Chapter 44
Maybe Chaos knew what she was doing after all.
— FROM CHAMPIONS OF KAVIOS
HART
Some days, I wondered if we saw each other even less now that we had a kingdom to restructure. But every night Ember and I crawled into the bed we’d come to call our own and my arms encircled her, with no fear of goddesses, or Blessed, or tyrants, I counted it all as worth it.
We had so much to do. Prioritization was key.
Ember spent her time cataloging the adamas.
We needed to know how much the Feared and Storm had collected and how many pieces remained in the city.
I was surprised to learn that they had collected most of it in their initial battle.
We knew better than most the damage that one or two pieces of adamas could do in the wrong hands.
The Feared kept searching for the pieces Ember pointed them toward.
I would be forever thankful that Ember had found a way through for all of us. Not that the throne really existed anymore, but being able to stare at its remains without so much as a whisper was something I hadn’t dared hope for.
Ember’s hope had carried us through.
Though she’d say that my determination had returned her to Kavios in the first place.
She thought I was somehow fit to rule, but she took to it more naturally than I ever had. She knew what questions to ask. How to think about moving the kingdom forward. While we collected the adamas, we still had so much to settle between the humans and the former Blessed.
Even Rodric’s law had claimed the Blessed weren’t to take without consent. Few outside of Forest’s Edge had enforced such a law, and accidental takings were claimed often, but Ember knew how to thread the line of repercussions for their actions versus collective incarceration of the Blessed.
There were plenty who deserved worse sentences than they received, and many citizens who attended our town hall forums said as much.
We did what we could with first-hand testimony.
We moved the kingdom forward. Thankfully, Rodric’s death—and Vaddon’s, too—had done a lot to ease the humans’ vengeance.
The first few days, Ember asked repeatedly if I needed to talk about my father.
His death. I honestly told her I didn’t.
I’d mourned my father two hundred years ago, when the first adamas gem had flickered green with his envy.
Of course, that was before we knew precisely what the green flash meant, but there had been a glint in his eye that I didn’t like.
A lust for power, a need to dominate, that I couldn’t condone.
I couldn’t have known how that drive would play out in the kingdom, but my father had ceased to be the man I’d known.
I’d left shortly after, and my need to undermine him, while staying away from the throne, had only grown with each passing year.
Now, it wasn’t Father’s fate I had to worry about. While Reid, Alysa, and Nicholas helped with proposals for the new government of Kavios, the dark cloud of my brother’s future hung over my head.
“Visiting again, brother?” Elias said as I entered his room. Two guards stood sentry outside, but he hadn’t tried to leave.
I ran my fingers through my hair. Strands fell to my face with my frustration. I’d visited him every day since the battle, and I still didn’t know what to do with him. “Why did you tell me about the ritual? Why did you tell me it was possible?”
Ember had found the book Elias and Vaddon sought.
She’d read it from cover to cover in a matter of days.
Her conclusions weren’t reassuring. She wasn’t Elias’s biggest fan, but she took Vaddon’s interpretation of the requirements.
The book didn’t say that they had to kill me.
It just said they needed my blood. In Elias’s mind, we already shared blood, so for him to succeed, he didn’t even need an offering from me. Only me as a witness.
Did that make it any better?
“What do you want me to say, Sebastien?” Elias asked, throwing himself onto the chaise. “I thought you deserved a chance to claim your own place as Champion.”
I rolled my eyes. “The two hundred plus years of ignoring it wasn’t a good enough signal for you?”
Anger flashed in his eyes as he sat up. “You never told me why you ran. You never told me anything.”
He had a point there. I just … hadn’t known it needed to be said. While it didn’t help with my decision, I took the time to share what I could. Even if it made no difference.
“She demanded things of me. The throne demanded things I couldn’t condone. I admit, at first, I simply didn’t like being told what to do, but it became so much more than that.” I sighed. What a mess.
“What a shock,” Elias quipped.
I sat in one of the wooden chairs at the table. “The more I denied her, though, the more I felt myself changing. She pushed harder when I pulled back. She required things I would never have done, even as the selfish prick I was when she summoned me.”
Elias clasped his hands together, his forearms draped over his legs as he listened. I couldn’t believe that, in two hundred plus years, we’d never had this conversation. That was most certainly on me.
“I know Father made it seem like the best thing in the Three Kingdoms,” I continued, “but Themis’s summons would have destroyed me if I let it.
She claimed she chose me for my determination, my mind, but those were the very attributes that the whispers of the throne sought to stamp out.
There was no room to share power in her reign.
She only wanted someone to execute her vision. ”
Elias leaned back. He looked thoughtful. For better or worse, my brother was a master of disguise. It struck me that he’d had to be, living with Father. Even the idea that he hadn’t been sure of Father’s choice of sacrifice struck me as incredibly sad.
“Don’t pity me, Sebastien. It’s not a good look.”
I grunted. “What was your plan?”
He searched the room, and I was once again sure I wouldn’t get a straight answer.
“There is no answer I can give you that will make anything better, Seb. I gave you the information I thought you needed. I also planned for every alternative that could have happened in that room. Could Father have chosen me as his sacrifice?” He shrugged. “Undoubtedly.”
“Then why did you stay?”
He waved off my question. “Be serious. Where else would I have gone? Kavios is my home. I know nothing else. I’m not adventurous like you. I am creative in my confines, but I’m unlikely to strike out to find something wholly new.”
My nostrils flared, and I sucked in a deep breath. I knew what we had to do. “I think it’s time to change that, Elias.”
Ember agreed with my assessment. Reid, Alysa, Nicholas, and the others didn’t object, either. We had yet to create a formal council, but I wanted to take care of this. And the decision felt right.
“He can’t stay,” Ember said.
I knew that. There was no way the people of Kavios would accept him wandering freely through the kingdom.
It didn’t matter what information he’d shared.
It didn’t matter that he’d felt trapped in his place here.
Not even my personal bias mattered—that he’d offered the adamas stone that had ultimately saved Ember’s life.
None of that would sway the people who had seen him ruling alongside Father for years.
“So we exile him,” I said.
I didn’t know where he would go, but I guessed that wasn’t my problem. As Ember had pointed out, he couldn’t stay here.
Elias took it remarkably well. “I understand. Honestly, it’s better than remaining under castle arrest for the remainder of my life. Who knows how long that will be without adamas?”
It was a sobering question. One that many of the ex-Blessed in the city had. No one knew how the removal of adamas would impact those who used it.
I couldn’t say that was a top concern.
Elias taking his exile in stride was a single brick stacked in the foundation of the kingdom we rebuilt. It felt small in the grand scheme of things. It was just one more item to check off our list, but making a decision and seeing it through gave me hope that we could do the same with others.
The next morning, I saw Elias to the Eastern Gate.
Charon had taken to flying over the city daily.
I’d wondered more than once if he considered this part of his duty, similar to how Scarlett circled Ciril.
Only, here, he was welcomed into the castle every night.
He’d stopped sleeping at the foot of the tower once he’d decided no assassins would sneak in to kill Ember.
I quite enjoyed that he’d created a nest for himself in the throne room.
We left the charred remains of the throne there, a symbol of our feelings on absolute authority over Kavios, although we still worked together to determine what shape the new power structure would take.
“The Oldwood doesn’t feel quite as eerie as it used to, does it?” Elias asked, pulling me from my thoughts as he glanced through the gates at the path.
I shook my head. “No, not so much. Feel free to tell that to anyone you meet on your travels.”
He turned his gaze to the hill, to the castle he’d called home for hundreds of years. “I’m sure people will flock to the kingdom when they hear of all you’re doing here.” He offered his hand. “Good luck, brother.”
I clasped it, unsure what to feel about this moment. Sadness at the thought of losing another chance to get to know him? Anger at the choices he made while seated at Father’s side? Resignation at the one choice that I had—sending him away? “Good luck, brother.”
With a final nod, he turned to the Oldwood Path.
I watched him walk away for minutes, maybe longer, until Ember’s gentle touch caressed my arm.
Her hand slid into mine, and she twisted our fingers together.
I had told her not to interrupt her work to be here, but she must have seen me through Alaric’s workshop windows.
“We knew picking up the pieces wouldn’t be easy,” she said.
We had known that. I gripped her fingers tighter and turned to face the city. “We’d better get back to work, then.”
She stood on her toes and pulled my mouth to hers.
A soft, lingering press of her lips to mine was exactly the reassurance I needed.
This was never going to be easy. We had thousands of citizens depending on us.
I wrapped my hands around her waist and brought her body flush against my own.
Her tongue slid against mine with an almost lazy reassurance.
Fucking Chaos, this woman was everything I needed. I soaked in the taste of her, the feel of her, knowing I wouldn’t have her back in my bed for hours yet.
She broke the kiss with a small smile. “Keep thinking what you’re thinking.”
The smoky taste of her lust hit the tip of my tongue. “I couldn’t change my thoughts if I tried, Chaos.”