Chapter 8

"Ronan."

Lyra's voice tore out of her before she could stop it, loud enough that Kael spun back toward her with a hand already up, a silent order to lower her volume that she had no intention of obeying right now.

"Ronan!"

Nothing answered. The house sat in a silence that felt deliberate, like it was holding its breath along with her, and for one long, terrible second Lyra thought she was going to be sick right there on the ruined hallway floor.

Then, faint, from somewhere deeper in the house, past the overturned furniture and the broken glass crunching under her boots, came a sound. Small. Wet. A cough.

"That way." Kael was already moving, blade up, sweeping the room ahead of them with the kind of fast, economical motion that said he'd cleared buildings like this before. "Stay behind me."

She didn't. She was three steps ahead of him by the time they reached the kitchen, where Ronan lay propped against the overturned table, one arm pressed hard against a wound in her side, blood soaking through the fabric of her cardigan in a spreading dark patch that made Lyra's whole body go cold.

"Ronan." Lyra dropped to her knees beside her, hands hovering, not sure where it was safe to touch. "Ronan, look at me, I'm here, I'm here."

Ronan's eyes fluttered open, unfocused for a second before they found Lyra's face, and something in them cleared with visible effort.

"You're alive." Her voice came out cracked, barely a whisper. "They said you weren't. They said the Nightguard already—"

"I'm fine. I'm here." Lyra's hands were shaking too hard to be any use, pressing uselessly at the edge of the wound. "What happened. Who did this."

"Three of them." Ronan's breath hitched, caught, started again. "Lycans. Not Veyri. I thought. I thought it would be Veyri first."

Kael crouched on Ronan's other side, already pulling a field kit from somewhere inside his jacket, hands moving fast and certain over the wound in a way that made Lyra want to scream at him to hurry and also made her trust, for one strange suspended second, that he actually knew what he was doing.

"This needs more than field dressing," he said, low, not looking up. "She needs a real medic."

"There's no time for—" Ronan's hand shot out and closed around Lyra's wrist with surprising strength for someone bleeding out on her own kitchen floor. "Listen to me. Before anything else happens. You need to hear this."

"Ronan, don't, save your strength—"

"I don't have strength left to save." It wasn't said with self pity. It was said flat, factual, the way you'd report the weather. "Your mother wasn't human, Lyra. She never was. And the mark. The one you don't know you have yet."

Lyra's chest went tight. "What mark."

As if in answer, a burning sensation bloomed across her chest, sudden and sharp enough to make her gasp, and when she looked down, horrified, she watched a crimson symbol rise to the surface of her skin just above her heart, glowing faintly beneath the fabric of her borrowed shirt like something lit from underneath.

Kael's hands stilled on Ronan's wound. He was staring at the mark with an expression Lyra couldn't name, somewhere between recognition and dread.

"Never let Cassian see that," Ronan whispered, her grip on Lyra's wrist finally loosening, her eyes starting to drift closed. "Promise me. Whatever happens. He can't see it."

"Who's Cassian. Ronan, who is that, I don't understand—"

"Promise me."

"I promise." The words came out before Lyra had any real grasp of what she was promising. "I promise, okay, I promise, just stay with me—"

Ronan's eyes closed. Her breathing went shallow, ragged, but it didn't stop, and Kael's hands were already back on the wound, pressing hard, his jaw set in a line that told Lyra everything about how close this was.

"She's not gone," he said, before Lyra could ask. "But she needs help now. Real help."

Behind them, headlights swept across the broken front windows, and for one sick second Lyra's whole body locked up, certain whatever had done this had come back to finish it.

Then a car door slammed, and a voice called out from the porch, low and urgent and achingly familiar.

Seraphine.

She came through the ruined doorway at a dead run, medical bag already open in her hands, dropping to her knees beside Ronan with the kind of speed that didn't belong to an ordinary woman in her forties, and the look that passed between her and Ronan's barely conscious face stopped Lyra cold.

It wasn't the look of strangers. It wasn't even the look of allies.

It was the look of two people who'd known each other for a very long time, and had been keeping that fact a careful, deliberate secret.

"How long has she been like this," Seraphine snapped, already working, hands moving with a precision that put even Kael's field dressing to shame.

"Minutes." Kael's voice had gone strange, tight. "Mom. How do you know her."

Seraphine didn't look up. Her hands didn't stop moving.

"Not now, Kael."

"You knew her name before I said it. You knew to come straight here. You're treating her like you've done this a hundred times before." His voice had risen, cracking at the edges in a way Lyra had never heard from him. "How do you know Ronan Vale."

Seraphine's hands finally stilled, just for a second, just long enough for her to look up and meet her son's eyes across Ronan's bleeding body.

"Because I'm the one who asked her to take Lyra in," she said quietly. "Twenty one years ago. The night your father died."