Chapter 2: The Bride Who Fell Between Worlds
Lyra Valtheris had grown up in velvet halls drenched in legacy and blood, where every chandelier was a reminder of the Valtheris name and every dress had been tailored for a future somebody else had chosen before she was old enough to object.
Now, with the taste of blood in her mouth and agony burning through what remained of her limbs, she realized she had finally escaped all of it.
The halls.
The promises.
The engagement.
Possibly several important pieces of herself.
Freedom, Lyra discovered, was rather more painful than the stories suggested.
But it was still freedom.
She was sixteen years old.
Cassian Solvaris was several centuries older.
Lyra had always considered that an excellent beginning to the list of reasons they should not marry.
Unfortunately, her father had disagreed long before Lyra had been born.
Her hand had been promised to the son of an old friend, and among the great houses of the Dark Dimension, a promise was not merely something said over wine and forgotten once everyone sobered up. Reputation survived longer than kingdoms. Oaths could outlive the people who made them. Her father had given his word.
Lyra had inherited the consequences.
Cassian was the son of a Sage Realm Dark Phoenix, old enough to have watched human dynasties rise and disappear, powerful enough that very few people were interested in offending his family, and wealthy enough to mistake possession for affection.
He also collected women.
Cassian preferred the word lovers.
Lyra preferred several other words, most of which were unsuitable for formal dinners.
He already had many.
He wanted Lyra too.
Worse, he had made it clear that marriage would not concern Lyra alone. Her attendants, close companions and female subordinates had attracted his attention as well. He spoke of taking them into his household with the casual certainty of a man choosing which paintings would decorate his new estate.
Lyra had smiled politely when he said it.
She had then spent the evening imagining several creative uses for a dinner knife.
She was elegant like that.
Her brother had tried.
That was perhaps what made everything worse.
He was ancient by human standards and had already reached the Sage Realm, one of the most powerful beings Lyra personally knew. If the matter had been settled by combat, Cassian would have been considerably less enthusiastic about the marriage.
But swords could not cut old promises.
Her brother could threaten.
Negotiate.
Delay.
He could make certain Cassian obeyed every word of the agreement.
What he could not easily do was erase their father's oath without dragging House Valtheris through a political war involving powers old enough to remember why such promises mattered in the first place.
Lyra had begged.
Argued.
Schemed.
Then argued again with better preparation.
Nothing changed the central fact.
Eventually, she was expected to marry Cassian Solvaris.
There were worse fates.
Lyra knew that.
Knowing it did not make this one acceptable.
She wanted something embarrassingly simple.
Romance.
One man.
One woman.
Love.
Perhaps flowers.
She was flexible regarding flowers.
She wanted the ridiculous stories she read when nobody important was watching. Manga hidden behind political histories. Anime watched late at night with attendants sworn to secrecy. Knights. Heroes. Adventures. The maiden trapped in the tower while some handsome idiot crossed half the world to save her.
Her closest friends knew.
Her brother knew.
Everyone else knew Lyra Valtheris as intelligent, composed and elegant.
That reputation depended heavily upon nobody inspecting the books beneath her bed.
For years she had imagined her hero arriving on a white horse.
At sixteen, Lyra finally reached an uncomfortable conclusion.
He was terribly late.
So she would have to save herself.
The answer came from a very old record.
Moryo.
The name appeared in archives concerning worlds beyond her own.
The Dark Dimension was not merely another realm sitting beside Earth. It was a universe unto itself, a vast and hostile existence whose pathways touched many other universes.
Most creatures born there were things sensible civilizations pushed back whenever they found a doorway.
Lyra's people were different.
Demons, certainly.
But demons capable of civilization, negotiation and restraint.
Long ago, agreements had allowed their kind to enter the universe containing Earth rather than being driven back with the rest of the things that crawled from the Dark Dimension.
Earth itself possessed a hidden world.
Mages.
Ki cultivators.
Supernatural species.
Creatures ordinary humans would have dismissed as myth.
They lived beside humanity without humanity ever truly seeing them, protected by methods established by the Sages of that universe. Ordinary people could walk past the supernatural their entire lives and never understand what they had witnessed.
But Earth was not Lyra's destination.
The archive spoke of somewhere farther away.
Another universe.
Moryo had crossed into it.
That had gone poorly.
The ancient creature had arrived expecting another weak world.
Instead, it encountered humans.
Not Earth's humans.
The records were fragmented, which Lyra found irritating because ancient historians apparently considered useful detail optional.
They spoke of beings who cultivated Ki in a manner unlike anything practiced on Earth.
Of warriors who crossed the heavens.
Of powers capable of reaching moons and stars.
Moryo had entered that universe.
Then Moryo had ceased to be a problem.
Lyra stared at that particular record for a very long time.
A world powerful enough to make an ancient monster disappear suddenly seemed like a remarkably attractive place to hide.
It was dangerous.
Possibly suicidal.
Completely unreasonable.
Her brother would have forbidden it.
Her friends would have helped her pack.
Lyra chose not to ask either group.
The portal ripped through her body like a blade.
That was the first indication that her plan might contain certain technical flaws.
Dimensional travel through established Dark Dimension pathways was supposed to be smooth.
This was not.
Something caught her between universes.
A barrier.
No—
something far greater than the barriers she knew.
It touched the portal and the portal began to collapse around her.
Lyra screamed.
Energy tore through her wings.
Bone cracked.
Flesh vanished.
For one impossible instant she felt as though the universe itself had noticed something foreign entering and simply decided no.
Then the damaged portal threw her through.
She fell.
Trees rushed upward.
The ground arrived with unnecessary enthusiasm.
Lyra hit hard enough to carve a trench through the clearing.
For several seconds there was nothing.
Then pain remembered her.
Her breath came shallow.
Blood filled her mouth.
Her right arm was gone.
Her left leg ended below the knee.
One wing had vanished almost entirely, while the other lay broken beneath her.
Lyra stared vaguely at the sky.
This was not how heroines escaped arranged marriages in manga.
She felt personally deceived.
Then someone stepped into view.
A boy.
Young.
Much younger than she expected.
Perhaps twelve.
Golden hair.
A training lance in one hand.
His clothes bore an emblem she did not recognize, and his expression contained none of the panic Lyra considered appropriate when discovering a mutilated demon falling from the heavens.
He simply looked at her.
Studying.
Curious.
She tried sensing him.
There was Ki.
But not the Ki she knew.
The difference was subtle enough to recognize and profound enough to make comparison almost useless. Like hearing two languages descended from the same ancient tongue.
Then Lyra sensed the others.
Her blood went cold.
Figures appeared from the forest.
One.
Three.
Six.
More beyond those.
Some had been there before she arrived.
Hidden.
Watching the boy.
Lyra couldn't properly measure them in her condition. Her senses were damaged, her magic unstable, and pain had turned concentration into an expensive luxury.
But she understood enough.
Strong.
Very strong.
Weapons appeared.
Their attention settled upon her.
Reasonable, Lyra supposed.
She had just fallen through whatever protected this place and damaged the landscaping.
The golden-haired boy looked at them.
Then at her.
He held a small pill between his fingers.
His expression changed.
Only slightly.
But when he spoke, his voice carried the casual certainty of someone accustomed to saying outrageous things and discovering that people listened.
"She is mine."
Lyra blinked.
The armed cultivators stopped.
Nobody attacked.
Nobody argued.
The boy stepped toward her.
Lyra's universal translation spell staggered into life and dragged meaning from the unfamiliar language.
Unfortunately, it confirmed that she had understood him perfectly.
She is mine.
Her thoughts moved sluggishly through pain.
She had crossed universes to escape one possessive man.
She had survived a dimensional barrier.
Lost an arm.
Lost a leg.
Nearly lost both wings.
And within minutes of landing, some golden-haired child had apparently claimed her.
Lyra stared at him through half-closed eyes.
Perhaps the white horse would arrive later.