Chapter 17
The goddess doesn’t make mistakes. However, there are always multiple paths by which order can be maintained.
— WHAT MAKES A CHAMPION OF ORDER
HART
Ithought we’d have more time. I’m not sure why. Nothing about the goddesses’ cursed game was fair. It wasn’t as if I chose to be summoned or chose to be cursed. Why would breaking free of our curse be any different?
The altar filled my vision. A simple wooden structure, made for a simple purpose. Mother had been devout. She hadn’t required much. Only a place of solitude, away from Father and the trappings of Themis’s unofficial reign.
Ember stood quietly. Her gaze dragged over me. That spark in her brown eyes told me she knew precisely where we were—precisely what this place was.
A mask of indifference covered her features, but a light minty taste touched the tip of my tongue. Minuscule, surely, compared to my own sadness from simply being in this place, but Ember understood the cost of who she was to those she loved.
“I didn’t even know she’d followed me.”
I couldn’t look at Ember as I stepped across the tunnel threshold into the chamber. The words were a whispered confession, and who better than Ember to hear them?
“No one was supposed to be here. I’d made sure no one saw me.” I swallowed thickly as I stepped closer to the altar. “The stories say I was stupid, filled with hubris to challenge a goddess. Truthfully, this was my last hope.”
Her tone held no inflection as she offered few words. “You knew the cost. You were willing to pay it yourself.”
I shrugged. “I’d tried everything else. The stories say I didn’t want to die. That was true enough. But my father held Charon captive. I’d known what I’d done when Father saw the adamas magic. I didn’t know he’d create the Blessed, but I knew he coveted distribution of power.”
The altar was an anchor, dragging me forward. It was for the best. I teetered on a knife’s edge with this confession. The words had to keep coming for this to work, but my gaze desperately wanted to find Ember’s—to catalog her response.
One look at her would halt everything.
I’d proven I couldn’t handle her judgment. It was why I kept so much from her. I wasn’t strong enough to watch any remaining opinion of me crumble to ash.
Being here reminded me that I hated myself enough for both of us.
“My attempts to break free of Themis caused too much damage. I had one more thing to try, and only myself to lose if it didn’t go my way.”
Pebbles spilled behind me across the dirt, almost like she had slid her foot forward. Like she wanted to close the distance between us, but that couldn’t be right. Ember couldn’t forgive me for what I’d kept from her. She’d only hate me more for this.
The well of my emotion she must feel now proved how much of this was my fault. My admissions here at Chaos’s altar would bring us one step closer to achieving her goals, to her being rid of me as a shadow at her side. To free her from any complication in taking the throne from my father.
Another slide of pebbles danced across the cave behind me. I didn’t slow my steps.
“I’d read that the blood of a Champion at the altar of a goddess would call her. I wasn’t sure Eris would respond to my blood, but she came when I tried.” I knelt at the foot of the structure. My fingers grazed the low wooden rise. “That was already more than I expected.”
The next words stuck in my throat. I wasn’t even sure how to finish the story—how to share my greatest shame.
Ember’s voice was a light in the darkness, a beacon calling forth the words I couldn’t quite find, just like I told her she’d always be for me. “You didn’t think she’d come?”
“I was her sister’s Champion. Her opponent in this game. Why would my blood work? Why would she answer me?”
Ember didn’t speak again, but she closed the distance between us. She fell to her knees beside me, her thick skirt spilled like a pool of water. Still, I couldn’t look at her.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said.
I didn’t know the meaning of my own words. She shouldn’t be at the altar of her goddess? She shouldn’t be in this room where I’d proven my protection meant nothing? Or that she shouldn’t be with me, a man who only cost those he loved?
She laughed. “If anyone should be here, it’s me.”
I dipped my head. “Eris was as terrifying here as she was in the throne room. All wild unpredictability. Too raw, too incomprehensible, too fueled by magic and thinly covered rage.”
“What did she do?”
Ember’s prompts were the lifelines I needed, the exact right questions to keep me on track.
My throat bobbed, and my heart pounded in my chest as the memory replayed.
“She appeared in a storm of darkness. That childish giggle was the first thing I heard. The second was a threat. ‘This had better be good, Champion of Order. It’s going to cost you either way.’”
The cavern looked much the same as I searched it, avoiding Ember’s eye.
Then, I’d had a torch with me, but Eris’s storm of magic had doused it, leaving only darkness in her wake.
The red glow of the pendant Ember held cast an angry light across the space.
I felt anger now—at my choices, at my actions—but it wasn’t my predominant emotion.
“She let me speak, let me make the case that waiting served no one, that I might as well challenge her and get this over with.” I cleared my throat. “She laughed at me.”
The way Ember coughed, I wondered if she, too, covered a laugh. Not the most appropriate time, but a worthwhile response nonetheless.
“Some part of her must have understood my concern, though. Understood that I asked for this because Themis would be untenable to the city if I took power. If her hold on the city were cemented through the life of a Champion, Eris would lose.”
The memory that stood out the most was the single twitch, a near-raising of her brow, as if she were surprised I understood the implications. I don’t think she’d realized until then how set against being used I was.
Of course, she’d used me in her own way, for her own means, but because it was in service of Ember’s ultimate rise to power, I found I didn’t mind as much.
“She wouldn’t change her plans, but she could change my value to Themis. That was all she said before the darkness enveloped us both. When the smoke cleared, something was different. My entire being longed for something that I couldn’t quite understand.”
Finally, I did glance at Ember. I was unsurprised to meet her gaze. She, too, understood that feeling now. I knew she’d felt it a handful of times since she’d been cursed. I knew because I’d felt it in those same instances. The emptiness that only the nearness of the other could fill.
Ember dropped my gaze and looked at her interlaced fingers. “If she cursed you before extracting a price, she must not have planned to kill you.”
“She knew my mother had followed me. Knew she was in the tunnel before I did. I think Eris knew what my mother would do.”
The final memory lodged in my throat. Every word up to this point had been like swallowing shards of glass.
How much more did the goddess need? The sharp taste of something acidic coated the back of my throat.
It wasn’t Ember’s emotions as I was now used to.
My body convulsed, dry heaving, to expel the words.
Heat flooded me, and the featherlight touch of Ember’s hand on my shoulder steadied me. Gentle strokes with her delicate fingers urged me to complete my story.
“Eris cursed me first. In her mind, a granted boon, so that I couldn’t argue over the cost later. When my mother stepped into the room, gooseflesh raised on my arms, and my body shook. I already knew the ending.”
My body tried to replicate the physical feelings now. The circle Ember’s fingers drew on my back paused the shaking, giving me space to breathe. If only she knew that my breath came easier when she was near.
“It was like they had already negotiated. My mother knelt beside me.” Now, my body shook even with Ember’s soothing strokes. I no longer knew what was memory and what was not. “Mother kissed my forehead and told me I’d done the right thing. That she was proud of me.”
Ember’s finger brushed my cheek. I didn’t understand until I caught sight of the water on her thumb. She caught my tear.
“Mother spoke of the act, of my foolish attempt to summon Chaos, like she’d known all along what I would do. She spoke like…” I grasped for a comparison, something Ember would understand. “She spoke in riddles like Alaric, like she’d plotted my future and had always known she would pay this price.”
Ember shook beside me. I turned to her, realizing how true the words I had just spoken were.
“And then, with no more than a sentence about the cost and a look of pure disappointment from Eris, my mother was gone.”
The silence thickened between us, but Ember didn’t push me away, didn’t give me space. Her gloved hand cupped my cheek, prepared to catch stray tears as they fell.
“Her involvement cost her.”
“And you resolved not to let anyone else participate.” Ember stated it as a fact, not a question.
One she’d likely stewed over multiple times since her childhood and again since Alaric’s death.
She’d been too young to push people away physically with her mother’s accident; she’d still needed them to survive, but she had certainly taken her emotions off the table.
After Alaric’s loss, it was like she stole away with every emotion, every person who made her feel, and tucked them deep inside her where no one and nothing could get to them.
Ember caught another falling tear, and she met my gaze. “What was her name? Your mother?” She asked, as if my mother’s identity was a precious thing—like speaking the name aloud would make a difference. Like maybe her sacrifice wasn’t a waste.
“Marianne. Glanmore, I guess.” My shrug was apathetic.
“Marianne Hart,” she whispered with another light swipe of her thumb across my cheek.
I closed my eyes, like maybe hearing that name held power. Maybe it wasn’t just hearing the name but who I heard it from. Ember honored my mother’s sacrifice. She seemed to understand the choice I’d tried to make for myself and the pain it had caused.
She’d said earlier that Alaric’s loss wasn’t a one-time pain to focus on but a constant barrage to survive. Like Ember, grieving my mother had taken me a lifetime. It would never end, but this wasn’t just about her death. It was about the cost of my decisions. Costs that continued to stack up.
The rolling tide of sadness broke free from where I tried to hold it. Like a wave cresting against a rocky shore. It wasn’t pretty. It was jagged, dangerous to unleash. My secret shame.
And I’d shared it with Ember.
A blue glow flickered in the room. The red from the necklace that Ember held had all but dulled in my mind. It had become a background color, and I no longer felt aware of its meaning.
I stared at the adamas gem in her hand. She pulled her gaze from it to meet mine. “Thank you, Hart, for sharing this with me.”
The gem flickered again. Slow and steady. The blue flash was mine.
I was too stunned to speak. At some point in my story, I’d forgotten why I was telling it. I’d forgotten that confessing my sadness was a step on our path to freedom. Mother’s sacrifice would shepherd us to our goal.
I wrapped my fingers around the adamas gem on the ground, the one that marked my mother’s death. The one I’d left as a reminder to my future self. I placed it on the altar and whispered a thank you again for everything she’d done for me.
Ember removed her glove and followed my lead, touching the stone in honor of my mother.
Her hand skimmed the wooden altar. I caught her flinch, though it was slight. She pulled her hand back, and a smear of blood dotted her finger. “It’s just a scratch.”
It might have been anywhere else, but not here.
In another flash, darkness coated the room, thicker than a cloud of smoke. I couldn’t breathe, unsure if this was a memory, but something reminded me that it was new and terrible.
The answer was irrelevant. My instinct remained the same.
Something clawed inside my chest, fighting to break free, fighting to protect—to defend. I was still her guard. I covered Ember’s body with mine as the high-pitched giggle I’d come to hate filled the room.