Chapter 4: Eat Something Too

Lyra's POV

Elias had picked the little place we've been to more times than I can count. End of a block in Brooklyn, one dead letter on the sign, menus in plastic sleeves, same short menu every time. He knows what I eat.

I got there late. He didn't mention it. First thing he did was look at my face.

I'd barely sat down when he looked up at me.

"You used it again. Too much again. Why are you this pale? I told you to be careful. That thing is not normal."

I hung my bag on the back of the chair across from me and didn't answer. My eyes went to the table first. He'd already ordered — the creamy mushroom pasta was sitting on my side, still steaming. "Elias, you're too good to me. Eat something too." I put some on his plate.

"You're white as a sheet," he went on, flat as reading out a bill. "How many times last week?"

"Let's eat first, I'm starving." I steered it off. "You really are too good to me. How is it everything you ordered is what I like? This one's good. This one's good too."

I picked up my fork and took a bite of pasta. "It's good. Try it."

I held the fork out to him.

"Get out of here," he said. "Don't change the subject."

I pulled the fork back and ate the bite myself, chewing slowly, like I was tasting it properly, like he hadn't said anything.

He waited me out.

That's how he's always been. He's quiet most of the time, but he takes his life seriously, and when he does he gets aggressive. He'll wait until you can't hold it in anymore and you open your mouth yourself. It's harder to handle than any interrogation.

"If you care about me, could you be gentler about it?" I said finally, with a little whine on the end. "You don't have to come at me the second I sit down."

He stared at me for a second, then gave me a fake smile, the kind that says there you go again. "If I'm gentler, will you listen?"

I nodded, guilty. In my head I was saying, no. No, I won't.

I looked back down at my plate and pressed the pasta flat with my fork. He was right. I don't listen — I have never listened to anyone about this. It's my ability. Mine. Why would I give it up just because there's a price?

"It's my weapon," I said, flatter than before. "It's my gift. It's God paying me back."

I believed that while I said it.

People hear ability and they think I read minds. It isn't like that. I don't walk in and pull whatever file I want, and I never get to ask. Skin-to-skin, and only when I'm the one who closes the gap — then whatever the person is carrying hands itself over. Sometimes it comes as a picture. Sometimes as a memory with no date on it. Sometimes as a want so naked it feels like mine for the ten seconds it's in there. And sometimes, when the person has already said everything and kept nothing back, the only thing left to hand over is words — his exact words, in his exact order. Same door every time. What's behind it isn't up to me.

Elias laughed, but he was irritated. "Paying you back for what? What exactly did God do?"

The question came like a gust of wind with no warning and pulled the old cloth off the memory. Neither of us said anything, because both of us knew the answer.

I was ten. The accounts got frozen, the assets got liquidated, my mother Elena was framed, and the company was seized and shut. Then they came for us. We ran. There were bullets. We found a place to hide and it didn't matter, because my mother wasn't going to survive. The blood wouldn't stop. She held me against her and kept apologizing. "Lyra. My baby. I'm so sorry. You have to live. I'm sorry. I'm the one who made it like this." Small as I was, I was crying and touching her body as it got colder. "Mom, there's so much blood. Are we going to die?"

Her hands were cupping my face and shaking so hard she couldn't hold them still. "You will not die. You are Elena Valente's daughter. You will not be ordinary." She took the necklace off her neck and pressed it into my hand. "I'm sorry, Lyra. Take it and run. Run forward and don't look back. Live. And remember the name Ronan Ashford."

Ronan Ashford. I had nothing to hang the name on that night but her voice and what was left of her pulse. Because she was dying and it was the last thing she wanted me to keep. It's been in my mouth every morning since.

Later I ended up at the orphanage, and I saw the story: Elena Valente, one of the co-founders of Cross, stole trade secrets and embezzled funds; discovered, she died by suicide to escape the charges.

I read it on the director's old phone. There was a crack down the screen and the words came through the crack. I stared at those two words — by suicide — for a long time. Long enough that they turned into two symbols with no meaning left in them.

Because I was in that room. I know what a woman dying looks like. Cross signed the story, and Cross is a name my mother built, and that is the part I keep coming back to.

From that day on, my life was a heap of mud.

I set the fork down. Softer than I meant to.

Elias spoke. "Lyra. Don't let the hate blind you. You've only got yourself left now."

I know he's right. I also know I'm not going to stop.

I reached across and closed my hand over his on the table. "What about you," I asked. "Are you giving up on me too?"

He looked down at my hand, then lifted it off and set it down. I thought he was going to say something serious, something with distance in it.

Then he put his hand back over mine and closed his fingers around mine. "You don't need to use it on me. It doesn't work. What you can read off me is just what I've already said to you. Isn't it?"

He knew. The ability only fires when I close the gap myself, on purpose.

He was right.

Every time I touch Elias, all that comes back is things he's said to me before. No hidden wants. No unspoken calculation. Just the words, exactly as they were. It isn't a different rule with him. It's the same door, and there's nothing behind it but everything he's already told me to my face. Even after he knows where I come from, he hasn't walked out.

My eyes went hot. I tipped my head down a little so he couldn't see it.

"You'll always be on my side. Right?"