Lyon Park in Greymoor Academy: The Boy Who Held On

This Lyon Park in Greymoor Academy tribute covers his whole story, including his death in chapter 212. Content note: grief and violence, described only in outline.

Lyon Park is never one of the four, and never really a rival. He is something rarer in this book: a man who loves Maisie and asks for nothing. That is why his ending hits so hard.

Bright Eyes

Lyon is Jenny's older brother, the young CEO of Park Industries and Maisie's childhood crush. He calls her "Bright Eyes" and "Mace". At the masked ball in chapter 30, when Maisie turns down Prince Soren, she dances with Lyon instead. He almost tells her something before Cole drags her away, then vanishes, and we later learn Cole used his Alpha command to send the half-human Lyon walking blindly towards rogue territory.

He is the one who calms her in the library in chapter 59, when the change breaks through in the middle of an exam. And in chapter 68, bruised and with his arm in a sling, he confesses he has liked her too much for too long, and steps back because he is afraid.

The warning

Chapter 210, Lyon's only point-of-view chapter, fills in what he never told her. After the club in Costa Ridge, Mercer found him and made his message very clear: stay away from Maisie, in this life and the next. Lyon was ashamed of how frightened he had been, and ashamed that he could never compare to the Lycans. So he avoided her. He hid from her in the library and skipped the cafeteria to avoid her.

He still could not stop caring. In chapter 204 he finds her crying in a bathroom at Lana's dress fitting, hands her a handkerchief and checks her arms for bruises, asking if they are hurting her. The narration warns us it is the last time they will really talk.

Samhain night

On Halloween Lyon only meant to deliver a wedding dress and catch a glimpse of her before a flight to New York. Stepping outside, he sees three hooded figures put a girl in a black dress into the trunk of a car at an unguarded gate. He knows the dress. He knows there is no time to find her mates. He is a boardroom man who hates fights, and he runs after the car anyway.

At the Ridge he throws one of Tessa's men into her, and catches Maisie by her dress as she goes over the cliff. He holds on while Tessa attacks him again and again, lifting Maisie one more inch each time. When Tessa pushes him over too, he turns in the air so that he takes the fall. His last words are for his sister, and a gentle joke about how Maisie cries. We will not quote more than one line of it: he tells her to close her eyes, Bright Eyes.

After

Lyon's death is the wound at the centre of the second half. The Queen's people frame Maisie for it, down to her ring on his hand. Jenny, who watched Maisie "confess" to it, cuts her off. Maisie keeps the lie to protect everyone else, and has nightmares where Lyon tells her that her love is deadly. In the dragon's dream in chapter 265, the cruellest detail of the perfect life is Lyon alive, with a cane, winking at her from the crowd.

Our read

Lyon is the book's proof that heroism does not need fangs. Everyone else in Greymoor Academy has power, a title or a bond. Lyon has none of those, and he still does the bravest thing anyone does in 273 chapters. We hope the story finds a way to clear his name as well as Maisie's, and to give Jenny the truth.

Read more in Recap Part 6: Samhain, our Maisie Adams analysis and Tessa Graham explained.