LYRA
The cut wasn't deep, but it was clean and sharp. A punishment for a moment of carelessness. After escaping the Vance Tower, I hadn't gone straight back to the Scriptorium's hidden workshop. The phantom loneliness of Cassian's emotions still clung to me, a foreign chill in my soul. I needed to ground myself, to find my center in the only way I knew how: work.
I'd sought refuge in one of our secondary safehouses—a small, dusty room above an antique bookstore in the city's old quarter. The space smelled of brittle paper and decaying glue, a comforting aroma that reminded me of my earliest training. The mission was simple: I had "borrowed" a small, Fabergé-style enameled egg from a private collector the week before. The client, a wealthy socialite with more money than sense, wanted a perfect replica to display while the original was safely tucked away in her vault.
It should have been a simple, almost meditative task. Replication was second nature to me, the lines and colors as familiar as my own breathing. But my hands wouldn't cooperate. They trembled, the fine-tipped stylus in my grip wavering over the delicate porcelain surface. The cool, controlled flow of my artifice, usually a steady, silent river, was now a choppy, unpredictable current. Cassian's emotions, even the faint echo of them, were a disruptive static in my mind.
Frustration, a rare and unproductive indulgence, coiled in my stomach. I gripped the stylus tighter, forcing my hand to steady. A ghost has no room for error, my grandmother's voice hissed in my memory. The pressure was too much. The stylus slipped, its sharp silver tip skittering across my palm, leaving a thin, crimson line in its wake.
I hissed, dropping the stylus onto the workbench. Blood welled up, a single, perfect red droplet on the pale skin of my palm. I stared at it, a wave of anger washing over me—not at the pain, but at the loss of control. He had done this to me. He had infected my artifice, my discipline, my very self, with his chaotic, undisciplined emotions.
Then something strange happened. The sharp sting in my hand was immediately followed by a second, phantom pain. It was a dull, echoing throb that wasn't located in my hand, but seemed to resonate from a place deep within the Soul-Ink on my back. It felt like a sympathetic vibration, an echo of my own pain reflected back at me from a great distance.
I froze, the blood on my hand forgotten. The bond. This was the bond. It wasn't just a one-way transmission of feeling; it was a circuit. My pain had traveled through the invisible tether connecting us and found him, miles away. I had felt the echo of his own shock and pain in return.
My mind, always quick to analyze and strategize, began to race. The implications were horrifying. This wasn't just an emotional link. It was a physical one. If I were seriously injured, would he collapse? If he were in danger, would I be crippled by his pain? We weren't just tied together; we were a shared vulnerability. A single, shared target.
I had to get away. Not just from the city, but from him. I needed to put as much distance between us as possible, to see if the bond had a range, a limit. Maybe if I went far enough, the thread would stretch until it broke.
The thought was a desperate, grasping hope. I stood up, my mind made up. I would take what little money I had saved, pack a bag, and catch the first train out of the city at dawn. North, South—it didn't matter. All that mattered was distance.
I began to move, my actions swift and decisive. I cleaned the cut on my palm, the mundane act of bandaging the wound a small, comforting ritual of control. I wiped down my tools, packed my forgery kit, and prepared to erase any trace of my presence in the small workshop.
A soft, scraping sound from the fire escape outside the window stopped me dead.
My senses screamed. Every nerve ending came alive. My artifice, chaotic just moments before, now flooded my body with a cool, sharp clarity. It was a survival instinct, honed by years of training in a world of shadows. Someone was here.
It couldn't be Scriptorium. They were subtle. They wouldn't announce their arrival with a clumsy footstep. It had to be the Chromatic Court. His father. They had found me.
I moved silently to the side of the window, flattening my back against the brick wall. I peered through the grimy glass. The fire escape was empty, the rusting metal slick with a light, misty rain that had begun to fall.
I held my breath, listening. The only sound was the distant hum of city traffic and the soft, rhythmic patter of the rain. Had I imagined it? Was my frayed state making me paranoid?
Then I heard it again. A heavy, measured footstep. Not on the fire escape this time, but on the rooftop above.
They weren't trying to come through the window. They were coming through the door.
My eyes darted to the only exit, a heavy oak door at the far end of the small room. There was no other way out. I was trapped.
My mind raced through my options, my training taking over. I could try to weave an illusion, a complex replication of an empty room, but that took time and intense concentration, neither of which I had. A simple sound illusion, a distraction, might buy me a few seconds, but for what? To leap out the window and onto a fire escape that they were surely watching?
The doorknob began to turn. A slow, deliberate creak of old metal.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a wild bird trapped in a cage. My artifice surged to my fingertips, a desperate, defensive energy. My hand instinctively closed around a heavy glass paperweight on my workbench, its smooth, cool surface my only tangible weapon.
The door swung inward.
It wasn't a team of Chromatic assassins. It wasn't a burly, suit-clad enforcer.
It was just him. Cassian Vance.
He stood in the doorway, his tall frame filling the space, his leather jacket dark and soaked with rain. His hair was a wild, damp mess, and his face was pale in the dim light of the workshop. He wasn't here to attack. He was here because he knew. He had felt it too.
He held up his left hand, and even from across the room, I could see the thin, dark line of blood bisecting his palm. A perfect, impossible mirror of the cut on my own.
"We have a problem," he said, and his voice wasn't the cold, arrogant tone from his mother's studio. It was quiet, grim, and utterly devoid of hostility.
My carefully constructed walls, the ones I had built against the world, against my own emotions, against him, began to crumble. He wasn't my enemy, not anymore. The terrifying truth settled over me with a chilling finality.
He was my curse.
He was my mirror.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn't alone. I was tethered.