Chapter 8
Themis's Champion will uphold order in all things.
— WHAT MAKES A CHAMPION OF ORDER
HART
Ihad seen Ember lie easily to every Blessed in Kavios. She’d convinced guards that their magic worked on her, and she had convinced Elias that she was nothing more than a talented jeweler.
None of that worked on me, and that was before I could taste her emotions.
So when I barged into the dining room with my blade drawn due to the fear that had bittered the back of my tongue only moments ago, I knew her response for the lie it was.
“I’m fine, Hart.”
With no attacker present, and only Lucinda and Blair seated primly, as if they had all waited for my return, I had no choice but to accept the declaration at face value. I would bide my time to learn what they’d done to her in my absence. What would have driven her to such fear?
It killed me not to know.
Thankfully, we left the hall shortly after. I didn’t taste one of the emotions that could fuel our magic, but the furrow of Ember’s brow illustrated her indecision well enough.
Whatever had happened between her and Lucinda, she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell me.
When we entered our suite, Ember retreated to the balcony with Charon. I wouldn’t invade her privacy to pry her secrets free. The goddesses knew I had my own. Every part of me just wished she’d confide in me.
I shook my head, knowing I’d cost myself that right.
Settling in, I paced the living room. Every few trips back and forth across the space, I checked the balcony through the bedroom door.
Part of me worried she’d hop on Charon’s back and disappear.
I caught a glimpse of her reading. I prepared to turn on my heel and retreat again—but halted as she looked up.
Our gazes locked, and I did not mistake the way she beckoned me toward her.
My heart raced as I attempted to calm myself.
Joy shouldn’t have been the first thing I felt. It should have been hesitation, caution, anything but building hope. But I’d never been good at controlling my emotions with Ember.
The question fell from her lips before I left the doorway. “What was your summons like?”
“I—”
“We talked about Delphine’s calling this afternoon. Was yours anything like that?”
I sighed, and my hand clenched into a fist at my side. “No. Nothing like that.” I glanced down at where she’d seated herself by Charon’s leg. The dragon was mysteriously silent, but his golden eyes tracked me. “As you noted, she was called as an adult, like I was. The similarities end there.”
A frown curled Ember’s lips, but she continued. “I don’t remember anything about a calling like Delphine described in her journals, but I assume that happened when I was a baby. The moment she made the choice, though … that felt similar.”
My spine straightened, and I pushed from the doorframe, taking hesitant steps toward her.
I hated thinking about Ember’s choice. She said she had made it herself, and I wouldn’t diminish that, but a part of me wondered if she would have made the decision so quickly if I hadn’t been bleeding out in front of her.
I cleared my throat, not sure where this was going, but I didn’t want the conversation to end. “I felt a spine-straightening jolt in the middle of the day, while working in the mines. It told me that something had drastically changed in my life.”
She snuck a glance at me as I spoke.
“Delphine’s journals speak of her choice like it was a winding path on the darkest night. She had options of where to turn, and she chose to walk in the direction Eris led. I was struck with a bright light so blinding I had no choice but to see what it deemed necessary.”
“And what did it deem necessary?” Ember whispered.
“A goddess and a throne,” I answered simply. “The only things Themis thinks her Champion needs to care about.”
Ember’s fist clenched and unclenched in her lap. Then her gaze rose to mine, some decision made that I wasn’t privy to.
“You should have had a choice,” she said simply.
As if that would have fixed everything. I shrugged. “You shouldn’t have made yours with my life on the line.”
She flinched at that, and I regretted the words. Her sadness mixed with fury in a swirl of spicy heat and minty mist in my throat. I saw the moment she pushed those emotions away, even before the sense of them disappeared.
“I was just thinking about that darkness, that walk through the blackest night. I did that too, the night I … healed you.” She bit the inside of her lip, not deigning to look at me as she spoke of saving my life—of the choice that had changed everything for her.
“I remember it so distinctly, almost as if the nothingness, the lack of color, was choice. And you—and Kavios—were mine.”
She flushed as if she hadn’t meant to say so much.
How much did she regret that choice now? We’d found no evidence in Delphine’s journals that reversal was an option. And with the most recent attack, we were running out of time. Themis had proven again that she would interfere to force me to the throne.
That small glimmer of … something left Ember’s face with my silence. Did she think I regretted her choice?
I didn’t.
Yes, I wished she’d had more time to consider it. But she was right, she’d picked me, and I was greedy for every moment I had to call her mine.
“Don’t broach subjects you don’t want answers to, Chaos. I won’t spare you discomfort. I’m too selfish to say I wish you’d chosen differently.”
Her gaze narrowed. She looked at me like I was a reproduction of an experiment that wasn’t following the path of the first.
Charon finally spoke; surprisingly, it was to both of us. “Just do it, Champion. You know you’re going to.”
She pulled a packet of folded papers from under the hem of her dress. The large skirts had covered them. My body brimmed with anticipation, but I did my best to wait patiently for her to speak. This must have been what upset her during the meal.
“Alaric said there is a way out. He left this packet of papers with the royal family. They were instructed to provide it to me if I ever arrived in Ciril with Themis’s Champion.”
My heart pounded in my ears as I took in the folded, aged papers. An awareness tinged my thoughts, a familiarity in the drops of dried liquid that seemed to sprinkle a corner of the papers.
It couldn’t be.
But of course it was. Alaric had always been playing an entirely different game than the rest of us. I shouldn’t be surprised. Recognition flared, and a memory surfaced.
The first time I’d delivered youngleaf to Alaric’s workshop, the jeweler had still been a stranger to me. Ava trusted him, though, and she’d arranged for me to traffic the herb into the city.
He kept very little for himself. I had liked that about him from the start.
Mostly, he distributed to those in need.
Ava had indicated he’d worked with Alysa and the Storm directly until he became Jeweler to the Blessed.
Now, due to his position, he didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to his extracurricular activities, and he seemed to have quite a few.
When I slid behind the thick golden curtain of his workshop to deliver the youngleaf after hours, he took great pains to appear completely absorbed in a project.
I could tell he wasn’t.
His focus darted toward the bookshelf across the room. The tea beside him on his workbench was well steeped, and he hadn’t removed the sachet. I had only met him twice to set up this exchange, but I’d come to understand his behavior.
Usually fixated, he was near obsessive about any project on his workbench.
He didn’t like me getting too close when something was in progress.
Every other time I’d visited, he met me in the middle of the room, as if my mere presence would disrupt his carefully curated experiments.
The fact that he didn’t seem to care about my approach now was another giveaway.
“Per your request.” I set the bag of youngleaf on the workbench.
I couldn’t help myself as my gaze drifted across everything strewn across the top.
He’d never allowed me to examine it so plainly before.
Tools for cutting and shaping the stones, glass beakers filled with mixtures I couldn’t begin to guess at, and a few books open for good measure.
“Thank you, Hart.” He cleared his throat. “It seems Ava was right about you.”
“How so?” I asked. I’d been working with Ava for years, since I hired her to run Forest’s Edge. Still, she rarely recommended me to anyone for a service such as this. I knew she had a larger partnership in mind for the jeweler and me, but she’d been stingy with the details of his next ask.
“She said you get things done. You have freedom to come and go that many don’t.”
I grunted in acknowledgment.
“I won’t ask how, or why.”
“I’m sure you have your own suspicions,” I said, glancing at the wall of books.
The ones I could see looked like history books and encyclopedias on plant properties.
He also had a few books that my dear father was known to be fond of, but the spines on those didn’t look broken.
If I were a betting man, I’d say he had a few select volumes that my father wouldn’t appreciate.
“My suspicions are my concern,” he replied.
“Alright. I’ll bite. What do you want to make my concern?”
Alaric laughed and turned to face me, giving up whatever game he had been playing. “Have your travels taken you far?” He glanced at the mirror over his workbench, as if to ensure the shop was empty. Little did he know I’d locked the door behind me.
“Far,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Linia?” he asked.
I opened my mouth to question him, but I hesitated.
It shouldn’t surprise me that he had an interest in the other kingdoms on the continent.
He clearly used the youngleaf on himself.
It protected him from my father’s hold on Kavios.
I didn’t know what this man, the key to my father’s stolen magic through the adamas gem, was up to, but I desperately wanted to find out.
“Sure,” I said.
Alaric folded his arms across his chest. It only accentuated the jeweler’s thin frame, the same way his too-loose clothes did. “What would you charge to carry a package there?”
“Depends who it was being delivered to,” I hedged.
“Let’s just say it’s going somewhere I think Sebastien will need to go, not Hart.”
I tensed. Indecision flooded me. Very few in Kavios knew that name. In fact, Ava was the only one I’d told myself. I couldn’t imagine she had shared that detail with Alaric.
As if the straightening of my spine were all he needed, Alaric walked past me.
He crossed the room to the bookshelf he’d been eyeing when I entered, and reached into the shelf, beyond the row of books, pulling something hidden behind them.
At this point, I was unsurprised to see a secret door swing open from within the bookcase.
The hidden room wasn’t too full. It had a few books stacked inside, and a small dragon statue just to the right of the entrance.
Frankly, that was what did me in. If the jeweler worshiped Chaos beneath my father’s nose, I would run his errand for him.
Alaric returned with a packet of papers, a small leather bag, and a gem. I knew it was adamas the moment he dropped it into my palm.
“This needs to go to Queen Lucinda.” He handed me the papers sealed with wax. “She’ll require the gem as payment.”
I laughed at the audacity. It had been a long time since someone had surprised me so completely.
Alaric not only worshiped Eris, but he also planned to send a piece of adamas to another kingdom.
I probably should have stopped him. Adamas was a scourge of my own making, but if I couldn’t stop the production itself, it served my father right to have it distributed beneath his nose.
“Alright, jeweler. I’m intrigued. What about the leather bag?”
“I need you to drop it off outside of Ciril.”
I shook my head, bemused. “How far outside the city?”
He cleared his throat. “Scarlett’s hoard.”
I tilted my head back and laughed loudly. Ava must have known I’d be too intrigued to say no, even though the ask was utterly ridiculous. “Fine. I’ll run your errand. For payment, I want your help when I return.”
Alaric tilted his head in question.
“I have my own project—call it a search.” I glanced at the dragon in the corner of the hidden room. “And I think you might have more information on the subject than I do.”
His face went pale as sheets fresh from the laundry, but he swallowed quickly and nodded. “Knowledge I can share. So long as the queen accepts the papers.”
I tossed the gem lightly from my hand and caught it with a flick of my wrist. “Oh, I don’t think I’ll have to convince her. She’ll want the protection the adamas offers, especially if she can take it from me.”
Alaric held out his hand, and I took it. “We have a deal, then.”
The memory of Alaric’s schemes faded. We’d worked together for years after that. I should have been more suspicious of how little information he’d shared on Chaos’s Champion, but truth be told, I ignored it because I liked him.
He dreamed of a Kavios I could never quite see. At least not until I met Ember.
The thought of all he hid from me still stung.
Few people knew me as well as he had. It struck a nerve that I couldn’t truly say I’d known as much about him. I was learning, though. And as Ember shared Alaric’s notes, I knew with absolute certainty where we’d need to go next.