“Keeping secrets doesn’t help, either,” I replied almost automatically. My hand lurched to cover my mouth and shove the words back in. They weren’t what I had intended to say. They revealed too much. That I cared. That what he’d done had hurt.
I stilled my hand. I’d only read through Alaric’s words once. They spoke of a way out. They spoke of … trials that required both Hart and me. The nature of the trials was unsatisfactory in its explanation, like many of Alaric’s answers had been in life. I’d need to study them a hundred more times, but one thing was clear. To be successful, Hart and I would have to work together.
Alaric’s words picked at my defenses. It was as if he’d known we would only be existing around each other at this point. The pages claimed I’d need to truly trust Hart for this to work. If I had any intention of attempting this path Alaric described, I needed to hear Hart’s response.
Hart only waited for my gaze to meet his. “I know, Ember. And I’m sorry. I never meant to keep it from you for so long.”
He didn’t call me Chaos. His voice was the gentlest I’d heard since we arrived. I hated both facts. The sincerity was more than I could handle. I wanted to walk away, to distance myself from his acknowledgement that he’d been wrong.
A million questions filled my head.Why did you? Who else knows? Was I just a convenient distraction in your games?Maybe whatever Alaric wanted us to do was doomed to fail because I couldn’t force any of my questions out.
Hart’s stare never left me, even when my face flooded with embarrassment, and I had to look away. Those forest green eyes seemed painfully aware of every question I pushed down. His unblinking gaze begged me to release them.
I couldn’t.
“Where do you think we need to go next?” I asked instead.
His eyes closed momentarily, and he looked up to the sky. I used to think that when he did this, he requested patience from a goddess he didn’t believe in. Now, I didn’t know what it meant.
“I want to work together on whatever this is.” Resolved, he crossed his strong arms over his chest.
The fact that he even made the statement proved he hadn’t read Alaric’s notes. There was no need to demand that we work together. The trials Alaric had discovered required it.
Something inside me wanted to needle him. The feeling hadn’t been present since before the throne room. I leaned into it. “Are you blackmailing me again?”
“I’d say my objective now is the same as then.” His smirk was there and gone before I could think through the words. “Come on, Chaos. We haven’t found a way out in Delphine’s journals. Not even Linia seems to have information on other Champions. The attack proves that we’re running out of time. And to no one’s surprise, Alaric has more secrets for us to uncover.”
Charon’s scaled nose pressed beneath my hand, which had fallen to my side. This time, I thought he spoke only to me.“As much as I enjoy seeing the Cursed beg for anything, are you going to tell him?”
What choice did I have?
Looking at Hart made me want to scream. I wanted to bite something. I wanted to do anything but what Alaric described in these pages. Being around each other was bad enough. Actively working together seemed impossible.
I swallowed it all down and tucked it in that stupid box inside my chest—it was filling fast. “What do you want to know?”
“What did Alaric plan?”
My exhale was heavy. “He found a way out.”
His brow raised. “Out?”
I nodded, knowing it was vague. “That’s what he said. If he knew this much—the details of our arrival in Linia—I have to assume he knew why we fled here, our curse. This has to be a way to break it.”
Hart looked thoughtful, but he didn’t contradict me.
“Do you know the conditions under which Lucinda was meant to give me the papers?” It was important for me to control the message on this part. I did not … I couldn’t even think the word that Lucinda had used.
He shook his head.
“She was only to give me the book if I arrived in Linia with Themis’s Champion, and if I appeared not to want his death.”
My cheeks heated at the lie. I understood the irony of keeping something from him now, but this piece of information seemed irrelevant. Queen Lucinda couldn’t know whether…
I couldn’t even finish the sentence. A lie or not, I wouldn’t be able to repeat what the queen had said to me. This was the best I could do.
Hart’s smirk broke free, and I wanted to throw something at him. If that was his reaction to my statement, it reinforced my decision not to say more. “And?” he pressed.
“Where did you deliver the adamas pendant?”
