Page 62 of Jeweler to the Blessed (Champions of Chaos #1)

He has the potential to be a good man. I almost wish I could tell him more. He promised to protect her, no questions asked. Whether he keeps the promise if he learns all I kept from him is another story.

— ALARIC SARE’S LETTERS TO ISABELLE ARKOVA

I wasn’t sure I was breathing. Something heavy plummeted in my chest, descending rapidly, sinking deeply into a place with no room for this information.

This couldn’t be right. Hart strode toward me, and steel screeched in my ears as he drew his sword.

His face was still covered, but I knew him.

The shape of him, the way he moved—they were permanently painted in my mind.

I couldn’ t convince myself it was someone else, but if it was him, it meant …

Without hesitation, he climbed the dais, purple glowing brightly from the familiar ring he wore.

Everything fell into place.

The way the Feared in the alley deferred to him.

His conversations with Soren.

How he knew so much about the firstborn’s curse.

The fact that I’d never seen him wear adamas to wield.

The purple glowing on the first adamas we worked together. It matched the purple of the stolen ring he wore now. He may use it, but I knew he didn’t need it.

The entire room fell to their nightmares.

Sebastien—that’s what Alaric had called him. That was the name of Rodric’s firstborn from the history books.

Hart was the Cursed King.

Unlike the night of the festival, he no longer pretended to be affected by the magic. I felt so stupid that I hadn’t recognized his act for what it was.

Shrieks filled the room. Even Alaric, who had called to Hart, lay crumpled on the ground, screaming from the tortures of his own mind.

“Hart.” The word broke free of my lips.

He pulled off his helmet. His gaze lifted to mine before he finished scaling the steps.

“You’re him.”

With all I knew about the Cursed King, the words I’d read a hundred times, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put it together.

Maybe I hadn’t wanted to.

If this was true, Hart wasn’t Blessed—he was cursed. He wore adamas now but didn’t need it to summon this magic. He only needed to find Chaos’s …

Hart hadn’t finished the story in the woods.

My stomach churned. I didn’t need him to finish it now.

He’d said Chaos wanted his fate to match what he’d brought upon others, but with a twist only she could appreciate.

He’d been so impatient. In his desire to avoid his fate, he’d created the Blessed.

When that hadn’t worked, he decided to face Chaos herself rather than wait for her champion.

The poetry of the missing end to the sentence was too perfect to ignore.

His curse was to take. And he could only take from Chaos’s … Champion.

He could only take from me .

I swallowed, my lips pressing into a thin line as I held his stare.

He had grabbed my wrist in the crowd the night of the festival, before he unleashed nightmares. I had even touched him in the adamas room, grabbing his hand before asking him to wield strength.

I flushed. He had all of me only last night. And I’d experienced every emotion. Happy to have found the safety to feel freely. Scared of what came next. I’d felt it all. He must be bursting at the seams with magic.

A hollow laugh escaped my throat.

A thunderous clap erupted before I could string a sentence together, and a woman stood beside Vaddon.

A curtain of long blond hair fell to her waist, and she wore a white gown much like my own.

I couldn’t look at her directly. A glow emanated from her body and seemed to assert what my mind already suspected: She was the Goddess Themis.

She shook her head in disappointment while the rest of the room’s occupants still screamed from the fear that took over their minds. “That was a little unfair, don’t you think?”

Her touch pulled Alaric from his nightmare. His gaze refocused on the room as Themis held him by the throat.

She glared at Hart with steely gray eyes. “You’re not supposed to wield the powers I gave you to save her champion. I knew you were rebelling, dear, but this is a little much.”

The words sank below my skin. My current thoughts were working to keep up with what I already knew. Hart was the Cursed King—Themis’s Champion—and she was here to watch him claim his prize?

That didn’t make sense.

“Themis?” Hart dropped his helmet to the floor as he stared at the goddess.

“You’ve been avoiding me, but surely you recognize your goddess after all these years?”

Hart looked unsure, as if he hadn’t expected this. In this particular situation, it was a wholly unsatisfying expression to see.

“Get her out of here, Seb!” Alaric yelled.

Hart pulled his gaze back to me. The purple glow faltered. The room’s other occupants regained consciousness. They were slow to sit up, slow to move. The guards didn’t seem to understand what was going on. Hart still appeared to be one of them.

“I tried over and over to help you.” The goddess kicked Vaddon. “He was so willing to help kill her. Unfortunately, his methods proved insufficient.”

I swallowed. Themis wanted to kill me? She used Vaddon to do so, instead of Hart?

“I didn’t want your help. I didn’t want any of this,” Hart said through gritted teeth.

“So you’ve said.” She clapped her hands together. “Let’s finish this.”

King Rodric woke from his nightmare as Hart lost control of the power. He glared at his son. “You should have never come back. ”

Rodric looked disappointed as he pointed at Hart. “Seize the Cursed King!”

“Sebastien?” Elias asked the name like a question as he, too, awoke. “What are you doing here?”

Hart rolled his eyes. “Nice to see you too, brother.”

Elias’s gaze darted to me. “I knew it was her.”

I didn’t like the look that crossed his face as he made whatever connections he thought he understood.

This had gone so far past sideways. Hart was the Cursed King. I couldn’t begin to process that. How did I get Alaric and myself out of this battle between goddesses and kings? That was what I needed to focus on.

The guards had risen from their stupor. They struggled to connect King Rodric’s words with the man before them—the man in guard’s uniform, whom they knew to be one of them. A few at the bottom of the dais glanced between Hart and Rodric. They moved slowly, as if waiting for reassurance.

“He’s the Cursed King, you fools! Seize him before he accesses more of his power!”

Something about that should have worried me, but the guards began to move at the king’s words. They flooded the dais. Hart regripped his sword and pushed me behind him as he prepared to fight us free.

Shadows filled the room, swelling to the same all-encompassing darkness I’d seen when I made my choice. When light finally parted the inky black that could only be magic, a woman stood next to Themis.

Her gown was black silk, slinking elegantly against her skin. Her hair was the color of a bonfire blazing in an autumn sunset. With lips painted the color of blood, the smile that crossed her face was anything but welcoming.

“Sister, dear, I don’t think you’re playing fair either.” Her words were directed at Themis .

“It’s over, Eris.”

The woman’s otherworldly beauty was apparent. I knew her for what she was the moment she graced the stage—Eris, Goddess of Chaos. Her power thrummed through the room, freezing the occupants outside the dais in place.

She tilted her head slowly from side to side. “I don’t think so, and you interfering like this isn’t very sporting. Didn’t we agree to let the champions decide?”

“You cursing my champion wasn’t very sporting!” Themis said.

Eris giggled. The sound was so at odds with the power that radiated from her; I wanted to laugh, but not more than I wanted to remain unseen in this room. Hart repositioned himself between me and the goddesses, deeming the frozen soldiers a lesser threat.

I wasn’t sure what to think of the action. He was the Cursed King. His use of magic proved he’d taken all he needed from me last night.

Tears pricked my eyelids as I held them shut, wishing this mess away. He hadn’t trusted me with this, even though I’d trusted him with everything. I didn’t know what to do. Anger bubbled beneath my skin at the thought.

Hart couldn’t be worse for this city than Rodric. How easy would it be for him to claim the throne in Order’s name?

But he didn’t.

The sharp smile that curved Eris’s lips was even more confusing than her giggle. “He’s lucky he isn’t dead.”

“I summoned him. He was mine. You aren’t allowed to kill him,” Themis shouted, lifting Alaric’s feet from the ground as she shook him by the neck.

“Unlike you, Sister”—Eris’s gaze drifted to Vaddon at Themis’s feet as a reminder of the claims Themis had made upon arrival—“I didn’t skirt the spirit of our rules. Your champion challenged me. I had every right to kill him.”

Themis glared at Hart like she was seeing him for the first time. “You didn’t.”

I needed to get myself and Alaric out of here. Any hopes I had of keeping him safe by submitting to the royals was gone. But I had no idea how to get Alaric away from the angry goddess.

“That’s the problem with summoning your champions instead of letting them choose, dear. Especially such a proud one like him.” Eris’s glance at Hart was almost leering.

That raw, gurgling anger twisted in my gut, even as I told myself he wasn’t mine.

As if she knew my thoughts, Eris winked at me. “Oh, but he is, Champion.”

Was she talking to me?

“Why didn’t you just kill him?” Themis hissed. “I could have summoned another.”

I wondered the same thing. A man summoned by one goddess, cursed by another—but a man determined to write his own destiny. It would have been easier to start fresh.

Then I remembered the end of the firstborn’s story. I thought of what Hart had told me in the hallway of my parents’ building—the guilt he carried for his mother. I realized the cost of his choice. He had confronted a goddess. His life was forfeit, but it wasn’t his life that had paid the debt.

For the first time, Eris looked a little sad. “His mother paid it for him.”

“So, his summons still stands,” Themis said.

Eris pointed to me. “The summons didn’t stand a chance once he met her.”

Hart’s gaze was finally drawn to mine as the goddess pointed. He looked resigned to his fate. Something the hero of Champions of Kavios should never be.

“What did you do?” Themis asked.

“I didn’t do anything. He did.” Eris twirled, the silk of her dress flowing with the movement of her body as she all but danced at the chaos unfolding around her. “My curse made him find her, should he wish to use his magic.”

“You didn’t even need your magic to take the throne,” Themis raged at Hart.

Eris ignored her sister’s outburst. “He fell for her all on his own.”

This time, I definitely wasn’t breathing.

Hart’s gaze held mine. His lack of denial, his unwillingness to even look at Themis while Eris made these revelations, was too much.

Themis erupted. Alaric’s shout was in my ears, and then something snapped. His body was flung across the room, cracking against the opposite wall.

I screamed and lunged for Alaric. Hart grabbed my arm and held me in place. I scratched, I clawed, I kicked with everything I had in me as I tried to reach Alaric’s unmoving body.

Eris’s smile faded. Oblivious to my struggle, she turned to her sister. “That wasn’t very nice.”

“I don’t care.” Themis held her sister’s gaze. “Your champion needs the curse too. There is Order in an even playing field.”

Her words didn’t register. Alaric wasn’t Blessed. No mortal could survive the snap and crash I’d just heard. I screamed again, and with tooth and nail, I fought to get free of Hart. His hold was unrelenting. He was impervious to my pain and my attempts to break free.

Eris gave me a hard stare as I fought Hart’s hold to get to Alaric. Her gaze flicked to him behind me, holding me in place.

“Done,” Eris said.

With a final wink at me, Eris disappeared.

Themis folded her arms across her chest. “I won’t wait forever.”

Then, giving Hart a hard stare, she disappeared like her sister.

Hart stooped to lift me. He must have found a slip of skin because the flame of our connection raged through my body. I recognized the heat for what it was. It must be him taking .

He threw me over his shoulder, his arm wrapping over my legs at the front of his chest. “We have to go, Chaos.”

I wiggled around him enough to see the ring turn purple again—the room fell again to nightmares. With me thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, he carried me down the aisle. His hand encircled my ankle. The sizzle of our connection didn’t drain me, though, like when I’d saved him.

It made me feel alive.

“What are you doing?” I scratched and clawed at the parts of his uniform I could reach.

“What I have to.”

My fists banged on Hart’s back. “I don’t want to go. Leave me here with Alaric.”

His steps didn’t slow. “He wouldn’t want that, and you know it.”

I squirmed and kicked, but Hart’s grip was like an iron vice.

“Let. Me. Go.” I banged my fist on his back again, but with his hand on my skin, whatever emotion I was feeling, he felt it too.

He could feel my anger, my fear, and my growing sorrow as he dragged me from Alaric’s unmoving body.

“I can’t do that, Chaos.”

The power flowed between us, and his command of it was clear. It was useless. He whisked me away, leaving the king’s Blessed to languish in their nightmares.