Page 114 of Embers of Ruin

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.”