Whatever had happened between her and Lucinda, she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell me.
When we entered our suite, Ember retreated to the balcony with Charon. I wouldn’t invade her privacy to pry her secrets free. The goddesses knew I had my own. Every part of me just wished she’d confide in me.
I shook my head, knowing I’d cost myself that right. Settling in, I paced the living room. Every few trips back and forth across the space, I checked the balcony through the bedroom door. Part of me worried she’d hop on Charon’s back and disappear. I caught a glimpse of her reading. I prepared to turn on my heel and retreat again—but halted as she looked up. Our gazes locked, and I did not mistake the way she beckoned me toward her. My heart raced as I attempted to calm myself.
Joy shouldn’t have been the first thing I felt. It should have been hesitation, caution, anything but building hope. But I’d never been good at controlling my emotions with Ember.
The question fell from her lips before I left the doorway. “What was your summons like?”
“I—”
“We talked about Delphine’s calling this afternoon. Was yours anything like that?”
I sighed, and my hand clenched into a fistat my side. “No. Nothing like that.” I glanced down at where she’d seated herself by Charon’s leg. The dragon was mysteriously silent, but his golden eyes tracked me. “As you noted, she was called as an adult, like I was. The similarities end there.”
A frown curled Ember’s lips, but she continued. “I don’t remember anything about a calling like Delphine described in her journals, but I assume that happened when I was a baby. The moment she made the choice, though … that felt similar.”
My spine straightened, and I pushed from the doorframe, taking hesitant steps toward her. I hated thinking about Ember’s choice. She said she had made it herself, and I wouldn’t diminish that, but a part of me wondered if she would have made the decision so quickly if I hadn’t been bleeding out in front of her.
I cleared my throat, not sure where this was going, but I didn’t want the conversation to end. “I felt a spine-straightening jolt in the middle of the day, while working in the mines. It told me that something had drastically changed in my life.”
She snuck a glance at me as I spoke.
“Delphine’s journals speak of her choice like it was a winding path on the darkest night. She had options of where to turn, and she chose to walk in the direction Eris led. I was struck with a bright light so blinding I had no choice but to see what it deemed necessary.”
“And what did it deem necessary?” Ember whispered.
“A goddess and a throne,” I answered simply. “The only things Themis thinks her Champion needs to care about.”
Ember’s fist clenched and unclenched in her lap. Then her gaze rose to mine, some decision made that I wasn’t privy to.
“You should have had a choice,” she said simply.
As if that would have fixed everything. I shrugged. “You shouldn’t have made yours with my life on the line.”
She flinched at that, and I regretted thewords. Her sadness mixed with fury in a swirl of spicy heat and minty mist in my throat. I saw the moment she pushed those emotions away, even before the sense of them disappeared.
“I was just thinking about that darkness, that walk through the blackest night. I did that too, the night I … healed you.” She bit the inside of her lip, not deigning to look at me as she spoke of saving my life—of the choice that had changed everything for her. “I remember it so distinctly, almost as if the nothingness, the lack of color, was choice. And you—and Kavios—were mine.”
She flushed as if she hadn’t meant to say so much.
How much did she regret that choice now? We’d found no evidence in Delphine’s journals that reversal was an option. And with the most recent attack, we were running out of time. Themis had proven again that she would interfere to force me to the throne.
That small glimmer of … something left Ember’s face with my silence. Did she think I regretted her choice?
I didn’t.
Yes, I wished she’d had more time to consider it. But she was right, she’d picked me, and I was greedy for every moment I had to call her mine.
“Don’t broach subjects you don’t want answers to, Chaos. I won’t spare you discomfort. I’m too selfish to say I wish you’d chosen differently.”
Her gaze narrowed. She looked at me like I was a reproduction of an experiment that wasn’t following the path of the first.
Charon finally spoke; surprisingly, it was to both of us.“Just do it, Champion. You know you’re going to.”
She pulled a packet of folded papers from under the hem of her dress. The large skirts had covered them. My body brimmed with anticipation, but I did my best to wait patientlyfor her to speak. This must have been what upset her during the meal.
“Alaric said there is a way out. He left this packet of papers with the royal family. They were instructed to provide it to me if I ever arrived in Ciril with Themis’s Champion.”
