Chapter 14
Lyra
The truck smelled faintly of gasoline and pine sap, while the heater rattled unevenly as it struggled against the winter cold. Icy roads stretched endlessly ahead beneath a sky swollen heavy with snow.
Lyra sat rigid in the passenger seat with her gloved hands locked tightly together in her lap while the older man driving kept his attention mostly on the road.
She had been grateful that he agreed to take her partway back toward the village when she caught him at the petrol station. She couldn’t survive another hour trapped inside the castle waiting politely while Beckett remained missing somewhere out in the cold.
Besides, she told herself, Mikael may not even be able to go with her in the morning. Thankfully the driver seemed to possess the rare gift of understanding when silence was preferable to conversation.
Every now and then the driver muttered something brief about worsening weather or road conditions. Otherwise he left her alone with the storm raging inside her head, which was almost worse because as the quiet settled fully around her, the memories started creeping back.
Dag’s laughter had once ruled the hallways like something cruel and inevitable, loud enough to turn heads from half the corridor away while students pretended not to notice the damage it caused. Drawing Dag’s attention was the fastest way to become his next victim.
“Move, Low-Life Lyra.”
The nickname slammed into her sixteen-year-old chest as hard as his shove had sent all the books from her arms crashing across the polished floor.
Conversations nearby stuttered into silence before quickly resuming again and suddenly everyone was fascinated by lockers, phones, or classroom doors. Anything except her humiliation.
Dag leaned back against the lockers with effortless confidence, tall and broad-shouldered even then, and grinned while two boys beside him snickered loudly enough to encourage the performance further.
“Careful, you know trash belongs in the dumpster, not the hallway,” he mocked as Lyra crouched to gather her papers with shaking hands. “And I don’t mean your books.”
More laughter followed.
Not everyone joined in, but that almost hurt worse because the ones who stayed quiet still watched. They always watched.
Heat burned behind Lyra’s eyes as she scrambled to collect loose assignments before someone stepped on them. Her fingers were clumsy from panic while whispers drifted around her like gnats she could never escape. No matter how many times it happened, she still felt the fear and isolation.
Low-Life Lyra. Loser Lyra. Lyra the Lame.
She knew most of the others didn’t approve of Dag’s cruelty but were just too afraid to step in. Many had suffered the same fate, but for whatever reason, she was his favorite to bully.
Dag had spent years turning her existence into his personal, sick entertainment.
He had already stripped pieces of her self-worth both publicly and repeatedly until people no longer looked at her like a classmate at all.
She had her own role inside the school ecosystem.
She was the girl everyone pitied privately and abandoned publicly because standing beside her carried risk.
And through all of it, Mikael stood only a few feet away from his best friend. Even now, years later, that memory hurt more sharply than Dag’s voice ever could.
Mikael had been leaning against the wall near the trophy case, handsome in that effortless way some people simply were.
He was admired by teachers and athletes, and girls trailed after him between classes like ships caught in a tractor beam.
He had looked directly at her while Dag mocked her, his expression unreadable, his hands shoved into the pockets of his letterman jacket.
Everyone knew he was in line to be king one day. And for one terrible second, sixteen-year-old Lyra had thought he might step in. She thought he might tell Dag to stop.
Instead, Mikael only shook his head faintly with the corner of his mouth twitching with restrained amusement before he glanced away entirely as though the scene bored him.
That had been the moment something inside her truly folded inward. Not because Dag hated her, but because Mikael watched her drowning and chose not to move.
After that day, Lyra learned how to make herself smaller.
She stopped raising her hand in class even when she knew answers better than anyone else.
She timed bathroom trips carefully to avoid crowded hallways.
She ate lunch alone whenever she could because isolation hurt less than public humiliation.
Little by little the loneliness wrapped around her so tightly she could barely remember what it felt like to breathe without fear. There had been nights during those years when she lay awake staring at her bedroom ceiling wondering if anyone would notice if she simply disappeared altogether.
And sometimes the worst part was knowing Dag had not destroyed her alone. Mikael’s silence had helped do it.
The truck hit a rut in the road and bounced her out of her spiral.
She was not that girl anymore. The realization came fiercely enough that Lyra straightened slightly in her seat and forced air back into lungs that suddenly felt too tight. She couldn’t afford to drown in old memories right now while Beckett needed her.
The past could wait, but the little boy could not.
So she pushed Dag and Mikael and every ugly memory back down where they belonged and focused instead on the snow-covered roads ahead. She silently counted every minute until the truck finally rolled into the village several hours later beneath thick swirling snowfall.
“Bakery open this early?” the driver asked casually while slowing near the center square.
“It will be soon.” Lyra nodded quickly. “Thank you for the ride.”
The man only tipped his head once before she climbed out into the cold. His tail lights hadn’t even vanished in the gloom before she was headed down the nearest alley.
“Beckett!”
She knew the chances of him being close by were slim, but she had to try. She had no idea if or where the guards had searched, and she was certain the boy would have hidden from them anyways.
She walked several blocks calling for him before she hurried across the square. Snow crunched hard beneath her boots and panic had become a permanent resident in her chest.
Warmth and the smell of fresh bread hit her immediately when she stepped inside the bakery. The familiar comfort of it barely registered because the baker looked up from behind the counter with instant alarm the second she saw her.
“Lyra. You’re back. How are you?”
“Hi, Maren, I’m fine.” Her pulse jumped. “Have you heard anything about Beckett?”
The older woman’s expression tightened with sympathy. “Not yet.”
Fear twisted harder inside her. “No one’s seen him?”
“A few people have been looking.” She hesitated briefly before continuing. “That social worker friend of yours was here earlier asking questions, and there was another man too.”
Lyra froze instantly. “What man? One of the king’s guards?”
“I don’t think so.” The baker frowned. “Tall fellow. Dark coat. Wouldn’t give his name.”
“Did he have a scar across his cheek?”
“It was more like from his cheek to his eyebrow.”
Ice flooded through her veins so quickly she nearly lost feeling in her hands. Beckett’s father.
“Oh God.”
Her stomach lurched violently because the possibility had haunted her from the moment Beckett disappeared. Hearing confirmation that some unidentified man had already come searching made terror explode fully into life inside her chest.
If his father had found him first—
No. No, no, no.
She turned abruptly and rushed back outside before panic suffocated her. The icy air cut sharply against her face as she began frantically searching every place within the village.
The alley behind the tailor shop. The woodshed near the market square behind the blacksmith’s shop. She even went to the abandoned storage buildings near the frozen river where Beckett sometimes liked to explore.
Every stable. Every narrow side street. She called his name until her throat burned raw from cold air and desperation, but the village remained painfully silent except for distant wind.
No Beckett. Not even footprints small enough to follow. Nothing.
By the time she stumbled back toward the bakery again, exhaustion and fear had left her trembling so badly she could barely feel her fingers anymore. Through the frosted windows she spotted Sherrell already waiting inside.
Relief hit so suddenly it almost hurt.
The social worker stood the moment Lyra entered. She had worry etched heavily across her face.
“I came as soon as Maren called and told me you were back.”
“You knew they took me?” That surprised Lyra.
“One of the villagers who witnessed your arrest was a friend and called me immediately afterward.”
Lyra’s throat tightened painfully. “Have you found him?”
Sherrell’s silence answered before words did.
“No,” she admitted softly. “I’ve checked the bus station, the shelters, the train depot, and every place I thought he might go if he was frightened.”
Lyra stared at her helplessly. “He knows not to wander too far alone.”
“I know.”
“He hates loud places.”
“I know.”
Her breathing started shaking harder. “He wouldn’t leave with strangers.”
Sherrell stepped closer carefully. “Lyra, stop. I know all this.”
“What if his father found him?” The words cracked apart the moment they left her mouth. “What if Boden saw the guards take me and thought Beckett was vulnerable enough to grab?”
“I’ll agree that Boden is an evil man.” Sherrell’s expression darkened immediately. “But we don’t know that he has his son.”
“But we don’t know he doesn’t either.”
The panic she had been barely holding back all morning finally broke through her defenses. Lyra pressed both shaking hands over her face as tears burned hot against freezing skin because she had promised Beckett over and over that no one would take him back there again.
She had promised, and now he was gone.
Sherrell wrapped steady arms around her shoulders while the baker quietly turned away to give her what little privacy he could inside the small shop. Lyra could barely hear anything over the roaring terror inside her own head.
“I can’t lose him,” she whispered brokenly. “I can’t.”
“You haven’t,” Sherrell said firmly despite the worry in her own voice. “We’re still looking.”
Before Lyra could answer, the sharp ring of the bakery phone cut suddenly through the room.
All three of them froze.
Meren glanced toward the counter, unease flickering across her face before she reached for the receiver. She answered cautiously.
A pause followed.
Then her expression changed abruptly as her eyes lifted straight toward Lyra.
“It’s for you.”