Chapter 24
I taught you to question. Your heart cautions you when you fear the answer.
— ALARIC SARE’S PAPERS FOR EMBERLINE ARKOVA
Serena chattered about everything that I had missed since the Blessing Ceremony. I couldn’t focus on her story because it felt like an animal burrowed into my chest as Hart leaned across the countertop to whisper something to Ava.
Ava had been nothing but kind to me. I hated the feeling that slid down my throat when I watched her with Hart.
Their rapport seemed effortless. Their trust in each other absolute.
With the tilt of her head, she wordlessly communicated something to him.
It likely had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t that vain, but I sat a little straighter in my chair nonetheless.
Would things ever be easy between Hart and me? Every ounce of trust I put in him felt like a battle against myself. Every moment of peace between us felt hard won.
He said he was here for me. He was with me as long as I required, but when he’d been dying in the woods, he’d asked for Ava. He’d told me to leave.
I knew my mental accusation wasn’t fair. There were a hundred ways to explain everything I thought and felt, and I intentionally chose the worst one possible for myself.
None of that seemed to matter when Hart next spoke.
I couldn’t deal with this right now. This …
slimy feeling inside of me, it burned as much as it chilled.
I’d deal with it later. I waved him off, and to my surprise—and with a slight loosening of the constricting feeling in my chest—Ava didn’t go with him.
“Are you listening to me?” Serena asked.
I shook my head.
“A little too honest, Emberline.” She laughed and turned her head to follow Hart’s movements. Nervous energy shot through me as his hand met another man’s chest by the alcoves. Hart seemed determined as he walked the man backward through the door to the gambling area.
What had I missed?
“That view has not gotten worse,” Serena said.
A surprised laugh slipped from my lips, and as my hand moved to cover my mouth, I realized it was one of the first times I’d laughed since …
well, since Alaric died. My heart still twisted at the thought that he was no longer here.
Tears threatened behind my eyes at the recollection, but that guilt for living, for enjoying this moment with my friend, was missing.
If anything, seeing Serena, my very human friend, reminded me how fleeting life was.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can you start over? Has Jasmine planned her wedding?”
Serena launched into an explanation, and I listened as if it were the last time I’d hear news from my old neighborhood.
For all I knew, it might be. She asked where I’d been and what had happened at the Blessing Ceremony.
I gave her little information she didn’t already seem to possess, but still her eyes lit with mischief.
“I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m sure that broody guard of yours will return shortly. And I have to find my own special friend for the evening.”
I reached for her arm but stopped myself before my hand closed around it. “Are you sure that’s safe? Letting the Blessed take from you?”
She gave me a soft smile, and it transformed her face from one sharing social pleasantries to someone … unsure, maybe scared. “This city is overwhelming. The raids, the taking, the … loss.”
Serena had started dating someone seriously just before I left. The way her voice cracked on the word, I wondered what had happened to him. When I opened my mouth to ask, she shook her head.
“We’ve all lost in Kavios. And I know the taking isn’t good for me.
I’m not an idiot. But in here”—she gestured to the tavern—“it’s my choice.
And the feeling is still unlike anything else I’ve experienced.
It lets me forget about my circumstance, about being a human in this city made for the Blessed, for just a little while.
” She squeezed my hand that was still outstretched.
I found I didn’t mind. “You be careful. Whispers in this place about the jeweler are still not kind.”
I nodded, and she slipped into the crowd, meandering toward the curtained alcoves. My thoughts raced as she found a partner who pulled her onto one of the daybeds.
“We look after her.” Ava’s voice drifted from behind the counter. “She gives only a little each visit. Enough to dull her pain.”
I turned on my stool to face the bartender.
As much as a deep-seated part of me knew that Hart’s intentions toward me were clear, I couldn’t get past the fact that I had thought that last time as well.
Their familiarity spoke of years of trust. I guessed Hart had admitted as much openly, but I just couldn’t shake that twisting feeling in my chest.
“Everything alright, Emberline?” Ava asked as she leaned across the bar to have a more private conversation with me.
I nodded, even though the words that slipped out told a slightly different story. “You and Hart have so much … trust between you.”
That, she seemed to understand. “We do. We’ve worked together for a long time.”
The root of his sadness made clear how long Hart’s life had been. There may not be anything between him and Ava now, but that didn’t mean there had never been.
“Have you and Hart ever…?” I couldn’t finish the sentence, and Ava’s brow furrowed as she tracked my words.
She threw her dishrag on the counter, shaking her head. “Never.”
The tightness in my chest at the thought of them sharing secrets, at the thought of him trusting her more than he trusted me, uncoiled slightly.
“He wanted me to get you when he was dying in the woods, before the Blessing Ceremony,” I offered as some version of an excuse for the question.
She wiped away my concern. “He just didn’t want you there. He didn’t want you to make the choice you did on his account.”
Her answers made so much sense, and I knew them to be rational, but my mind was determined to suggest the worst possible answer first. “He kept things from me.”
She nodded. “He did, but you knew that when you started working with him. He kept his deal with Alaric a secret. Remember when you stormed in here, upset about catching him out? You can’t expect a man like that, who has kept secrets from everyone for hundreds of years, to change overnight.”
I knew that. Hart and I had only known each other for weeks. I couldn’t expect us both to cover every topic in that time.
“Whether your uncle wanted this or not, I think he prepared you for it.”
My attention snapped back to Ava. “What do you mean?”
“He taught you to question. Always. Not only because he left a million truths unsaid but because he wanted you to have the skills to figure things out for yourself.”
When I first met her, I’d wondered if she and my uncle had been more than smuggling partners. She’d been so worried for him. I wanted to comfort her now, commiserate about our shared loss, but I wasn’t sure how.
I took a deep breath. “He also warned me not to let my fear of the answers get in the way of asking the questions.”
“That sounds like him,” she said, standing a little straighter to wipe the counter with her dish towel.
“I don’t even know where to begin, sometimes,” I whispered, mostly to myself.
“Didn’t Hart just try to take you with him to the meeting? That seemed like a good opportunity.”
I hadn’t actually heard what he asked me.
I’d been too busy fighting the burning feeling inside me to notice.
I opened my mouth to ask Ava what she meant, but her head tilted, and I realized someone approached on my side of the bar.
I turned, honestly hoping Hart had returned so I could ask him these questions directly, only to find another face I hadn’t expected.
“Macen.” I turned to face him. “You’re alive.”
He smirked and ran his hand through his hair. The gesture looked nothing like it did when Hart did the same. “I am. Are you glad to see me?”
My history with Macen was complicated. A lover, a traitor—he’d led me into a trap with the Feared, but in the end, I hadn’t wanted him dead.
When the king asked me to drain him as part of the Blessing Ceremony, I’d faked it.
No matter what he’d done to me, I couldn’t kill him, at least not in cold blood.
I hadn’t been sure he made it out of the throne room when chaos erupted.
Was I glad to see him? Not really. I felt nothing for him. So, I gave the most honest answer I could. “I’m glad you made it out of the Blessing Ceremony alive.”
He leaned in closer, and I stiffened as his fingers cupped my elbow. “How glad, Emberline?”
Before I could respond, a familiar rumbling voice shredded the vestiges of fear that had crept up my spine. “Chaos, I did warn him if he touched you again, I’d kill him. Do you need me to follow through?”
The taste of citrus filled my mouth as Macen turned to Hart. Though Macen tried to mask the movement, the hand that touched me dropped, and his eyes widened briefly. He still had a healthy fear of Hart, it seemed. “We were just catching up,” he said.
Hart’s face was unimpressed, masked. I couldn’t get a handle on the taste of this new emotion. His gaze shifted to mine, and I wondered what he saw there. “Is he bothering you, Ember?”
There was a rigid hesitation in his stance, like he wasn’t quite sure of his role here. The insides of my mouth sucked in as the taste of lemon strengthened. I’d seen Hart’s face do the same when…
No way.
The laugh that had slipped free with Serena bubbled up once again. Before I could stop myself, a chuckle overflowed, and I leaned back against the bar behind me. “You’re jealous?” I pointed at Macen. “Of him?”
My tone was incredulous, and I heard Macen’s indignant whine before he sauntered away.
The gap between us closed, and Hart was very much in my space.
His proximity only brought anticipation, not fear as Serena and Macen’s closeness had.
My question seemed to spark something in him, like I’d opened a floodgate.
“What do you expect, Chaos? You literally risked your life to save his. How am I to know what you feel for him?”
I sucked in a breath as something shifted between us. It was a tangible thing. I knew without looking that another flashing light would display on the pendant beneath my blouse. I glanced down out of habit. “I guess that’s envy.”
We didn’t unwrap the pendant, but Hart grunted in agreement.
“Was it really that easy?”
Hart’s chuckle was low and dark. “It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we say what we’re thinking.”
He moved to step back, but I gripped his hand and kept him there—in my space. “For the record, just because I don’t want to murder someone doesn’t mean I have any romantic interest in them.”
His fingers gripped my waist where I’d pressed them, and every inch of me wanted to lean in, to arch my chest into him, closing the gap that remained between us.
His fingers brushed down my side. “You don’t want to stoke my envy, Chaos?”
I shook my head, realizing once again that he and I weren’t so different.
He must have felt my envy before he walked away.
That was what the burning feeling inside me when he confided in Ava had been.
The coil in my chest had tightened, knowing that he trusted her with things he’d never tell me. But now, I wasn’t sure that was true.
Either way, he was right. We accomplished much when we simply spit out the words. I pushed mine free before I could change my mind. “I envy how much you trust Ava. How easy your relationship seems. To the point, I wondered if it had ever been more than trust.”
Something shifted again, and I let out a long breath.
I knew I’d done it—shown envy. I knew from the way that the heat of our connection thickened the air between us.
The closer we came to completing these trials, to breaking free of our curse, the more connected I felt to him.
Each change was like a physical force, pulling us closer together.
It didn’t make sense, but I arched forward, and he leaned in.
His smirk was firmly in place. “It’s nice to know you care, Chaos.”
I swallowed, and as he leaned in closer, his nose chased the bob in my throat. He inhaled deeply as he soaked in the scent of my skin.
“And I’m sorry you have any doubt in my feelings for you. I know I’ve made things harder than they need to be for us.”
I wanted so badly to close the distance. To feel his lips on mine.
“We need to talk.” His words were a low rumble, like he growled at himself for interrupting whatever this was. “The Feared were in the back room. We need to decide what happens after the trials. We need a plan we can share with them.”
The haze his nearness always brought burned away with the topic. I cleared my throat, and he put much-needed space between us as he leaned on the bar beside me.
“Ava reserved a room for you upstairs. It’d be best if we plan this somewhere not so open,” Hart said.
I was still unsure what our future held, but my track record with the Feared wasn’t great.
Their repeated attempts to kill me in an effort to stop the distribution of adamas had been a decent plan, but it was a sore spot in my relationship with them.
If they were here, Serena’s warning made sense, and in that case, nowhere was safer than with Hart.
“Can I stay in your apartment?” The words were out before I could second-guess them.
He studied me, as if searching for the motivation behind the question. I wished him luck. All I knew was that I felt safer—sturdier, like the ground wouldn’t shift beneath my feet—when I was with him.
He nodded and took my hand as I hopped from the stool. “Let’s go.”