CHAPTER 26
For a moment, nothing happens. That’s the detail that hurts most. Not the screaming. Not the destruction. Not even the grief waiting just beyond the next few minutes.
It is the normalcy of what comes before. The way disaster arrives quietly. The way no one ever realizes they are standing in the last ordinary moment of their life.
* * *
Young me simply stares. The gold beneath my skin isn't frightening yet. It appears sometimes when I'm upset, or excited, or when I laugh particularly hard. Once, when I was six, flowers bloomed beneath my feet and my mother spent three days convincing me I wasn’t secretly turning into a garden.
At the time, I thought it was wonderful. Magic felt wonderful then.
My mother kneels in front of me, taking both of my hands in hers. Her face is calm, but I know her well enough to see the worry hiding behind it now. I always knew when she was worried, even when she tried to pretend otherwise. Her smile becomes too careful. The corners of her eyes tighten.
"Look at me, little flame."
I do.
The light beneath my skin grows brighter. My father rises from the table. Not quickly. Just attentive. As though this has happened before.
Maybe it has.
Maybe there were signs long before this night.
Maybe my parents spent years protecting me from fears I never knew existed.
The carving horse remains abandoned on the table.
Its crooked little face stares toward us.
I find myself focusing on it. The memory wants me to focus on it.
As if some part of me already knows that later, when everything else is broken, I will remember that ridiculous horse.
I will remember it more clearly than I remember my own breathing.
"It's alright, you didn’t do anything wrong, sweetling," my mother says.
And the worst part is that she believes it. I can hear it in her voice. She genuinely believes she can make this better, that she can protect me. The knowledge tears through me because I know something she doesn’t. I know how this ends. I know she doesn't get the chance.
They needed protection from me.
The gold spreads slowly up my arms. Not violently—beautifully. Like sunlight moving beneath water. I was imagining what an actual sun was. I said I wanted to be just like the sun and burn bright.
Young me watches with fascination. Not fear.
"Mamma, my hands are warm. I’m hot all over!"
"They are," my mother agrees.
"Is something wrong with me? Am I sick?"
"No. Nothing is wrong with you. You’re perfect, sweetling."
The answer comes too fast. My father and mother exchange a glance. A tiny one. The kind adults think children don't notice. I notice it now. And suddenly I want to scream at them. Run! Get out! Save yourselves and leave.
Go anywhere else.
Anywhere.
Because the memory has become unbearable in a different way. I am trapped inside it. Forced to watch them walk toward a cliff only I can see. My father crosses the room and crouches beside us. One large hand settles against my shoulder.
Steady. Solid. Safe. Gods. I forgot what it felt like to have a father. Not the idea of one, but the actual thing. The weight of his hand. The knowledge that if something went wrong, he would fix it.
I forgot.
I forgot them.
The realization nearly brings me to my knees inside the memory itself.
A young version of myself leans into his side automatically. Trusting. Loved.
And for the first time since the memory began, genuine terror curls through me because I finally understand what is about to be taken away.
* * *
The Shadow King did this, Lyra.
The words echo through my head like a bell struck beneath the water.
Not because I remember every detail, but because I remember Mara.
I can hear her voice now—not clearly, not every word, just fragments.
A hand smoothing my hair as I trembled uncontrollably.
Arms wrapped around me while I cried. The scent of rain and herbs clinging to her clothes.
Her tears soaking into my hair while I asked questions no child should ever have to ask.
What happened?
Where are they?
Why won't they wake up?
This is my fault. I hurt them, didn’t I?
My stomach lurches and the memory twists again.
I see Mara kneeling in front of me, grief written across her face. And something else. An expression I couldn't name as a child... but I see it now. Horror. Gods... the look on her face makes my stomach knot.
Not the horror of a woman who had arrived too late to save her friends.
The horror of a woman who walked into that room, saw the truth in an instant, and realized she would have to bury it.
Another memory surfaces, hazy at first. A man with crimson eyes stands behind Mara.
His voice is calm. Cold. It’s for the best. He looks at me with something almost like pity.
I’ll wipe the memory from existence. The air leaves my lungs.
The realization comes slowly at first, like a crack spreading through ice. Then all at once it breaks.
Mara knew.
She saw the broken cottage.
Saw my parents.
Saw me.
Saw the light.
Saw what my magic had done.
And she let someone erase the truth and replace it with a lie: that the Shadow King murdered my parents.
My chest seizes so violently my lungs refuse to work.
I gasp for air, but each breath catches in my throat before it reaches my lungs.
It feels like I'm underwater, kicking desperately toward the surface, only to sink farther into the darkness.
A sob claws its way out of me, raw and broken, echoing off the walls until it is all I can hear.
It’s the sound of something inside me breaking. Not my heart. Something deeper. Something someone locked away deep inside me because they didn’t think I would survive it.
They were wrong. I never escaped my grief.
I buried it beneath my hatred until I forgot it was there.
Until now. The lock gives way, and grief crashes into me all at once, so violently it feels as though my bones are splitting beneath my skin.
It tears through every wall I’ve built, leaving nothing untouched, nothing standing.
I’m not watching it break free. I’m breaking with it.
I always believed grief faded with time. I know now it doesn’t. It waits. Patiently. Quietly. Buried beneath everything you’ve built to keep it contained, until one day the walls give way and you realize the grief was never imprisoned.
You were.
“Mara knew.”
The words barely make it past my lips before a rush of pain seizes my heart. No one answers. They don’t need to. The guilt written across their faces tells me everything. They knew. Maybe not all of it. Maybe not the details. But they knew enough to understand how deeply this would wound me.
I press a hand against my chest as if I can somehow keep my heart from tearing itself apart.
Everything folds beneath the weight of one unbearable truth.
My entire life has been built around a story.
Not a memory. A story. A frightened little girl had asked what happened to her parents and someone had given her an answer.
An answer a little girl clung to until it became part of her.
It rooted itself beneath her skin. She fed it until it grew into hatred because hatred hurt less than grief.
Hurt less than guilt.
Hurt less than the truth.
I think of every night I spent cursing the Shadow King. Every time I imagined him as a monster lurking somewhere beyond the mountains. Every moment I looked at Thorin and saw the villain from Mara’s stories.
I hated him. Gods, I hated him. And all the while…
My father never blamed me.
My mother never blamed me.
Even in their final moments.
Even when the cottage was coming apart around us, they were trying to save me.
Not themselves.
Me.
A fresh sob breaks free. I fold forward, arms wrapped around my middle as though I could somehow hold myself together.
But there’s no holding this together. Not anymore.
Because the grief is different now. Before, I mourned people who had been stolen from me.
Now, I mourn the people I have finally remembered.
I remember my mother’s laughter drifting through our home while bread burned in the oven because she’d become distracted talking to my father.
I remember the warmth of her hands as she braided my hair, the gentle tug whenever I squirmed too much.
I remember my father's terrible little wooden horse, carved so crooked he insisted he’d meant to make it that way all along.
Little flame.
Gods. The nickname alone is sharp enough to split me open.
For years, I believed remembering the day they died would finally give me peace. Instead, I remember how they lived. And somehow… that hurts so much more. Tears spill freely down my face as my magic stirs, attempting to comfort me. I don’t acknowledge it.
For the first time in my life, I don’t know what's true anymore. I know my parents are dead. I know I loved them. I know they loved me.
And I know Mara lied.
Somewhere beneath the grief, the guilt, and the heartbreak threatening to swallow me whole, another realization begins to take shape.
If the Shadow King didn’t kill my parents...
Then who is he?
And if Mara lied about that...
What else did she lie about?