Chapter 16
I trusted him with your life, but that wasn't the hard question. The hard question was whether you could trust him with your heart.
— ALARIC SARE’S PAPERS FOR EMBERLINE ARKOVA
My heart pounded, my breath heaved, but I didn’t drop Hart’s hand. I knew if I tried, he’d simply throw me over his shoulder and continue his sprint.
He’d done it before.
But where were we going?
We took a sharp left behind the buildings on Cross Street.
If I had to guess, I’d say we were almost to the Eastern Gate.
The turn had us sprinting toward the castle grounds.
It wasn’t as steep as climbing the front steps, but Lower Hill still earned its name.
Every step I took, I feared I slowed—feared one of the guards in pursuit would snatch me from Hart’s grip.
Another part of me knew he’d never let that happen.
The patrol paths wound around the castle. They were the same ones we’d used to sneak out to the mines during the Selection Ball, except then, the Eastern Gate hadn’t been guarded. The odds were stacked against us now.
“Hart,” I huffed.
“Don’t slow down, Chaos.”
I hadn’t, which made finding my words harder. “My fear. Call nightmares.”
He shook his head. “Only as a last resort. They’ll know it’s us.”
I sucked in another breath. I guessed the guards might not have known us on sight. We could be anyone breaking into the jeweler’s workshop. “We won’t make it past the gate without magic.”
If I could see his face, I knew I’d catch his eye roll. But we didn’t slow down, and he didn’t even bother with a glance in my direction. He only tugged me forward.
“Where are we going?” I tried a different tack as my heart threatened to break through my rib cage.
“An altar that shouldn’t have existed. A place I was never supposed to be.”
I was too annoyed that his response didn’t sound labored to parse it, though his tone of voice sounded ominous as the words rolled over me. “What is—”
“Get them!” one of the guards shouted behind us.
Hart squeezed my hand like he knew I’d hate this and pulled me across the hill as quickly as my legs could carry me. He turned further left, heading directly toward the castle.
“You are not—”
He drew me faster, his pace pushed my legs harder, and we sprinted around the garden trails heading toward the city wall behind the castle. Greenery careened past—trees, bushes, hedges—but it wasn’t tall enough to shelter us.
“There is no way out. The city wall.” Why was I explaining this to him? He’d helped build this goddess-forsaken kingdom and the wall that surrounded it.
“Trust me, Chaos. Please.”
It was the please that did it. It felt foreign from him.
Hart was not used to being denied. He was a prince.
First in line for the throne. He was a human summoned by a goddess, even if it wasn’t what he’d chosen for himself.
He led the Feared. He brokered deals with leaders of foreign kingdoms. He wielded authority that may or may not be imagined.
Yet he asked me for trust.
Begged me for it.
I’d trusted him with my life on countless occasions. He’d yet to let me down.
I stopped questioning him and found another burst of energy. Something would have to give soon, before my legs did. We would hit a literal wall in minutes. I could give him this.
He pulled me through the gardens. The castle spires loomed overhead. Overbearing, watching, waiting to claim us.
Hedges lined the paths through the gardens.
The growth granted some cover, but it wasn’t enough.
The guards shouted again in pursuit as we cut into the maze of pathways and greenery.
The bushes grew denser the closer we got to the wall.
If the guards who chased us didn’t find us, some new ones on patrol would.
With another sharp turn into dense rows of olive trees, we sprinted to a pathway on the other side. The echo of the guards’ shouts seemed to continue toward the wall. Hart slowed our sprint to a brisk walk on the new path. His grip on my hand was like a vice.
Footsteps clomped ahead of us. Hart moved before the source of the noise appeared. He pushed me into a grove of orange trees, and his long frame pressed against me as he peered around the trunk.
He was so close. We still had nowhere to go. I didn’t doubt he knew the castle well, but did he think we could evade all the groups of guards patrolling the grounds?
Did we have any other options?
I struggled to control my breathing and realized I wasn’t alone in my effort.
A moment of silence. Another.
His weight pressed my back against the tree trunk, as if he could hide me with the sheer force of his will.
I stared at his throat. It bobbed as he swallowed once.
Then again. I hated that he smelled so good.
Hated that it felt so warm and safe here, even though we were the furthest thing from it.
Hated that the bitter taste of his fear coated my tongue, and I had no doubt in my mind that he didn’t fear for himself. He feared for me.
I doubted so much when it came to Hart. Doubted his intentions, doubted his words.
How could I be so sure of this?
“We can go.” He stepped toward me and closed his hand around mine again.
I stared at our clasped hands. We’d made it this far holding fast to each other.
My gloves still covered my skin, and I reasoned that the layer of protection helped even though I knew it didn’t.
My awareness of him was almost as consuming as my fear of being caught.
Instead of dragging us back to the path, he took us farther into the orchard.
“Where are we going? Is there another way out?”
That made him laugh, but it rang hollow. “Do you remember when I told you the story of the Firstborn? Of his confrontation with Eris?”
We walked more slowly now, not drawing attention to ourselves as we moved between the trees and hedges. Hart stopped by a particularly large bush just shy of the city wall.
“You mean when you told me your own history but didn’t acknowledge the story was about you?”
He grunted in acknowledgment.
“Yes, I remember.” Then his words from earlier returned. An altar that shouldn’t have existed. A place I was never supposed to be.
The particular hedge was thick, its blooms large enough to hide all manner of sins, possibly even those of a queen who worshipped a forbidden goddess.
He pushed between the thick branches and knelt.
The words slotted into place as he dug his hands into the dirt.
In moments, he scraped the sediment from a wooden trapdoor, his hand poised to pull it open using a brass handle.
“Your mother’s altar.”
He opened the trapdoor to darkness. A descending ladder was barely visible.
“Is this part of the mines?”
Carefully, Hart searched both sides of the hedge for guards on patrol, but here, we were nearly invisible.
“It was an original site that my grandfather wasn’t able to use.
It caved in before he got deep enough to mine, but that made it perfect for her purposes.
” He gestured toward the pendant beneath my blouse. “Can we use it to light our path?”
I pulled the throne-shaped necklace free and unwrapped it. The red glow lit the darkness between the branches. It wouldn’t be much in the total darkness beneath us, but it was something. I swallowed and offered it to Hart.
“Can you go first? I need to pull this shut behind us.”
The ladder disappeared into blackness after only a few rungs, but the look of distress on Hart’s usually stoic features motivated me. I climbed carefully down, and the red of the gem grew brighter the farther I descended.
I dropped onto cool dirt. The cavern was tall enough that I could stand without hitting the ceiling. That was better than I expected. What little light snuck in from above was gone within moments as Hart secured the trapdoor, then landed on the ground beside me.
He offered his hand for the pendant. He would lead if I asked—tackle whatever we found in this place. Unfortunately, his presence buoyed my strength. I told myself it was that he literally fueled my magic. With him beside me and with a bit of his fear, I could defend myself.
But I was as good at lying to myself as I was at doing hard things.
I clasped the necklace tighter in my hand and lifted it to illuminate the path. Careful steps beneath the red glow led us from the ladder.
“This path ends at the altar room. There is another trapdoor there, and it exits to the opposite side of the city wall.”
I nodded, unsure what to say. We had obviously been desperate.
There was no other way out that we could use.
It was this path or unleashing our magic and fleeing through the Eastern Gate.
Doing so would only have alerted more guards to our whereabouts.
Wielding the magic of Champions would be hard to miss.
But this…
“Hart—” The word was rough, and suddenly, my throat closed around all the emotion packed into it.
We’d been in Alaric’s workshop to dig up sadness, to bring forth our deepest regrets and losses.
I was ashamed to admit I hadn’t truly considered how far back in Hart’s history we had to go to find his.
“I hoped I could find something in Alaric’s workshop. A memory. Anything,” he said quietly.
My chest tightened as I remembered his stiffness, the rigidity of his frame as he realized what he had to do.
“It had to be my turn eventually, Chaos. The trials are for both of us.”
His words were so heavy. I wondered what this would cost him. He spoke with a resignation that said he’d known we would end up here. Maybe he’d tried to avoid it. Maybe the circumstances weren’t ideal, but the location was unavoidable for him, given our goals.
We walked in silence. Me, unsure what to say, and him …
I couldn’t begin to imagine what went through his mind.
Before I knew who he was, he had told me all he’d done to fight the summons.
He’d gone so far as to find and shape the adamas himself, attempted to create others who had the same magic he did, and hoped they could take his place as Themis’s Champion.
That hadn’t worked. The goddess didn’t want just anyone. She wanted him.
After inadvertently creating the Blessed in his attempts to flee his fate, he’d turned to anger and decided to challenge Eris himself. If he had no choice but to be Themis’s Champion, he wouldn’t wait for Eris’s Champion to find him. He used his mother’s altar to challenge Eris directly.
He should have died for the audacity. The goddess had every right to kill him. Instead, his mother bartered for his life. A devoted follower, Eris granted her request not to kill Sebastien Glanmore, but his slight could not go unpunished.
The price of challenging a goddess was death. If Sebastien Glanmore wouldn’t pay it, someone else had to.
This was the first part of the Cursed King’s story I identified with.
The burden of others’ choices to protect him.
At the time, I’d likened it to my own mother’s story.
She’d protected my secret, that the Blessed of Kavios couldn’t take from me, and because of that, a Blessed had taken from her to excess.
Now the concept was even more familiar. A heavier grief settled on my shoulders as I considered not only my mother’s youth and her mind, but also how Alaric’s life had been sacrificed in service of my destiny.
When would it end?
The tunnel widened as the red light from the necklace spilled into a larger opening.
I lifted the pendant for better visibility.
A ladder on the left led toward what I could only assume was the other trapdoor.
On the right, a small dragon statue sat on a wooden riser.
Beside it, a large gemstone lay on the ground.
The distance between Hart and me lengthened.
He paused at the entrance as I walked to the center of the room.
His breathing remained even, but his shoulders drew taut, and his spine straightened.
It wasn’t a refreshing coolness that coated the back of my throat; it was a wave breaking against rocks.
His sadness threatened to drown me whole as he glanced at the room where his mother had given her life for him.