Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Roremar
If there was one thing Roremar was certain of, it was that the grin Emmeline DeLeoste flashed meant trouble.
And fuck if trouble wasn’t his weakness.
But he didn’t have time for the particular brand she seemed to harbor. A quiet, sharp cunning seethed behind her stare as she assessed him one last time before leaving, like a serpent waiting to strike. She quickly bottled it up, from conniving to smirking before he could fully dissect any of it.
A mystery. That’s what she’d turned herself into with that facade. And Roremar had always loved unraveling a puzzle.
The door closed with a soft click after Emmeline, but Roremar’s gaze remained on the frame, the train of her skirt still slithering across the stone in his mind.
“Roremar!” a harsh voice snapped.
“Yes, Uncle? Sorry.” He tore his eyes away from the polished oak door, spine straightening when he met the judgmental glare awaiting him.
Judgment and…something else. Something there and gone in a flash before he could give it a name.
Spirits, he was exhausted. He’d gone straight home immediately after receiving his uncle’s summons at Fated Ink last night, but it was like his mind had been working the entire time he’d tried to sleep.
Roremar rubbed his eyes as Aldryn tied back his silver hair and strode around the desk, the grey shining like a helmet in the mystlight. Unbuttoning his cloak, he tossed it across his overly grand wingback chair, the rich leather not baring a single scuff.
“You can handle this, correct?” Aldryn phrased it like a question as he took his seat, long fingers flicking hastily through the paperwork crowding the surface, but Roremar knew better.
His uncle was always in control. Just as he navigated the leaders of the Constellation Isles so Lyra held their balance in its hand, he orchestrated everything around him to stack up against him.
To make himself a lynchpin that if removed, would send them all crumbling.
Sometimes, Roremar pictured them all as surviving on a scale—the isles, his family, everything. And his meticulous uncle had the power to tip them to their ruin.
Whether it was because of Aldryn’s upbringing—with a father who expected greatness from his eldest son and a younger sister who was sick—or something else entirely, he seemed to thrive off maintaining authority.
And since Roremar had permanently returned from the army ten years ago, wounds he’d never recover from gaping through his soul, that included over him.
So while the words may have been phrased as an inquiry, Roremar knew there was no option at all.
“Yes, of course, I can handle it.” Wandering over to the brass telescope pointing out the window, he swiveled it to the ancient map of the Constellation Isles curving across the rounded wall, the parchment worn behind its glass case, and immediately located the Temple Academy.
“The case and watching out for, Miss DeLeoste?”
What was so important about this instructor that his uncle was so concerned? Roremar couldn’t guess other than the hints about her magic being strong, but his mind was already framing the shape of the puzzle.
A dangerous plan was forming—one that involved lingering in the corridor to sneak into this office once his uncle left and search for Emmeline’s file.
“She’s just a woman. How difficult can it be to guard her?
” Without pulling back from the eyepiece, Roremar held up the leather-bound file with the information on the missing Starsearchers.
“No one does anything without leaving a trail. The culprit will have done something sloppy, and we’ll wrap this up within the week. ”
Aldryn’s smirk was evident in his tone as he stamped papers with the Lyra sigil. “You sound certain.”
“No offense, but even you know Lyra Isle Guard has been lazy as all Fates in recent years.”
It may have been a blunt thing to say to the man effectively in charge of the legions who retired from active battle and became officers on the isles, but Roremar never had a sense of self-preservation when it came to his words.
He stated things as he saw them and dealt with the fallout of overly sensitive souls later.
Why should it be his job to cater to them? Spirits knew the world never did.
Besides, he suspected his uncle respected that about him.
Even if he didn’t miss an opportunity to remind Roremar of his reckless reputation. Indignation heated his chest. His hand tightened around the body of the telescope, but he kept his attention trained on the eyepiece, looking at nothing at all.
“That may be,” Aldryn said, derision gravelly in his voice, “but you are required to work with them. Do not sow more discord on my isle.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Roremar knew a few soldiers in law enforcement who were decent men.
He’d reach out to them to ask what they’d already found.
Finally straightening, he crossed his arms and voiced the fact he’d rather ignore.
“When I first started in the army, I was stationed on reconnaissance rather than active battle. That’s why you picked me for this, isn’t it? ”
He’d been eighteen, just coming off his Fatorum and still growing into his frame. But that adventurous spirit that earned his reputation had been a strongly beating heart, his blood laced with keen instincts and mind poised to discover. He’d been fearless, indestructible.
Reckless.
“Yes,” Aldryn said with a curling smile that sent doubt over his uncle’s true motives twisting through Roremar. “Yes, that is precisely why.”
He shoved aside the discomfort and strode to the front of his uncle’s desk to address the real problem with this assignment. The one he bit back in front of Emmeline. It was none of her business.
“I don’t care what this mission is or how many people continue to go missing—it cannot interfere with my responsibilities at home.”
Aldryn’s eyes narrowed, and satisfaction at wresting a shred of control from his uncle painted a smirk on Roremar’s features.
“You have my word.” The Temple Master leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “And I’ll make this deal even better for you. You solve this case—including taking care of Miss DeLeoste—and I will ensure that your siblings’ schooling is covered through their Fatorums.”
Roremar couldn’t stop his eyes from widening. “All of them?”
He nodded. “Every year.”
His mind whirled with calculations. He hadn’t known how he was going to afford their schooling for this term, let alone years.
The money he’d save if he wasn’t allocating the residuals from his father’s business ventures to lessons might allow his mother to cut back at her own job, and their basic necessities would still be covered, no matter how her headaches faired.
Suspicion reared in the back of his mind. Why was his uncle offering this now? What about this case was so important when he’d never been this generous before? While he’d given them small monthly stipends, it never came close to this.
But Roremar wasn’t stupid. Especially not where his family was involved.
“Deal.”
“Remember our previous agreements. My funds only flow so long as everyone remains taken care of and attending to their duties. Yours now include this case and protecting Miss DeLeoste. Fail and repercussions will have to be instituted.” Meaning the money would dry up.
Roremar hid his disgust at his uncle’s threat.
So much wealth, yet he resorted to threatening his own family.
“Do not give me any reason to doubt your capability.”
Annoyance rumbled in Roremar’s chest, teeth grinding.
Shadow-shrouded memories pummeled Roremar’s mind, blood sticky and slipping between his fingers. The void he was now accustomed to widened where his heart had once been.
A keening laugh barreled down his bones.
Aldryn leveled Roremar with an expectant stare, clouds obscuring the sun outside the high windows that flanked his desk and darkening the Temple Master’s features.
“I assure you,” Roremar growled, “my priorities remain straight.”
If there was one thing he would go to the Spirit Realm to protect, it was his family. They had been his sole focus since he left the army, a job that felt built for him alone, and nothing would distract him from that.
“Final thing,” Aldryn said, flicking back through his papers so rapidly, Roremar wasn’t even sure he could read them. He waited, scowling at his uncle’s long-fingered hands and muscled frame. He hated that he’d gotten that build from his mother’s side.
Where Roremar’s father had been tall and thin—and he’d certainly gotten the height—he received most of his appearance from his mother’s bloodline.
His messy waves and complexion. Sure, he had his father’s night-dark hair and strong jaw, but his nose had been broken enough times that it was slightly crooked, and every time he looked in the mirror, it seemed more of his father was slipping away.
Right down to his eyes that forged into more of a steel grey by the day instead of the cloudy blue he remembered from the man he missed.
A part of him was relieved the constant reminders of his father would one day fade. Another part—the part that handled a lot of his pain by having Desmond ink new tattoos on his skin as reminders—wanted the knife to twist eternally.
“Here it is,” Aldryn said, extending a piece of parchment stamped in the corner with the Isle of Lyra official seal, the ink long dry.
“What is this?” Roremar grumbled.
“To afford you the time necessary to work with Emmeline and provide a story of why you’re suddenly around the Academy so often, you are our new sparring instructor.”
What in the Fate’s fucking grave?
“We just clarified that I have prior commitments—”
“Those have been adjusted as well.” Aldryn nodded at the document.