The distance between Hart and me lengthened. He paused at the entrance as I walked to the center of the room. His breathing remained even, but his shoulders drew taut, and his spine straightened. It wasn’t a refreshing coolness that coated the back of my throat; it was a wave breaking against rocks. His sadness threatened to drown me whole as he glanced at the room where his mother had given her life for him.
17
The goddess doesn’t make mistakes. However, there are always multiple paths by which order can be maintained.
— WHAT MAKES A CHAMPION OF ORDER
HART
Ithought we’d have more time. I’m not sure why. Nothing about the goddesses’ cursed game was fair. It wasn’t as if I chose to be summoned or chose to be cursed. Why would breaking free of our curse be any different?
The altar filled my vision. A simple wooden structure, made for a simple purpose. Mother had been devout. She hadn’t required much. Only a place of solitude, away from Father and the trappings of Themis’sunofficial reign.
Ember stood quietly. Her gaze dragged over me. That spark in her brown eyes told me she knew precisely where we were—precisely what this place was.
A mask of indifference covered her features, but a light minty taste touched the tip of my tongue. Minuscule, surely, compared to my own sadness from simply being in this place, but Ember understood the cost of who she was to those she loved.
“I didn’t even know she’d followed me.”
I couldn’t look at Ember as I stepped across the tunnel threshold into the chamber. The words were a whispered confession, and who better than Ember to hear them?
“No one was supposed to be here. I’d made sure no one saw me.” I swallowed thickly as I stepped closer to the altar. “The stories say I was stupid, filled with hubris to challenge a goddess. Truthfully, this was my last hope.”
Her tone held no inflection as she offered few words. “You knew the cost. You were willing to pay it yourself.”
I shrugged. “I’d tried everything else. The stories say I didn’t want to die. That was true enough. But my father held Charon captive. I’d known what I’d done when Father saw the adamas magic. I didn’t know he’d create the Blessed, but I knew he coveted distribution of power.”
The altar was an anchor, dragging me forward. It was for the best. I teetered on a knife’s edge with this confession. The words had to keep coming for this to work, but my gaze desperately wanted to find Ember’s—to catalog her response.
One look at her would halt everything.
I’d proven I couldn’t handle her judgment. It was why I kept so much from her. I wasn’t strong enough to watch any remaining opinion of me crumble to ash.
Being here reminded me that I hated myself enough for both of us.
“My attempts to break free of Themis caused too much damage. I had one more thing to try, and only myself to lose if it didn’t go my way.”
Pebbles spilled behind me across the dirt, almost like she had slid her foot forward. Like she wanted to close the distance between us, but that couldn’t be right. Ember couldn’t forgive me for what I’d kept from her. She’d only hate me more for this.
The well of my emotion she must feel now proved how much of this was my fault. My admissions here at Chaos’s altar would bring us one step closer to achieving her goals, to her being rid of me as a shadow at her side. To free her from any complication in taking the throne from my father.
Another slide of pebbles danced across the cave behind me. I didn’t slow my steps.
“I’d read that the blood of a Champion at the altar of a goddess would call her. I wasn’t sure Eris would respond tomyblood, but she came when I tried.” I knelt at the foot of the structure. My fingers grazed the low wooden rise. “That was already more than I expected.”
The next words stuck in my throat. I wasn’t even sure how to finish the story—how to share my greatest shame.
Ember’s voice was a light in the darkness, a beacon calling forth the words I couldn’t quite find, just like I told her she’d always be for me. “You didn’t think she’d come?”
“I was her sister’s Champion. Her opponent in this game. Why would my blood work? Why would she answer me?”
Ember didn’t speak again, but she closed the distance between us. She fell to her knees beside me, her thick skirt spilled like a pool of water. Still, I couldn’t look at her.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said.
I didn’t know the meaning of my own words. She shouldn’t be at the altar of her goddess? She shouldn’t be in this roomwhere I’d proven my protection meant nothing? Or that she shouldn’t be with me, a man who only cost those he loved?
She laughed. “If anyone should be here, it’s me.”
