Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
Roremar
Roremar raced to Rian’s table as his ally gripped the wood, the surface cracking beneath his nails. He didn’t cry out or retch like others had, but sweat poured down his face, his features twisted as he scrambled to pry open the burlap sack.
Roremar scooped up the silver chalice Rian had thrown to the floor. Smoke still spiraled from the empty basin, orangish-brown gems studding the metal. He sniffed the contents.
“Citrus,” Roremar said. And a hint of something earthy. He gripped Rian’s shoulder. “What did it taste like?”
“What?” Rian gritted out as he removed herbs from the sack.
“The liquid—what did yours taste like?”
Rian slouched forward, one elbow hitting the table with a crack. He gulped down air. “Fucking lemon juice, what does it matter?”
“Your Fate tie is Anhala, isn’t it?”
Eyes widening and face turning red, Rian nodded.
“The poisons are connected to each of our Fate ties,” Roremar whispered hurriedly to Rian. The poisons were crafted uniquely for each of them, assigned based on an inherent part of their magic.
Around them, more and more men struggled, a few succumbing to their duress before they could even attempt to figure out an antidote. Roremar’s attention scoured every table for clues.
“Twelve cups,” Roremar muttered. His side flared with pain, but he ignored it. Turning back to Rian, he said, “All of us have twelve tin cups—it’s one of the only shared things. We have to figure out which one holds the key ingredient for our specific antidote, then craft it.”
Behind Rian, Khasson gripped his own chalice with white knuckles. His dark hair curtained his face as he leaned over the table. Roremar couldn’t tell exactly how he was faring, but he caught Khasson’s eye, nodding to him.
Panting, Khasson returned it, having heard Roremar’s tip about the Fate ties. He didn’t seem as affected as some of the others. He even forced a twisted smirk, the smug bastard.
Rian grunted, heaving himself into a standing position. “Fates, if I die for this, I’m going to haunt my father’s manor.”
“That’s the spirit,” Roremar said, clapping him on the back. “Got it from here?”
“I think,” Rian panted, clearly struggling to remain upright. “What’s the box for?”
Roremar eyed the polished wood. “I don’t know—”
“No!” A scream echoed, deep and guttural.
Every eye in the arena went to the owner, a contestant in the heart of the group. He cowered beneath his table, hands pressed to his bleeding ears and an array of palm leaves scattered around him. He clawed at his cheeks, his hair, as if whatever was plaguing his mind could be ripped out.
Roremar raced over to him, sliding in the dirt. He sniffed the chalice. “Honeysuckle?” he guessed, remembering a perfume his mother wore with the same, almost-peachy scent.
He wracked his memory of each Fate, wishing for once that he hadn’t scorned them all so deeply.
But he thought honeysuckle was most associated with Metrina, the Fate of Prophecy and Demise, who went mad after she suffered a great loss thousands of years ago and now sent twisted prophecies to her warriors.
Roremar looked at the man cowering at his feet, then at the chalice in his hand. This trial—it ran so much deeper than entertainment for the capital. It was carnage against the base of their magic, the very fabric that held them together.
These poisons weren’t only assigned to them based on their Fates, they were targeting the alignments themselves. This one was turning the warrior mad.
Rian’s—Anhala, the Fate of Foolish Hearts and Wisdom—would likely twist to make him less considerate and rash.
And Roremar—his Fate was chaos personified. He was a murderer who had already manipulated him once, without the aid of poison. What would he do once this kicked in?
Roremar’s eyes met Rian’s again, renewed determination in his stare despite his heaving breaths.
“Think carefully,” Roremar told him.
An unnervingly solemn look entered Rian’s eyes as he nodded.
Roremar felt fine so far, but he hurried back to his workstation.
“Oh, fucking Fates,” he grumbled. The contents had been swiped off the tabletop and scattered across the dirt.
Svalla, barely holding himself up and with vomit trailing down his tunic, flashed Roremar a greedy smile. He’d ransacked Roremar’s supplies.
“Good luck now, Reckless.” Svalla sputtered, blood in his teeth. “Clock is ticking.”
Roremar scooped the wooden box and book off the ground, the wound in his side throbbing with a fresh sting. Hissing, he lifted his tunic to check it. The linen bandages were crimson-stained again.
He’d torn his stitches.
He couldn’t deal with that now. Leaving the rest of the supplies on the floor for later, Roremar focused.
“It’s a puzzle,” he said to himself.
He flipped open the age worn book first. Only he and Perry had received that specific item, and as Roremar tore through the pages, it was clear why.
This was a recipe ledger. Everything was handwritten, nothing confirmed as successful or what the proper dosages were, but it was a guide of poisons and antidotes.
It would help if he knew what poison he’d actually ingested, but he’d have to guess. All around him, men were struggling to stand, to breathe. Shrieks of horror rang through the crowd.
“Vanilla is warm and sweet,” Roremar muttered. “So, something smoky or fresh to counter it maybe.”
He scanned the twelve cups scattered at his feet and the items that had fallen out of them. One was overturned beside a eucalyptus sprig, and he reached for that first, but before his fingers locked around it, his stare snagged on another herb.
Picking that one up, he inhaled it. “Bitter.”
The Fate of Chaos and Revelry was known for lavish parties flowing with wine and depraved decadence. He had no room for anything bitter at his table.
Satisfied, Roremar placed the tin cup before him and dropped the bitter herb in, analyzing what he was left with. That damn box…
Shoving the book aside, deeming it unnecessary until later, he pulled the box over. Everyone had one. It had to be crucial to surviving. A quick glance at Rian said he’d arrived at the same idea, the polished wood gleaming as he tried to work it out.
Roremar’s side ached. He hunched over the table, shutting out the world and focusing solely on the puzzle before him, hearing the hum of the sea in his mind instead of the roaring crowd.
He felt around every edge. There were no obvious latches or hidden compartments, but he’d done these as a boy with his father. The answer was never the first thing he found, so he’d trained himself to skip over the most blatant, often wrong path.
With delicate fingers, he pressed gently on each panel of wood, until—
“There,” he whispered, his heart rate speeding when one side clicked so quietly he easily could have missed it if he hadn’t been so focused.
The panel popped out half an inch, and Roremar carefully pulled it out the rest of the way, not wanting to force anything. If you had to use too much pressure, it was always the wrong answer.
Roremar stretched the drawer out, but it was empty.
Holding the box to his ear, he slowly pushed the panel back in. About three quarters of the way, it locked into place with an almost imperceptible click
Once in place, the front of the panel twisted. Roremar unscrewed it from the rest of the box. He set it down, half expecting something venomous to strike out at him. Instead, a series of metal chips fell into his palm.
“What in the Fates?”
More men screamed around him, the poison wreaking havoc on their Fate ties. He distantly wondered if it was similar to the pain he felt in the seeing chamber as the resin in the stone had tried to wrench his alignment away.
If it was even half as bad, he felt for the fuckers, and he didn’t know how any of them were managing to keep at this trial.
A few had gotten the first panel of the puzzle box open, some had abandoned it completely and were hurriedly chopping at different herbs and petals, stuffing them down their throats.
Perry and Rian seemed to be the furthest along after him, studying the drawer intently.
The former seemed the least affected from the poison next to Roremar, his eyes bloodshot and his chest heaving, tunic sweat-soaked, but nothing else visible.
Khasson was intently focused on the box, head down so Roremar couldn’t tell how he was faring.
Roremar swept the metal chips into one palm, looking closely at their little grooves and indents.
“Puzzle pieces,” he breathed, and he started clicking them together.
As they took their shape, they resembled the trinkets that had been on his table originally.
His attention swung to the dirt where they were scattered, winking up at him in the sunlight, like tiny silver stars cut from sheets of metal.
Roremar collected them, dumping them on the table.
He paused to catch his breath, assessing himself once again for hints of the poison taking root.
There was nothing.
He didn’t have time to worry about it, though. Poison or no, he had to finish this task if he wanted any chance of keeping Emmeline from being bonded to someone else.
Roremar fully removed the pieces of the puzzle box he was done with—that went without resistance—and looked into the shadowed interior. He ran his fingers along the wood.
“Grooves,” he whispered.
And one by one, he started slotting the tiny stars into their places. Until each found a spot it clicked into easily. But there was an extra groove inside the box.
“I’m missing one.” Roremar scanned the ground. “Fucking Svalla.”
A chip of metal glinted, half-buried in the dirt near the leg of his table, and Roremar dove for it, ripping his stitches wider.
He cried out, pressing a hand to the wound. Sticky blood seeped through his tunic, but he didn’t stop. He squinted into the box, and scoffed as Dryvius’s constellation stared back at him, every line full of taunting metal stars.
With one space empty.