Page 132 of Embers of Ruin

His head cants to one side with unsettling fluidity, the movement slow enough to make my skin crawl.

“Not what do you want with me?” His crimson eyes hold mine. “Not where am I?”

“Your first question is about your magic.” He smiles again.

Something unreadable flashes across his face, twisting my stomach into knots.

“I find that very interesting. I assume you are well acquainted with what the gods have placed in you.”

I don’t mean to ask that first. I don’t care where I am if I can’t defend myself. Panic surges higher, instinctively reaching for the familiar warmth that always rises to meet it. Nothing comes.

What is he trying to get from me? Why does everything come back to my magic? I reach for my magic again and again, but there’s nothing. The emptiness is worse this time because I know why. The cage has already taken it.

“You should not waste your strength,” he says. His voice comes through the glass more smoothly than the other voices, as if the cage has chosen to honor him with basic acoustics. “It will only make the chamber feed faster.”

I stare at him, breathing hard. “How considerate. Kidnapping followed by advice. Your mother must be proud.” Where the fuck am I? And why does his voice sound so familiar? I know it from somewhere—I just don’t know where.

His head tilts faintly. “Still sharp. Good. The mind has not dulled yet.”

I bare my teeth. “Come inside and I’ll show you exactly how sharp I am.”

Beneath the shadow of his hood, only the lower half of his face is visible. Sickly pale skin stretches over sharp bones, and the corners of a deeply lined mouth curl upward.

“You could try,” he murmurs. “The Cursebreaker has teeth. That will not save you here.”

The word sends a chill through me.

Cursebreaker.

He doesn’t say it like a title. He says it like a fact. Like there has never been any question that this is what I am.

A slow, vicious smile spreads across my face. “Call me that again and I'll make sure you leave with fewer teeth than you arrived with.”

“You cannot reach me.”

“Not yet.” My smile widens. “But he can.”

The smile disappears from his mouth. His crimson eyes narrow, the red within them brightening for the briefest heartbeat. “The cage feeds on your energy. If you fade, so does your usefulness. Eat when food is brought. Drink when water is given. Sleep when the lights go out. Resistance inside this chamber is mostly theatrical, and there is no use for it here.”

“Then I’ll be fucking theatrical. I’ve been told I have a gift for it.”

“Yes,” he says softly, watching me with an interest that makes my skin crawl. “You have many gifts. More than the Shadow King understands.”

The Shadow King.

Something tightens painfully in my chest. “Watch your next words.”

“I know he will look for you. I know he will send shadows tearing through the wrong corners of the continent until his precious kingdom begins to wonder whether its monster has finally slipped its leash.”

My wrist flares so violently I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out. His crimson eyes drop to my hand, and he goes very still.

“You feel him,” he observes.

My body goes deathly still, unwilling to betray the bond between Thorin and me.

The man smiles coldly. “Not clearly, no. Your cage prevents that. But rage is difficult to silence when it has divine roots.”

I don’t ask what he means. Some answers are too dangerous to hear from the wrong person. Not here. He studies me for another long moment, as though committing every reaction to memory. Then he turns away, dismissing me as effortlessly as though I cease to exist the moment I leave his attention.