Chapter 12 #2
Last time Hart brought me here, there’d been maybe fifty people.
I would have guessed thirty tents to accommodate everyone.
With what Alysa had said, an increase in taking in Kavios, I’d guess there were closer to seventy now.
They likely needed to consider moving their camp farther into the foothills.
The surrounding boulders may no longer be enough to hide it.
Still, I found Mother in the second row, seated outside their tent.
She almost swayed with the breeze across the grass.
Her blond hair looked gray in the sunlight.
“Mother, it’s me, Ember.” I searched the area for Father but didn’t see him. It seemed odd. He had never been far from her at home. That had been part of the problem, why I had to start work at the family jewelry shop so young.
“Ember!” she said, opening her eyes. They were bright blue, instead of the dull gray they sometimes turned when she was low on youngleaf. A wide smile crossed her fragile features. “You’re back.”
I nodded. “Where’s Father?”
She swatted away my concern. “Oh, he’s around here somewhere, doing our chores. I think he collected firewood today. He won’t let me help, so he has to do double.”
At least that sounded right.
“Did you travel far? Did your friend take you? Did you stay with the Cursed King?”
Her questions straddled the line between standard and unusual. The dreamy quality of her voice was barely present, which I took as a good sign. Alysa had said she regularly received the tonic, and being outside of the impact radius of the king’s magic had to be good for her.
“We went to Linia. I went with Charon and Hart.”
She nodded slowly as if the action held great significance. “It’s a good sign that you still call him Hart.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but I let it go. There were more pressing questions. I pulled the folded papers from my bag and offered them to her. “Do you remember these? Did you help Alaric with this plan?”
Mother’s fingers grazed the papers as she took them into her hands.
She always seemed so frail to me. I knew it was a side-effect of the Blessed taking too much from her, but I hated it because it stole the image I’d had of my mother from childhood.
The loud and boisterous woman who brightened any room.
She’d aged so much in those few moments when the Blessed overtook.
There would be no escaping Hart feeling the heat of my anger in this moment. It was never far from my mind when I thought of what happened to Mother.
While she flipped through the pages, I pulled the pendant from beneath my shirt, unwrapping the cloth that dampened the glow.
“You’ve made progress,” Mother said.
It appeared she did remember something about the trials. I waited for more.
She had stopped flipping through the papers and stared at the necklace. “Anger is such an easy emotion to reach for. I’m not surprised it’s your first.”
“I’m not sure it was,” I said, looking down at the adamas gems.
Mother laughed a little at that. “No, your first instinct would have been to shut down, to wield no emotion. We should thank the Cursed King for dragging something from you.”
I sucked in a breath. Her words felt uncanny.
They left me wondering whether she made those comments based on an inherent understanding of her daughter, or a possible future she’d seen.
I guessed it shouldn’t surprise me that she’d notice things about my behavior.
She was my mother, after all, but I let my perception of her be colored by the life that was stolen from her.
I spent so much time caring for her that I sometimes forgot she was still very much her own woman.
“I don’t want to feel around him,” I whispered as my fingers toyed with the adamas.
Mother reached for me. She squeezed my hand tightly, or at least tightly for her. Her strength would never be what it was. “Tell me about it, baby.”
Maybe I spoke because I’d already told Alysa, and every time I broached the subject it got a little easier. Maybe I spoke because I was mad at her actions in this, too. “He lied to me, just like the rest of you.”
“You’re right. We all did.” She squeezed again.
“Why?” I whispered.
She looked thoughtful. “If you’d only ever considered him your opponent, none of this could have been possible.”
Anger, hot and ready, rushed through me. How dare they? She so willingly admitted that they’d withheld information to direct the course of my future. “How can you sit here and say that with a straight face? You manipulated me.”
Mother didn’t flinch from my words. If anything, she swayed with the ebbs and flows of my anger. “We did. Yet here you are, talking to me, telling me you’re mad at me for what I did. Something it seems you struggle to do with him.”
“It’s not the same.”
She smiled sadly. “No, it’s not. And the faster you admit why, the easier the rest of these trials will be.”
I wasn’t ready to engage with that thought. It was another one I tucked away. Maybe that box could no longer contain my anger, but I’d use it for other feelings I’d rather not examine too closely.
Mother’s gaze was alert through my internal struggle. Her frown told me all I needed to know about her opinion on the matter. “You won’t be able to keep doing that. You’re too smart not to realize.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She bit her lip. “Have you considered where you’ll go for each of the remaining emotions?”
Now I wasn’t sure which of us was managing the other. She seemed to realize she’d hit a stone wall in discussing Hart. I wasn’t sure I preferred talking about the trials.
Scarlett had recommended that emotions would be stronger in locations that mattered to us, that held some resonance with the emotion itself.
As if reading my thoughts, Mother’s voice wavered as she recited her own words from the paper in her hands.
“Feel sad, feel fear, feel deepest when danger nears.”
“Mother.” I let the necklace fall back to my chest and covered her hand with my own. “Mother, it’s alright.”
When she looked at me again, her eyes were glassy, and her head shook. “It’s not alright, baby. No, it’s not fair that this is asked of you. It’s not fair that you don’t have time to figure things out. But this is the path Alaric fought for.”
My flinch was automatic. The familiar echo. The crash and snap in the throne room replayed.
I closed my eyes and breathed. This was the future he had fought for? It could also easily be said that this was the path he’d pushed me down. The path he’d led me toward without giving me the information to make my own decisions. Anger bubbled within me again, but I couldn’t hold on to it.
“I’m mad at him, too,” I whispered.
“I’m sure you are, baby. And you have every right to be.” She folded the papers and returned them to me. “But that is different, too, and you will have to confront the reason why before you can succeed.”
She spoke in riddles, but she sounded better than she ever had in the city. “This place is good for you.”
She nodded. “I think it’s good for both of us.”
At that moment, Father approached the campsite. “Emberline, you came back.”
“She won’t be here for long. Tell her you missed her.”
Father glanced at Mother, then to me, as if he wasn’t sure what Mother meant. I stood and brushed off the length of my skirt. “She’s right. Hart and I will enter the city in two days.”
“You can’t go back in there. They’re looking for you. They’ll kill you if they find you.”
Alysa had said they wanted us alive, but I wasn’t sure that made a difference.
Even though I had freed the dragon who made their adamas, Hart and I were still the only ones who could determine which stone in the mines held the dragon fire that created the magic gem.
The king would not be pleasant if he got his hands on me, but he needed me.
I was as much a precious resource to him as the adamas itself.
Either way, Father’s sentiment, that nothing good would come if I were caught, still stood.
“I have to do it. This is what you all raised me for. A chance at a different Kavios. A chance to live like this”—I gestured to the camp around us—“within the city’s walls.”
“Is it really worth your life?” Father asked.
Wasn’t that the question? I didn’t know what this would cost me, but I knew the price would be high. I dipped my chin. “I think that’s the cost of being a Champion, sacrificing the life you thought you wanted.”
As I turned to leave, I was unsurprised to see Hart leaning against one of the nearby boulders. His arms were folded over his chest, and he looked pensive. He must have heard my last comment. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to him, though. I’d learned that bit about Champions from him, after all.