Chapter 33
Charon is pure chaos. He’ll sense things you won’t.
— ALARIC SARE’S PAPERS FOR EMBERLINE ARKOVA
Iheard Charon’s roar like I heard the snap of Alaric’s neck in my head.
An echo of someone else I cared for, whom I was unable to protect.
The sound of the pained growl had sent me sprinting toward the exit.
Hart had slipped my bag of gemstones over his own head.
Now, it beat a steady rhythm against his leg as he kept pace with me.
My lungs burned, my breath came faster and faster, and every step took me closer to Charon. I didn’t physically feel his pain, but my anger raged nonetheless at the sound I’d heard—his roar of protest against whatever harm had befallen him.
What had he expected? There were likely hundreds of workers who had been called to the surface by his distraction.
Though they were humans and, as Hart had pointed out, he was a dragon, what was the old adage?
Throw enough mud at the wall and some of it will stick?
They were bound to get lucky if he stayed in place at the mine’s entrance long enough.
My legs lifted faster. I pushed deep breaths in and out through my nose as I sprinted. Hart kept pace. Each time I slipped, each time I nearly fell, he didn’t tell me to slow down or relax. He just pulled me back from the edge, steadied me, and followed me in my wordless mission.
I’d been so close to having the discussion we needed to have.
Fucking Chaos. Things couldn’t remain calm for more than a few moments between us.
My mind circled on how close I’d come, how much more I needed to say. These trials had pushed me so far in learning how to truly express myself, but they’d also made me realize I had so much farther to go.
A deep breath escaped my lungs as we broke through the copse of trees that hid the old mine entrance. Panic flooded me as I considered how long the hike to Charon would take. It’d be hours before we arrived.
“You seem to be sending thoughts of both anger and worry in my direction, Champion.” Charon landed heavily outside the trees at the mine entrance. “I’m not sure which to hope for at this moment.”
Relief swelled in my chest even as I snapped, “What were you thinking?”
Smoke billowed from Charon’s nostrils. “Wasn’t it only yesterday that you demanded I make my own choices? Leave if I wanted to?”
Hart cleared his throat, but I had no illusion that it didn’t cover a laugh. I narrowed my eyes at him, and he made a valiant effort to smooth his features.
Then it occurred to me what Charon had said. “I sent you emotions?”
Charon dipped his head. “You worked so hard when we first left this place to bury your feelings. To hide them like Kavios had taught you to.” His wings folded into his body, mirroring his words. “It’s nice to see you share this. Even if it’s anger at my choice.”
Both he and Hart sounded like broken records on this topic, but I had to acknowledge that something had shifted in me. I’d shed the skin of the girl who fought only for survival in a city set against her. My goals aimed higher. I wanted better, not just for myself but for all humans in Kavios.
“I am … trying not to suppress everything,” I said carefully. “But truly, did you have to take on the entire mine to buy us time?”
“Were you successful?”
I realized his wing wasn’t only tucked into his body to illustrate his point. He draped it strategically over his leg. “Why don’t you show me what your wing is hiding and let me decide if it was a success?”
His wings snapped open, and my hand flew to cover my mouth at the gash down his back leg. It was large, the length of my arm or longer. The liquid that oozed from the gash was dark. I couldn’t tell if it was the cloud-filled night or the fluid itself.
I ran to him to get a closer look. I touched his blood and held it to the light the adamas cast. It wasn’t red like my own would be. “Your blood is black?”
He dipped his head in acknowledgement.
I wanted to heal him. While my father had made a show of giving us anger, another member of the camp had offered lust, healing magic for my adamas, just in case.
“We don’t have time, Champion. They will notice I landed soon. Climb on.”
I clenched my teeth, but realized he was correct. No footsteps echoed through the forest yet, but the last thing I needed was the discovery of this mine entrance. Charon wasn’t inconspicuous.
Hart boosted me up Charon’s front leg, giving me space to scramble to the back of his scaled neck. Then he followed, our bodies flush as if in the saddle of a horse together.
I couldn’t believe how much I’d hated this when we first fled Kavios. Being forced to sit so close to Hart had been my nightmare. The man for whom I’d fallen. The man who’d kept so much from me. The man I had been forced to work with by the whims of a goddess.
“Hold on.”
It was the only warning we received before Charon’s wings snapped again. Each beat lifted us from the ground. The trees grew smaller as we rose into the air.
Now, a future with Hart was the dream I dared reach for.
Every inch of me wanted to lean back into his warmth.
To take advantage of our flight, where I could feel safe and secure—if only for a moment.
But even if Charon said he could wait, I knew we shouldn’t.
There was no telling what weapons the miners had used against him.
The sooner we healed him, the better I’d feel.
I couldn’t take Hart’s lust to heal Charon, but all the same, I leaned back into Hart’s warmth as we flew farther into the Pinnacle Mountains. Lakes looked like puddles, and the trees were as small as bushes. Everything looked different from this perspective.
Hart slung his arm around my waist, pulling me into him while anticipating my thoughts. “You had better heal him fast before he feels the change and yells at you.”
My lip curved into a smile at the fact that Hart knew precisely what I’d do. Encircled by Hart’s strength, I drew on the stored lust in the adamas ring. Even if it wasn’t Hart’s lust I used to heal, I couldn’t help but wonder about his thoughts as the familiar smoky flavor filled my mouth.
I’m working, love. The too-casual use of a word I could barely think sent heat straight to my core. It didn’t take much to surface the scene in the woods. Had it only been this morning?
This thing between Hart and me felt new and old all at once.
It was a first kiss in the woods, a partner I’d fought beside for what felt like years.
I didn’t know what to make of it, but I wanted it.
Hart’s arm tightened around my waist like a band as I remembered the heat of his mouth against my center.
Fire built within me at just the thought. My toes curled of their own volition.
“Careful, Chaos.” His breath was a whisper against my neck, and I knew he must taste the same flavor I did.
A flush heated my cheeks at how quickly I’d been lost in my own lust. We didn’t even need mine.
I sat up straight, and Hart chuckled as I attempted to put myself to rights.
I pressed my hands onto Charon’s scales, channeling the magic through the adamas to heal him.
Though I couldn’t reach his leg from here, I focused entirely on the wound, pictured it stitching closed as I had done with Hart’s past injuries. The ring on my finger glowed orange.
Charon’s growl was quick. “Champion.”
I sensed his wound knitting itself back together. He must as well. I knew I’d finished even before the second rumble was loosed from his chest.
“Calm down, Charon. I’m already done.”
Hart huffed out a laugh behind me.
“We will have words about this.”
I was happy to. “Then we can discuss what else Alysa has asked of you, and how long you’ve been chatting with the leader of the Storm.”
Charon chuffed, and his wings beat a little harder as he flew us farther from the mines.
Charon landed at the cavern where I’d previously visited him. I hadn’t explored it much, but in the quiet of the night, the sound of a stream gurgled beside the entrance.
I slid off his back and walked to his previously injured leg to check the healing. Although I knew the magic had sealed the wound, it was impossible to see through the black sludge that still remained. “Can I clean this?”
He nodded, and I bent to tear a piece of my skirt to use as a cloth.
“Do all dragons have black blood?”
“Yes,” Charon said. “We are made in our goddess’s image.”
I paused my progress. He’d said something like this before, but for some reason, it nagged at a thread in my mind. I wanted to pull hard and unspool whatever thoughts evaded me. My gut said they were important. “What do you mean, in the goddess’s image?”
“I told you, my kind are made from pure chaos. It’s why our magic is drawn to each other.”
“And pure chaos is…” I couldn’t quite finish the thought as Hart knelt before me to rip the strip I’d stalled on. I put my hand on his shoulder as recognition lit up every part of me. “Pure chaos is black.”
Eris’s human form flashed through my mind. When she’d appeared in the throne room, she was draped in a slinky black dress. It had moved with her like a second skin. Themis, her opposite, had been cloaked in white.
Hart waited for me to finish my thought. “The last stone, it’ll be black. What’s most important to Eris…”
I felt on the verge of something big. These trials were meant to free us, and if I believed Eris as I wanted to, they’d free us from more than just our curse.
The difference between the sisters was stark in my mind.
Chaos and Order. Black and White. Polar opposites in so much.
Darkness clouded my vision as I called forth what we’d read in the Library of Linia.
The one similarity between Delphine and me was the way we’d made our choice.
In the Oldwood, the night I’d chosen to be Eris’s Champion, I’d felt like I was lost in the deepest, darkest night.
The darkness had grown so heavy, so overpowering, that it was blinding.
“‘It is the most important aspect of all of this—at least to Eris.’ That’s what Scarlett said. It has to be choice.”
Hart stood, studying me carefully as he handed me the strip of cloth. He spoke hesitantly as if knowing something simmered beneath the surface. “It makes sense that to break free of whatever this is, you would make a choice to mirror your first one—the one all Eris’s Champions make.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t it. Well, it was and it wasn’t. “But it’s not like I want to undo my choice. I stand by it.”
He nodded slowly, but I could see his hesitation in the movement. The conclusion we’d both arrived at was one he struggled to voice. “You think you can give me that choice? Even though it’s Eris’s plan? And you’re her Champion?”
My heart swelled that he put such hope into words. It made sense, but this whole idea felt fragile. “Maybe. I mean, if I have to speak it, then so be it, but I hope you know I’d happily choose to free you from the goddesses’ game.”
“Think of everything this path hinged on,” Charon said.
“The requirements to receive the papers, the ability to be vulnerable with each other … everything about this path required a connection between you. If you are correct that the final trial is a choice, I think the choice will require both of you as well.”
I considered it further as I took the strip of cloth to the stream and knelt to wet it.
Returning, I swiped along Charon’s scales.
“Eris told me I wasn’t thinking big enough.
Breaking the curse doesn’t free Hart from Themis, and it leaves us open to her interference should her path with your father and the book they found come to fruition. ”
I swiped the material over Charon’s leg again, then returned to the stream for another rinse.
“I know our path leads us there anyway, but it occurred to me that the location associated with our change must be the throne room. No matter what our choice, to challenge what is known, we need to challenge the power that currently holds Kavios.”
Hart’s gaze seared my cheek as I worked. His silence told me that he agreed, but he’d probably been hoping to keep me out of that particular part of our plan. I knew that as long as we could fill the adamas with fear, I wouldn’t be a liability.
Still, I had to complete my emotional trials. Alaric’s instructions were clear: those six had to be complete before we could attempt the seventh.
I considered the balance between Chaos and Order again. The game, even the loophole to free ourselves, seemed structured around the goddesses. Alaric had said everything we needed to know came from my studies. I just couldn’t find the missing piece right now.
“I’m exhausted,” I whispered as I leaned my head against Charon’s scales.
“It’s late, Champion. You don’t have to solve it tonight.”
“We’ll divide and conquer,” Hart said. “I’ll reread Alaric’s papers tomorrow while you work the gems. For now, we should sleep. We can’t keep pushing ourselves like this.”
Charon grunted in agreement, and I couldn’t help but smile.
In Kavios, I’d been surrounded by so many but felt seen by so few.
That had been my intent, a choice born from fear of my condition, but still, it was isolating.
I hadn’t even shared my whole self with my friends.
Jasmine and Serena had only seen parts of me, and as my conversation with Serena had illustrated at Forest’s Edge, I’d only seen parts of them as well.
I couldn’t fault my choices then, but I focused on the ones I made now. Hart and Charon were the new choices I’d made for myself. My initial honesty with them both might have been coerced through magic, but I didn’t regret it. It felt good to be known.
It was so easy to curl up in the cave with Hart’s arm draped over my waist for warmth. Charon placed himself between us and the entrance, and his breath was a furnace—heating the coldest hours of the night and thawing the most isolated parts of my heart.