QUOTE: "The reality of you, to me, is much more than just a mask." *** TEASER: Lyra shakes, trembling, her back arched against the cold, rotting metal, but her voice holds a sharp edge of defiance that I hadn't expected. "Do more than this, and Lord Blackwood will finish your lineage," she spat. For a beat, they stilled. The name Blackwood carried the weight of a guillotine throughout the country. I saw a flash of raw, primal, primitive fear cross the leader's face. A flicker of recognition that they were playing with a timed detonator. It was brief. The fear curdles away into a stupid bravado. They weren't desperate enough, it seemed. Didn't fear or understand the urgency of this situation. "Well" the leaders smiles, a sneer spread cross his face, his finger hooking under the edge of her collar, ignoring the visible 'DB' initials that was his certain death warrant, "I don't see Lord Blackwood here to save you. Maybe we'll trade his valuable possession for some coin?" His sentence doesn't see completion. Atoms collide. I don't just move, I fission though time itself, vibrating into existence behind him. One moment, a shadow. The next his nightmare. I catch the scalp of his head, ripping his skull, placing my hand over the underside of his chin, my fingers digging into the soft tissue of his flesh. "That won't be necessary." *** SYNOPSIS: A life of servitude and rags is all Lyra has ever known. Tossed from cage to master, it is no different when a new man purchases her to tune his whim. Any absolute desire. His lavish lifestyle, scheming wife-to-be, and snobbish circles do not scare her off. It is the power that he holds, the force to crumple her to ash, that truly frightens her. To feel. One thing is certain in her new role, and that is Dominic Blackwood makes people feel.