Lyra woke before dawn with the taste of iron in her mouth.

It wasn’t pain that pulled her from sleep. Not fire. Not the sharp, familiar sting of magic rebounding where it shouldn’t. It was nausea though slow, rolling, wrong in a way she couldn’t immediately name. Her stomach twisted as though it had decided, without consulting her, that something inside her did not belong.

She lay very still beneath the heavy furs, one hand pressed flat against her abdomen, breathing through her nose the ...