Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Emmeline
Escaping Graves turned out to be the easy part. With the crowds flooding into the arena and her dark cloak draped around her shoulders so she could blend in, plus having Myrella to insist she walked back to the manor with one of the councilmen, the initial slip went off smoothly.
Renting a horse to get her across the city without anyone seeing her was more concerning. Emmeline left more than double the payment rate on the window ledge and hopped atop a bay horse at the crossroads of the Sixth and Seventh Districts, hurrying for the vineyards.
Time wouldn’t be her friend—there was only so long before Graves insisted he return to the manor and barged into her suite—but she had to do this. Her magic beat demandingly in her veins the entire ride, rioting as she took extra turns to ensure no one who worked for Rocarri was following her.
Emmeline hurried down the rows of grapevines beyond the Twelfth District, her horse’s hooves pounding against the dirt path, each of her silent breaths visible in the night.
Moonlight blurred around the edges of thick grey storm clouds, the air heavy and icy after a sudden storm this afternoon. The world was masked in mist.
Finally, beyond the vines, ornate iron gates and stone pillars marked the entrance to the cemetery. Pointed spokes rose like sharpened teeth, threatening and piercing the moon-dusted fog.
Chills rose up Emmeline’s arms under her cloak as she dismounted and tied her horse beneath a pergola at the edge of the vineyard. She stepped over fallen grapevines, creeping toward the gate.
Dew-covered ivy clung to the bars like it had been there for centuries, practically welded into the metal itself.
She leaned closer, studying the statues, monuments, and tombs through the fog, their faces masked in the night but haunting echoes of warriors’ lives hugging each stone.
She could almost hear them, their stories that were buried here beneath the earth.
“About time,” a voice said from the shadows of a mausoleum beyond the gate.
He was cloaked as he stepped toward her, but she knew him down to her bones.
His voice, his gait, his presence that hummed along her skin.
Roremar was woven through her soul—that need more evident with each day she stayed away—and when he stopped beneath the blue, foggy glow of the mystlight lamp atop the pillar, Emmeline held back a sob.
Followed by burning anger. “What are you doing here?” she growled, clutching the iron bars, frosted ivy crunching beneath her glove.
“Desmond told me where you’d be.”
“Desmond was supposed to attend to me himself.”
Roremar’s chin dipped, and he took a threatening step forward, face nearly pressed to the bars. Silver eyes burned beneath his hood. “The only man who is going to attend to you, Emmeline, will be me.”
Her throat dried out at the tone of his voice, at the combination of undeniable desire and fear that twisted through her. Fear for him and what he’d suffer if they were found together. Fear for them and the possibility of what waited beyond this tournament.
The bars between them were a stark reminder of the Presentation, of his silver gilt cage, a symbol to them both before all of Valyn.
“I thought you didn’t want to know details of what we’re doing in case Dryvius hears it,” Emmeline said.
“When the alternative is you creeping through a graveyard at night, I decided it’s worth the risk.”
Her heart pattered faster. “And the risk of sneaking out of the barracks?”
“Eston’s brother arranged it. He likes Desmond a little too much and was happy to help.”
“Reckless.”
“That’s what I’m told.”
Too close. They were venturing to close to their easy banter, the comfort that would get him killed.
He was taking unnecessary risks to get to her, but she couldn’t deny the way she steadied in his presence, the pull toward the bars.
“We aren’t good for one another,” Emmeline reminded herself more than him, tilting her chin up.
If she pressed onto her toes, her lips would brush his.
If he ducked his head, he could claim her. A selfish part of her wished he would, but she couldn’t give in with his life at stake.
Fates, did she want him, though.
Her entire body came alive, a hum of starfire crackling through her blood, her bones, along the very heart of her fate, like it had atop the ruined seeing chamber.
It ripped her apart to fight it, an internal war about which musicians would write ballads, poets would pen epics. That was what she thought she and Roremar were made of: The magic of legends, or star-crossed tragedies perhaps.
As if seeing the pain that thought wrought in her expression, Roremar exhaled. She wasn’t sure if it was a disbelieving scoff or an accepting sigh, but the breath stoked the starfire within her as it ghosted her lips.
He stepped back, and Emmeline’s chest squeezed with the distance, the longing of those legends threatening to bring tears to her eyes. But Roremar said, “What exactly are we here for?”
“Desmond told you about my readings?” she presumed as she walked along the fence searching for the entrance.
Her leather-clad fingers drifted over the ivy.
She was stuck in her simple cotton dress, but at least she’d been able to bring her gloves and wear sturdy boots.
“I needed to come here, but that’s all I know. ”
Roremar studied her, following every step. “And you don’t think it’s a trap?”
“No, I don’t.” She couldn’t explain it, but it boiled down to the instinctual trust she’d developed with her magic.
“Okay.” Roremar’s belief and support warmed her in the misty night, but when she hummed in frustration at the locked gate, he laughed. “You have to climb it, Huntress.”
Emmeline glared at him. “Did you climb it?”
“Very skillfully.” He grinned—a true one—and Fates, did she miss that smile. “Do you need me to show you how?”
Determined to keep that grin there, she joked, “Did you forget who you’re talking to? Stand back, Reckless.”
Roremar snickered as Emmeline gracefully scaled the bars, wedging her toes and fingers between vines. When she was over the other side, only feet from the ground, a pair of strong hands gripped her waist.
She froze, her words a fogged breath. “What are you doing?”
“Helping you down.” Roremar’s voice was gravelly.
“I can do it myself.” She didn’t move, couldn’t. His touch was searing right to the center of her, and she feared what would happen if she leaned back into him.
“I know you can,” Roremar whispered, closer now. His desperation bled through every word. His fingers curved into her skin. “But I’ll always help you.”
Exhaling slowly, Emmeline lowered one shaking foot to the damp earth, then the other. When she turned, she was looking into molten silver eyes, only inches away.
She swallowed, and Roremar’s eyes tracked the motion, branding her skin. When he looked at her like that, it was hard not to remember how he’d looked kneeling between her legs, how his hands felt gripping her thighs possessively, how he’d sounded when he found release at her pleasure.
“Thank you,” Emmeline whispered, heat flooding her cheeks. Even with her hood up, she knew he saw it or perhaps felt it. The wild beat of her heart and her staggered breathing.
“Always.”
Roremar stepped aside, exercising a self-control she was quickly losing sight of, and gestured for her to lead the way.
Damp soil cut pathways between the graves, fog clinging to aged, moss-wrapped tombstones and tickling her skin.
Angelic statues with wings spread wide to the heavens embellished some of the resting places, others adorned with carvings of animals, monuments, or sigils of notable families, Fates, or whatever the dead cherished most. All of them seemed to watch Emmeline and Roremar as they passed, memorizing who walked among the spirits.
They followed a trail between crooked, cracked tombs, their shallow breathing loud in the night. A light drizzle picked up, dampening their cloaks and pattering the stones, turning the greys of death deeper.
Emmeline kept one eye on her Fate ties, Serchus in particular, following the beat they pounded through her veins with every step. It was increasingly easier to see both places at once.
“That way,” she whispered when they came to a fork in a row of warriors who had been resting here for thousands of years if she was reading the dates etching their graves correctly. A towering tunnel of branches wove above one side of the path, the other bare to the sky.
She stepped toward the former.
“You’re sure?” Roremar whispered, following.
Emmeline nodded. “Serchus was in a tree,” she explained, tipping her head back to look at the wooden limbs crossing into a hatch work overhead, so reminiscent of the Fate of Secrets and Greed’s perch. “It’s this one.”
Ravens cawed overhead as they crept beneath the branches, their beady eyes burning into her. Even here, she was watched.
Coveted.
Desired.
Kept.
But with Roremar beside her, so close she could touch, though she wasn’t allowed, she didn’t fear it. She revolted. Indignation turned every step more confident. Wind whispered through the trees, the storm picking back up outside the tunnel and locking out the rest of the world.
A while into their silent walk, Roremar asked, “The Fates couldn’t tell you what we needed to find here?”
“Does that sound like the Fates to you?” Emmeline challenged, a brow raised.
Roremar laughed. “You’re right. But this place is fucking creepy.”
“You don’t relax in graveyards casually? Where’s your thrill-seeking side?” she teased, leading him quicker down the path when she spotted an opening ahead.
“If you want to see me take a risk, all you have to do is ask nicely.”
“Pretty please, oh, Reckless one, show me something witless,” she joked, as they emerged at the edge of a small clearing, halting among the ring of cyphers.
Broken monuments scattered the spaces between the trees, most no more than ruined rubble.
Rain beat down on the grass, the clouds shifting overhead briefly enough for the moon to beam through, lighting a square mausoleum in the center in a ghostly glow.
Emmeline stepped forward, watching the Fates in her mind. Watching this building spring to life on that night-drenched plane, beside Serchus’s tree.
“Come on,” she said.
She waded through the tall, unkempt grasses. It appeared no one had visited this space in centuries. Around them, the trees were packed so tightly together, even if there were any surrounding paths, no one would know the structure was here. It only had that one ominous, tunneled entrance.
The stone structure in the center was cracked and coated in layers of dirt, a few of the pillars lining the facade crumbling.
Behind them, blocking the doors, was a statue of a woman.
Carved of the same stone as the building, her features had been dulled by time, but the wings at her back were impossible to miss.
“Valyrie,” Emmeline whispered.
“Do you think she’s the one calling you here?” Roremar whispered from over her shoulder. Emmeline jolted at his proximity but didn’t allow herself to turn around.
“I—I don’t know. Valyrie has never spoken to me before, and you can’t read the fortune of an Angel.” Her gaze dropped over the stone floor leading to the entryway, and she gasped, grabbing Roremar’s wrist on instinct. “Look.”
Roremar crouched, keen stare studying the carvings in the ground. He brushed away a layer of dirt and windswept debris from the recent storms, fingers tracing the patterns.
Shooting back to his feet, he circled the statue, scuffing the caked-on dirt with his boot as he went. His steps grew more rushed, Emmeline’s heart pounding. Circling the entire statue, Roremar stopped a foot away, eyes slashing to hers.
“Wings,” he whispered.
“Twelve?” she guessed.
He nodded. “Each one different.”
“Like the Warders.”
They both looked up into the weathered face of the Angel, her wings wide and inviting, though the presence of the tomb pulsed with a haunting echo. A haunting echo, and hopefully answers.
“I suppose we have to go inside,” Emmeline said. Roremar didn’t argue. Restless curiosity rolled off him in waves, and Emmeline laughed, the sound cracking the tension clinging to the rainy night. “You’re excited about it.”
Roremar gave her a dumbfounded expression. “Of course, I am. Aren’t you curious?”
She sighed, conceding, “Yes, I am.”
“I knew it.”
Without waiting, Roremar strode to the back of the Angel statue and threw his weight against the door. The wood groaned as if it hadn’t been touched in years, taking a few good shoves before it finally creaked open.
“Coming, Huntress?” he called, the easy, taunting tone crawling down her spine.
Fates, this reckless warrior would be the death of her. And in this graveyard, haunted by the ghost of what they could have been, she might welcome it.