I stood before the door of a luxury villa, a faded little backpack slung over my shoulders.
Stretching up on tiptoes, I put all my weight into pressing the doorbell. "Ding-dong—"
The door swung open, and a face both achingly familiar and strangely foreign appeared in the doorway. Cassian Fitzwilliam, my father. This was him, nine years ago.
His eyes sparkled far brighter than I remembered, yet the creeping gloom that would later swallow every last bit of that light was already stirring beneath the surface.
He wore a black shirt of impeccable quality, the sleeves casually rolled to his elbows, revealing strong, muscular forearms—still smooth and unblemished, without the savage, hideous scar he would later earn shielding me from a blade.
"Whose kid wandered to the wrong door?" He frowned down at me.
I tilted my chin up and plastered on that sweet, obedient smile I'd rehearsed a thousand times in the mirror. "Daddy, I'm Lyra, your daughter from nine years in the future."
Cassian's face turned to stone.
"I'm not lying!" I'd come armed. In a flash, I whipped out a crisp, folded copy of the paternity test from my little backpack and shook it vigorously right under his nose.
Seizing that split second of hesitation, I ducked down like a nimble kitten and—whoosh!—slipped right under his arm into the house.
"Out!" he barked, spinning around and lunging to grab me. But I was ready, dodging his grasp with a quick twist and bolting straight to the center of the living room. I planted my hands on my hips and swept my gaze around.
The home of nine years ago—it was both eerily similar and hauntingly different from the alcohol-soaked, suffocating house in my memory.
I opened my treasured backpack and pulled out that notebook, its cover worn and frayed to tatters.
Then I spilled every last detail—the past and the future, every single thing that had happened and would happen.
I thrust the notebook right in front of him, tilted my head up, and with a tone that was both innocent and devilish, asked, "Need me to tell you about that time you were alone in the bathroom, belting out 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' and butchering every note?"
Cassian's ear tips flushed crimson at a visible speed.
He snatched the notebook from my hands, his fingers whitening from the force of his grip. He flipped through the pages in a frenzy, his face shifting from red to pale, then from pale to green, his expression turning uglier by the second.
His gaze swept over my face, a turbulent storm of shock, suspicion, resistance, and a flicker of panic he hadn't even noticed himself.
At last, he whipped out his phone and dialed a number. The instant the call connected, his voice snapped back into that commanding, no-nonsense tone. "Mr. Greaves, bring a cop and a doctor. Now. Right this second!" He hung up and glared at me. "A shoddy, absurd story like that… it's impossible to believe."
Then his eyes took in my ragged, bony frame, and a flicker of tenderness crossed them. "Stay here. Let the doctor check you over. I'll help you find your parents afterward."
Aksara