Book Two: The Broken Accord

Some treaties were never meant to survive the truth.

A year later, Lyra is the reason the Conclave can't look away. The Article Nine review has split the Conclave in two — a reform faction against an old guard three centuries in the making — and when she and Cael recover the second Binding document, they learn what the Antecedent really is, closer now than in three hundred years. On the solstice, in the grove, Lyra opens every gift she has, and for the first time, the presence beneath it asks her directly what she is.