Lyra
I came back to consciousness slowly, like swimming up through something thick. The room was dim when my eyes finally opened, and the first thing I registered was the cold of the floor beneath me and the dull, relentless pounding behind my eyes. I tried to push myself upright and a wave of dizziness knocked me straight back down. I was alone. No Thorian. No Soren. No Vaelin. No one.
The realisation hit me like cold water — I had been taken.
I forced myself to focus, my eyes moving across the room as my mind tried to catch up. The space was strange in a way I hadn’t expected — not a cell, not a dungeon. It was almost obscenely luxurious. Velvet drapes, a four-poster bed, a marble fireplace, furnishings that looked like they belonged in a manor house rather than anywhere I had any bus
