Chapter 10
Forgive me, Ember. I dared to hope.
— ALARIC SARE’S PAPERS FOR EMBERLINE ARKOVA
Stone fell where Scarlett’s claws gripped the side of the mountain. Her long neck curved toward me, even though Charon and Hart had both positioned themselves between us.
“So, the Trials of the Cursed have begun,” Scarlett hissed from her perch.
I had never once feared Charon. Since childhood, he’d felt like a long-lost friend instead of a dangerous beast. My instincts were not the same with Scarlett. When her talons dug further into the side of the mountain, releasing a small rockslide to the outcropping, I tensed.
“How do you know that?” I asked, finding my voice.
She glanced between Hart and me. “That glow couldn’t have been achieved otherwise.”
I looked down at the necklace I hadn’t yet tucked beneath my blouse. Alaric had said the trials would go against everything I’d done to survive. How did that connect with this glowing adamas? Red was for anger, but neither Hart nor I had taken from each other.
It was true, I’d felt a lot of anger in the cave. Worst of all, I’d expressed it. But how did that fit? I loosed a low groan as the rhyme from Alaric’s notes surfaced in my mind. Shared emotion they wield, emotion they can no longer hide, only emotion shared will change the tides.
Something sank like a stone in my gut as an inkling of the rules fell into place.
I had no longer been able to suppress my emotions.
Whether I’d intended to or not, I’d shared them with Hart.
I let my head fall, finally understanding what both Alaric and Hart said I’d done to survive in Kavios—hid my feelings.
Every day in my home kingdom, since my mother’s accident, I’d ensured no one could read my emotions on my face. Today, I’d unleashed my anger on Hart. I covered my mouth as I replayed what I’d said.
I stepped back, unsure what I ran from. More horrifying news of what Alaric had kept from me? The fact that every instinct I’d built to survive would need to be ignored to break our curse? Or the terrible things I’d said to Hart to provoke this?
Scarlett gnashed her teeth, and a curled claw reached toward me.
I’d been too distracted in my own thoughts, almost forgetting that a deadly dragon loomed above.
Hart stepped into the path of her talon before I could react.
Her progress slowed. She didn’t appear to want to tear us to shreds. She might be pointing at the necklace.
“I take it you do not know what it does.”
Too horrified to speak what formed in my mind, I shook my head. “Can you tell us?”
This time, the huff of smoke came out like a heavy sigh. “Apparently, if I don’t, no one will.” She glared at Charon.
“I would tell her if I knew, but Alaric didn’t share,” Charon all but growled. “If you have information that could help, we would have it.”
“I don’t know Alaric.” Scarlett looked around in search of another human. “He is the maker of the pendant?”
I nodded. “He was my uncle.”
If Scarlett caught my use of the past tense, she didn’t comment on it. “He was a smart man, then. He found a loophole in your fate—a way for you to free yourself if you so choose. It requires both of you.” It was impossible to miss Scarlett’s snout as it gestured toward Hart.
“How?” Hart asked.
“You’re the Cursed King.” She stated his name of legend as fact, though I didn’t think she’d yet confirmed it. “Your curse was to only draw magic from Chaos’s Champion.”
“Very aware of that,” Hart said under his breath.
Scarlett turned her green gaze on me. “You are now likewise cursed?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
“If you want to free yourselves, you need only to prove it.”
“What does that mean?” Hart asked.
I think Scarlett smirked at him, but that meant both rows of sharp teeth were now on display. The smallest one was the length of my arm. I had to suppress the instinct to pull Hart back, pull him out of harm’s way.
“Every well-crafted goal has many chaotic paths to success.”
“Whose goal?” I asked.
“One who would accept many chaotic paths to success.”
“Eris.”
This path had been designed by the chaos goddess? Wasn’t her goal to win the game? To win on Eris’s behalf, I should have to sit on the throne, and Themis’s Champion would be defeated. That was a little hard to do when she had cursed me such that Themis’s Champion was the source of my power.
If her goal was to win the game, she had a funny way of helping.
Was winning her goal? Eris had only interfered when she’d been provoked, when Hart had challenged her directly.
Themis had interfered at every turn to ensure Hart succeeded.
She’d tried to have me killed through Vaddon on multiple occasions.
She’d just tried again. My gut said that Eris didn’t care about winning.
“Tell us the path,” Hart said through gritted teeth.
“You’ve already found it.” Scarlett gestured with her snout again to the necklace.
“The gem flashed when I yelled at Hart,” I said. It felt like Scarlett played with us, and I wanted it to end. If my suspicions were correct, I’d rather just know. “It glowed when Hart did the same. We didn’t touch each other to power the gem. In our current predicament, that should be impossible.”
Scarlett nodded.
“So what changed?”
Hart raised his brow. I didn’t know if he sensed my anger rising again, or if he, too, had figured out the missing piece and wanted confirmation.
“You tell us, Champion. What did you do to make the red light appear?”
“I said horrible things.” The weight of Hart’s stare was heavy, but I couldn’t look at him.
“True things,” he added. “You’ve swallowed all your anger since we left Kavios—refused to tell me what you actually thought. This was the first time since…” He swallowed with no small amount of discomfort. “The first time we’ve been honest with each other in a long time.”
My anger flared again as I realized what he’d been about to say. This was the first time since we were together. This was the first time since everything had broken between us—since he had broken it.
A smirk crossed his face, and I couldn’t for the life of me fathom what he was happy about.
“Why does that bring you joy? We were awful to each other.”
“Because you were angry.” He gestured to the red glow again. “And I guess so was I.”
He moved closer, his fingers skimming the necklace where it rested on my chest, and I finally glanced up to meet his gaze.
“I’ve seen every time you wanted to yell at me, every time you wanted to snap, every time you wanted to”—he swallowed again—“do something that showed an emotion. You’ve been shoving them all away.”
How could he possibly know that? This was the conundrum that was Hart. He seemed so cavalier at times, with that stupid smirk, but then he’d have these moments where he showed how carefully he paid attention. He saw me, even when I preferred he didn’t.
“You’ve seen—no, you’ve taken just about enough of my emotions,” I said.
“Ember—”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear it.
“There should be no question if one of you has taken from the other. You would know,” Scarlett interrupted.
“How?” Regretfully, I thought of the night we spent in each other’s arms. Nothing between us. It was his biggest betrayal in all of this. Not only had Hart kept his true identity from me—he’d used me.
Hart sighed. “You can feel when you take from me, right? When we’ve healed Charon?”
I nodded.
“You would feel the same if I took from you. I won’t deny you’ve felt it before, but it wasn’t when you think it was.”
My mind returned to our night tangled together in his room above Forest’s Edge.
I had felt … a lot. And as much as my mind tried to rush away from the scene, from the memory of what we were to each other—what we could have been—I considered his words.
My skin had been alight with our connection, with that heat that always danced between us.
It was not the same feeling as when I took emotion from him to fuel magic.
That didn’t mean anything.
I searched my memories of our interactions since our first meeting. Unfortunately, they were too easy to call to mind. “You tried to grab me in the crowd, to stop me from getting stuck with the Feared.”
He nodded.
“You took in the alleyway, then when we were in the mines—the cave-in. The throne room.”
He seemed to let out a breath at my recollection.
“What, so you want a trophy for not taking from me when we had sex?”
Charon growled at my challenge. Scarlett’s wings snapped out, and a grunt that sounded like a cackle erupted from her mouth. And Hart—well, Hart just stood there shaking his head. “I just want you to consider which lines I crossed and why.”
I wanted to yell at him again, and I felt the anger boiling within me.
He wanted some prize because he only took to protect me?
That couldn’t be true, even as words he’d spoken to me after the cave-in cycled through my head.
If you’re in danger, I won’t care. I’ll take anything to protect you.
The only comfort I can offer is, you’re safe with me.
More stupid lies. Or were they? The times I could remember clearly the feeling of him taking had been when we had no other choice.
No other way out. I no longer knew what to believe.
I just knew I didn’t want to fall for his lies again.
There was one way to know for sure. “Take from me, Hart. Take my anger now. I want to know what it feels like.”
A low growl rumbled over the cliffside, and I honestly wasn’t sure if it came from Hart or one of the dragons.
“This isn’t a trap,” I said. “I need to know.”
“It’s clearly a trap, but if this is what you need, I’ll do it.” Hart stepped toward me, his arm outstretched.
I took his hand, my anger still bubbling at the surface. But nothing happened. I felt only the sensation always present when we touched.
“Are you taking?”
His hand gripped mine tighter. “I’m trying.”