CHAPTER 6 LYRA
LYRA
T he dream started, as ever, with the flower.
A calla lily. Then came the candy necklace.
Only three pieces of candy. Somewhere in Lyra’s consciousness, Odette Morales said: There are always three.
But in the dream, Lyra was small. In the dream, there was no Odette.
There was only a shadow and a gun and a man’s voice saying, “ A Hawthorne did this .”
Only this time, Lyra saw the man’s face. She saw his eyes, her father’s eyes, amber just like her own.
And then everything was dark.
And then her feet were sticky with blood.
And then she was running barefoot on pavement, out into the night.
Lyra’s eyes snapped open. She forced herself to exhale the breath trapped in her chest, forced the muscles in her body to relax, one by one.
She reached for the feeling she’d had running the island, that clarity, and rolled out of bed and into a stretch, lifting her knee to her chest. After a few seconds, she rotated her hip and extended her leg back and up—and up and up, until she could feel a low, familiar ache in her hips and back.
She switched legs, stopping only when the watch on her left wrist began to buzz.
A message appeared on its screen: DON YOUR ARMOR.
The night before, it had been gowns and masks. Today, it was armor . Lyra couldn’t help wondering what that said about phase two. She tapped a red circle that had appeared beneath the words, and in response, the back wall of her room began to part.
Within seconds, Lyra was staring at a hidden closet— hidden no longer.
A single rack held two outfits, identical but for their color.
One was white, the other black. At first glance, Lyra thought she was looking at body suits, but a closer inspection revealed three separate pieces for each outfit: tank top, outer jacket, and pants.
The fabric looked almost like leather, but touching it ruled out that possibility.
Whatever the fabric was, it breathed. It stretched .
Lyra knew instinctively that a person could dance in this fabric—or run or climb or fight .
She donned her armor—black. The clothes felt like nothing she’d ever worn, the fabric molding to her body.
There were pockets on the outside of the jacket and more in the pants.
Lyra made use of them. Room key. Glass dice.
Grayson had their longsword, but Lyra had kept possession of the opera glasses Odette had given her as a parting gift.
Picking them up by their diamond-encrusted stem, Lyra tucked the opera glasses through the belt loop of her pants, securing them directly over her hipbone.
Then she retrieved the key-shaped pin she’d been given in phase one of the game and affixed it to her left sleeve, just above the place where her wrist met her palm.
Finished, she turned her hand back over and looked back down at her watch.
The message about donning armor had been replaced by a timer— 2:17:08 .
Lyra watched as it counted down, second by second. Prior to the first phase of the game, there had been a masquerade ball—and a challenge. With more than two hours to go until the start of phase two, Lyra had to assume that this night would follow a similar pattern.
So what’s the challenge?
Bringing her index finger to the face of her smartwatch, Lyra tried to scroll but quickly realized that there were only two screens, the timer on one and an isolated symbol on the other. A spade. Lyra tapped it and was presented with a keyboard.
“Feels like a test,” she mused. Lyra thought about the only piece of instruction she’d been given: DON YOUR ARMOR. And then she thought about Grayson Hawthorne, telling her that she was no one’s weapon.
That she was lethal in the best possible way.
If nothing else, Lyra was a competitor. She chose her reply to the game makers. READY FOR BATTLE.
Lyra hit Send. Within a minute, she’d received a message back—a map.