Page 124 of Embers of Ruin

Not fear of me. Fear for me.

“What did Mara tell you?” he asks.

The name hits hard enough to steal my next breath. “Mara? How do you know about Mara?”

“What did she tell you?” His voice changes.

It’s no longer the Shadow King’s voice. Not the ruler. Not the teacher. Not the man who almost touched his mouth to mine in the archives. This voice is careful in a way that terrifies me, each word placed like a footstep over thin ice.

I step back. “Why?”

Thorin comes closer, forcing another step from me.

“Lyra, I need to know what she said.” His voice sharpens.

“She told me enough.”

The repetition breaks something loose in my chest. I reach for the memory because it has always been there. Hasn’t it? Mara’s voice. Her arms around me. The story she gave me when the grief was too large to hold without a shape. The king’s men came. There was light. And screaming.

Your parents tried to protect you.

The Shadow King’s curse took everything.

That is what she told me. Isn’t it? My mouth opens but nothing comes out and I frown. The silence inside my head is sudden and wrong. I try again.

“Mara said…” The words vanish, and I struggle to remember exactly what it was that Mara told me.

The memory doesn’t seem forgotten. It feels taken. I know what forgetting feels like. I have forgotten names, chores, the exact taste of my mother’s stew, the sound of my father’s laugh on ordinary mornings when grief was not watching. This is not forgetting. This is reaching for a cup and finding your hand pass through air. My heartbeat stumbles.

“Mara said…” I try again, but the sentence collapses before it forms.

Thorin sees it. So does Onyx.

“No,” I say, though I don’t know who I’m speaking to.

The golden wall inside my mind stirs, and I feel it. It’s not a memory—it’s a barrier. The same one Thorin touched before. Only now it is awake.

“No,” I repeat.

Thorin’s face twists—not much, but enough. Enough to show pain he can’t hide quickly enough. “That is why.”

“What is why?” I ask, but my voice has gone thin.

He takes another step toward me and I step back, falling onto the bed.

Onyx moves again. “Thorin, don’t! You’ll push her too far!”

Thorin doesn’t look away from me. “She has to know.”

“No. Not like this.”

“If not now, when? When, Onyx?” The words are sharp, but beneath them is something desperate. Something breaking.

Onyx’s jaw locks. “When she chooses.”

“She cannot choose what she does not know.”

“And you think forcing her is better?”