Lyra's POV
The memory hit me like lightning, stealing the breath from my lungs.
Stubborn. That single word echoed through my mind, though Father had actually used two. Stubborn and reckless. The sound of that lock clicking shut still haunted me, trapping me in my room like some wayward child who dared to defy the healers' grim pronouncement about my mother's fate.
I had been forbidden from leaving Willow Brook territory after my desperate attempts to find a cure. The grinding of forbidden herbs in secret chambers, the frantic hope that somehow I could slow the disease devouring her from within. All of it deemed too dangerous to Father's carefully maintained reputation. They called my efforts foolishness, claiming I was only torturing myself with impossible dreams.
But locks had never stopped me before.
The estate's secret passages had been my salvation, allowing me to slip away undetected when the guards grew complacent.
