Page 71 of Jeweler to the Blessed
“How did you notice my absence?”
His hand pressed against the wall on my left side, and he leaned in. “I like the shortened version of your name. Ember. Does only Alaric use it?”
My brow furrowed. Only family did. It added another layer of confusion to hear it from his lips. “What does that?—”
“Just answer the question.”
His proximity was distracting. “My mother does …”
He let the silence hang between us, thick and heavy. “You are a single ember, lighting the darkest night, a beacon calling me across kingdoms. I’d find you anywhere, Chaos.”
His words shot chills up my spine and gooseflesh across my skin. His gaze was too intimate, too knowing. I was too lost in it.
Finally, he stepped back. His lingering smirk told me he knew his words had landed. Determined not to let them affect me, I straightened my spine and left the alley.
Hart let me lead, though he was never far behind. Every time I snuck a glance at him, his jaw was flexed, hands gripped into fists at his sides. He was fighting some internal battle as we walked through Kavios.
I still couldn’t figure out what to think of him. He’d come clean, but as Ava had pointed out, only because Alaric had outmaneuvered him. What I really hated was that his reasons for thinking I might use the youngleaf separately from Mother, unfortunately, made sense.
When I turned to look at him as I rounded the first-floor staircase of my parents’ apartment building, he held my gaze like he’d been waiting for it. He hadn’t asked anything about what we were doing here, and I didn’t share.
“I understand doing anything to care for your mother.” His words were a whisper.
Unsure what this was, I waited. Hart had mentioned he had a younger brother, but it was one of the few personal details he’d shared. I was desperate to know more about this man who seemed to know more about my uncle than I did.
His voice remained quiet. “My mother died because of my actions.”
I questioned whether I’d heard him correctly. The pain etched into his features when he stopped speaking told me I had.
My heart cracked a little at the words. Cracked in a way that only someone who carried the same weight could. I opened my mouth to say something. What? I wasn’t sure. Offer my condolences? I knew it didn’t help.
“There was one part of our property I wasn’t supposed to go to. I knew as much from a young age, and my mother ensured I had plenty of other entertainment. I had more than I needed. Avoiding the area in question shouldn’t have been aproblem. But I was young and reckless, and”—he shook his head at his younger self’s stupidity—“I went anyway.”
Something changed in his face. The pain remained, but a fierce resolve slipped in with it. Telling this story was costing him something.
I wanted to hear the story as much as I wanted to know why he was sharing it.
“My mother, of course, came after me. But there was a reason I wasn’t supposed to be there. It was dangerous. She died helping me return.”
By his stops and starts, I could tell he’d left out much of the story. His pain was real, though. He believed he was responsible for his mother’s death. I couldn’t blame him. For a while, I’d believed I was responsible for Mother’s condition.
His fists were still clenched at his side when our gazes met.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
The words seemed inadequate, but they were all I had.
“Me too.”
He offered me this part of him. I wanted to give a piece of myself in return. He knew the king’s calm didn’t affect me, and thanks to Alaric’s need to keep information from me, he knew it wasn’t because of youngleaf. If nothing else, this would help him understand.
“I don’t know what Alaric told you, but a Blessed—they took too much from my mother. They were trying to take from me, and she knocked me away.”
I couldn’t bring myself to fill in the gap, to say why they pulled too hard, that their first attempt to take from me had failed.
His eyes widened slightly. I didn’t think it was because of my story. It was, unfortunately, a common one in Kavios. More likely, he was surprised that I was saying anything at all. Asmuch as he hadn’t shared his history with me, I hadn’t shared with him either.
“I’m sorry that happened.”
