Trials of the Cursed (Champions of Chaos #2)

Chapter 1

I’m sorry for all I didn’t share, Ember. Let this be my attempt to explain.

— ALARIC SARE’S PAPERS FOR EMBERLINE ARKOVA

Once, the word Cursed told the story of a prince who defied his fate. A man who refused the summons of a goddess. As all stories in Kavios go, this one, too, had a monstrous ending: the cursed hero unleashed nightmares with his resistance.

Now it was my story, too.

The word Cursed filled my every waking thought, or at least those not crammed with the snap of my uncle’s neck and the crash of his too-thin body against the wall where the goddess had thrown him.

I shuddered in an attempt to suppress the mental image.

The whole of the Three Kingdoms spread before me.

A continent I’d dreamed of exploring for years.

None of it held my attention. Not the fact that I rode on the back of a dragon, even though my fingers clung to his scales for purchase.

Not even the fact that each beat of Charon’s wings brought us closer to the city of Ciril.

I had planned to visit the capital city of Linia, and the library housed there, before my life turned upside down.

Before Alaric went missing, before I became Jeweler to the Blessed, before I learned about goddesses and Champions.

It seemed an unholy symmetry—like Themis’s scales held in perfect balance—that it had become the destination we fled to after everything.

We.

I shuddered again.

Smoke billowed from Charon’s nostrils, and he grunted. His voice in my head sounded low and deep like the gnarled roots of the Oldwood where I found him. “I don’t know what we’ll encounter in Linia…”

None of us did, but his hesitation revealed the reason for his comment.

He needed to heal before we reached the city.

I’d all but forced the magic on him during our journey.

Trapped in a mine for almost two hundred years, his wings needed time to unfurl—to strengthen.

In our rush to leave the kingdom before the Blessed caught up with us, we’d given him none.

We.

My curse—Hart—leaned forward. The worst part was that I didn’t even know what that meant. He was my curse, as I was his. I knew only the basics. Namely, when it came to our magic fueled by emotion, mine could only be powered by his feelings, and his by mine.

The goddess found it irrelevant that he was perhaps the last man in the Three Kingdoms I wanted to share my emotions with.

I no longer knew what drove us. We had nowhere else to go after the events in the throne room. Experience dictated that physical separation would have consequences. My only thought had been to seek out knowledge on magic, and there was only one place to search.

We couldn’t find answers fast enough as the sensation, forever present between us, shot a bolt of awareness down my spine with Hart’s proximity. A shiver fought to free itself. I held still, halting the inadvertent reaction. He didn’t deserve to know his effect on me.

Especially now.

Lost in my own thoughts, I hadn’t noticed Charon’s body tense beneath us. His neck lifted slightly, and his wings angled as he banked east. It didn’t take long to notice what he had. Another dragon circled the city walls in the distance.

Charon wanted to prepare for any reality as we flew toward the city.

No other dragons existed in Kavios, but that obviously wasn’t true here in Linia.

I had considered them myths, lost symbols of a forbidden chaos goddess, before I freed Charon from captivity in the mines.

If he required healing magic to face another dragon, I would grant it.

I only wished that I could heal him myself.

But that was my curse.

I sighed, wishing that the existence of dragons and the fact that Charon could speak directly into my mind were the worst of the revelations that led to our fleeing Kavios.

“Hart.” I turned to face him and met his outstretched hand. The ease with which that name rolled from my tongue gave me pause. When I’d first used it, I hadn’t thought it suited him. Now that I had another name—Sebastien—I found I preferred the first.

My continued use of “Hart” only proved my ability to ignore hard things.

And look what it had cost me.

I flinched from the memory of my uncle’s body as it slammed into the throne room wall.

I closed my eyes like that would remove the scene from my mind.

Death by a thousand tiny cuts didn’t begin to cover the loss.

Each thought seesawed my feelings about him.

This morning, when Charon recited the whole of Champions of Kavios to stop Hart from asking questions about our imminent arrival in Ciril, I thought Alaric would have liked the dragon’s methods.

Another cut quickly followed the thought: Alaric had known about Charon, that he was trapped, that he needed me, yet he’d kept his existence a secret.

Nothing could be done about it now. I tucked the heartache deep within my chest, twisting a key as I locked it up tight. Sadness wouldn’t save me, no matter how convenient the sweet stupor of its calming magic might seem.

Unfortunately, sadness wasn’t the emotion I required.

My gloves protected my fingers from Hart’s skin. In Kavios, the layer had shielded me from the Blessed’s unwelcome touch—from the discovery of my immunity to their magic. Their flimsy protection did next to nothing against the spark that lived between Hart and me.

With one hand, I steadied myself on Charon’s back, while with my mouth, I bit the middle finger of my glove and tugged it free. “Charon is nervous about the other dragon. He needs to heal before we arrive.”

“I am not nervous,” Charon chuffed.

I rolled my eyes at his response. It served to distract me from Hart’s hand, which remained outstretched, waiting for my touch.

We’d done this half a dozen times. Still, saliva coated my mouth.

An excess swallow felt unnecessary, just like my explanation, but I couldn’t help it when I was asking for Hart’s lust.

Reaching for his hand should be easy. Maybe that was why I hesitated.

I knew otherwise. I knew how quickly that hand could move to violence to protect me and how capable it was of stoking my own lust as it mapped my body.

I bit the inside of my lip in an attempt to erase what I thought I knew.

Then I made the mistake of looking at him.

Fucking Chaos. My stoic, brooding guard taunted me with his every breath.

Wisps of chocolate brown hair flicked with the wind around the hard lines of his face.

Scruff covered his sun-kissed skin from our days of travel.

His perfect posture sketched a portrait of determination, though what drove him now, I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

Then the deep, forest green of his irises found mine, and I wanted to forget the word Cursed.

I wanted to forget the Cursed King. I wanted to forget the goddess-cursed game. And I wanted to forget the curse that now bound me to Hart.

The weakest part of me wanted to fall into his strong and steady arms. Let him help me forget the loss of my uncle, the separation from my parents, and the choices I’d made that had upturned my entire being, if only for a few stolen hours.

I blinked away the connection as something smoky coated my tongue.

No. Hart’s deception might have been the worst of all—the one I hadn’t seen coming.

I had thought Alaric missing. The prince had considered him dead. I had known King Rodric stole freedoms from his people as he took and manipulated their emotions. All that had been understood. Known.

I hadn’t expected Hart to be King Rodric’s son.

I hadn’t expected Hart to be the Cursed King—the runaway prince responsible for this entire mess. And I certainly hadn’t expected to learn this in the throne room when the Sibling Goddesses arrived to bicker over their game. A game in which my life was a playing piece.

Cursed might be an understatement.

Hart’s nostrils flared. I still hadn’t taken his hand. His eyes met mine again, and that same insolent challenge from our first meeting remained. “The magic requires touch.”

“Want me to buck him off?”

The line of Hart’s lips flattened, and I assumed Charon spoke to him as well.

With a deep breath, I reached for Hart’s outstretched hand.

I’d grown used to the way my hips rocked gently with every beat of Charon’s wings.

The days of travel felt like a lifetime.

No matter how much I wanted to turn away from Hart, to scoot forward on Charon’s back and put as much distance between us as our current transport would allow, I wouldn’t when Charon needed this.

“I’m aware. Just as I’m painfully aware that lust creates healing magic.”

His mouth tilted into a smirk. “And here I thought you’d forgotten.”

My hand inched toward his. “I’m only doing this for Charon.”

“Understood.” Hart’s brow raised in an unspoken provocation even as his response said otherwise.

A short, sharp shake of my head served to remind me I didn’t know this man.

Any illusion of knowing him had shattered with the purple glow of the stolen adamas he’d wielded in the throne room.

The man who’d been my partner in plots of treason and my confidant through uncertainty had disappeared.

In fact, he might never have existed. Everything Hart did had only served to protect the source of his power: me.

“Your goddess saw fit that my magic can only come from you,” I said.

The slight curl to his lip that had formed with his taunt flattened as I named Themis his goddess.

While he was distracted, I clasped his hand.

A tingling sensation danced across my skin where we touched.

I’d hoped to catch him off guard. Hoped the lust wouldn’t flow so seamlessly between us.

His smirk returned as not a moment of hesitation passed before magic flooded the connection.

He hadn’t required any time to source lust.

Another surge of magic pulsed between us, and he answered my unasked question. “What can I say? You inspire me, Chaos.”

Once playful, forbidden, and secretly powerful, the name chipped at that box of unwanted feelings locked deep in my chest.

Hart held my gaze, and as much as I wanted to look away, I didn’t.

Did Hart ever think of the night in Forest’s Edge when I’d played at being a human seeking his Blessed touch? Or did he think of our night together—

No. I was sure he didn’t think of me at all.

I took the lust he offered and forged it into healing magic. I almost wished for the orange glow of an adamas gem between us. It would make things easier—transactional—but as Champions with matching curses, we had no need of the stone.

Blinking rapidly, I attempted to dissolve the unhelpful thoughts. If any information to break our curse existed, I’d find it in Ciril. The Library of Linia held the most knowledge on Champions’ magic in the Three Kingdoms.

I cleared my throat as I molded more of Hart’s lust into healing magic. “How’s that, Charon?”

“I’m sorry, Champion, a little more would be best.”

My teeth clenched, but I nodded. Charon only spoke to Hart to taunt him. I wasn’t sure he realized the folly of that plan—it meant I had to speak to Hart on his behalf. “He needs more.”

Hart’s lip didn’t curl, and his pine green eyes didn’t flash with mirth. His words were flat. Maybe that was why I felt them like a slap. “I could go all day.”

Another nod to myself. I couldn’t spend time considering what that meant.

Who he fantasized about. It was nothing to me.

Whatever bloomed briefly between us had broken.

I had trusted him with everything—my immunity to the Blessed, the discovery of my magic, and my indecision with how to carve a place for myself in Kavios. He couldn’t even give me his real name.

A small, quiet voice in the back of my mind fought to be heard. It said that he’d showed me my magic and helped me uncover everything my family had hidden. He’d known too much about the Cursed King for any other outcome to be true. Was it really his fault I refused to make the connection?

No. I didn’t accept that, either.

I trusted too few to let such a significant deception pass. A lie of omission was still a lie. Whatever might have been had washed away, leaving only this curse in its wake.

“I have what I need, Champion.”

Charon’s sentence barely finished before I tugged my hand free of the minuscule connection to Hart. “He’s good.”

My heart raced as I pulled my glove on. That smoky tang still coated my mouth, and I felt Hart’s gaze the same way I knew an adamas gem from quartz in my palm—instinctively. His stare demanded attention on this seemingly new facet of our connection, but I remained determined to ignore it.

Cursed. The word had lost all meaning to me, yet I knew I needed it gone. That was why we were here. I couldn’t win the goddesses’ game when my opponent fueled my power, even if my opponent seemed to care little for this fact. Or the fact that he was a Champion at all.

Still, I wanted it gone. I needed all connections to Hart severed.

The other dragon roared in the distance, and my legs tightened around Charon. “Easy, Champion. You’ve done your part.”

I hadn’t done nearly enough. Kavios needed me. King Rodric’s bastardization of the Champions’ magic had ruined the lives of humans in my home kingdom for too long. To free them, I needed a way to break this curse.

Only one Champion could sit on the throne.

I wasn’t sure I was the best choice, but I had to be better than ceding the city-state to Themis.

She cared nothing for those she ruled, so long as her definition of order was maintained.

Hart tensed at my back, as if he sensed my fear of the goddess’s rule through him.

With another flap of Charon’s magically reinforced wings, the city of Ciril drew closer.

The Library of Linia held my only hope. We would learn about the other Champions.

Each of the Three Kingdoms had its own pair.

I knew little of Aven, but a prior queen of Linia had been Chaos’s Champion.

Her descendant held the throne now. I didn’t know what had happened to Themis’s Champion, or how the goddesses’ game had played out in this kingdom, but I’d search for those answers.

Alaric had taught me that all history held value. History taught us not to repeat others’ mistakes. It taught us how to forge our own path.

I may be cursed, but I would find a way to break the goddesses’ hold on my fate.