Lyra's POV

"No!" I screamed as I woke up, covered in sweat.

My hands were reaching toward my throat, trying to stop the bleeding but there was no wound. My skin was smooth and smooth, and wet with sweat, and my heart pounding wildly under my fingers.

I couldn't breathe.

The coldness of the silver slicing through my throat came back again and again and again in my mind, and it was as if I were stung all over again. My chest rose and fell in my struggle for air, my eyes scanning around the new darkness, until I saw the outline of my dormitory desk, packed suitcases by the door, the moonlight falling on the same window it had fallen on before.

The door burst open.

"Lyra!" I heard yelling and frantic movement as Kael quickly went into the room, still dressed for the night, looking around for anyone who looked dangerous, then settling on me. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

My voice broke and I said, "I-". I struggled to get the words out of me. How was I going to tell him that I had just witnessed my own death?

"Lyra, " he said again but this time softly, and he came across the room and knelt by my bed. "Talk to me. What happened?" He asked as he placed gentle kisses on my hand. 

Finally I could get the words out, my voice shaking, "A nightmare. It was a nightmare."

He looked at my face closely, opened his mouth to say something but he closed it. Instead, he came up to me and stroked slow circles over my back, as he had done many times before when I was tired or stressed out during our time at the academy.

He whispered, "You are safe. Whatever it may have been, it was not real, you are here and you are safe."

Slowly, my breathing evened out, though the fear coiled tight in my chest refused to fully release its grip.

"Stay," I whispered, and I couldn't stop myself. "Please, I don't want to close my eyes again. Please stay with me...please don't leave me." 

Kael paused, his eyes darting to the door. "Lyra, if anyone sees me here after dark, it's against all academy rules."

I looked him in the eye, " I don't want my knight, I want my man." 

He appeared to be slightly off balance in his expression, the formal calmness he seemed to always have.

"Alright," he said as he pulled me closer to his chest and placed a kissed on my forehead, slowly running my back. 

Soon, sleep once more took me.

When I opened my eyes and the sun was shining through the window and Kael stood  beside my bed, wearing his ceremonial armor. 

"Good morning ." I greeted as I sat up. 

He replied, "Good morning little  miss alpha . The heads asked you to be with them  and complete your  clearance, your uncle wants you to be home before the coronation."

Something was off. 

Those words. That exact wording. I had heard them before, word for word, on a morning that was supposed to have ended long ago.

"What did you say?" I whispered, "I ask...".

"Your clearance," Kael repeated, giving a slight frown at my response. "Is something wrong?"

"No," i  said and forced myself to move and breathe  despite the fear in my stomach. "Nothing's wrong."

I walked from the grounds dressed in silence, silently, and silently, alone, to the administration building, each step of the way being a rehearsal of what I had already experienced. The clearance process went through as usual. My steps turned back to the dormitory, following the same rhythm. I knew who was calling before I even saw the caller's name on my phone before it rang.

I replied "Uncle Regulus".

"There she is ," my uncle said with that same warm pride in his voice. "The girl who made history..."

It was exactly as I remembered, every word, every joke, every saying to hurry home, my people awaited me. As the call ended, my hands were shaking.

It was not déjà vu. This was a repeat of something I know for sure happened.

The confusion morphed into fear as I scrambled into the car that would bring me back to Silvercrest. I looked out the window, trying to calm my frantic mind, and the world around me fell still. 

The journey back home began. For a weird second, I could have sworn everything tilted.

All turned to a sea of dazzling white light, and in front of me was a faceless figure, his shape and outline lost within the light that surrounded us.

"Kael... I think I'm hallucinating again." I mumbled. 

The stranger replied, "You are not hallucinating. I come bearing important message. Your death ... the nightmare was true, but you have been given a second chance to change your fate."

"Who are you?" I demanded, my voice becoming sharp with fear and desperation. 

He didn't answer. Rather it was the white light around us that changed, and I got a vision that turned my stomach over. I saw  my parents, many years younger, surrounded by silver blades stained dark with blood. My mother's face was frozen in fear, my father's body fell to the ground.

As the vision receded, the stranger said, "There is a connection between your parents' deaths and your own murder. Don't mis use  the opportunity you have been given."

"Wait" I said, extending my hand toward him as his shape fuzzed out even more. "Tell me more please. Who did this? Who-"

He pressed something into my hand before he disappeared altogether. A small shiny stone. 

I blinked my eyes open.

I was in the moving car  again, with the sunlight coming in through the window, just as it had been before the vision started. A pounding in my ribs, in my heart, as I gazed at my hand.

The stone  was still in my hand.

I just sat there, unable to move, unable to breathe, as the truth sank in.

I raised my head slowly to Kael's, who was sitting across from me, his gray eyes placid, oblivious to the battle raging within my mind. It had all changed, and now I felt nothing for him but coldness and emptiness.

It was the image of that silver dagger that I had given him, with my own hands, that had taken my life, that came back behind my eyes.

I made just one discovery.

Kael had me killed.