Lie-ra.
Lie-ra.
The name echoed through Lyra’s mind as her gaze locked on the photograph of her father and her uncle and their mother holding an infant in that ratty blue blanket. Alisa had said thatAquilawas a maternal last name.
Lie-ra.
Aquila
Vega.
Monoceros.
Lyra could hear herself saying,My name is Lyra.
And her uncle had said:No, it isn’t.
And sometime after that, he’d said:A Hawthorne did this.And then:Don’t be afraid, Lyra Catalina. She will come for you.The smell of blood seeped into Lyra’s nostrils. She could feel it on her feet. And then Grayson’s hand was on the back of her neck, and reality settled back in around Lyra.
Reality was Grayson Hawthorne.
Reality was the warmth of his hand on her skin, the closeness of his body to hers.
Reality was the fact that he’d given dancing back to her and the way that she wanted to dance right now. But Lyra didn’t dance. Or cry. Or give into the memories. She just listened for the sound of Grayson’s breathing and timed the rise and fall of her chest to his.
And then Lyra fixed her gaze on Nora, just as Jameson pinned their visitor to the whiteboard.
“You know something.” Jameson’s voice was a rumble in his chest, somehow rendering the words as both an accusation and a plea.
“Jameson,” Oren warned. With what seemed to be Herculean effort, Jameson let Nora go, his hands dropping to his sides, though he didn’t take a single step back.
“In the grand scheme of things,” Nora said with an eerie sort of calm, “I know relatively little.”
Lyra managed to coerce her lips into moving. “Alice was supposed to choose you.” That was what Gigi had told them.
“You,” Jameson echoed in that same gut-wrenching tone. “Not Avery.”
“We could make you tell us what you know.” Grayson’s calm a match for Nora’s.
“You could try.”
Gigi leapt between Nora and her brother, brandishing her dry-erase marker. “I have some more additions to make to the board!” she announced, adding an asterisk to the timeline between Alice’s first Crucible in 1967 and her second, more than thirty years later.
“Helena said that Vega’s last Crucible happened when Calla was really young,” Gigi explained. “Timing-wise, that would almost certainly make Helena’s Vega the Judge during Alice’ssecondCrucible. Maybe Vega was the one who chose Alice? Or maybe there’s some other connection—between Alice and Vega, between Vega and you, Lyra.”
The brightest star in the constellationLyra? It’s calledVega.
Family lines?Lyra thought, but Gigi had said that Vega’s very dangerous family line—Nora’s family line—was in Europe, not Brazil. Lyra’sgaze went to the fleur-de-lis Gigi had drawn on the board, the one associated with Vega’s family.
Just looking at the omega symbol had the phantom smell of blood surging for Lyra once more, but she fought the memory and realized something.Omegas, plural.
“There are two omegas on this symbol.” Lyra walked to the board, like a moth pulled to the flame. “Lily.” She touched the bloom on the fleur-de-lis. “Monoceros.” The bottom point. “Omega.” First one side, then the other. “Omega again.” Lyra’s heart rate kicked up a notch.
“There are always three—but this symbol has four parts.” Lyra whipped her head toward Nora. “Four parts, and Calla’s necklace originated from a Candidate fromyourvery dangerous family line.”
Nora cocked her head to the side and slowly made her way toward Lyra, trailing her hand down the board as she went but never smearing any writing.
Lyra cut her gaze to Grayson in warning.Don’t stop her.