Chapter Two The Last Warning
That night, Lyra could not sleep.
She sat by her window and watched the strange stars turn slowly overhead, like the hands of a clock built by someone who did not believe in time the way she did.
A knock came at her window. Not loud. Just enough to make her jump.
She opened it, and a woman climbed inside — small, quick, with silver hair pulled back tight and eyes that missed nothing.
Lyra recognized her at once. Ilka. An old friend of Cassian's, from a group who called themselves the Watchers.
They had helped Lyra and Cassian in Book Two, when the ancient enemies first came hunting.
"You should not be here," Ilka said, glancing behind her like she expected to be followed. "Not with that door open in your house."
"You know about the door?" Lyra asked.
"Everyone who matters knows about the door. It only opens for one reason, girl. It opens when the Kingdom of Echoes needs the two of you inside it."
"Needs us? Why?"
Ilka's face grew serious. "I do not know the full answer. No one alive does. But I know this — the enemies who hunt you and Cassian, the ones your storybooks would call the Hollow Court, they want that door open too. They have wanted it open for a very long time."
Lyra's stomach tightened. "The Hollow Court. Cassian told me about them. He said they fear us."
"They do not fear you," Ilka said. "They fear what you remember. Every life you live, every memory you recover, it chips away at something they have spent centuries trying to bury."
"Bury what?"
Ilka shook her head. "That is not mine to tell. Ask Cassian. Though I doubt he will give you a full answer either."
There was something in the way she said it — a warning wrapped inside the words.
"What do you mean?" Lyra asked.
Ilka hesitated at the window, one leg already back outside. "I mean that Cassian Vale has carried secrets longer than most kingdoms have carried kings. He carries them because he loves you. But love does not always mean honesty, girl. Remember that, when you walk through that door."
And then she was gone, disappearing into the dark street below, leaving Lyra alone with the star-shaped door and a warning she could not shake.
When Lyra finally slept, she dreamed of a woman with Lyra's own face, standing in a hall of endless doors, whispering the same four words, over and over.
"He is not telling you everything."