Chapter 18
Eris didn’t need to win. She just wanted Themis to lose.
— ALARIC SARE’S PAPERS FOR EMBERLINE ARKOVA
Something purple flashed in my periphery as darkness flooded the cave. Caught in a wall of muscle and fabric, I fell sideways too fast to catch myself. My landing on the cavern’s cool dirt floor felt featherlight, and the weight that held itself just above me was more than familiar.
What was Hart doing?
“Well, isn’t this unexpected? Or perhaps precisely as expected. I can never be sure.” The voice was high-pitched and feminine, and I recognized it immediately from King Rodric’s throne room.
Panic rose, and my limbs shook. We fought to free ourselves from Eris’s curse. She couldn’t be here. It was only Hart’s steady weight that allowed me a moment’s peace to think. Did she know what we were doing? Did she care? Hadn’t Scarlett claimed Chaos designed the loophole?
“You two should be careful. The progress you’re making could draw unwanted attention.”
I gripped the pendant tighter. I couldn’t see it from this angle, with Hart’s broad frame covering me.
Wait, so she knew what we were doing? Was she alright with it?
It was her curse we were attempting to break, after all.
I guessed that if all went according to plan, I would still technically win the goddesses’ game.
Though I still wasn’t sure Eris cared about winning.
Alaric hadn’t thought she did. The Goddess of Chaos was hard to comprehend.
“Oh, do get up.” Eris snapped her fingers, and Hart and I stood before the altar. The wooden rise was so slight and her stature so small that she barely met Hart’s gaze. It was irrelevant, though. No one would question the power she wielded as her flowing black gown twirled.
The engulfing darkness had subsided, and a deeper hue, a deep violet, flashed faintly, granting us light to see. Just as quickly as Eris had repositioned us, Hart put himself between the goddess and me.
“What are you doing here, Eris?” I don’t know where my confidence came from. I was just so angry. At Hart’s loss. At mine. It wasn’t Eris who had killed Alaric, but in my mind, it might as well have been. Her game was responsible for all of this.
She tutted. “This is my altar, my place of worship. The better question is, what are you two doing here, Champions?”
My gaze drifted to the pendant clutched tightly in my hand. As my fingers unwrapped to expose the light, I couldn’t help but notice another new color flashed along with the blue.
Purple. Fear. That hadn’t been there before.
My head snapped in Hart’s direction. His back was all I could see as his body created a wall to prevent the goddess’s direct access to me.
What deep-seated fear had he revealed? He hadn’t said anything.
“I think he’s too distracted at the moment, Champion.
He’s had bad experiences in this cave, as he’s no doubt told you to get that gem to flash blue.
I don’t think he could handle a repeat.” Eris pointed at the gem with a long, pale finger.
The gem’s lighting was adequate, but the chaos goddess brightened the cave.
She seemed to glow like the moon on a cloudless night.
I don’t think he could handle a repeat. The words cycled through my head. I had looked at the pendant right before Eris arrived. Purple hadn’t flashed then. I’d seen the first hint when he threw himself over me with the goddess’s appearance.
He hadn’t voiced his greatest fear, but he’d shown it to me nonetheless.
Hart’s greatest fear was the goddess killing me?
“Hart.” I reached around him to clutch his arm, working to lower his weapon. Eris was a special kind of untameable, to be sure, but… “I’m her Champion. Is she really going to kill me?”
“My mother worshipped her. It didn’t spare her.”
Point taken.
His words were rough, and his sword didn’t lower, no matter how little I thought it would help against a goddess.
“He’s leaving out a few important details.” Eris waved her hand dismissively. “But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to see if you two know what you’re doing.”
The goddess’s voice was lyrical, and her black dress swayed with movement as she spoke. It was as if she danced across her own altar in worship to herself. She tracked my fingers as they smoothed my hair and tucked it behind my ear. Hart just stood with his blade drawn between the goddess and me.
I thought of everything I’d learned from Alaric. When studying history, when collecting facts to make a case, when in doubt, ask more questions. “What do you want to know?”
She laughed again—the sound of tinkling bells chiming in the wind. “No hemming or hawing about what you’re doing. That’s a good start.”
The most dangerous part of all this, the part I continued to gloss over, was the seventh stone. Scarlett had said it would test us the most—that it was the most important to Eris of all the trials. Maybe I could learn something about it in this conversation.
“Why do you hesitate, Champion?” Eris licked her lips like my answer would be the most delicious feast. Worse, I didn’t know how to respond.
I had hesitated in Alaric’s workshop. I hadn’t been able to say anything I needed to say.
Yes, I’d admitted the constant ache I now carried from Alaric’s loss, but that wasn’t my only wound.
Maybe my sadness wasn’t wrapped up in what hurt the most but in expressing all the pain associated with a single act: deception.
To me, Hart’s offenses were so different from Alaric’s, but to anyone looking in, they were identical. I didn’t know what to do with that.
The goddess studied me the same way Alaric and I used to study his forbidden texts. Her focus was uncompromised. “So, you know the answer, you’re just not willing to say it?” She nodded knowingly. “That’s always been your challenge, hasn’t it?”
My anger at her simple yet accurate evaluation made me careless with my words. “If you know everything, why are you here?”
“Chao—” Hart’s shoulders tensed, and his gaze flicked toward me. He shook his head, cutting off his own use of the nickname in front of the goddess. I imagined that if I could see his face, his brow would be raised, and he’d grace me with a flat line across his lips.
“I take it as a compliment that you see so much of me in her, Sebastien.”
His attention returned to the threat in the room. “Fine, what do you want? To tell us to hurry up? We’re working on it.”
She clapped her hands together with glee. “You never cease to fascinate me, Sebastien. I can taste the sickly sweet chaos of your decisions. And each one is a treat.”
With her words, the flavor of Hart’s fear lessened. The goddess’s focus on him gave me a moment’s reprieve from his fear for me. I hated that the difference was evident to my senses.
“I bring a warning. Three colors now flash. My sister doesn’t have much faith in humanity’s ability to surprise her, but she’s not an idiot.” The goddess pointed to the necklace once again. “She’s bound to notice that.”
“She can’t interfere,” I said.
Eris laughed, and I guessed I deserved that.
“She couldn’t interfere before, either,” Hart grumbled, “and yet she convinced Vaddon to kill you. She sent assassins after us to Linia.”
All fair points, I knew. Was it really too much to ask that the rules of this stupid game be followed by its creators?
“What do you think she’ll do?” I don’t know why I looked to Eris for answers. She’d never given me the ones I required. She’d left me in the dark for my entire life.
Eris reached forward from the dais, lifting Hart’s chin with her finger and thumb.
He didn’t drop his defensive stance. Every part of me recoiled at the action—at Eris’s hand on his skin.
My foot slid forward, my hands clenched into fists at my side.
It was like the first night I’d encountered Hart in the streets of Kavios.
Something had driven me to the edge. Something had told me to pick up the stones and cast them into a crowd.
Start a riot to save a single man. Something unknown and uncontrollable unfolded deep inside me at Eris’s presumption with Hart.
My breath caught as I considered the lengths I might go to save this particular man.
And it was one more feeling I wouldn’t consider too closely.
Hart’s non-sword arm stopped me. With tense muscles and a rapid shake of his head, he begged me to stay in place behind him. The taste of his fear shifted once again. I knew without reason that his fear for me returned. The purple gem flashed brighter, and my forward progress faltered.
Eris’s gaze met mine, and she smiled broadly. “Lovely.” She nodded. “This might work after all.”
She dropped Hart’s chin and straightened her spine. “You’ve chosen a path that will anger my sister. She’ll feel Sebastien’s slow separation from her magic soon enough.”
“Did you feel mine? Is that why you’re here?”
The red curtain of her hair swayed with the shake of her head. “You’re not doing quite as well, darling. I’m here because you called at my altar.”
Her words were like a slap, but I couldn’t deny them.
“There is hope for you yet,” the goddess said. Her gaze lingered on the spot where she’d touched Hart. Even the look set my skin on fire. “But time is short.”
“What will Themis do?”
“Whatever she can.” Eris spread her hands. “Sebastien is right, she didn’t follow the spirit of our game before. I doubt she will once she realizes what is happening. You must be quick.” Her gaze rested on me. “You cannot continue to hide truths from yourself if you hope to accomplish our goals.”
I shook my head before I could get the question out. “Are our goals really the same?” I clutched the necklace tighter. Staring at a goddess who called me her Champion, it seemed foolish to admit to her that I wanted to break free of her curse.
“A Champion of Chaos needs only to challenge what is known. I require nothing else from you but that.”
I clenched my fists again. “What about Kavios? If we succeed in these trials, if we break the curse, how do we save the kingdom?”
“Changing the status quo in Kavios sounds like challenging what is known,” Eris said as her lips curled into another devious smile.
Hart scoffed. “We need more than endless riddles.”
Eris seemed to wipe away Hart’s comment with the swish of her wrist. “You have everything you need to change the tides of Kavios. Do it together.”
My anger boiled again at the meaningless words. Hart must have felt it. He did his best to block my path to Eris, the bitter taste of his fear for me spiking again on my tongue.
“I have nothing I need,” I said. “You hid everything from me.”
Eris shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry so much about me. Focus on your trials. Focus on the hurdles Themis will throw your way. She warned Sebastien that he was out of time to claim the throne. She won’t tolerate his continued dismissal.”
I still didn’t trust Eris’s role in all of this. She’d called me her Champion but had done nothing to help me find my path. Yet, despite Hart’s fear that Eris would attack at any moment, she seemed uninterested in doing so.
“You think she’ll send soldiers after us again?” I asked.
Eris smiled, a little sadly. “I’m sure she’ll get more creative. Then, she was only trying to remove you from the gameboard. Now that emotion is involved, she needs to convince Sebastien that there is no hope but to acquiesce.”
A flash of cool mint hit my tongue. It reminded me that this new facet of our curse. “Tasting each other’s emotions was a bit heavy-handed, wasn’t it?”
“I can’t say I know of what you speak, Champion.” Eris cocked her head in thought. “If that is true, it is a detail that none of us could have anticipated.”
“Wonderful,” I mumbled. That she would deny doing this sounded about right. Chaos never provided a straight answer.
The tension in Hart’s shoulders didn’t fall, but he shook slightly before me. Was he … laughing?
“I’m not sure he’s well, Champion,” Eris said, glancing once again at Hart with confusion.
Hart pulled himself back up to his full height. “Any other cryptic messages for us? We really must be going.”
Eris smiled, her lips pulling back to expose all her teeth. At no point in this conversation had I considered her anything less than dangerous, but the attempt showed the inhumanity of her features.
“I’m looking forward to the game’s conclusion,” she said before she disappeared in another billow of darkness.