We hiked in the opposite direction from this afternoon, returning to the Storm’s original camp in the foothills. We picked our way around the large boulders that dotted the landscape, sheltering their first settlement from view. Beyond the rocks, a copse of trees hid the old entrance to the mines.
How different things had been the last time we were here. The cool taste of mint coated my throat, and I knew Ember’s sadness meant her thoughts couldn’t be far from my own.
Alaric had just died. Ember had just learned all I’d kept from her with an audience of royals and goddesses. We had come to free Charon from the mines. She would have left me in the Oldwood if she could. Fortunately for me, our shared curses meant she needed me.
Now, even as we lost the ability to take from each other, I only felt our connection strengthen.
She needed me now, but not as a burden. She had leaned on my strength at the fire when she confronted her father. Her plans had included me as she considered Alysa’s demands. I dared to believe that we could take the throne from my father, that we could free the citizens of Kavios from his rule, and that maybe we could find happiness together along the way.
Ember pulled out the pendant as we approached the mine entrance. It would provide light in the descent. As I considered our future, I couldn’t help but notice the pendant only flashed yellow—it didn’t glow. I could dream of happiness all I wanted, but if Ember still didn’t know what joy looked like to her, we were shooting an arrow without a target.
I took a deep breath, letting the crisp evening air fill my lungs. We would figure this out. Time was not on our side, but no matter my past failures to free myself from Themis, I chose now to believe in Ember.
Somehow, I knew that if the final trial was one of chaos—was something Eris valued—the weight of our success would fall on Ember’s shoulders. The final trial was barely spoken of in Alaric’s papers. Scarlett had at least given us cryptic guidance, but it wasn’t much. I’d support Ember however I could. Part of being better together included knowing our strengths and weaknesses. I’d get us where we needed to go, likely my father’s throne room, and Ember would find a way to navigate us throughwhat we found there.
The old mine entrance was much the same as we’d left it when we fled with Charon. I had been worried that someone would discover the path with our disappearance. Or, in my father’s case, that he would have rediscovered it. But due to the Blessing Ceremony, the mines had been empty. Rodric must assume we’d walked right out the front entrance. It had certainly been designed with a dragon of Charon’s size in mind.
With Ember and Charon’s disappearance, Rodric thankfully had bigger problems to consider than how we’d entered and exited the mines. He had lost his ability to source adamas.
“Ready?” Ember glanced at me, holding up the necklace for light.
I nodded. “Let’s focus on not slipping on the descent this time.”
She rolled her eyes and entered.
The grand entrance was dangerous, and it was maintained daily. These paths we followed hadn’t been used since my grandfather’s time. He had created multiple bare-bones entry points before he knew where the richest quartz deposits were found.
Her foot slipped on her next step down the steep slope.
I caught her elbow. “Chaos.”
When she turned to me, her brown eyes were wide and inviting. Like she’d tease me, or maybe she’d kiss me. I hadn’t had time to process all that had happened since the raid on Forest’s Edge. Yes, my family kept making our trials harder. On top of that, they sought to make them irrelevant. It was a problem, but it couldn’t hold my focus. Her lips on mine had reconstructed my thoughts. As much as I fought for any chance to prove myself to her, my shock at her actions made me wonder if I’d ever really dared to hope before.
Hope was a dangerous thing.
Father weaponized the humans’ hope with the Selection and Blessing Ceremony. They dared to dream of being selected, of becoming one of the Blessed themselves, and it made room for all manner of sins. Now I had my own fragile hope unfurling inside me. It was new and delicate, and one wrong move could crush it.
It didn’t feel fair that everything I wanted was within my reach. After two hundred years of mistakes, I finally had a chance at happiness.
The yellow flashing adamas needed resolution. It needed to glow. While I had finally found my joy, I knew better than most that Ember finding hers could take time.
“Do you think my father’s justifications were true?” Ember asked into the darkness. Her voice was a mere whisper, and I wondered how long she’d been sitting with the question while my mind cycled through nonsense.
By the fire, I’d tasted the minty flavor of her sadness and the spice of her anger in equal measure. Her relationship with her father was … fraught. I could see why. Maybe he feared for her life, but a cynical man like me also wondered how much he feared for himself.
“I think it’s progress for him to acknowledge his failures.” I wouldn’t hide my thoughts from her, but I also wanted to speak with care. “I can’t be sure he sees all of them yet. His focus on your mother made him blind to his other duties, and that’s a fault regardless of what you were destined for.”
She sighed and dragged her hand against the wall to steady herself as her foot slipped beneath her again. “Every time I think I let it go, I remember how many secrets they kept.”
With a glance over her shoulder, she considered me. It wasn’t anger that invaded my mouth, now, but something softer. Annoyance.
“I know,” I acknowledged. “I know I didn’t help.”
She reached for my hand, and I knew I’d guessed correctly. Ember may want to move past my omissions, past the betrayal she felt at having learned my identity the way she did, but that didn’t immediately negate all her pain.
“You’re too hard on yourself if you think all of those feelings will disappear just because you will it to be,” I said. “You can still be mad, sad, frustrated, any and all of those things. I just need us to be able to talk about them when they surface.”
This connection between us wasn’t just magic. It certainly wasn’t just a curse. It was something more potent. Something strong. While I wondered how much Eris guessed at, versus how much she knew, I agreed with Ember’s stance at the fire. Only our choices could have brought us here.
