CHAPTER 25 #2
For one traitorous second, I ache for him.
“You think I don’t understand what it means to lose things,” I say.
His gaze sharpens. “I did not say that.”
“No, you didn’t have to say it. But I know that you think it. You think because I came from one miserable village, I can’t understand the weight of a kingdom.”
“I think you have been taught a narrow version of the world.”
The words aren’t cruel, and that makes them worse.
“And whose fault is that?” I demand. “Who made the world narrow? Who filled it with fear? Who made girls like me hide what we were until hiding felt safer than breathing?”
“The curse did that.”
“Your curse, Thorin! Your family’s curse! You did this to me, to all of us!”
“Lyra!” Onyx snaps, his expression telling me I’m crossing a dangerously thin line I may not be able to come back from.
I toe the line anyway.
Thorin’s eyes flash. “Stop, Lyra.”
“Then tell me! I’d certainly like to know. But you’ll never, ever admit it, will you?”
I laugh, and there’s nothing soft about it.
“No. No, I am done being careful because everyone else is uncomfortable with the truth. You want me to understand what’s at stake?
Fine. I understand that villages are dying.
I understand that your garden is dead. I understand that your kingdom looks at me like I might save it. ”
The light around my hands grows brighter.
“But you don’t understand what you took from me.”
His expression shifts in warning. “Lyra.”
“No.” My voice cracks, but I keep going because the crack only makes the words sharper.
“You took my home. You took the only life I had left. You took whatever safety I scraped together in Elvora, miserable as it was. You sent Onyx after me and dragged me here and now you stand there acting as if all of that is justified because your kingdom needs something from me.”
The shadows move, and Onyx moves with them. I barely notice because the grief is rising now. It’s old grief. Familiar grief. The kind Mara gave shape to long ago. The kind I built my hatred around because hatred was easier than emptiness.
“You took everything from me,” I whisper, tears spilling freely now.
Thorin’s face goes very still, and I see the moment he realizes where the words are headed and tries to stop them.
My magic flares before I realize I have moved. Light spills over my hands, bright and sharp. I feel so much rage and I have nowhere to channel it—what do I do with it? It’s begging to be set free.
“You don’t understand what you took from me.”
“Lyra.” His voice rises, a command for me to stop speaking. But it’s too late—I can’t stop now.
“You took them.”
Silence doesn’t simply fall over the room—it crashes like a wave threatening to drown an entire village.
My breath comes hard. My hands are shaking, light flickering wildly beneath the skin. Thorin stands across from me, shadows curling around him, face stripped of all emotion.
“What did you say?” he asks. His voice is low. Too low.
I should stop. I know I should stop. But the door inside me is already rattling, and anger has become the only thing holding it shut.
“My parents,” I say. “You took them. Your curse. Your guards. Your kingdom. I don’t care which piece of it held the blade.
They died because of you. Because of you allowing the order your ancestors started to stand.
Magic is forbidden, so take the children.
Magic is forbidden in Solaris.” I spit the last words at him as if they’re ash on my tongue.
Onyx lowers his head.
That movement cuts through me. He looks devastated. Why does he look like that? Thorin doesn’t look at Onyx. He looks only at me, and for the first time since I met him, I see something like fear in his eyes.
Not fear of me. Fear for me.
“What did Mara tell you?” he asks.
The name hits hard enough to steal my next breath. “Mara? How do you know about Mara?”
“What did she tell you?” His voice changes.
It’s no longer the Shadow King’s voice. Not the ruler. Not the teacher. Not the man who almost touched his mouth to mine in the archives. This voice is careful in a way that terrifies me, each word placed like a footstep over thin ice.
I step back. “Why?”
Thorin comes closer, forcing another step from me.
“Lyra, I need to know what she said.” His voice sharpens.
“She told me enough.”
The repetition breaks something loose in my chest. I reach for the memory because it has always been there. Hasn’t it? Mara’s voice. Her arms around me. The story she gave me when the grief was too large to hold without a shape. The king’s men came. There was light. And screaming.
Your parents tried to protect you.
The Shadow King’s curse took everything.
That is what she told me. Isn’t it? My mouth opens but nothing comes out and I frown. The silence inside my head is sudden and wrong. I try again.
“Mara said…” The words vanish, and I struggle to remember exactly what it was that Mara told me.
The memory doesn’t seem forgotten. It feels taken.
I know what forgetting feels like. I have forgotten names, chores, the exact taste of my mother’s stew, the sound of my father’s laugh on ordinary mornings when grief was not watching.
This is not forgetting. This is reaching for a cup and finding your hand pass through air. My heartbeat stumbles.
“Mara said…” I try again, but the sentence collapses before it forms.
Thorin sees it. So does Onyx.
“No,” I say, though I don’t know who I’m speaking to.
The golden wall inside my mind stirs, and I feel it. It’s not a memory—it’s a barrier. The same one Thorin touched before. Only now it is awake.
“No,” I repeat.
Thorin’s face twists—not much, but enough. Enough to show pain he can’t hide quickly enough. “That is why.”
“What is why?” I ask, but my voice has gone thin.
He takes another step toward me and I step back, falling onto the bed.
Onyx moves again. “Thorin, don’t! You’ll push her too far!”
Thorin doesn’t look away from me. “She has to know.”
“No. Not like this.”
“If not now, when? When, Onyx?” The words are sharp, but beneath them is something desperate. Something breaking.
Onyx’s jaw locks. “When she chooses.”
“She cannot choose what she does not know.”
“And you think forcing her is better?”
I look between them, suddenly cold all over. “What are you two talking about?”
Neither one of them answers. Of course they don’t answer me. Men and their secrets. Men and their noble silences. Men standing around my life like they are deciding which pieces of it can be safely handed back to me.
Rage surges through the fear. “No,” I say. “No, if this is about me, you look at me when you argue over it.”
They both do, immediately. Thorin’s eyes are bright, silver cutting through their usual storm-cloud gray. “Lyra, your memory was altered.”
For a moment, I stare up at him. Then I laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because the alternative is screaming.
“What?” I say, because I’m terrified that he’s right and I’ve been wrong this entire time. I can’t let that be true. “No, Thorin.”
“I am going to help you remember, Lyra.”
“NO!”
“Lyra—”
“No.” I laugh hysterically, shaking my head. “Don’t stand here and say that as if it’s another one of your little lessons. My memory wasn’t altered. I remember my parents. I remember losing them. I remember Mara telling me—”
The sentence fails again. The golden wall pulses and pain lances through my skull and I gasp, pressing a hand to my temple.
Onyx swears, stepping forward. Thorin lifts a hand, but his eyes remain on me. “Don’t interfere, brother.”
My head is pounding and blinding light steals my vision, but I heard it. Brother. They’re brothers. I remember learning of a second heir to the throne. Everyone assumed he’d died. Apparently he’s alive and well.
Thorin and Onyx Rothstone.
What. The. Fuck.
“You’re hurting her,” Onyx yells, and I can see them but barely—the edges of my vision are blurring white, and I feel myself fall back onto something soft.