The silence in the office was no longer a vacuum; it was a pressurized chamber. Lyra stared at the cream-colored folder resting on the mahogany desk as if it were a poisonous thing, something that could blister her skin if she touched it. The word marry rang in her ears, clashing violently with the hum of the city lights outside.
"You're insane," she whispered, her voice trembling not with fear, but with a burgeoning, white-hot fury.
Elias didn't blink. He stood perfectly still, the light from the desk lamp carving his features into sharp, unforgiving lines. "I am many things, Lyra. Insane is rarely one of them. I am a man with a specific set of requirements and a brother of yours who has provided me with the leverage to meet them."
"Leverage?" Lyra stood up so abruptly her chair scraped harshly against the polished floor. "You're talking about my life! You're talking about a human being like I'm a piece of equipment you can just... lease to fix your image!"
"I am talking about a trade," Elias countered, his voice remaining terrifyingly level. "Ten million dollars and twenty years of your brother's life in exchange for a temporary arrangement. If you would sit down and let me explain the parameters"
"I don't want to hear your parameters!" Lyra shouted, her composure finally snapping. She felt the paint on her cheek itch, a reminder of the girl she had been only hours ago, the girl who thought this man was a soul worth knowing. "You sat there in that museum, and you looked at that painting like you felt something. You looked at me like I was a person. Was that all a lie? Were you just scouting me? Checking to see if I was desperate enough to buy?"
Elias's jaw tightened, the only sign that her words had hit a nerve. "The gallery was a coincidence. A fortunate one, perhaps, but a coincidence nonetheless. My discovery of your brother's activities happened independently. However, seeing you there, seeing how you navigate a room, how you speak, how you carry yourself despite your... unconventional circumstances, it confirmed that you were the ideal candidate for what I require."
"The ideal candidate," she spat the words back at him. "Do you even hear yourself? You sound like a machine. You want a wife to show off to your board and your parents, so you find a girl whose family is drowning and you hold her brother's head under the water until she says yes."
"I am offering him a life, Lyra," Elias said, taking a slow step around the desk. He didn't move toward her with aggression, but his presence was a wall of cold air. "If I hand those files to the authorities, Dorian is gone. My parents will see to it that he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law to make an example of him. He will lose his youth, his sanity, and any chance of a future. I am giving you the power to stop that. All you have to do is play a part for twenty-four months."
"Twenty-four months," she laughed, a jagged, bitter sound. "Two years of waking up in your house. Two years of lying to the world. Two years of belonging to a man who thinks he can own the light because he has enough money to buy the windows."
"You would be well compensated," Elias added, as if he were discussing a holiday bonus. "A legal settlement at the end of the term that would ensure you and your mother never want for anything. You could paint in a studio that isn't a drafty closet. You could..."
"Stop," Lyra commanded, her hand flying up. "Just stop. You think everyone has a price. You think because my brother is a thief, I must be a commodity. Well, I'm not. I don't care how much money you have, Elias Thorne. I don't care how big this building is. You can't have me."
She grabbed her messenger bag, the strap digging into her shoulder. She felt a sudden, desperate need to get out of this room, away from the sterile scent of wealth and the suffocating logic of the man standing before her.
"Lyra," Elias said, his voice dropping to that low, vibrating hum she had once found intriguing. Now, it just sounded like a threat. "Think about your mother. Think about what a trial would do to her. Think about Dorian in a state facility. He wouldn't survive a month."
"Don't you dare use them against me," she hissed, her eyes burning with tears she refused to let fall. "You're not saving my family. You're destroying it. You're just doing it with a pen instead of a cage."
She turned on her heel and marched toward the massive double doors. She didn't look back at the view, or the desk, or the folder. She didn't look back at him.
"Ellis Woods is waiting in the hall," Elias called out, his voice following her like a shadow. "He will have a car take you home. Take the night, Lyra. Look at your mother. Look at your brother's empty room. Then tell me that your pride is worth more than their lives."
Lyra didn't answer. She slammed the doors behind her with a force that echoed through the marble foyer. Ellis Woods was indeed standing there, his expression a mask of professional neutrality. He stepped forward as if to speak, but Lyra brushed past him, her heart thundering against her ribs.
"I don't want your car," she snapped at the lawyer. "I'll walk."
"Miss Sinclair, it's late, and this neighborhood..."
"I said I'll walk!"
She hit the elevator button and practically fell inside the car when the doors opened. As the lift plummeted toward the ground floor, Lyra leaned her head against the cool metal wall and finally let out a choked sob. The man she had sketched... the man she had thought was a "bruise starting to heal"... he was the one causing the injury.
When she hit the street, the cold night air slapped her in the face. The financial district was a ghost town at this hour, the massive skyscrapers looming over her like tombstones. She began to walk, her mismatched sneakers slapping against the pavement in a frantic, uneven rhythm.
She walked for blocks, her mind a chaotic blur of charcoal and marigold. She thought of Dorian's face behind the glass at the precinct. She thought of her mother, Vivienne, sitting at their small kitchen table, waiting for Dorian to come home for shepherd's pie. How was she supposed to tell her? How was she supposed to explain that their golden boy was a criminal?
By the time she reached the subway, the adrenaline was beginning to wear off, replaced by a hollow, aching dread. She sat on the plastic bench of the train, surrounded by the late-night tired and the city's restless, and looked at her reflection in the dark window.
The paint was still there, a tiny smudge on her cheekbone. It looked like a mark of shame now. It was a reminder of the girl who had walked into that gallery with a peppermint and a smile, thinking the world was a place where you could just talk to people and find the hidden violet in their souls.
"He's the void," she whispered to her reflection. "He isn't the light. He's the thing that swallows it."
She reached her apartment building and climbed the three flights of stairs, her legs feeling like lead. When she pushed open the door, the familiar scent of linseed oil and lavender didn't comfort her. It felt like a taunt.
Maeve wasn't home yet; she was likely still at her double shift or perhaps she had gone straight to Vivienne's. Barnaby meowed as she entered, trotting over to rub his head against her ankles, but Lyra couldn't even bring herself to pick him up.
She walked over to her easel. The abstract she had worked on, the pillar of blue being encroached by gold, stared back at her. She picked up a palette knife, her hand trembling. With a sudden, violent movement, she slashed a line of black paint directly across the center of the canvas, obliterating the gold.
"You want a part, Elias?" she muttered, the tears finally spilling over. "You want a match of pure passion?"
She threw the palette knife against the wall and sank to the floor, burying her face in her hands. The silence of the studio was deafening. She wanted to believe she could fight him. She wanted to believe there was another way, a lawyer she could hire, a loan she could take, a miracle that would drop from the sky.
But as she sat there in the dark, surrounded by the remnants of her father's dreams and her brother's failures, she could still feel the weight of that cream-colored folder. She could still hear the clinical, devastating logic of Elias Thorne.
He was right about one thing: she was standing in a hole she couldn't climb out of.
She stayed on the floor for hours, watching the shadows of the city move across her ceiling. She told herself she would never go back. She told herself she would rather go to jail with Dorian than spend a single night in that man's house.
But then she thought of her mother's heart. She thought of the way Vivienne still wore her father's wedding ring on a chain around her neck, how she believed in the goodness of her children above all else.
Lyra closed her eyes, and all she could see was a charcoal suit and a pair of eyes that had seen the violet but chose the black.