After the life I had lived, Lyra Bien would be wise not to trust me. I’d be half-decent if I left her be, if I kept a watchful distance.

I settled in front of the door, hand on my blade, senses alert. Trouble was, I wasn’t certain there was much decency left in me.

40

Lyra

I couldn’t breathe. There was pressure over my mouth, my body.

Someone was on top of me.

My eyes snapped open and a muffled scream peeled from my chest. A gaze of copper and blood hovered above me. Darkness in the room shaded the cowl over his head, the mask covering his mouth, the pallid gray sheen of his skin, but I needed little light to know who pinned me to the furs on the ground.

Skul Drek raised a finger over his masked lips, mutely demanding I keep quiet.

A whimper sliced through his leather-wrapped fingers. His palm still covered my mouth, but I tried to nudge my face to the side.

The assassin merely added more pressure, holding me still.

He was oddly solid and heavy, a body of muscle and strength, but also cold shadows. He’d played me a fool, drawing me to a strange sort of ease near him, and now he found me in the night and would end me.

Outside light glowed like a bleary lantern through the open window. My head spun when the walls cracked and peeled with blackened rot. Cold washed over me in a roaring wave and all at once, the heat of my chamber faded into a dank, mirrored chamber.

Gods, all gods, Skul Drek could drag me away into the trance of his wretched mirror world without melding. What was he? A blood crafter? A demon from the hells?

I kicked and thrashed, desperate to scream, desperate for a hint of my voice to break through the trance. Roark was on watch; if he could but hear me, the Sentry would take the assassin’s head.

My insides twisted in sick knots—or Skul Drek would take Roark from me.

“We had to slip away. You can’t be heard.” A scorching heat boiled in my skull, and the gritty, thick rasp of Skul Drek’s voice.

I let out a scream all the same, muffled under his palm. Skul Drek hissed and stroked a finger down my cheek. “You needed to be warned.”

I blinked through the coils of his inky cloak, my body going still. With my other hand, I patted his arm until he eased the unnerving pressure of his weight off my mouth.

I rubbed my jaw, glaring at him. “Warned of what? How did you do this? How did you bring me here?”

Skul Drek leaned forward, drawing close enough I felt the scratch of frigid wool over his face, half-solid, half-dark. “The gates have cracked. Keep out of sight.”

He lifted slightly, letting me breathe.

“How am I here?”