I hadn’t actually heard what he asked me. I’d been too busy fighting the burning feeling inside me to notice. I opened my mouth to ask Ava what she meant, but her head tilted, and I realized someone approached on my side of the bar. I turned, honestly hoping Hart had returned so I couldask him these questions directly, only to find another face I hadn’t expected.
“Macen.” I turned to face him. “You’re alive.”
He smirked and ran his hand through his hair. The gesture looked nothing like it did when Hart did the same. “I am. Are you glad to see me?”
My history with Macen was complicated. A lover, a traitor—he’d led me into a trap with the Feared, but in the end, I hadn’t wanted him dead. When the king asked me to drain him as part of the Blessing Ceremony, I’d faked it. No matter what he’d done to me, I couldn’t kill him, at least not in cold blood. I hadn’t been sure he made it out of the throne room when chaos erupted.
Was I glad to see him? Not really. I felt nothing for him. So, I gave the most honest answer I could. “I’m glad you made it out of the Blessing Ceremony alive.”
He leaned in closer, and I stiffened as his fingers cupped my elbow. “How glad, Emberline?”
Before I could respond, a familiar rumbling voice shredded the vestiges of fear that had crept up my spine. “Chaos, I did warn him if he touched you again, I’d kill him. Do you need me to follow through?”
The taste of citrus filled my mouth as Macen turned to Hart. Though Macen tried to mask the movement, the hand that touched me dropped, and his eyes widened briefly. He still had a healthy fear of Hart, it seemed. “We were just catching up,” he said.
Hart’s face was unimpressed, masked. I couldn’t get a handle on the taste of this new emotion. His gaze shifted to mine, and I wondered what he saw there. “Is he bothering you, Ember?”
There was a rigid hesitation in his stance, like he wasn’t quite sure of his role here. The insides of my mouth sucked inas the taste of lemon strengthened. I’d seen Hart’s face do the same when…
No way.
The laugh that had slipped free with Serena bubbled up once again. Before I could stop myself, a chuckle overflowed, and I leaned back against the bar behind me. “You’re jealous?” I pointed at Macen. “Of him?”
My tone was incredulous, and I heard Macen’s indignant whine before he sauntered away.
The gap between us closed, and Hart was very much in my space. His proximity only brought anticipation, not fear as Serena and Macen’s closeness had. My question seemed to spark something in him, like I’d opened a floodgate. “What do you expect, Chaos? You literally risked your life to save his. How am I to know what you feel for him?”
I sucked in a breath as something shifted between us. It was a tangible thing. I knew without looking that another flashing light would display on the pendant beneath my blouse. I glanced down out of habit. “I guess that’s envy.”
We didn’t unwrap the pendant, but Hart grunted in agreement.
“Was it really that easy?”
Hart’s chuckle was low and dark. “It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we say what we’re thinking.”
He moved to step back, but I gripped his hand and kept him there—in my space. “For the record, just because I don’t want to murder someone doesn’t mean I have any romantic interest in them.”
His fingers gripped my waist where I’d pressed them, and every inch of me wanted to lean in, to arch my chest into him, closing the gap that remained between us.
His fingers brushed down my side. “You don’t want to stoke myenvy, Chaos?”
I shook my head, realizing once again that he and I weren’t so different. He must have felt my envy before he walked away. That was what the burning feeling inside me when he confided in Ava had been. The coil in my chest had tightened, knowing that he trusted her with things he’d never tell me. But now, I wasn’t sure that was true.
Either way, he was right. We accomplished much when we simply spit out the words. I pushed mine free before I could change my mind. “I envy how much you trust Ava. How easy your relationship seems. To the point, I wondered if it had ever been more than trust.”
Something shifted again, and I let out a long breath. I knew I’d done it—shown envy. I knew from the way that the heat of our connection thickened the air between us. The closer we came to completing these trials, to breaking free of our curse, the more connected I felt to him. Each change was like a physical force, pulling us closer together. It didn’t make sense, but I arched forward, and he leaned in.
His smirk was firmly in place. “It’s nice to know you care, Chaos.”
I swallowed, and as he leaned in closer, his nose chased the bob in my throat. He inhaled deeply as he soaked in the scent of my skin.
“And I’m sorry you have any doubt in my feelings for you. I know I’ve made things harder than they need to be for us.”
I wanted so badly to close the distance. To feel his lips on mine.
“We need to talk.” His words were a low rumble, like he growled at himself for interrupting whatever this was. “The Feared were in the back room. We need to decide what happens after the trials. We need a plan we can share with them.”
The haze his nearness always brought burned away withthe topic. I cleared my throat, and he put much-needed space between us as he leaned on the bar beside me.
