Page 152 of Embers of Ruin

The dark ember. The curse’s heart.

“Stop, brother,” Onyx says. “Please. In this life and the next, we swore it. You can’t do this to me.”

There’s no command in his voice now. Only fear. “Think of our oath,” he pleads.

Thorin doesn’t look at him; he doesn’t have to. Resolve is written all over his face.

“If I ask you to save my kingdom, the question is already poisoned.” His gaze stays on mine. “If I ask you to save me, it is worse. You deserve a choice that does not come with my hands around your throat, no matter how gently I think I am holding you.”

The shadows rise around him. Not outward. Inward. Wrapping around his chest, his arms, his throat. I push myself toward him, panic surging through me. “Don't do this. Thorin! Don’t do this!”

For the first time since Illurine appeared, his smile almost reaches his eyes. There is something devastatingly beautiful about it. The man has been difficult to tolerate from the beginning, but now he is about to rip the heart right out of my chest.

“I choose you,” he whispers.

The shadows plunge into his chest, quicker than I can react to stop them. Thorin arches forward with a sound that tears through me. Not a scream. Worse. A broken, strangled thing dragged from the deepest part of him as he reaches into himself and rips, both hands pressed to his chest. Between his fingers, the dark ember flickers, small and terrible, pulsing weakly in the air. Black light spills across his skin, then drains away.

He looks at me one last time. Not at the ember. Not at Illurine.

Me.

Always me.

“Even if you don’t choose me,” he says. Then he opens his hand and the dark ember falls to the ground between us as Thorin collapses.

"Thorin!" I scream his name into the light, into the dying echo of my own power, into the silence that answers me. “Thorin! You do not get to do this. You don’t get to leave me like this!”

Onyx catches him before his head strikes the earth. For a second, he simply stares down at his brother as if the universe has finally committed the one cruelty he never prepared for.

Then his composure breaks. Not with tears. Not with begging. With my name.

“Lyra.”

Just that. But there is so much in it that I nearly fall apart completely. Something inside me tears loose.

Thorin’s eyes go black—not the endless, molten black of the Shadow King, but something worse. A void with nothing behind it. And then, in the space of a single heartbeat, the black drains away entirely, leaving his eyes a pale, lifeless gray. No silver. No warmth. No him.

The faint pulse of our bond is gone, and I stare, because I don't know what to do. I look to the Goddess to plead for help, but she only looks from him to me, sadly. It’s as if the entire continent feels the loss of its king—and its curse. I feel the loss much more deeply—the king that was my mate….the space that he alone occupied… is now empty. I won’t recover from this.

I’m hovering over his body, screaming at him to come back. But I know he won’t wake. I know I’ll never see those silver eyes again.

“Wake up. Wake up. THORIN!”

I gently pound his chest, scream his name, and gods—why won't he wake up? My fists hit the ground hard enough to jar my teeth, my hands scrabbling uselessly at the stone, at his sleeve, at anything that might anchor me to a world that has just tilted off its axis.

NO. No, no, no. He’s not gone. I refuse to accept it.

How?

Why?

How could you do this to me, Thorin? Why would you leave me! Why⁠—

Thorin.

Please!

“Thorin,” I say, tears streaming down my face as I cradle his head in my lap. He’s unbelievably cold. The touch confirms he’s no longer in this realm. But I knew that as soon as I looked into his lifeless eyes.