Upon arriving at Braşov Lyra searched for the remaining energy of the key. It was faint but at least she was able to pick on something so she was happy that she would finally solve this mystery. If only she knew that she was about to open up the pandora"s box.Jaime did not like this kind of foreboding in the book. I mean Lyra was alive and well right downstairs, was there even any need to be this pessimistic? At this point, it felt like the author was being depressing just for the sake of it.
Lyra spent close to 3 months in Braşov, trying to find where the energy signature would lead her but no matter how hard she tried the path always lead her to where she started. It was almost as if the whole trail was just one giant spider web and she was standing in the middle of it. This gave her a bad feeling, almost as if someone was playing with her, leaving her this breadcrumbs to follow that did not lead anywhere. Still, she was an addict and she was not going to give up just because of this minor set back.
Also thinking about it if these crumbs were left on purpose to fool her that would mean there was someone behind this. If there was someone behind it she just needed to uncover who it was but the question was how? How was she going to put the man in the shadows onto the spotlight?
So Lyra started to plan a trap in order to catch the perpetrator. Actually, once she found out that she was being played it was quite easy to set up a trap. You see when you are setting a trap you have to have a bait and in this case, the bait was her. The next thing you need was to know the purpose of your target and her target"s aim was supposedly keeping her away from the truth of this mystery. Now that she had established these facts she had to find a way to use them.
The next day Lyra sent an e-mail to Richard telling him that he found out where the key was and she was going to leave Braşov soon. Of course, this was all a farce quite an obvious one, in fact, now she needed to see if her opponent would panic and do something or just ignore her. So she started to think about how could she make this fact more believable. Right now she was betting on the fact that the man in the shadows could access her phone records but that was not enough. She needed to be the person to leave the breadcrumbs now.
That was when Lyra had discovered one more fact if the opponent knew that she was searching for the key he must know its use. If he knew that it would mean he wanted to gather all of them together because if he didn"t why not just leave them with their respective clans? I mean wasn"t their whole mission was to keep them from falling into the wrong hands? So it was only logical that their aim was to gather the keys but if that was so why didn"t they move till now? After all, they had enough power to eradicate one of the 9 clans so it would mean they can also eradicate the others. Once thinking along these lines Lyra s.h.i.+vered uncontrollably. She just noticed that she was actually playing with fire. Then again she was arrogant to the core, she was sure that there couldn"t possibly be anyone in the world that could best her in a fight if she had enough preparations, even Richard could not.
So with her confidence renewed Lyra sent Richard another e-mail. She told him that her key was acting weird and she might be really close to the missing one. This way even if the other party didn"t have the key together with them they would still know that hers was acting weird and this would give them enough incentive to act. Now she only had to wait.
That night Lyra received a reply from Richard telling her to wait and he was coming over. She was fine with that considering she didn"t have such intention in the first place. Unknowingly Richard helped Lyra with his reply. Lyra was extremely strong alone and if she had help from Richard to booth bringing them down would be impossible or at least she thought that way. To summarize the enemy was sure to attack her tonight so she had to speed up her preparations.
It was 4 am, the dead of the night. Lyra was lying on her bed nervously. According to what she had planned they should have attacked her by now but there wasn"t even any movement outside let alone an attack. Could it be that her intentions were seen through? That was possible considering her plan was so simple but it should have still worked. Even if they did not believe her words they couldn"t take the risk of being found so they should have sent someone to at least check her key and when they do that she would be here to catch them. In order to not raise any suspicions, she had even set a dummy alarm in order to lull them into a false sense of security.
While Lyra was still deep in her thoughts her alarm suddenly triggered which jolted her awake. She was both excited and relieved knowing that her plan worked. She kept on faking being asleep but she was observing the room.
A man clad in black clothes and a mask slowly crept up to her room extremely carefully. He was not making any sound so Lyra thought he must have cast some sort of silence spell which confirmed that he was some sort of magician.
The man scanned the room searching for the key and found that it was on top of the desk. He made his way to it and when he grabbed it he was suddenly stuck in place. He was not able to move. It was a fake key that Lyra put deliberately to fool him. Lyra bolted out of her bed and cast a couple more sealing spells to the enemy. She was feeling smug, feeling like she was on top of the world. Almost as if the whole world was under the control of her intelligence. In short, she was getting c.o.c.ky.
That all changed when she unmasked the a.s.sailant, it was one of her own clansmen. Someone she knew extremely well. Her uncle the brother of his father, the current clan head. She weakly asked why, why had he betrayed her and the whole clan. He just said he was not betraying the clan and the day of reckoning was on its way, that they had to pick a side and the clan already did. After saying those cryptic words he killed himself right there leaving behind a shocked Lyra.
She was panicking, not knowing what to do, it was obvious that her uncle wouldn"t come here on his own. Someone must have already gone to the clan and reported it. Wait why would they have reported it to the clan? Does that mean her father was the one responsible for the destruction of Blood Dragons? Or are they a splinter cell inside the clan planning a rebellion? Should she just go back and check? No that would be too idiotic, no matter which option was the truth it would only mean trouble for her if she decided to go back.
Also, what did he mean by the day of the reckoning? Could it be that the G.o.ds" seal was about to be undone? If so does that mean the clan decided to side with the G.o.d of Humanity? The more she thought about the more it seemed to make sense. So right now there was a G.o.d hunting her wonderful. But thinking about it in another way if the G.o.d of Humanity was the winner of the contest between him and the Primogen of the Sacred Beasts it would mean that he could not get out on his own. He needed the keys. Well, that would explain why he destroyed the Blood Dragon Clan. They must have refused him and he destroyed them as an example to the others. That would also explain why her clan sided with him. They were afraid of being obliterated too.
Now that she established her own situation Lyra decided it was too dangerous to wait for Richard to arrive. She left a cryptic message for him at her room and left.
Upon leaving she drifted from place to place and eventually hired Arkady"s mercenary group and the rest was history.
Reading the end Jaime had so many questions to ask but there was one prominent question gnawing her mind; is this truth or fiction?