Page 125 of Embers of Ruin

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.

“I have not touched her.”

“Not yet.” The anger in Onyx’s voice is unmistakable.

I stare at Thorin, noticing he’s closer to me than he was before. He’s looking over me.

“I did not harm your parents,” he says, quiet sorrow in his voice. “Nor did I send the Shadow Guard for them. I did not order their deaths. I did not know where you were until years later, and if I had⁠—”

He stops and the silence after is unbearable.

“If you had what?” I ask.

His gaze holds mine. For a moment, he looks exhausted enough to fall with me.

“I would have come sooner.”

The words break something open inside me. Doubt. Doubt in the one place I never allowed it. Doubt beneath the story Mara gave me. Doubt beneath the hatred that kept me warm when grief would have swallowed me whole.

No.

No, I can’t doubt this.

But if he didn’t order their murder, then what happened?

If the Shadow King didn’t kill them, then who did?

If Mara lied⁠—