She worried her lip.
“We’re connected more than you want to admit,” I said, letting my head fall.
Her sharp intake of breath reassured me that my assumption was correct. She could feel my emotions as I felt hers. “Hart, don’t.”
“Don’t what?” I pressed. “Don’t make you acknowledge your feelings?”
Her spine straightened like that of a teacher preparing for a lecture. “Emotions drive our magic. We’ve always known that.”
I shook my head. “I was cursed for hundreds of years and never felt anything like I have in the past few days. Let’s not pretend this is how our magic is supposed to work.”
Spices I could never name coated my tongue as her anger flared. “What do we know about it? So little information exists about Champions. And none have been cursed until you!”
The flavor of her emotion was all-encompassing. So hot I wondered if it would burn. Little did the goddess know that I would happily let it turn me to ash. “It means something. What didChampions of Kaviossay? ‘Chaos may have cursed him, but she had bigger plans?’”
“No, Hart. There is no hidden meaning. We are here to find a way to break the curse, and then I’ll return to Kavios.”
My anger roared to life as I confronted the truth I’d barely acknowledged to myself. She planned to return without me.
I held her gaze in challenge, but her fury burned out almost instantly. She had just been attacked. She was too good at hiding her feelings. I should have known the crash would come quickly. When the minty relief of her sadness trailed through the wake of her anger, I knew I had to get her back to the castle.
“Come on, Chaos. Lucinda is not going to be happy with me for disturbing the peace in her kingdom.”
I turned to walk toward the alley entrance, and my leg buckled. Ember was there, her shoulder a brace as I found my footing with my wound. I had forgotten about it. Now that I remembered, the pain flared.
“Do you need to heal?” she asked.
I shook my head. The last thing I wanted was her resentment over healing me. “They’re scratches,” I said, downplaying the pain the same way she pushed down her emotions. “I’ll wrap them at the castle.”
She looked unsure, but I didn’t pick up an emotion with how quickly they seemed to flit across her face. Tucking them away would only last so long. If she wanted to go this route, I would bide my time until she erupted. I’d remain at her side until she admitted what she feared in the alley. It hadn’t escaped my notice.
If I hadn’t seen her do the same thing in Kavios, I would have questioned it more. But just as Iknewthe flavors I tasted were her emotions, I alsoknewher fear hadn’t been for herself.
Never for herself.
Her fear was for me.
And if she feared my death, then she cared that I lived.
Eris’s curse seemed to anticipate Ember’s reaction to the revelations in the throne room. Like the goddess knew her Champion would shut down, would hide away her every emotion once she learned of all the secrets kept from her.
I didn’t pretend to understand the goddesses, but sometimes I thought we gave them too much credit. This didn’t feel like a path Eris charted. It felt like a clue laid for me to find. A truth not yet ready to emerge. A desperate part of me wanted to believe Ember gifted me this knowledge herself.
But that, too, was ridiculous. It couldn’t be possible.
No one would mistake me for a pious man, but I would worship on my knees the one who had gifted me this map to correct my course.
7
Should the impossible occur, give her this. There is a way out that only the two of them together could master.
— ALARIC SARE’S LETTER TO QUEEN LUCINDA
“Iwould have extended an invitation to dine with us tomorrow,” Lucinda drawled. “You needn’t have nearly gotten yourself killed in the streets to procure one.”
I was uncomfortable, to say the least, as we sat down to a meal in a room too formal for my liking. Staff surrounded the table, watching, waiting for a signal to act. A bureau on the far wall held carafes of water and wine. The painting on the wall above it drew my attention. In it, the red dragon we’d seen upon arrival circled the city. That action had been a nightly occurrence duringour stay.
“King Richard had to deal with the unfortunate business of your attacker,” the queen said as she gestured for the servants to fill our plates.
