Page 129 of Embers of Ruin

And she let someone erase the truth and replace it with a lie: that the Shadow King murdered my parents.

My chest seizes so violently my lungs refuse to work. I gasp for air, but each breath catches in my throat before it reaches my lungs. It feels like I'm underwater, kicking desperately toward the surface, only to sink farther into the darkness. A sob claws its way out of me, raw and broken, echoing off the walls until it is all I can hear.

It’s the sound of something inside me breaking. Not my heart. Something deeper. Something someone locked away deep inside me because they didn’t think I would survive it.

They were wrong. I never escaped my grief. I buried it beneath my hatred until I forgot it was there. Until now. The lock gives way, and grief crashes into me all at once, so violently it feels as though my bones are splitting beneath my skin. It tears through every wall I’ve built, leaving nothing untouched, nothing standing. I’m not watching it break free. I’m breaking with it.

I always believed grief faded with time. I know now it doesn’t. It waits. Patiently. Quietly. Buried beneath everything you’ve built to keep it contained, until one day the walls give way and you realize the grief was never imprisoned.

You were.

“Mara knew.”

The words barely make it past my lips before a rush of pain seizes my heart. No one answers. They don’t need to. The guilt written across their faces tells me everything. They knew. Maybe not all of it. Maybe not the details. But they knew enough to understand how deeply this would wound me.

I press a hand against my chest as if I can somehow keep my heart from tearing itself apart. Everything folds beneath the weight of one unbearable truth. My entire life has been built around a story. Not a memory. A story. A frightened little girl had asked what happened to her parents and someone had given her an answer. An answer a little girl clung to until it became part of her. It rooted itself beneath her skin. She fed it until it grew into hatred because hatred hurt less than grief.

Hurt less than guilt.

Hurt less than the truth.

I think of every night I spent cursing the Shadow King. Every time I imagined him as a monster lurking somewhere beyond the mountains. Every moment I looked at Thorin and saw the villain from Mara’s stories.

I hated him. Gods, I hated him. And all the while…

My father never blamed me.

My mother never blamed me.

Even in their final moments.

Even when the cottage was coming apart around us, they were trying to save me.

Not themselves.

Me.

A fresh sob breaks free. I fold forward, arms wrapped around my middle as though I could somehow hold myself together. But there’s no holding this together. Not anymore. Because the grief is different now. Before, I mourned people who had been stolen from me. Now, I mourn the people I have finally remembered.

I remember my mother’s laughter drifting through our home while bread burned in the oven because she’d become distracted talking to my father. I remember the warmth of her hands as she braided my hair, the gentle tug whenever I squirmed too much. I remember my father's terrible little wooden horse, carved so crooked he insisted he’d meant to make it that way all along.

Little flame.

Gods. The nickname alone is sharp enough to split me open.

For years, I believed remembering the day they died would finally give me peace. Instead, I remember how they lived. And somehow… that hurts so much more. Tears spill freely down my face as my magic stirs, attempting to comfort me. I don’t acknowledge it.

For the first time in my life, I don’t know what's true anymore. I know my parents are dead. I know I loved them. I know they loved me.

And I know Mara lied.

Somewhere beneath the grief, the guilt, and the heartbreak threatening to swallow me whole, another realization begins to take shape.

If the Shadow King didn’t kill my parents...

Then who is he?

And if Mara lied about that...