“It is,” Brady said simply, “just for a briefer time than in the northern hemisphere and only in certain regions. You’ll have to forgive me for testing you, it’s a habit leftover from childhood. Most people didn’t appreciate being corrected by a scrawny little kid who’d skipped three grades, especially one who looked like me, so I developed a habit of saying things that were slightly wrong to see what other people knew—and what they didn’t.”
“Was anything you said just now atest?” Lyra pressed. “The bit about Orpheus, maybe?”
“No.” Without another word, Brady moved on—to another constellation. “Monoceros, the unicorn. That one’s fainter than Lyra, faint enough that it wasn’t one of Ptolemy’s original forty-eight constellations. But Aquila, the eagle? Its brightest star, Altair, is also a part of the Summer Triangle.”
Brady went off on a tangent there about ancient Egypt and Babylon, but Lyra focused on what he’d already given them:Lyra, also known as the Lyre of Orpheus, falling vulture, Arthur’s harp. And Aquila—the eagle.
And just like that, Lyra saw it. If Grayson had been there, Lyra would have looked to him, but in his absence, she looked to Libby. “Where’s Zara?” Lyra asked, her heart thudding in her chest, her brain exploding with the realization she’d just had. “Where are the keys?”
“Follow me.” Gigi beat Libby to an answer. “I hope you like stairs.”
Chapter 70
LYRA
Zara was alone in the tower when they arrived, but in a matter of seconds, the room was full. Everyone had followed, except for Brady and Oren, who’d stayed back to keep an eye on Brady. Lyra scanned the keys on the floor—first the larger group and then the smaller one. She found the eagle first and then the harp.
“Lyra, the harp,” Lyra said. “Aquila, the eagle.” She scanned the rest of the keys. “Are any of the rest of these constellations?”
Knox pulled the scorpion key. “Scorpious.” He reached for the dragon. “Draco.”
Draco.Lyra’s heart skipped a beat. Per Eve’s file, the surnames that Lyra’s father had used most frequently had been Aquila, Reyes, andDrakos.
“Everything okay in here?” Nash said from the doorway.
“More of the same,” Libby told him. “Constellations.”
More of the same.Lyra could feel herself reaching a turning point.Something has to change.
“The edges!” Gigi popped up next to Lyra from who knows where. “Forget the designs on the heads of the keys and look only at theflourishesaroundthem. If you focus on the borders…” Gigi confiscated Lyra’s keys, then went for Knox’s, and then she gathered all the letter keys and began going through them one by one.
Slate’s lips curved very, very slightly. “She’s pulling the matches—one letter for each of those keys.”
Four letters.Lyra took them in.A,J,K, andQ.
“Avery and Jameson?” Libby guessed for the first two. “Or theAcould be forAlice.”
Another puzzle. Another game. More of the same.Lyra could feel a pressure building in her chest. Something had to change. She’d promised Grayson that she would stay at Hawthorne House, safe and sound, protected by all of Oren’s security measures. But Lyra wasn’t sure how many more puzzles or dead ends or questions she could take.
“I need some air.” She stood. “I’ll check with Oren to see what perimeter I need to stay within, but I’m going for a run.”
Even inside the security perimeter, the Hawthorne estate offered plenty of terrain for Lyra to conquer. With only the light of the moon overhead, she pushed herself harder and farther and faster, and all the while, she just kept thinking thatnothingwould change unless she changed it.
Unless she took a risk.
But every time she even considered it, she remembered her promise—and everything else. Pulling each other back from cliffs. Knowing Grayson and being known by him. The way he’d looked in the woods at Mile’s End and the way it had felt to shave his face.
Seven days.It had only been seven days. Just one week, and Lyracouldn’tbreak her promise to him, but something had to change. She ended up in the forest—as far out as she could go with Oren’s blessing. It took her longer than it should have to realize she had a shadow.
“I don’t need a babysitter,” Lyra called back.
“Clearly not.” Nash didn’t even have to work to catch up to her now that his cover was blown. “You don’t need a babysitter,” he said, pulling even with her. “You need to run.”
“You don’t have to keep me company,” Lyra told him. “I’m fine.”
She could practically hear Grayson:You don’t have to befine.
“Gray swims to calm his mind,” Nash said steadily. “Or he used to, anyway. He’d swim until every muscle in his body was screaming, until he could barely keep himself afloat. For Jamie, it’s always been either going too fast or being up too high. Xander tends more toward eating scones and playing with explosives. We all have our ways of processing things.”