— ALARIC SARE’S PAPERS FOR EMBERLINE ARKOVA
When we arrived at the Storm’s camp, Alysa waited with arms crossed over her chest and Harrow on her shoulder.
“We’ve been looking for you. There are three guards on the mountain.” Belatedly, she cataloged my hand wrapped in Hart’s. She bit the inside of her lip, and her gaze raised to meet mine in question. “That’s new.”
I pushed my shoulders back and dipped my chin infinitesimally. There was no reason to be embarrassed. If I could fight to free a kingdom, I could tell my newest friend that I was ready to acknowledge my feelings for Hart.It wasn’t as if she believed I had none.
A moment passed between us. Then another. Hart’s fingers uncurled from my hand as if granting me space to extricate myself. I shook my head. “It is, but I’ve made my decision.”
Alysa nodded as if she’d never doubted. It wasn’t as if I’d fooled anyone with my distress at the thought of losing Hart to the mudslide.
“Oh, and we took care of the guards,” I added.
The laugh that slipped from Alysa’s lips with my response broke the tension. “Of course you did.” As Reid arrived to greet us, she asked. “Do we know why they were here?”
“My escape from the city was more conspicuous than Ember’s,” Hart said. “They followed me out.”
I didn’t like that he took the blame. The only reason I’d escaped with any stealth was because he distracted the guards. He’d only had pursuers because he cleared my path. On our return walk to the Storm, he’d told me what had happened with his brother and what he’d seen in the book Vaddon was after. It had been like a bucket of ice water poured over me. I agreed with his opinion: we were out of time.
“You’d better come with us—we’ll get the whole story so we know what to plan for,” Alysa said, and turned on her heel toward the camp.
Hart squeezed my hand again, then dropped it, as if he somehow knew I wanted to speak to Alysa without an audience. I stopped questioning how this man knew what I needed and jogged to catch up with her. I was unsurprised to see Reid fall into step with Hart.
“We’re close,” I said.
Alysa glanced at me from the corner of her eye. “Close enough to tell me what you’re doing?”
“I didn’t intend to keep it a secret, Alysa.” I shook my head. “I guess I did whether I intended to or not. It just seemed like such a long shot.”
“And now it’s not?”
I pulled the pendant from beneath my blouse. The orange had stopped flashing. That part of the necklace now glowed solid, like the other emotions we’d both completed. I glanced over my shoulder at Hart and Reid hunched together. Somehow, I had known that Hart lifted his gaze to me as I retrieved the pendant. My favorite smirk curled his lip as he noted the change.
“What’s this?” Alysa asked, returning my attention to the conversation instead of images of Hart’s mouth on me in the middle of the woods.
I sighed. “Our trials. A way to free us from our curse.”
Her brows pinched, and I guessed she might not know of my curse. News of the throne room had spread because plenty of the Blessed had witnessed the two goddesses arrive in all their glory. The specifics of the game, of Themis’s request that I, too, be cursed, likely wouldn’t be widely known or understood. So, I explained.
“The only way to break the curse, to disconnect you from Hart’s magic—Themis’s magic—is to share your feelings with each other?” She looked appalled. I was glad she understood.
“Our prize is to break free, should we figure out the final trial. I hope that means we can free Hart from more than the curse. Maybe we can free him from Themis’s hold.” She looked thoughtful, so I continued. “It’s worse now. It seems there might be a similar path that Themis laid out to replace Hart. So we have to act fast. If we free him from the game but Themis has another in line, we’re in no better a place than we are now.”
Alysa rubbed her temples. “What do you need from us?”
“We need numbers to fight the Blessed.”I swallowed. “Numbers with adamas of their own, that they’re willing to use.”
She didn’t look away. That was what I liked about Alysa. She understood the stakes. She knew my ask. Her reluctance was obvious, but she took a moment to consider. “With the relocation, many now say resettling is not good enough. They say it will just happen again. The king’s guards, natural disasters. They don’t want to run anymore. There is a group that talks openly of challenging the king.”
As much as I hated the position that put her in, it was what I needed to hear. Guilt twisted my thoughts as I wondered how much of her situation was my fault. Would the natural disaster have struck if Hart and I weren’t here? Would the guards have passed through her woods if not in pursuit of us?
Alysa’s premise for starting the Storm had been to live outside the system. They’d found people desperate enough to flee the city, but everyone had a breaking point.
We reached the tent that seemed like Alysa and Reid’s command center. Alysa held a flap open and waved me in. Hart and Reid followed. They were close enough behind that I didn’t doubt they’d heard the end of our conversation. A few others sat around a table in the center of the tent. A woman I didn’t know and one of the other men, Phillip, who’d been caught with Reid and Hart in the mudslide.
Alysa turned to Hart, hands on her hips. “Ember and I were just discussing your plans.”
He didn’t flinch. Not only had I assumed he listened, but I’d also suspected he wanted me to tell her everything. For whatever reason, I cared that Hart wanted this information out in the open. The trials were his as much as they were mine. If they went how I hoped, they’d free him from something he’d never chosen. While I wanted to break mine and Hart’s curse, I wouldn’t reject my fate.
