YA fantasy series about a mining town with a deep connection to the magical stone they've mined for generations. Early-mid 2000s.

A particular rare stone which only nobility are allowed to use is "discovered" to be magical (I seem to remember the nobility had been covering up the knowledge previously). Families and towns that have historically mined this stone report a deep empathetic, almost symbiotic connection with the stone, developed over generations of working with the stone and accidentally ingesting it from their environment. The main character of the series, a teenage boy, develops this connection into true telepathy with the help of a small bird (I think it was a hawk) statuette made of the stone and a girl sent by a mysterious party to learn more about the reports of magic in these mining towns. (Unsure about the girl's exact involvement, but I remember her being part of some conspiracy and not being who she said she was.) Turns out if you're in a building made of this stone, you can communicate with anyone touching the same kind of stone elsewhere, even if separated by long distances. I believe the stone even holds memories, and helped solve some mysteries along the way. I *think* the name of the stone might have started with an L, but I'm not sure. Eventually the town the boy is from, and later other mining towns, decide they want more rights and self-governance (using the stone as leverage), sparking civil unrest in the kingdom. I think the boy gets married to a princess? Or else the girl is secretly a princess and they get married. At one point the girl gets kidnapped and gets rescued with the help of the building she's held in; this is how the memory holding and some of the telepathy was discovered. In this building there was a painting and old memories of a princess that was "lost" generations ago, but she was actually hidden away for some reason - this discovery helps unravel a larger conspiracy later. (There's a chance this is from another series and I'm misremembering, but I'm pretty sure it was from this series.) The story was set in a fictional medieval time period, with many of the problems of rampant feudalism that come with that period.

I don't remember what the books looked like, sadly, but they were written in English. Most likely paperback.

I think it was a trilogy at the time, not sure if there's more books now. I borrowed the books from my local library many years ago, sometime in my tweens or early teens. This would've been close to ten years ago, I'm not sure how new the books were then, but my library tends to mainly stock YA books less than 10 years old. They were age-appropriate, with drama and tension suitable for a young adolescent, but also enjoyable for older adults (my mom really enjoyed them as well and she can recite Tolkien in her sleep, so they definitely weren't trashy or childish, if I'm remembering correctly.)