Page 127 of Jeweler to the Blessed
Mother’s words were a jumble in my head. My connection with Hart? Again, I glanced at him over my shoulder, unsure what I was searching for in his features. His brow was furrowed.
I focused on the information I could retrieve from Mother. “You spoke with Eris?”
She giggled—actually giggled. “Oh, yes. It was quite terrifying. I was there when she granted Alaric his boon to protect you.”
“What?” I asked.
Mother was still giggling about Eris.
I turned to Father. “What did she grant Alaric?”
Father sighed. “Alaric said Rodric had too much power. You’d be noticed and found before you had a chance to choose. He asked to have the ability to source the adamas in the hope of buying you time.”
My heart clenched in my chest.
“Why didn’t any of you tell me?” I once again looked to Father. Mother wasn’t really answering my questions.
“We couldn’t,” he said, like this entire thing was my fault. “Chaos’s Champion chooses their fate. None of us could interfere. It was more than she cared for that Alaric would protect you, but she allowed it because of how adamas was being used in Kavios.” He rubbed his forehead. “Isabelle, tell her.”
Mother’s eyes fluttered closed. “You will know her as Eris’s Champion because Chaos will be the language of her heart.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Those words were fromChampions of Kavios. The other suspicion I had yet to verify flooded to the forefront.
“How do you know those lines?” I asked Father.
“They’re in that damn book!” he said.
“The book Mother wrote?”
He glared at me like he couldn’t believe I’d make him say it. I shook my head. I didn’t know what he was so upset about. This was my life—written into the lines of a book—by my mother, and she hadn’t bothered to tell me.
“The Glanmores have Alaric.”
Mother closed her eyes, her lips turning down. “The cost to save him is your freedom?”
I didn’t even know how to answer that.
Father clenched his fist at his side. “Alaric was in over his head. He deserves his fate.”
I turned to him. “How can you say that? After all he did for us?”
“He tried to control the uncontrollable. He thought you would save Kavios. He refused to acknowledge that what you are is inherently intractable!”
I stood, gesturing for him to continue. The way his voice shook, I knew something was there, and I needed to know what it was.
“Chaos’s Champion isn’t a savior. What did your Mother say? She’ll challenge what is known. That means her champion will destroy, devastate, and raze. Only when it’s burned to ash does something new grow.” He spoke with a resignation I was all too familiar with.
“I see.”
And I was starting to. I was a danger to him. My path wasn’t set in stone. It didn’t guarantee a happy ending for those in Kavios.
Maybe I’d built a cage around my emotions, lived without feeling too deeply, without trusting myself for years. But Father had done the same. His cage was a city that took from his kind, a wife whose light was dampened by their excess, but he was content to move within the world he knew, not risk a new world I could create.
He opened and closed his mouth. Like maybe he realized he’d said too much. But I could tell part of him thought he hadn’t said enough.
Mother reached for his hand, pulling him to her side. “You have a choice to make, baby.”
I’d already made it. Or, at least, I knew the immediate next steps. I’d need time to figure out how to challenge what was known without risking Alaric.
