Chapter 32
The path to replace a Champion requires proof of dedication.
— WHAT MAKES A CHAMPION OF ORDER
HART
We hiked in the opposite direction from this afternoon, returning to the Storm’s original camp in the foothills. We picked our way around the large boulders that dotted the landscape, sheltering their first settlement from view. Beyond the rocks, a copse of trees hid the old entrance to the mines.
How different things had been the last time we were here. The cool taste of mint coated my throat, and I knew Ember’s sadness meant her thoughts couldn’t be far from my own.
Alaric had just died. Ember had just learned all I’d kept from her with an audience of royals and goddesses. We had come to free Charon from the mines. She would have left me in the Oldwood if she could. Fortunately for me, our shared curses meant she needed me.
Now, even as we lost the ability to take from each other, I only felt our connection strengthen.
She needed me now, but not as a burden. She had leaned on my strength at the fire when she confronted her father.
Her plans had included me as she considered Alysa’s demands.
I dared to believe that we could take the throne from my father, that we could free the citizens of Kavios from his rule, and that maybe we could find happiness together along the way.
Ember pulled out the pendant as we approached the mine entrance.
It would provide light in the descent. As I considered our future, I couldn’t help but notice the pendant only flashed yellow—it didn’t glow.
I could dream of happiness all I wanted, but if Ember still didn’t know what joy looked like to her, we were shooting an arrow without a target.
I took a deep breath, letting the crisp evening air fill my lungs. We would figure this out. Time was not on our side, but no matter my past failures to free myself from Themis, I chose now to believe in Ember.
Somehow, I knew that if the final trial was one of chaos—was something Eris valued—the weight of our success would fall on Ember’s shoulders.
The final trial was barely spoken of in Alaric’s papers.
Scarlett had at least given us cryptic guidance, but it wasn’t much.
I’d support Ember however I could. Part of being better together included knowing our strengths and weaknesses.
I’d get us where we needed to go, likely my father’s throne room, and Ember would find a way to navigate us through what we found there.
The old mine entrance was much the same as we’d left it when we fled with Charon.
I had been worried that someone would discover the path with our disappearance.
Or, in my father’s case, that he would have rediscovered it.
But due to the Blessing Ceremony, the mines had been empty.
Rodric must assume we’d walked right out the front entrance.
It had certainly been designed with a dragon of Charon’s size in mind.
With Ember and Charon’s disappearance, Rodric thankfully had bigger problems to consider than how we’d entered and exited the mines. He had lost his ability to source adamas.
“Ready?” Ember glanced at me, holding up the necklace for light.
I nodded. “Let’s focus on not slipping on the descent this time.”
She rolled her eyes and entered.
The grand entrance was dangerous, and it was maintained daily. These paths we followed hadn’t been used since my grandfather’s time. He had created multiple bare-bones entry points before he knew where the richest quartz deposits were found.
Her foot slipped on her next step down the steep slope.
I caught her elbow. “Chaos.”
When she turned to me, her brown eyes were wide and inviting.
Like she’d tease me, or maybe she’d kiss me.
I hadn’t had time to process all that had happened since the raid on Forest’s Edge.
Yes, my family kept making our trials harder.
On top of that, they sought to make them irrelevant.
It was a problem, but it couldn’t hold my focus.
Her lips on mine had reconstructed my thoughts.
As much as I fought for any chance to prove myself to her, my shock at her actions made me wonder if I’d ever really dared to hope before.
Hope was a dangerous thing.
Father weaponized the humans’ hope with the Selection and Blessing Ceremony.
They dared to dream of being selected, of becoming one of the Blessed themselves, and it made room for all manner of sins.
Now I had my own fragile hope unfurling inside me.
It was new and delicate, and one wrong move could crush it.
It didn’t feel fair that everything I wanted was within my reach. After two hundred years of mistakes, I finally had a chance at happiness.
The yellow flashing adamas needed resolution. It needed to glow. While I had finally found my joy, I knew better than most that Ember finding hers could take time.
“Do you think my father’s justifications were true?” Ember asked into the darkness. Her voice was a mere whisper, and I wondered how long she’d been sitting with the question while my mind cycled through nonsense.
By the fire, I’d tasted the minty flavor of her sadness and the spice of her anger in equal measure. Her relationship with her father was … fraught. I could see why. Maybe he feared for her life, but a cynical man like me also wondered how much he feared for himself.
“I think it’s progress for him to acknowledge his failures.
” I wouldn’t hide my thoughts from her, but I also wanted to speak with care.
“I can’t be sure he sees all of them yet.
His focus on your mother made him blind to his other duties, and that’s a fault regardless of what you were destined for. ”
She sighed and dragged her hand against the wall to steady herself as her foot slipped beneath her again. “Every time I think I let it go, I remember how many secrets they kept.”
With a glance over her shoulder, she considered me. It wasn’t anger that invaded my mouth, now, but something softer. Annoyance.
“I know,” I acknowledged. “I know I didn’t help.”
She reached for my hand, and I knew I’d guessed correctly. Ember may want to move past my omissions, past the betrayal she felt at having learned my identity the way she did, but that didn’t immediately negate all her pain.
“You’re too hard on yourself if you think all of those feelings will disappear just because you will it to be,” I said. “You can still be mad, sad, frustrated, any and all of those things. I just need us to be able to talk about them when they surface.”
This connection between us wasn’t just magic. It certainly wasn’t just a curse. It was something more potent. Something strong. While I wondered how much Eris guessed at, versus how much she knew, I agreed with Ember’s stance at the fire. Only our choices could have brought us here.
Ember nodded, and she turned fully to face me.
“When I first spoke with my mother upon returning, she pointed something out. She said that of course I’d be angry with Alaric if he were here, of course I’d fight with him over all he kept from me, but I’d forgive him, too.
At the time, I had no such designs on forgiving you.
It was different with you, even though the action was the same.
She told me the faster I acknowledged that, the better off everyone would be. ”
I wasn’t sure I was breathing. I knew precisely what her mother spoke of; I’d been begging Ember to acknowledge it since Linia. I’d tried pressing her on it. I’d tried letting her come to me. Neither option had helped.
Soft footfalls ahead pulled her focus. “The path intersects with the main trails just ahead.” She pointed. “We need to get in position. Reid said we’d know when the distraction happened. He said the guards would leave the adamas cavern entrance.”
I scoffed. “Reid used to be a thief. Someone who valued discretion above all else. Now his plans are so bold, so large that we’ll … just know?”
“That’s what he said.” She turned and took the remaining steps to the tunnel that intersected the main mine paths.
I stepped in front of her. “Let me do the initial check.”
As quickly as I could, I peered out. It was understandable why no one gave this path a second glance. It looked decrepit. The walls were near collapsing, and the entrance was stacked with stones. This path looked like one of the many old, unused sites.
Farther down the main trail, two guards stood at the entrance to the adamas room.
“So we wait?” I asked in a whisper when I told her what I saw.
She nodded. Anticipation mixed with anxiety left a sickly sweet taste in my mouth. I wanted desperately to return to her previous conversation. With one glance at her, I thought she knew it.
“You haven’t asked about the queen’s requirements to give me Alaric’s packet of papers about the trials.” Did she sound … disappointed?
“Ember.” I tipped her chin so that our gazes locked.
What should I tell her? That I already knew what it was?
There had been no evidence provided to me, no key.
I’d known simply because there was only one answer she would have so heavily guarded from me.
One emotion she wanted desperately not to confront.
“You know, don’t you?”
There was no heat in her words—a resignation mixed with something solid. Something deep. A new connection forged between us in this moment.
“No one—”
She waved me off. “I’m not asking if someone told you.
I’m asking if you know. The same way you always know when it comes to us.
The way you know when I need you to silently support me versus when I need you to challenge me.
The way you see my exhaustion when I’d rather hide it.
Or the way you seem to understand my thoughts before I can articulate them.
That’s how you know that the queen had to believe I lov—”
The earth shook beneath our feet, and a low roar echoed against the walls like a beast stood before us, even this deep in the mines. Screams erupted, shouts heralded workers toward the entrance, and all traces of the conversation that had me hanging on her every word were forgotten.
“No,” she hissed, and I knew where her thoughts went. “She brought Charon into this?”
Yet I had relaxed upon hearing the familiar roar. If anyone could cause a distraction, it was a dragon with a few hundred years of captivity on his mind. Maybe Alysa’s plan had more merit than I thought.
Ember pushed my shoulder as if sensing that I was happy with this turn of events. “This is dangerous. He shouldn’t be here.”
I chuckled, unable to hold it in. “It’s a good plan, Chaos.
It doesn’t point back to the Storm. Only to a freed dragon who is angry from his years of captivity.
” I tilted my head in thought, offering her what comfort I could.
“It’s not like Alysa could have forced him to do it. He had to have volunteered.”
She sighed as another group of miners ran past the tunnel where we hid. Momentarily, I felt Ember’s worry and recognized it for what it was. What could human miners with pickaxes do against a dragon?
“Let’s hurry,” she said. “The faster we get what we came for, the faster he can get away.”
I listened for another group of miners and guards to rush past. When the footsteps were no more than an echo, I did a final search of the path.
My heart raced as I grabbed Ember’s hand.
The rapid beats had nothing to do with this stupid heist and everything to do with the words she’d been on the verge of spilling.
I hated that she’d been interrupted, but now was not the time to continue.
With a regretful tug, I pulled her down the path, toward the adamas cavern.
The large, locked door stood between us and our goal. Her father’s anger filled the adamas ring on her finger. She didn’t waste his contribution. With little more than a thought, she channeled the anger into strength and broke the door’s lock.
I scanned the empty cavern beyond. The circular, hollowed-out space was much the same as the room in which my mother’s altar to Eris was built. I could easily spot the quartz deposits. Pickaxes and scaffolding dotted the walls.
My father must be desperate. He still mined the stone. Did he hope to stumble upon adamas? No one but Ember or me could tell which of the deposits had been transformed by Charon’s fire into adamas. Rodric only fooled himself into thinking he could stumble upon a solid piece of the gem.
Another roar sounded from above. We needed to hurry.
Ember’s gloves were off, and her hands searched the stone desperately for the heat she was all too familiar with.
Her gaze darted toward me while I stood by the door listening to what was happening above.
I kept a lookout as she pulled a pickaxe from a workstation and swung at an identified deposit.
The clang of the axe against the gemstone rang through the cavern.
She reached for the heat of the adamas stone, but even that wouldn’t be enough.
Tomorrow, we’d have to shape it. To hold magic, the stone must be cut so that it was solid adamas.
We had all day tomorrow to turn the raw stones into the weapons of the Blessed.
Ember pried loose chunks of stone and put them in her cross-body bag. When she finished, the bag was filled to bursting. I hoped she’d retrieved enough. Now that she understood Charon was the distraction, I didn’t think she’d allow a return trip to the mines.
A roar echoed through the cave, and I winced. That wasn’t just a growl. It sounded pained.