23. Chapter 23 #4
His gaze meets mine. For a moment, there is no king in his face. No crown. Only a man looking at me as if I am both salvation and ruin, and he has not yet decided which one will destroy him first.
“Nothing,” he says.
Liar.
The word is right there on my tongue but I can’t make myself say it.
His hand shifts, and his knuckles brush my cheek.
The touch is so gentle it feels impossible that it belongs to him.
Thorin, who commands shadows and an entire continent.
Thorin, who throws darkness like blades and keeps truths locked beneath stone.
Thorin, who infuriates me with every breath he takes and somehow makes it impossible to breathe when he stands too close.
His thumb grazes my cheekbone and my eyes flutter.
Traitors. All of me.
“Lyra,” he says.
My name in his voice is a warning, a question, a mistake we are both already making.
I look up at him. “Don’t.”
His hand stills and for half a second, pain flashes through his eyes. Then he begins to pull away. And because I am apparently determined to ruin my own life, I catch his wrist. Thorin goes utterly still. I don’t know what I’m doing.
That’s the first problem.
The second problem is that I don’t let go.
“I meant don’t say my name like that,” I whisper.
His gaze burns into mine.
“And how is that?”
As if my name means as much to you as yours means to me.
I don’t say it. Thank the gods, I don’t say it.
But something in his expression tells me he hears it anyway.
His hand turns beneath mine, not pulling free, only shifting until his fingers close around my wrist. The touch is light and controlled. But beneath it, I feel the pulse of his shadows and the answering warmth of my own magic, both of them circling something I don’t understand well enough to name.
His mouth lowers slightly, but not enough. I need him closer. Want him close to me. I want him pressed against me like he was that night in the dark corridor, wrapped in shadows.
I stop breathing.
This is madness.
It has to be.
I hate him.
I absolutely hate him.
I—
The archive doors burst open.
The sound snaps through the room like a blade and I jerk back so quickly I nearly knock the ancient book from the table.
Thorin catches it without looking away from me. His eyes never want to leave mine, as if he wants to memorize my face every minute of every day. How odd that I’m starting to feel the same…
Mazelle stands in the doorway, right on time as fucking always.
Her eyes move from Thorin’s hand on the book, to me, to the distance between us, which is not nearly as much distance as I would prefer under interrogation.
Her face reveals nothing.
“I apologize for the interruption, Your Majesty.”
She does not sound apologetic at all.
Thorin’s expression has closed completely by the time he turns toward her. The king returns so quickly I almost wonder if I imagined the man who touched my face at all.
“You have news,” he says.
“Yes.”
The word is simple, but something in her tone shifts the air.
Thorin closes the book with one hand. “Leave us. I’ll visit you in the war room shortly.”
Mazelle’s eyes flick briefly to me. “It concerns The Rebellion… and Lady Tarethyn.”
My stomach tightens. What could possibly concern me? Apparently everything does now. And what is the rebellion?
Thorin turns back toward me, and whatever passed between us is locked away so thoroughly that I want to scream. Or laugh. Or ask him whether kings practice becoming impossible or if he was born naturally talented.
“What news?” I ask.
Mazelle steps inside. “A report from the western road. Another village has gone silent.”
The words settle over the archive and Thorin’s face changes.
Not dramatically. Not enough for anyone else to call it grief. But I see it now because I have begun to notice the things I should not notice. His shoulders still. His eyes darken. The exhaustion I saw yesterday returns in an instant, carving itself into him beneath the hard lines of command.
“How long?” he asks.
“Three days since the last signal.”
“Are there any survivors?”
“Their status is unknown.”
The shadows around Thorin spread across the floor.
Not wild or uncontrolled, but the archive seems darker for them.
I think of burned villages and empty roads.
Homes standing like graves. The anger that carried me to Andell stirs again, but it does not know where to land now.
Not cleanly. Not after Lycar. Not after the court.
Not after watching Thorin’s face when a single leaf grew in the Sacred Gardens.
“You should have led with that, I think,” I say quietly.
Mazelle’s gaze moves to me and Thorin’s does too.
The words surprise even me, mostly because they aren’t sharp.
“Instead of dragging me into dinners and lessons and riddles, you should have told me people are disappearing. Are you behind it? And what is The Rebellion?”
Thorin looks at me for a long moment, something painful flickering across his face. “Lyra, you need to leave. I do not have time to deal with this right now.”
His voice is quiet. Dangerously so.
“No,” I say. “I think I needed to know.”
“What would it change right now?”
“I don’t know.” My hands curl at my sides. “Maybe I would've hated you more and never let your words find my heart before finding out that you truly are the monster I believed you to be.”
I look away first.
Mazelle clears her throat, though not unkindly. “The council is gathering.”
Thorin nods once. “I’ll come.”
He turns back to the book and places one hand over its cover. The gesture is final.
“Return to your chambers,” he says to me.
My anger flares. “Of course.”
His gaze sharpens.
“No, truly,” I continue, stepping away from the table.
“Thank you for the generous scraps of terrifying knowledge. I’ll go back to my room now and try not to think too hard about a rebellion, torn prophecies, silent villages, or whatever you almost said before deciding, yet again, that I’m better off blind. ”
Something in his expression shifts and I wonder if it’s wise to continue baiting him.
His jaw tightens. “Lyra.”
“No.” I hold up one hand. “Don’t. Not like that.”
I can tell that I’m testing his patience, but I don’t care. Not at all.
Let him feel something uncomfortable for once. Mazelle watches us with unnerving stillness. I move toward the door, but Thorin’s voice follows me.
“You will have the truth.”
I stop but I don’t turn. “When?” I ask.
The silence stretches. Then, softer than I expect, he says, “Soon.”
I laugh once, bitter and tired. “I’m beginning to hate that word more than your face.”
He pauses. “My face?” he says, and I catch a hint of amusement in his voice.
Damn him. Damn him for making amusement tug at me even now.
I look over my shoulder. “Yes. It’s distracting, and I resent it.”
For one heartbeat, the almost-smile returns. Then it is gone, swallowed by the report in Mazelle’s hand and the kingdom waiting outside the archive doors.
“Lyra, I have to go now.”
Just like that, my anger returns, because I know he isn't going to tell me anything.
He never will. The realization burns hot enough to make me want to cut him and sever whatever bond exists between us.
Whatever this is—whatever it was, whatever it could have been—I'm ending it now.
Because where he hides behind lies, I'm about to be painfully transparent.
If I can't use softness to get what I want... then I'll use my anger.
“Here’s a secret for you, Shadow King. I know you killed my parents. And I’ve been planning to kill you since the moment my adopted mother told me. You’re lucky you have loyal guards, or I would have fucked you senseless and slit your throat in the same breath.”
With that, I storm past him, pretending not to notice the mixture of horror and disbelief written across his face. I flash Mazelle a smug smile as I walk past, raising my eyebrows when her mouth practically falls open.
It’s not so fun when I tell you what I know, now is it?
* * *
Riven is waiting in the hall, because apparently my life now comes with a rotating assortment of concerned men. He falls into step beside me without a word, and I’m grateful enough for the silence that I don’t insult him. This is how one knows the night has become serious.
We are halfway back to my chambers when I realize my hand is still warm where Thorin touched my wrist. My cheek remembers his thumb.
My body remembers how well we fit together.
My magic remembers his shadows. And my mind, traitorous and exhausted and far too curious for its own survival, keeps circling the same unfinished sentence.
Because when I found you—
I press my fingers to my temple.
A prophecy, a vanished village, complicated feelings about a king, and another locked door. At this rate, I may actually start missing the simplicity of being chased through the woods. At least then, everyone trying to ruin my life had the decency to do it with swords.