Chapter 4
Power takes many shapes. Some would say power is the order of ruling a kingdom. Others say it’s the chaos of disruption.
— ALARIC SARE’S PAPERS FOR EMBERLINE ARKOVA
Charon and I sat on the balcony until exhaustion sent me crawling toward the bed.
Hart hadn’t returned to the bedroom, but I knew he paced in the main room.
The constant shift between the cool minty flavor on my throat and the peppery heat of too-spicy meat alerted me to the changes in his emotions.
I dismissed any thoughts of what it meant to feel such things—to know inherently that they were his.
We’d find a way to break this curse—this connection—soon.
Sleep took me, and the images of the throne room found their way in. The white marble floor, the raised dais where Rodric sat, then Themis snapping Alaric’s neck with no more care than if she’d stepped on a twig.
I screamed and thrashed and tore to get to my uncle. Anything to prove it wasn’t too late. I’d move faster, fight harder … anything.
My eyes snapped open to Hart’s careful gaze. He stood in the doorway with his sword in hand. Cataloging the room, he seemed to realize there was no physical threat. Still, he hesitated.
The moment hung between us, filled with impossibilities.
He could come to me. He could hold me and tell me everything would be fine. The comfort could help me loose the tears I desperately fought from streaming down my face.
No.
I didn’t want him. I didn’t want any of that.
“I’m fine,” I said, sitting up and placing my feet on the solid stone floor.
His snort was audible, but he returned to the main room and closed the door behind him.
The sun barely peeked over the horizon, but I was no stranger to early morning.
I wandered to the balcony to find Charon.
He slept curled, his snout tucked in by his tail.
The circular shape reminded me of a doknot, my favorite cake treat from the Selection Festival vendors.
Had it been only twelve days ago that I’d been excited to have one?
Charon’s golden eyes blinked to life as I opened the glass door to the balcony. He unfurled slowly, stretching his neck and legs.
“I dreamed of Alaric again,” I said.
Charon grunted in acknowledgement that we called reliving Alaric’s death dreaming about him.
“Were you responsible for the youngleaf?”
He blinked and tilted his head. “An interesting question. Alaric used the youngleaf to protect himself and others from the influence of the adamas gem’s magic, didn’t he?”
I nodded. Charon had spoken at length about the history of the Three Kingdoms, but not his own. I held my breath and wondered if he’d answer this.
“I can’t claim to have created it intentionally, but there are truths in the stories of the Oldwood.
It tells us what we need to hear, or it grants what is necessary to survive.
Chaos magic seeks balance just as most imagine Order does.
It’s just approached in different ways. My displeasure at the use of my magic to create the adamas stone must have manifested in an antidote of sorts. ”
My hand fisted at my side. “I wouldn’t say the goddesses seek balance.”
Charon snorted. “You would be correct. But I didn’t say they did. I said magic did.”
“Eris and Themis are magic, aren’t they? They created it.” An energy shot through me as I asked the question. This conversation felt natural, normal. I could almost imagine Alaric in the other room, complaining about my horrid coffee as we studied together in his workshop before the city rose.
“The Siblings aren’t magic incarnate. They used magic to create humans.”
His response brought forth a slew of questions. He knew so much that I’d never find in a history book. “They both created humans, but Hart said you were pure chaos. Eris created you?”
“As with much between the Siblings, competition escalated things. After creating humans, Themis created kings and queens—those with divine right to rule. Eris didn’t care for such a path. She created dragons—monsters with their own magic, to counter the authority of sovereigns.”
I considered this alongside the story that I knew. Eris had created her Champions to challenge what was known. “It wasn’t just dragons, though. It was Champions, too.”
“Another escalation between siblings. Themis pushed her sovereigns to destroy, to conquer, to impose order on the continent. By doing so, they all but wiped out my kind. So, Eris created her first Champion. A final attempt to redistribute power.”
My gut told me the reason mattered. That if dragons and Champions were both ways for Chaos to counter Order, there was something that connected us.
I swallowed the doubt that always crept up when I made a guess without solid evidence.
“So we’re both paths to counter Order. Is that why I heard you call through the Oldwood? ”
“I believe so. Eris’s magic recognizes and calls its own.”
Hart had said that before, too. When we freed Charon from the mines, it was why my magic had to heal him. “I’m sorry it took me so long to realize. I’m sorry you were trapped.”
His tail flicked as a shiver looped around his partially curled spine. “You were a child. And the adults in your life did everything in their power to keep you ignorant of your calling.”
Anger flared in my chest. “Alaric did what he thought was best.”
“Yes. He did.”
There was something in the way Charon chose not to argue with me that drove me to defend Alaric further.
“He spent every spare moment teaching me not to accept information at first glance. To dig deeper, to pull back the curtain on what an author didn’t want the reader to know. He trained me for his own deception.”
Deception.
The word rang like a bell struck—a warning I’d missed. My face fell into my palms before I could stop it. My sinuses stung, but still I wouldn’t allow tears to fall. I hadn’t since we left Kavios.
Yes, Alaric had deceived me. The man who had taught me what was right and what was wrong. He’d taught me how to form my own opinions. He’d taught me to trust my gut. But he’d never told me the single most crucial piece of information about myself: that I was Chaos’s Champion.
Prophecies foretold I could change the tides of Kavios. I need only accept my calling and take the throne before Order’s Champion—before Hart.
It should be simple, given Hart had proven multiple times that he didn’t want it. I still didn’t know what to do with that. He’d even claimed he’d help me, and I really didn’t know what to do with that.
“That was a bit much, even for you, Charon,” Hart said from the doorway.
I turned to stare over my shoulder. “How long have you been listening?”
“Long enough.”
I glared at Charon for good measure. He must have spoken into Hart’s mind as well as mine.
“The Cursed was already coming to check on you.”
“Why do you call him that?” If Charon was in the mood to answer questions this morning, I wanted more. I didn’t want to speak of kingdoms or thrones or my uncle’s deception. Not with Hart listening. Not until I had more answers myself.
“He is Cursed.”
I waved my hands in exasperation. “So am I, yet you call me Champion.”
Hart crossed his arms over his chest as if he enjoyed the show. It only served to annoy me further.
“You would have me call you both Cursed? Cursed One and Cursed Two?” Smoke rose from Charon’s nostrils with his chuff. “That is ridiculous, Champion.”
Champion. I let my head fall into my hands again as the word echoed through my mind. Alaric had thought I’d save Kavios. My own father thought I might destroy it. With smoke rising from Charon’s snout, I no longer faulted him for that sentiment, but neither did I want to dwell on it.
“If you and I are connected because of Chaos’s magic…” I raised my head, a new thought unspooling, and I desperately tried to grasp it. “And if magic is balanced … what is Hart connected to?”
Charon’s teeth gleamed in the morning’s first rays of sunlight. He looked terrifying, but I knew he was proud of my question. He didn’t answer it, though. His golden gaze shifted to Hart.
“The throne,” Hart said, still leaning against the doorway. “The throne pulls me toward it at all times.”
My mouth hung open. I tried to snap it shut, to remain unaffected by this new piece of information. Really, I shouldn’t be surprised there was more he had hidden from me. It seemed to be a pattern with those I trusted. I shook my head. “The way Charon’s magic called to me through the Oldwood?”
Hart considered my question as if I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. “I would guess the connection is more similar to the way Themis summons and Eris calls.”
I swallowed. There were times when Charon’s magic had pulled me under in the Oldwood, had influenced me heavily, but that seemed more about hearing the message in the first place.
Once I’d heard it, the effects had lessened.
As with becoming Eris’s Champion, saving Charon had been my choice.
The Cursed King’s story was the opposite.
Themis summoned her Champions—a demand to serve.
Many would claim it was an honor, but Hart’s legend was that he did not.
How hard did the throne pull him toward his goddess’s goal?
As much as I wanted to say that none of this made sense, I remembered his reactions to the throne room. The first time I’d been called there as Jeweler to the Blessed was the first time I had seen him panic. I’d believed it due to my audience with King Rodric.
I guessed it could have been both.
Later, he’d left the ball held in the throne room as quickly as allowable.
He’d waited for me to find him outside in the gardens.
And while I had thought his irritation and restlessness in the Blessing Ceremony were due to the position that they put me in, could they have been due to the summons of the throne itself?
Hart nodded as if seeing the recollections in my face. “It’s part physical. Like the way the magic of the Oldwood drove you to dig into the dirt. But it’s also part … mental. The throne whispers promises of everything I could do with its power.”
“All the time?”
“Proximity strengthens it, but it’s always a dull throb inside me. The only thing that seems to counter it is…” Hart coughed into his fist. “You.”
“See, Chaos may have known what she was doing after all,” Charon said.
“What do you mean”—I glared at Charon, not acknowledging his comment—“I ‘counter it?’”
Hart sighed. “The night of the Masquerade, the throne called to me, desperately. I wanted to jump out of my own skin. Or seize it. When I held you, when we danced, it silenced.”
A flush heated my cheeks. I’d just thought about his reaction at the ball. I never imagined that our dance had granted him a moment of peace in that room. Was that why he’d offered it?
I shook my head. I’d become too absorbed in the conversation. I didn’t want to think about Hart’s struggles. Or why he struggled, for that matter. Why not take the throne and be done with it? Why point me toward the truth of who I was when no one else had? Why help me at all?
Too many questions for which I had no answers. The man who could answer them stood with arms crossed and a carefully blank look on his face.
I swallowed them all down before I spoke. “I’m going to the library.”
There might have been a slight twitch of Hart’s lip to a frown. A hint of disappointment that I wouldn’t ask any of my questions.
As much as I wanted space from Hart—from his knowing gaze—I knew this wasn’t the time.
He had already read many of the texts we were interested in.
I couldn’t ignore the information he had.
Swallowing my anger, my frustration with our situation, I asked a different question.
“Will you show me the books you think are most relevant?”
He nodded. I wished he didn’t have the insights I needed. Every time I looked at him, at the way his eyebrow raised in question, or the way he worked to keep his stupid smirk from appearing, a different pain shot through me. One I wouldn’t name.
I didn’t want to notice any of it. Hart may have helped me, but he had deceived me, too. Everything he’d said and done for me had been in service to himself.
My anger at the lies flared hot, just as my devastation at his betrayal pulled me back into the fathomless depths.
Everyone had known but me.
Embarrassment heated my cheeks and soured my stomach. I closed my eyes as I tucked all of those feelings deep inside my chest and smoothed out my expression.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
He nodded again, and with a final glance at Charon, he turned and left the balcony.