~LYRA'S POV~
I heard the commotion from the upper corridor, voices in the main hall carrying that particular edge that happens when someone important and unexpected arrives. I came down the east stairwell and stopped on the last step.
Ari Voss was standing in the centre of Silverclaw's main hall like she'd been there before and found it adequate.
She was dressed in deep burgundy, fitted perfectly, her blonde hair arranged in a way that looked effortless and wasn't. Three men flanked her loosely, I recognised the build of Kael's guard rotation, even if I didn't know their names. They weren't wearing Shadowfang colours. They weren't wearing anything identifiable at all, which told me everything about how carefully this visit had been planned.
Ryland was already there, composed as always, his hand extended in formal greeting. Ari took it with both of hers and said something that made the people nearest to her smile.
She hadn't looked at me yet.
Which meant she'd known exactly where I was since the moment I'd appeared at the top of the stairs.
I came down the rest of the steps and crossed the hall. I didn't hurry and I didn't slow down.
Ryland glanced at me as I reached his side, a brief look that carried about four separate questions, none of which I answered.
"Lyra," Ari said, turning to me with her smile fully in place. It was the kind of smile that made the room feel slightly tilted. Warm on the surface, precise underneath.
"You look well."
"Ari," I said.
That was it. We stood there for a moment while the hall moved around us, and her eyes did that thing they'd always done, a full, cataloguing sweep that started at my dress and ended at my face, taking stock, calculating the gap between what she'd expected and what she was looking at.
Whatever she found, she kept it behind the smile.
"Silverclaw suits you," she said pleasantly, to Ryland.
"The pack has a particular warmth. You've built something admirable here."
"We appreciate the visit," Ryland said, in the tone he used when he was being careful.
Ari stayed through dinner. She was charming and well-spoken and made exactly the right comments to exactly the right people, and everyone around her relaxed incrementally while I watched from across the table and did not relax at all.
—
She found me in the east corridor an hour after dinner.
I'd been heading back to my room with a book under my arm, I heard her steps behind me just before her hand closed around my arm, not roughly, just firmly enough to stop my forward movement.
I turned.
We were alone. The corridor was empty in both directions.
"You should know," Ari said, with that same pleasant tone she'd been using all evening, "that everything you have right now, the gown, the title, those three men following you around, it's temporary."
She tilted her head slightly. "Women like you don't hold things like this. They borrow them."
"Women like me," I said.
"Slaves," she said, letting the word land gently, almost affectionately, like she was doing me a kindness by being direct.
"Girls with no wolf, no bloodline, no business standing where you're standing. You can dress it up, Lyra. You're quite good at that, I'll admit. But the people in that hall tonight?
They know the difference between a Luna and a placeholder."
"That's interesting coming from someone who spent years being chosen and still got left behind."
Her smile thinned. Just slightly. "Careful."
"I'm not being careless," I countered.
"I'm being accurate. Kael picked you deliberately. You had everything you just described, the bloodline, the wolf, the standing. And he still ends up showing up here, in this pack, in this corridor, while you're arriving uninvited with borrowed guards to check on a woman you said was beneath your notice."
I looked at her steadily.
"If I'm just a placeholder, why are you the one making the trip?"
Something moved behind her eyes. Hot and fast, there and then controlled.
"You think this is over?" she said, her voice dropping the pleasant register entirely.
"You think because you're wearing a title and Ryland Thorn has decided you're interesting, you're untouchable? I have been in this world far longer than you. I know how these things end for girls who climb too quickly."
"And yet here I am," I said. "Still climbing."
"For now," she said.
"You've been saying that for a long time," I told her. "And I keep not falling."
I looked down at her hand, still on my arm. I didn't pull away. I just looked at it the way you look at something that has forgotten it doesn't belong where it is, steady and unhurried, until she felt the look and slowly removed her grip.
Then I looked back up at her face.
"Last time you spoke to me," I said quietly, "I was on my knees. Look at where we're both standing now."
With that, I turned and walked away.
I kept my pace even, my spine straight, and my breathing measured. I didn't speed up until I had turned the corner and moved far enough down the next corridor that there was no way she could hear me.
Then I pressed my back against the wall and let out a slow, shaking breath.
My heart was going at twice its normal speed. My hands were steady, I'd made sure of that before I'd turned away, but the rest of me was catching up to what had just happened, the adrenaline finding its way out now that there was no one to see it.
I stood there for a minute to compose myself. Maybe two.
Then I straightened up and went to my room.
As I entered and closed the door behind me, something made me stop.
In fact, I froze because there, sitting on my pillow, was a letter.
It hadn't been slipped under the door or tucked into a pocket; it was right on my pillow. That meant someone had entered my room while I was at dinner or in the corridor with Ari.
They had been in here, close enough to touch the bed where I slept.
I stood there for a long moment, just staring at it, before I made myself cross the room and pick it up.
My hands were no longer steady.
I opened it slowly. The first thing I noticed was the handwriting… the same sharp, slanted ink as before, the same hard pressure into the page, like whoever held the pen had been angry while doing it. Same person… same hand.
But what sent chills down my spine was the message itself.
"You've been warned, but you're still here. Next time won't be a letter."
My heart skipped a beat.