Page 76 of Embers of Ruin

I look at his hand, then at him. “If you find anything embarrassing in my head and tell anyone, I will make your life miserable.”

“You already do.” He’s full on grinning now—an expression I’ve never seen on him before.

My mouth opens but no words come out. His expression remains smooth, but there is a glimmer in his eyes that tells me he knows exactly what he has done. The bastard has learned how to spar with me.

I bite back a smile, shaking my head.

I sit on the stone bench across from him, placing my hands in my lap. I curl my fingers tightly together, resisting the urge to glance at Onyx. I can feel him watching. That should comfort me, but instead it makes everything worse. I don’t want him to see me afraid. I don’t want anyone to see me afraid.

Thorin’s shadows gather beneath the bench, dark and silent, curling around the stone legs without reaching for me. For once, they seem restrained, and I wonder if restraint is natural to them or if he is holding them back by force.

“Breathe,” he says.

“I am breathing. You can’t tell?”

“You are preparing to fight.”

“I find it useful in your presence.”

His eyes hold mine. “Not today.”

The words are soft, making my chest tighten. His eyes never leave mine as shadows unfurl from his feet, gliding around me in silent ribbons until they frame us both. The rest of the garden seems impossibly far away.

I draw in a breath slowly.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

“I would rather not.”

“Lyra.”

There is that possessiveness again. I close my eyes.

Darkness presses behind my lids, and immediately the garden becomes louder in other ways. I hear the faint rattle of dead vines. Mazelle’s boots shifting over stone. Onyx’s silence, which somehow has a shape all its own. Thorin’s presence across from me is the strongest thing, a cold, immense pressure that reminds me of standing at the edge of a deep lake and realizing the water is much darker than it looked from shore.

Something brushes the edge of my thoughts and I go rigid.

It’s not painful, but pain might have been easier to understand. This feels intimate in a way I am not prepared for. Not like a hand on my skin. Worse. Like someone standing in the doorway of a room I have spent my entire life pretending does not exist.

My eyes fly open.

Thorin’s are already fixed on me.

“No,” I say.

His gaze does not waver. “I have barely touched the surface.”

“I felt you.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not helping your case, Thorin. I felt you in my mind.”

“You need to learn the difference between presence and invasion.”

I almost laugh. “Spoken like a man inside my head.”

“I am not inside yet.”