CHAPTER 29
Hours pass. Or days. Time becomes slippery inside the glass. The lights never fully dim, only lower when the cage seems to grow bored of blinding me. Food appears through a narrow seam that opens and seals so quickly I nearly miss it the first time.
I don’t eat. I drink only because my throat burns from shouting and because dying of stubbornness in a glass cage seems anticlimactic even for me.
Eventually, I stop pounding on the walls.
Not because I surrender. Because my knuckles ache, my head spins, and the cage enjoys it too much when I fight.
I sit in the center of the floor, surrounded by a hundred distorted versions of myself, and try not to think about my mother’s hands in my hair. Naturally, that means I think of nothing else.
Little flame.
I press my palms against my eyes until sparks bloom behind them. I will not cry here. Not in front of these walls. Not in front of whatever cowardly audience watches from beyond them. I have cried enough. I have cried until grief has become part of my breathing.
The next time the man returns, he carries a book bound in cracked black leather.
It looks ancient, the edges of the pages yellowed with age, the spine softened by centuries of careful hands.
He says nothing as he crosses the room and places it on a glass stand beyond the wall of my prison, positioning it with deliberate care before opening it to a single page.
My eyes are drawn to it before I can stop myself.
The parchment is covered in circles nested inside other circles, each one filled with symbols I don't recognize.
Thin black lines connect them in intricate patterns that resemble constellations more than words.
Between the diagrams are detailed sketches of a human figure, veins of light branching from the heart to the wrists, throat, and spine with unnerving precision. My breath catches.
The figure looks like me.
My stomach twists as I study the page, searching desperately for some explanation that doesn’t make my skin crawl. There isn’t one. The longer I stare, the more certain I become that this wasn’t drawn to resemble someone like me.
It was drawn to resemble me.
“What is that?” I ask quietly, already regretting the question.
His crimson eyes lift from the page to mine. “The record of your creation.”
A dry laugh escapes before I can stop it. It scrapes against my throat, humorless and brittle.
“Who are you?”
The man inclines his head with that same unsettling, serpentine grace. “I am known as Malveris.”
The name means nothing to me, but something deep inside me stirs anyway, as though my memories recognize him long before I do.
“Well,” I say, “that's certainly one way to introduce yourself. Do all kidnappers speak in riddles, or are you making a special effort to be unbearable?”
Malveris doesn’t react. His crimson eyes remain fixed on me with the same unsettling calm, as though my sarcasm is nothing more than another line in a text he’s already read.
“You were not born as ordinary mortals are.”
I push myself upright too quickly, the room pitching beneath me. My hand catches the glass before my knees can give out.
“No. I had a mother.”
His expression doesn't change. “You were placed with one.”
The words strike something raw inside me.
No.
I refuse to believe him. I refuse to believe the man who kidnapped me, locked me inside a glass cage, and now claims to know the truth of my own life.
Mara did the same. She told me a story. I believed every word of it, built my life around it, and discovered far too late that it had never been the whole truth.
I won’t make that mistake again.
The memories come so easily now they steal the breath from my lungs.
I remember my mother’s laugh before I remember her face.
I remember the smell of rosemary and fresh bread clinging to her clothes whenever she wrapped me in her arms. I remember the warmth of her rich mahogany skin and the bright almond-shaped eyes that mirror my own.
I remember my father’s pale skin, dark hair, and impossible green eyes, forever bent over another crooked little carving he insisted looked noble despite every piece of evidence to the contrary.
I remember home.
I remember being loved.
“They were my parents,” I say, my voice shaking despite every attempt to steady it. “You’re lying.”
“Partially, perhaps,” he says quietly. “Not enough to matter.”
The dismissal knocks the air from my lungs. I press both palms against the glass until my fingertips ache, refusing to let him see me retreat.
“I remember,” I say, shaking my head. “I was born in Valeyn. Before Elvora.”
“No.” The certainty in his voice infuriates me.
“You were hidden in Valeyn.”
“My mother—”
“Loved you.” The interruption is gentle. “I have no doubt that she did.”
His crimson eyes never leave mine. “But love does not make someone your beginning.”
Something inside me snaps. “You don’t get to speak about her or my beginning.”
Immediately, the glass reacts. The white light humming beneath its surface falters, flickering once before steadying again.
Malveris notices immediately.
So do I.
Pain tears through my wrist and I suck in a sharp breath, clutching my forearm as heat races beneath my skin, climbing toward my elbow in fierce, pulsing waves.
This isn’t the glass cage. It steals my magic before it can answer me.
This feels different. Hotter. Wilder. It feels like fury with nowhere to go.
His gaze drops to the mark on my wrist, and something changes behind those crimson eyes. Recognition.
“...Interesting.”
My stomach knots as the realization hits me in waves.
“You feel the Shadow King,” he says quietly as he circles the outer edge of my glass prison.
“I feel a strong desire to break your nose, Malveris. Do you want to know something else?” I tilt my head to the side, assessing him now. “I’m going to kill you when I get out of here. Those creepy eyes of yours? I’m going to carve them out of their sockets.”
His answering grin is terrifying. “I am not afraid of you, child. But I wonder…”
He walks closer to the glass, sneering at me with yellowing teeth. “The king still doesn't know what you are, does he?”
The question catches me off guard and my mind betrays me before I can stop it, pulling me back through moments I had almost forgotten amid everything else.
Thorin standing in the archives with his fingers buried gently in my hair, studying me as though I were the answer to a question he had spent years asking.
Thorin in the Sacred Gardens, promising that I would have the truth one day.
Thorin forcing open the memories that shattered what remained of my world because he believed I deserved to know what had been stolen from me.
Thorin knows I’m the Cursebreaker.
He knows my magic is the only thing capable of healing Solaris. But does he know everything?
Ever since my memories returned, fragments have surfaced without warning. Fleeting flashes. Half-formed truths. Pieces the gods buried so deeply that even now they refuse to reveal themselves all at once. They wanted me to remember. Just…not everything.
I won’t tell Malveris that.
I meet his gaze with contempt. “I don’t think anyone does.”
A slow smile curves his mouth. “No,” he says quietly. “Not yet.”
He reaches for the ancient book, tucking it beneath one arm as though I’ve already given him everything he wanted.
A cruel smile twists his mouth as his crimson eyes gleam. “Then perhaps we will all learn together.” His gaze drifts over me with unsettling interest. “Though I do wonder how your body reacts to magic through the chamber. I shall test it.”
My mind blanks as horror washes over me. “I’m going to fucking kill—”
He holds his palm out and a bright spark of crimson shoots straight toward me, passing through the glass as if it’s not there, hitting me square in the chest. My eyes go wide, and every limb freezes. In my mind…
I am screaming.
His magic is so painful that I want to claw at my skin to tear my flesh off. It feels as if my body is on fire, and thousands of small needles are stabbing me. My mouth is open, but no sound comes out. I try to raise my hand, but I can’t move it. I can’t move anything.
THORIN!
THORIN HELP ME! FIND ME!
Find me. Find me. Save me. Help me. Thorin. Help. Thorin…help.
Malveris releases his hold on me and I hit the ground hard with a loud thud.
Malveris looks pleased with himself and gives me a hateful smile, turning on his heel before I can catch my breath, which is fortunate for him because my response would have been vulgar and deeply satisfying.
But I can’t breathe. Or I can—it’s just taking a lot of effort to drag in breaths.
When the lights finally lower, I lie on the glass floor and stare at the warped ceiling. My reflection stares back, silver hair spread around my head like a halo I never asked for. The cage hums softly, pleased with itself, feeding on panic, grief, fury, whatever pieces of me it can reach.
My wrist pulses once, weak and faint, but undeniably real. Heat floods beneath the mark, and with it comes something so sharp and vast it steals what little breath I have left. Fury.
I know immediately it isn’t mine. I know what my own anger feels like. This belongs to him. It’s raw and terrible, vast enough to devour stars. I press my hand over the mark and close my eyes. Somewhere, far beyond my reach, the Shadow King knows I’m gone.
And gods help these rebels when he finds them. I hope he makes them suffer.