The sun rose the morning after Lyra's meeting with Elias Thorne with an agonizing indifference, casting bright, cheerful light over the stacks of unpaid bills on her kitchen counter. It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since her world was upright, but as she sat at the small wooden table, the air in the studio felt thin, as if the walls were slowly exhaling the last of the oxygen.
"Lyra, talk to me. You're vibrating like a live wire, and you've been staring at that piece of toast for twenty minutes, what's wrong"
Maeve was sitting across from her, her red hair tied back in a messy bun, her face etched with a rare, deep concern. She had come home from her shift to find Lyra slumped on the floor, and the frantic energy coming off her best friend was enough to make the air hum.
"It's Dorian," Lyra finally said, her voice sounding like it was being dragged over gravel. "He's... he's in the 14th Precinct, Maeve. He's been arrested."
The color drained from Maeve's face. "Arrested? For what? Did he get into a bar fight? Please tell me it's just something stupid."
"Embezzlement," Lyra whispered. She couldn't bring herself to say the amount yet. Ten million sounded like a fairy tale, a number so large it lost all meaning until you realized it was the weight of a mountain sitting on her brother's chest. "From Thorne Logistics. They have everything, Maeve. Records, bypass logs... they say he's been doing it for over a year."
Maeve let out a long, low whistle, sinking back into her chair. "Mother of God. Dorian? I knew he was chasing the high life, but I didn't think he'd jump off a cliff to catch it. What did the lawyer say? Can we get him out?"
"I met with the CEO last night," Lyra said, her heart stuttering. She finally looked up, her eyes wide and glassy.
Maeve blinked. "Who? The CEO? What do you mean?
"Maeve... it's him. The man from the museum. Lyra breathed, therealization still tasting like ash. The one I told you about. 'Elias.' The man who looked at the void and saw the octopus. It was him. He's Elias Thorne. He stood there and let me offer him a peppermint, let me tell him about 'finding a way out,' while he already had the evidence to destroy my brother sitting on his desk."
Maeve's jaw dropped. "You're joking. The brooding statue in the charcoal suit is the one who has Dorian in a cell? Lyra, that's not a coincidence. That's... that's twisted."
"He said it was a coincidence," Lyra said, a bitter laugh escaping her. "But it doesn't matter. He's cold, Maeve. Like a machine. He didn't even acknowledge the gallery. He just wanted to show me how much power he had. He's holding the bail because of the magnitude of the theft. He told me it was insurmountable." He offered a settlement, but it's impossible. It's not something we can do.
"We have to tell your mom," Maeve said firmly. "We can't keep this from her, Ly. If he's going to be arraigned, she needs to know."
The walk to their mother's small apartment on the edge of Queens felt like a funeral procession. Vivienne Sinclair was a woman of quiet grace, a former librarian who had spent her life surrounded by books and the vibrant chaos of her husband's art. When they arrived, she was in her small garden patch, tending to the late-blooming marigolds that lyra had always loved.
"Lyra! Maeve! What a lovely surprise," Vivienne chirped, wiping her soil-stained hands on her apron. "I was just thinking about making some tea. Where's Dorian? He promised he'd help me with the trellis today."
Lyra felt the first sob break through her ribs. She didn't say a word; she just fell into her mother's arms and wept.
The conversation that followed was the hardest of Lyra's life. Telling her mother that her son was a thief was like watching a beautiful painting be bleached of all its color. Vivienne didn't scream or wail. She sat very still at her small kitchen table, her hand clutching the wedding ring on the chain around her neck, looking at the empty space where Dorian usually sat. Her eyes glanced at a photo of Lucian on the mantle.
"We have to help him," Vivienne said, her voice trembling. "He's a good boy, Lyra. He just... he wanted to give us everything we lost when your father died." "He didn't understand that we didn't want the things; we just wanted him,"
They spent the entire afternoon in a frantic, desperate search for an alternative. They called every family friend and every distant relative. Lyra watched as her mother pulled out an old, velvet-lined box containing her few pieces of jewelry, her grandmother's pearls, a pair of modest gold earrings.
"We can sell these," Vivienne said, her eyes bright with a fragile hope. "And I have the small savings from the library pension. It isn't much, but surely for a first offense..."
Lyra didn't have the heart to tell her that the pearls wouldn't even cover a single hour of a Thorne-level lawyer's time. Instead, they went to see a legal aid attorney Maeve knew from the cafe, a harried woman named Sarah.
Sarah met them in a cramped office, her desk buried under a landslide of folders. After reviewing the notes Lyra had managed to jot down from her meeting with Ellis Woods, Sarah sighed and leaned back, the fluorescent light flickering overhead.
"I'll be honest with you, Mrs. Sinclair," Sarah said, her voice softening with pity. "This isn't a simple case. If Thorne Logistics has the evidence they claim, this is a federal-level crime. The complainant is one of the most powerful families in the state. They don't just want their money back; they want to make an example of him. To even mount a defense, you'd need a high-tier white-collar firm. Their retainers start at fifty thousand dollars. And that's just to get them to pick up the phone."
"Fifty thousand?" Vivienne whispered, her hand going to her throat. "We don't have fifty dollars to spare after the rent is paid."
"And the bail?" Lyra asked, her voice tight. "There has to be a way to get him home while we figure this out."
"For an amount like ten million? Even if a judge grants bail, you're looking at a million-dollar bond. You'd need to put up collateral, property, land, significant assets. Do you own this home, Mrs. Sinclair?"
"We rent," Vivienne said, her voice barely audible.
"Then I'm sorry," Sarah said, closing the folder. "Unless you can find a way to satisfy the complainant, to get them to withdraw the charges, Dorian is going to stay in that cell until his court date. And based on the evidence, he's looking at twenty years."
The walk back to the subway was silent. The city, which usually felt like a canvas of endless possibility to Lyra, now felt like a predatory, grey machine. She watched her mother's slumped shoulders and realized that Vivienne was aging ten years with every block they walked.
They dropped Vivienne off at home, promising to stay, but Vivienne insisted she needed to pray. Lyra and Maeve made the trek back to their studio, the air between them thick with a hopelessness that felt like lead.
Once inside, the studio was dark. Barnaby meowed from the shadows, sensing the distress. Lyra went straight to her easel and looked at the canvas she had slashed with black paint the night before.
She felt the weight of the secret in her pocket, the memory of Elias Thorne's voice offering her a way out. She hadn't told them. She couldn't bring herself to say the words contract marriage to her mother, or even to Maeve yet. It felt too dirty, too much like a confession of her own worthlessness.
"We've tried everything, Ly," Maeve said, leaning against the counter and rubbing her tired eyes. "Every favor, every contact, every penny we can scrape together. It's not enough. It's not even close. That lawyer looked at us like we were already mourning him."
Lyra didn't answer. She stood in front of the window, looking out at the city skyline. Far off, the Thorne Building stood taller than the rest, its crown of lights glowing like a cold, artificial star, watching over the city it owned.
She realized then that there were no more phone calls to make. No more jewelry to sell. No more miracles to wait for. The world had narrowed down to a single office, a single man, and a single folder.
"I know," Lyra whispered, her fingers curling into a fist.
She looked at her paints, at the life she had tried to build, and realized it was all just colorful dust compared to the cold, hard steel of the Thorne legacy. They had tried their hardest, and they had failed. They were exactly where Elias Thorne wanted them to be, with nowhere else to turn.