Chapter 17 · He put a trigger in me

She yanked against him. The cramped passage gave her no room. Her shoulder pressed into his chest, and the warmth of her breath fogged the edge of his visor.

"He put a trigger in me," she said. "Happy?"

"No."

"You should be. Now you know enough to keep moving."

"What does it trigger?"

"Pain."

"That's not what Silas meant."

"It triggers the curse."

Silas raised one hand on the screen. "There are two ways to wake the thing below. The first is the blood of the living sacrifice. The second is the blood of the heir."

Cane's fingers loosened around Lyra's wrist.

Silas watched his face. "You really didn't tell him?"

Lyra moved in front of Cane again. "Tell him what?"

"That he is not merely the disgraced son of a dead house."

Cane's voice dropped. "Lyra."

She didn't look at him.

Silas continued, "His family did not lose the deep. They guarded it. They held the throne before your people took it from them."

"My people?" Lyra said.

"Ask Cane why the old seals react to his blood. Ask him why every creature in these ruins tracks him instead of you.