Page 133 of Embers of Ruin

“You will understand soon enough.”

He leaves me with the hum and my reflection.

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.