsteady, until Cassian's voice filled the wrecked kitchen instead of just her ear.

"I assume Mr. Arden is listening in." Cassian didn't sound surprised by this. If anything, he sounded faintly amused. "Hello, Kael. Your mother sends her regards, I'm sure, though perhaps not in those exact words."

Kael's jaw tightened. "What do you want."

"Directness. How refreshing." A pause, unhurried, the kind that belonged to someone who had never once in his existence had to rush a conversation. "I want what I've wanted since the night Lyra was born, though I imagine that sentence sounds considerably more sinister out loud than I intend it."

"You don't get to talk about the night she was born." Lyra's voice cracked despite her best efforts to keep it level. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know more than you'd like, and considerably less than I'd like, which I suspect puts us in a similar position tonight." Something in his tone shifted, softened at the edges. "I know you're standing in Ronan's kitchen right now, looking at blood that shouldn't be there. I know three Lycans attacked her tonight, which tells me the council has decided to move faster than I anticipated. And I know you're currently wearing a mark on your chest that you have absolutely no idea how to interpret."

Lyra's free hand pressed flat against her sternum without meaning to, as if she could physically shield the mark from a voice coming through a phone speaker.

"How do you know about the mark."

"Because your mother wore an identical one, and I watched her learn to live with it, badly, for several years before she understood what it meant." For the first time, something genuine crept into his voice, something that sounded almost like grief carefully folded away under three hundred years of practiced calm. "I would very much like to spare you that same difficulty, if you'll let me."

"Why would I ever let you anywhere near me." Lyra's voice had risen now, sharp, scared. "You're the thing Kael's entire organization exists to hunt. You're the reason people are dying with my name carved into walls."

"I am not the reason for that, though I understand why it would appear that way from where you're standing." A faint sound on his end, something that might have been a sigh if creatures like him still needed breath for that purpose. "The ones hunting you, the ones who attacked Ronan tonight, are not acting on my orders. If they were, you would already be in a very different situation than the one you currently find yourself in."

"That's not reassuring."

"It wasn't meant to be reassuring. It was meant to be true." A beat. "I find the truth tends to serve better than comfort, in situations like this one."

Kael leaned in close to the phone, his voice hard. "If you're not the one hunting her, who is."

"That," Cassian said, "is a considerably longer conversation than I'm willing to have over a phone line, surrounded, I imagine, by several of your colleagues who would very much like to trace this call and come find me." Something that might have been a smile colored his voice. "Not tonight, Kael. Tonight you should get Lyra somewhere safe and let her rest, insofar as rest is possible after an evening like the one you've both had."

"And if I refuse to let her anywhere near you," Kael said, low and flat, "ever."

"Then I imagine she'll continue being hunted by people who have far less restraint than I do, and far less interest in keeping her alive long enough to understand what she actually is." Cassian's tone didn't sharpen, didn't rise, stayed maddeningly even. "I'm not asking for your trust tonight. I'm asking for a conversation, at a time and place of Lyra's choosing, with whatever protection she wants to bring along. That's all."

Silence stretched across the line. Lyra looked at Kael, searching his face for some sign of what to do, and found nothing there but the same uncertainty twisting through her own chest.

"Why should I trust anything you say," she finally asked, quiet now, the fight draining out of her voice and leaving something more tired and more honest behind it.

"You shouldn't. Not yet. Trust is earned, not given over a phone call at two in the morning." Cassian's voice gentled further, and for one disorienting second he sounded less like a monster and more like someone who had simply lived through far too much grief to perform anything but careful honesty anymore. "But I knew your mother, Lyra. I loved her, in whatever broken way someone like me is capable of loving anyone. And I would very much like the chance to tell you about her before anyone else decides that story belongs to them instead."

The line went quiet for a moment, and Lyra realized she was crying, silent tears tracking down her face without her permission, grief for a mother she'd never known rising up out of nowhere and catching in her throat.

"I'll think about it," she said finally.

"That's all I ask." A pause, and then, softer, almost gentle. "Take care of yourself tonight, Lyra. The mark will keep spreading as your power grows. Don't be frightened when it does."

The call ended before she could ask what that meant.

Kael took the phone gently from her shaking hand, staring at the blank screen like it might still hold answers if he looked hard enough.

"He's lying," he said, though it sounded less like a conclusion and more like something he was trying to convince himself of. "He has to be lying."

Lyra looked down at her own chest, at the faint warmth still radiating from beneath her shirt where the mark had settled into her skin, and found she wasn't entirely sure she agreed with him anymore.