Page 130 of Embers of Ruin

What else did she lie about?

CHAPTER 27

By the time I wake up in my chamber, I’m too exhausted to move.

I remember Thorin calling my name more than once. I know he did because I remember his voice, low and steady as always, but not a single word reaches me. They dissolve before they ever settle into meaning, leaving me to drift through a vast, empty silence, as though I’ve become a stranger inside my own body.

The room grows darker around me as afternoon slips into evening, though I hardly notice. Time passes while I remain curled on the bed, replaying every memory my mind chooses to return to. A tray of food appears outside my door at some point. I stare at it until the steam disappears, then look away without touching it. Someone knocks once, waits, then knocks again. I never answer.

Eventually, the palace settles into silence. The fire burns lower, casting long shadows across the room until only the glow of the embers remains. I pull my knees against my chest, trying to make sense of a life that has unraveled in the span of a single afternoon.

I hated Thorin.

I hated him with every certainty I possessed.

I cry for every accusation I ever threw at him. Every cruel word. Every time I looked into those storm-gray eyes and saw nothing but the monster Mara taught me to fear. Now all I can see is the look on his face as my memories return.

He didn’t look relieved.

He didn't look vindicated.

He looked heartbroken. As though my pain had somehow become his own.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but the image refuses to leave me. Nothing makes sense anymore. Not Mara. Not the rebellion she spent years telling me about. She used to whisper that one day the rebellion would overthrow the Shadow King. That one day his reign would end and Solaris would finally know peace. She told me he was cruel. Corrupt. A tyrant who ruled through fear. Those are the stories I grew up believing.

But they aren’t the man I met. They aren’t the king who carries the weight of an entire continent on his shoulders. They aren’t the man who seemed almost as wounded by my memories as I was.

If he isn't the monster Mara raised me to hate…

Why did watching him hurt feel like another wound?

CHAPTER 28

When I wake again, the world is white. Not the white of memory, not the blinding rupture of my own mind being split open by my mate, but something colder, sharper, and entirely without mercy.

The last thing I remember is my chamber. My knees pulled against my chest as I tried to make sense of everything I’d learned.

After that, there’s nothing.

My eyes burn before they fully open, and for a few disoriented breaths I lie still, trying to understand why the floor beneath me is so smooth and cold. Not stone. Not wood. Not the thick rug in my room or the hard garden path beneath my knees. Whatever I am lying on feels polished and lifeless, like ice that has forgotten how to melt.

Glass.

The realization comes slowly at first, then all at once. I push myself upright too quickly and immediately regret every choice I have made since birth. My head throbs. My mouth tastes metallic and my limbs feel heavy, as though someone has filled my bones with wet sand. Around me, the room bends in a perfect circle, walls curving upward into a domed ceiling that reflects my face back at me from every possible angle. The walls are glass. The floor is glass. The ceiling is glass. Everything is transparent and warped, so every version of me staring back looks slightly wrong—my silver hair too bright, my eyes too wide, my face too ashen beneath the cold white glow pulsing through the chamber.

I finally learn my entire life was built on a lie, cry myself into a state no woman should ever be seen in, and now apparently I’ve been placed inside a glass cage.

I press one hand to the floor and force myself to stand. Where am I?

The room hums. The sound is low and constant, not loud enough to hurt, but impossible to ignore. It vibrates through my bare feet, up my legs, and into my chest, where it settles unpleasantly behind my ribs. The air smells clean in the way knives look clean before they cut you, sharp and metallic and wrong. No smoke. No damp stone. No cedar. I don’t feel the familiar pulse of shadows. Nothing of Andell. Nothing of Thorin. Panic surges through me, and I force myself to take slow, steady breaths.

A dull ache settles beneath my wrist, growing hotter with each heartbeat. Then the pain ignites. I hiss and yank back my sleeve. The faint mark that appeared after the bond between Thorin and me settled into something neither of us could deny pulses beneath my skin, dark gold against bronze flesh. It isn’t steady. It’s furious. The pain flares once, sharp enough to make my fingers curl, before fading until only heat remains.

“What now?” I whisper, because apparently my own body has decided to become another person in this story who refuses to explain itself. I reach for my magic. Nothing answers.

No warmth flooding my veins. No gold light gathering in my palms. No familiar pressure, no soft pulse of life waiting beneath the surface. I reach harder, panic clawing up my throat, and the hum in the glass deepens. For one breath, light flickers under my skin, thin and weak. The cage brightens immediately, swallowing it before it can form. The glow vanishes from my hands as if someone has pinched out a candle.

My stomach drops.