Lyra wasn’t charmed. “You agreed to help with the cover-up? Agreed to disappear so they could pretend you were the one who’d died?”
“I’m the agreeable sort.” He’d introduced himself as Tom. JustTom.
“And I’m your daughter,” Lyra said tautly, her voice coming out lower than she’d meant for it to.
“You were never really mine, princess. You were always hers, your mother’s, and she was always so—”
“I don’t need you to tell me a damn thing about my mother,” Lyra cut in. “I don’t need you to tell me that she’s a thousand times the person you are.” Lyra was almost incredulous.Princess?He was the kind of manwho had a term of endearment for everyone, and he’d gone withprincessfor her?
“It’s funny.” He punctuated the words with a wry, sly shake of his head. “You look so much like my little sister, but that—that steel, that passion, that tilt to your chin—it’s all Darcy.”
Lyra stared at him. Was hekidding? “Darby,” she said, and just like that, she realized that there was almost nothing else she needed to know about this man. “There’s a lot of my mom in me,” Lyra said slowly, “but if it’s any consolation, I’m also a hell of a lot like my dad, my real dad, the man who raised me—andnothinglike you.”
And there it was again, that wry, infuriating, oh-so-charming shake of his head.
“Tell me about Katalin.” Lyra cut to the only thing she wanted from this man, the only thing she would ever want from him. “Give me something. Anything.”
Anything that might help me help Grayson.
“She’s dead.” He shrugged, and con man or not, Lyra’s gut said he believed that. “Beyond that? Kat was pretty quiet growing up. Killed a frat boy once, though, less than a year before she died. The guy deserved it. I helped her cover it up.”
Lyra wondered if that was why an Ascendant of the Gilded Blade had chosen Katalin—not just that she had the blood, but that she’d shownthatkind of promise. “What did he do to deserve it?” Lyra asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
Lyra thought about Alice’s poem. About Nan’s fingers. About Eve and that teacher of hers. “Maybe I do.”
“You asked forsomething. I gave you something.” For a moment, Lyra thought he was going to try to get something from her in return. He didn’t. “I’ll give you this, too. My sister bought a blanket for you before you were ever born. Darby might even still have it.”
At least he’d gotten her mom’s name right this time.
As if he could feel Lyra’s judgment, her father’s brown eyes grew a little more intent. “For all my flaws,” he said, “I loved my sister. My brother, too. As much as I am capable of loving anyone, I loved them. ButI’m not big on mourning, and I also truly love the easy life.” He turned the phone in his hand and Lyra was able to make out a beach, the ocean, the sunrise. He turned the phone back around. “I lovethislife.”
But not me. Never me.“And that’s it?” Lyra clarified the question before he could take it the wrong way. “Katalin killed a man who deserved it. She bought a blanket for your unborn daughter. And that’s it. That’s all you have to tell me?”
“My brother was the obsessive one, the one who could never let anything go. Look where that got him. And look at me, princess.”
This is a waste of time.Lyra didn’t want that to be true, but it was. Grayson was still out there. He still might not come back. And nothing this man had to say would change that.
Look at me, princess.
Lyra let it all come, every last emotion. She let it all go. And then, she told Luiz Aquila Reyes, the man of a hundred names, the truth. “I don’t see anything worth looking at.”
Chapter 88
LYRA
It took three minutes after that phone call for Lyra to hit the point where sheneededto dance. Not because of a man who’d never cared about her. Not because her biological father had proved to be yet another dead end. Not even because every question she’d spent the past three years obsessing about had been answered.
Because her phone wasn’t ringing. Because no one else’s was either. Because Lyra didn’t think she could stand another second of waiting, another second of hope warring with dread, of thinking that Graysonhadto be okay.
Has to. Has to. Has to.
Fortunately, Hawthorne House, being Hawthorne House, had its own theater, complete with a stage. As she climbed the steps up to it, Lyra had a morbid flash of premonition that said that if Grayson didn’t come back, she’d dance to feel him.
Every day.
No good-byes, Lyra reminded herself, rising into an arabesque and holding it. Her mind conjured up the feeling of Grayson’s hand on her waist. Slowly, painfully, that feeling faded, and Lyra came out of thearabesque and began to spin. There was an art to spotting, to fixing your gaze on one place and holding your head just so, whipping it around only once per turn to stave off dizziness.
