Page 126 of Embers of Ruin

No.

My magic surges outward, growing stronger with each passing second. Not in attack. In refusal. Light bursts from my entire body, slamming into the walls until I feel as if my body is on fire. Thorin’s shadows rise around me but I strike at them with light. They bend but do not break.

“Stay out of my head!” I scream. My chest tightens until every breath comes short and shallow. What’s happening to me?

Thorin steps closer through the storm of my magic, shadows wrapping around his arms like armor. “I cannot leave that wall in your mind. I’m going to help you, Lyra.”

“It’s mine!” I shout, covering my face as another wave of pain tears through my head. I don’t know why I don’t want him to touch the wall. I only know that every part of me is screaming to protect it.

“No,” he says, and the grief in his voice nearly undoes me. “It was put there.”

The wall inside me pulses again and behind it, something moves. A sound. A scream? My mother?

No.

I clap both hands over my ears as if that can stop a sound coming from inside my own mind. “No!”

Onyx reaches me first. Or tries to. Thorin's shadows sweep between us, not striking, only cutting him off. He halts so abruptly he nearly loses his footing.

“She is not ready for this. Move, Thorin!” Onyx shouts.

Thorin doesn’t turn. “No.”

“She is not your kingdom, Thorin.” Onyx's voice is sharp with urgency, every muscle in his body taut as if he's ready to force his way through the shadows.

The words hit like a blade. Thorin finally looks at him and the air between them turns lethal. For one terrifying second, I think the shadows will attack. I try to sit up, but my body feels pinned to the bed.

Then his gaze returns to me.

“I know she is not my kingdom.” His voice is quiet. “She is my world.”

That answer silences Onyx. It silences me too. Because it’s not the answer of a man who sees me only as a weapon. It’s not even the answer of a king defending his claim.

I don’t know what it is.

The pain in my head spikes and I cry out, writhing on the bed. Thorin’s attention snaps back to me. The shadows move then, fast as thought, curling around my wrists, my waist, my shoulders. Not tight enough to hurt. Not gentle enough to ignore. They hold me steady as my magic tears through the room. I see Thorin’s shadows blocking Onyx.

“Get out, Onyx!”

“I won’t leave her like this!” Onyx shouts, and I gasp as I watch him throw up a transparent wall of solid—air? Thorin’s shadows can’t get to him.

Light flares around my arms, burning silver-gold against black. The shadows hiss but hold. Thorin approaches slowly, as if I am a wounded animal with teeth.

Perhaps I am.

“Don’t touch my mind, Thorin,” I whisper. “Please. Please! Please don’t do this.”

His face breaks again. But I see it. Determination.

“I will show you the door,” he says. “Not what is behind it.”

“I don’t want to see it.” I whimper. The voice that leaves my lips doesn’t even sound like my own.

“I know.”

“Then don’t touch it!” My ears are pounding. Am I screaming? It sounds like it.

Gods, I wish it would stop. I would give anything for the pain, the screaming, the light—for all of it to just stop.