Chapter 6

Lyra's POV

I was alive.

The realization didn't hit me until the car door slammed shut and the engine rumbled beneath my legs. Until I felt the solid warmth of a body under mine, arms locked around my waist, and the gate of the Southern estate growing smaller through the tinted glass.

The welts on my back screamed with every bump in the road. My lip was split. There was dried blood under my fingernails from where I'd clawed at the stone floor. But I was breathing.

Through the rear window, the manor's iron gates shrank to a dark line,…