Page 106 of Jeweler to the Blessed
“What do you mean that was me?” I hissed.
He removed his helmet, set it on the counter, and folded his arms over his chest. “Exactly what I said.”
My head was shaking in denial before he finished the sentence.
“Ember.” The name absent the flirtatious tone of the nickname he usually preferred. “Think about it. What did you feel?”
I felt too much. I didn’t want to think about it. “It was nothing.”
He dipped his head, forcing me to meet his gaze, even as I tried to look away. “Do you ever think that maybe you avoid too much?”
I snapped. “Have you ever considered what it’s like to walk this city’s streets without magic?”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m not saying you did anything wrong, Chaos.” The honeyed warmth in his tone soothed my anger. “It’s worth considering the repercussions of actions this city made necessary. When you express emotions, they take. Understandably, you learned to hide them, but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel them.” The workshop door was locked. No one could get in, but Hart didn’t seem to be taking any chances with his following words. He leaned in so close I could feel his breath on my ear as he spoke. “You said the gem’s magic doesn’t affect you.”
I shivered at his proximity even as I nodded.
I wanted to flee, to be anywhere but here, talking about the way I dealt with emotions. At the same time, I didn’t want to move as his warm breath promised a safety I wasn’t guaranteed elsewhere.
He continued. “Now, why would that be? I only know of two people in this city that would create magic as you do—that would not succumb to what’s clearly a bastardization of the real thing.”
“I’m not the Cursed King,” I said with a lot of conviction I didn’t truly have.
Hart glared at me, unamused. He had told me a story another time we were in this same room together. A story not about Themis’s Champion, but about Eris’s: a champion chosen not to spite her sister but to defy the order she imposed. Hart had said she wouldchallenge what’s known.
I shook my head, unable to voice the question. I thought he saw it in my face anyway.
That smirk curled his lip. “I told you that story could mean whatever you wanted it to.”
“I don’t have magic.”
Maybe if I said it enough times, it would hold.
His green eyes danced with something merciless, and I knew I’d hate his following words. “Your magic is fueled by emotion, Chaos. Emotion you rarely allow yourself to express. Tell me there haven’t been times other than today when you’ve done something that didn’t make sense. Something impossible. What did you feel?”
The bastard. He had an event in mind. He was goading me toward it. The night of the Selection Festival, I’d raged at my circumstance. I’d been so angry that I hadn’t stopped to consider how I’d pushed Mother’s chair, with Father in it, for fifteen blocks. It shouldn’t have been possible—and he’d known it.
I glared. It had happened again when the group attacked me outside of Alaric’s workshop. He’d been there for that as well. The man then fell before me as fear built within me, so similar to what happened today—except this time, my fear wasn’t for me.
His smirk crept impossibly higher, dimpling his cheek.
“And what? My fear of the attackers granted me the power of nightmare magic?” I asked, playing into his theory.
His smirk broke into a full-on grin, and I knew I’d misstepped. “No, Chaos. If I’m not mistaken, the emotion slipped out today when you were scared for me, not yourself.”
I glanced at the bleeding cut on his arm. The screams had unleashed right after it occurred. Still, he couldn’t know that. I didn’t grant him the satisfaction of asking about his assumption. He tracked my gaze, looking more than confident in his assessment.
I met his outrageous implication with a rational question. “Why wouldn’t Alaric have said something?”
No one studied Eris more than Alaric. He would have known.
Maybe he had known. And he didn’t tell me.
Alaric doesn’t have friends. He has projects.I hated that Father’s words were there, waiting to be weaponized. The ones I wielded against myself were always the most dangerous.
Hart pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what Alaric was doing. He didn’t trust me with the information.”
“Why?”
