The estate was quiet when she returned.
Lyra walked through the garden door as the sky began to lighten. Her palm was still marked from the ritual—a thin red line where the knife had cut, already healing but not yet gone. Kael's blood had mingled with hers in that moment of binding. She could still feel it, a faint warmth that didn't belong to her.
Her father walked beside her. Cassius hadn't spoken since they'd left the tunnel. His silence was different from his usual reserve—not patient, but processing. Aldric and Kael had returned to their own territory, with an agreement to meet again in three days.
The house was empty. The human staff wouldn't arrive for hours. Lyra followed her father to his study, where he poured himself a glass of wine and stood at the window, watching the dawn.
"You should rest," he said.
"I don't need rest."
"No. But you should take it anyway. Tonight was... significant."
Lyra sat in the chair across from his desk. The leather was cold. "You knew about Aurelius. You knew the creature had a name. Why didn't you tell me before?"
Cassius was quiet for a long moment. "Because I wasn't sure. The scroll we found—I'd seen references to it, but never the original. I didn't want to give you false hope."
"False hope would have been better than watching Kael offer to die."
Her father turned from the window. His expression was unreadable. "The wolf. You care about him."
It wasn't a question. Lyra didn't answer.
"He's brave," Cassius continued. "Reckless, but brave. His father is the same. Aldric Shadowbane refused my warning in 1847, but he came tonight. He stood with us. That took courage."
"Or guilt."
"Often the same thing." He set down his wine glass. "Lyra. The treaty forbids contact between our kinds. What you and Kael have done—working together, bleeding together—it violates every protocol the Council holds sacred. If they find out—"
"They won't."
"They will. Secrets have a way of surfacing. The question is what we do when they do."
Lyra stood. "We face it. Together. Like we faced the creature."
Cassius studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. "You sound like your mother."
The words hit her somewhere unexpected. "You never talk about her."
"I know. I should have." He walked to a cabinet and withdrew a small wooden box. Inside was a photograph—old, faded, but preserved. A woman with dark hair and warm brown eyes, smiling at someone outside the frame. "She believed in impossible things. In alliances that couldn't exist. In love that crossed boundaries it shouldn't cross."
Lyra took the photograph. Her mother's face was young. Hopeful.
"She would have liked Kael," Cassius said.
"She would have liked you too. If you'd let her stay."
The silence between them was heavy. Then Cassius closed the box and returned it to the cabinet.
"Get some rest. We have three days before we meet with the wolves again. We'll need to decide what comes next."
Lyra went to her room. She lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling, her marked palm pressed against her chest. Somewhere across the city, Kael was doing the same.
She pulled out her phone and typed a message.
"You're alive."
The response came a minute later. "So are you."
"What happens now?"
A longer pause. Then: "I don't know. But I want to find out."
Lyra set down the phone and closed her eyes. For the first time in a hundred years, she didn't dream of the past. She dreamed of amber eyes and a voice that sounded like a storm over the ocean.