Her fingers closed around a small glass vial.
She yanked it free, sobbing now, uncorking it with trembling hands and turning toward Caelum.
He was still on the ground. Collapsed. Eyes closed.
She crawled to him on her knees, bloodied hands shaking as she went to pour the liquid between his lips.
“Please— please wake up— I chose you— I killed him for you—please—”
Caelum’s eyes opened.
He looked at her.
Then at Adrian’s body.
Then back at her.
And smiled.
“Good girl. I knew you would make the right choice.”
* * *
The praise hit harder than anything else.
Lyra stumbled back, the vial slipping from her fingers, her hands slick with Adrian’s blood.
“You— you were—”
Caelum sat up slowly, the paralytic poison having no effect at all. He brushed dirt from his coat with casual ease, gray eyes bright with dark amusement.
“I wanted to see,” he said simply. “I wanted to see what you would choose. Your escape… or my life.”
She stared at him, devastated, the weight of what she had just done crashing down on her like the Collegium itself.
“You— you made me—”
He stood, towering over her, the choker at her throat suddenly feeling heavier than iron.
“And you chose correctly,” he murmured, reaching down to brush a bloodied strand of hair from her face. “My perfect, loyal girl.”
Lyra’s knees gave out.
She collapsed beside Adrian’s body, the knife still clutched in her hand, tears cutting clean tracks through the blood on her cheeks.
Caelum crouched beside her, one hand closing gently—possessively—around the back of her neck, thumb brushing the sapphire choker.
“You never would have made it far,” he said softly. “I placed a tracker spell in the choker the moment I fastened it. You were never going to escape me, Lyra. Not today. Not ever.”
She looked up at him, eyes wide and shattered.
He smiled.
And for the first time, the illusion was gone. There was no more pretense.
There was only the cage.
And the man who held the key.
