Chapter 129 SENT HOME

Chapter 129 SENT HOME
KAI

The door to Ser Thorian's office opened without a knock.

Principal Cerys walked in without announcing herself. She was a small woman but she filled every room she entered completely. She looked at me and Yvaine, and we both stood.

“Sit,” she ordered.

We sat.

She did not sit herself. She stood beside Ser Thorian’s desk and looked at us both with comprehensive attention.

“I’ll ask you both directly,” she began. “Do you know why Lyra flew into the realm of magic?”

Yvaine glanced at me. I looked at Cerys. “No,” I answered.

“You have no idea what drove her to attempt an entry alone, without telling anyone, without preparation.”

“No,” I repeated.

Cerys looked at Yvaine.
“No,” Yvaine replied quietly.

Cerys held both our faces for a moment, she did not look suspicious exactly. Then she reached forward and picked up the book from Ser Thorian’s desk.

She held it for a moment, weighing it in her hand. Then she opened the cover and flipped slowly through the pages, her eyes moving across the inscriptions and the shape of the writing.

Her eyes came up from the page and found mine. “Do you know what this says?” she asked.

I looked at the book. I looked at Yvaine. “No,” I answered.

“Have you seen it before?”

“No,” Yvaine replied, which was a lie.

Cerys looked between us once more. “Do you know where she got it?”

“No,” I said.

She closed the book. She set it back on the desk with a small, precise movement and looked at us both. “We will find the truth,” she stated. “Whether you help us find it or we find it another way. That is simply a statement of fact, not a threat.” She paused. “I want you to understand that I am not asking for your protection of her. I am asking for the information that will help us help her.”

Neither of us answered.

Cerys looked at us for a long moment. Then she continued: “Given what Healer Coraline has told us about the nature of Lyra’s memory loss, we cannot force recall. We cannot put pressure on her mind to produce what it is currently unable to produce without risking permanent damage to the neurological injury.” She paused, the pause had weight in it that I felt. “And so I have made a decision. Lyra will be sent home.”

I was on my feet before she finished the sentence. “What?”

Cerys glared at me.

“You cannot send Lyra back home,” Yvaine objected from beside me, on her feet as well, her voice carrying a firmness.

“Sit down.” Ser Thorian’s voice, from behind Cerys. Direct and leaving no room for interpretation. “Both of you. You are speaking to the principal.”

I sat down.

Yvaine sat.

My hands were pressed flat on my thighs, using the physical pressure of a surface to anchor myself to composure. Shock and anger were fighting for space in my chest.

Cerys looked at us both. “I will not address the insubordination,” she stated, “because I understand you are both in a heightened emotional state. But my decision will stand regardless.” She held my gaze. “Lyra will be returned to her family home as soon as she is physically able to travel. She will recover there, with the people she knows and the environment she remembers, without the pressure of an institution whose entire purpose and population are inaccessible to her current memory.” She paused. “It is the correct decision for her recovery. That is the only consideration.”

“It’s not,” I argued, and kept my voice as level as I could manage. “Being here, being around the places she spent the last year, the training fields, the roosts… it could help. Memory responds to environment. Being in the spaces where the memories were made—”

“The spaces she does not remember making memories in,” Cerys countered.

“The spaces that could help her make the connection—”

“And Tempest?” Cerys raised an eyebrow, and the question had an edge to it. “Tempest, that she does not remember?”

I stopped. The name alone sent a fresh wave of dread through me.
“We do not know what Lyra losing her memory of her dragon does to the bond,” Cerys continued. “We do not know what Tempest will experience when she wakes and reaches through the bond and finds a rider who does not know her. We do not know whether that experience could be harmful to Tempest in her already compromised state.” She looked at me steadily. “We do not know enough to make decisions we cannot take back.”

“Tempest is still unresponsive,” Ser Thorian added from behind her. “We do not know what to expect when she wakes. We do not know what state she will be in or what the bond will do.”

I looked at him. “That’s exactly why Lyra should stay,” I insisted, and I heard the desperation in my own voice and could not remove it. “If Tempest wakes and the bond is intact, if the connection between them survives the memory loss then Tempest could help her. The bond could do what we can’t do from the outside. It goes deeper than memory, it lives in a place the injury hasn’t reached.” I looked between them both. “It could save them both.”

Cerys looked at me for a long moment. Then she declared: “No.”

One word. Final. She had made a decision and was done receiving arguments about it. I looked at my hands. Defeat and fury mixed in my chest until I could barely breathe.

“Stormbridge.” Her voice again, something in the tone made me look up. “You will go to her. You will tell her that you brought her here, that she had an accident, that she hurt her ankle and hit her head, and that she will be returning home as soon as she can walk.” She held my gaze steadily. “You will not tell her about the bond, you will not tell her about Tempest, you will not tell her anything that could pressure her memory or distress her unnecessarily. Is that understood?”

I stared at her.
She wanted me to lie.