Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Emmeline
Continuing down this path will send you both to endless ruin, igniting in a prophetic vision of crashing stars and bleeding worlds.
Emmeline didn’t know Roremar well, but that threatening line from her reading in Fortuna followed her all day.
Endless ruin.
It had driven her guard up so sharply that when Roremar pushed her—when he challenged her to read, hinted at all the research he’d done on her, and she recognized a kindred persistence in him—all she could see was the two of them succumbing to burning starfire.
Roremar was the type who would never stop trying to peel apart her secrets, devour the scars she buried so deeply. He was clearly a man who enjoyed puzzles, but Emmeline couldn’t be one.
And while he was a stranger, she didn’t want ruin for either of them. That was one thing she’d learned about the fortunes revealed to her—they always came to pass in one way or another if she stayed the course. In a way, it was a reliability she craved.
Her mother had impressed upon her at a young age how important it was to never ignore your readings entirely.
So with the threat of endless ruin burning through her, she’d stormed out of Fortuna like the prim and cold-hearted Starsearcher darling she needed Roremar to believe she was.
She played the part everyone wanted to see of her, erecting the barriers that shielded her heart from anymore pain and ensured she’d stay on task to get transferred to Valyn.
Alone.
And, true to form, she’d provided no explanation as to why.
She’d been alone for eighteen years, she reminded herself hours later as she crept through the vineyards to her cliffside sanctuary. She lifted her skirt so it didn’t snag on the dried ends of fallen grapevines, moonlight carving paths through the quiet night.
Loneliness was a hollow footstep that outlined her own. It was the aching need to speak and not being able to find her voice. The way she wanted someone—anyone—to look at her and have their eyes soften with the understanding that conveyed more than words ever could.
But loneliness was also safe.
It was security in a world that took everything from her. Something she couldn’t overlook for the sake of warm glances and unspoken understanding. Solitude meant she could uphold her delicate control.
So what was one more solo task if it solidified her loneliness but also guaranteed she finally got to Valyn?
As she traipsed on silent feet through the vineyard, her fingers wrapped tighter around the triple blade sheathed at her waist. The grip of the weapon was worn and steel nicked. She was perfectly capable of fending for herself, no reckless warriors needed.
It was easier this way. Less pain than down the road to relinquishing.
Emmeline emerged onto the lakeside cliffs, the pale stone of the temple ruins reflecting the moonlight. The sight surrounded her heart, filling in those hollow gaps she dug out so viciously as she dragged her fingers across rubble.
It wasn’t clear what Fate the structure had originally been designed to worship—perhaps it was the Angel herself.
Emmeline had searched the crumbling columns and debris-strewn halls meticulously but never found a scrap of a sigil or discarded incense in the six years since she’d claimed this spot as her private haven.
She’d searched the library at the Academy, too.
Even now, as she crept toward the drop overlooking the glassy lake, she kept her eyes open for any hint she may have missed.
Starlight glimmered off the still water and bounced up the jungle-wrapped cliffs, their jade and moss hues vibrant even in the fall.
Vines wound down the rocky facade, critters scrambling through them as she sank to a crouch, breathed in the crisp air, and let the events of the day settle around her.
Emmeline had always loved books and folktales, and here, bathed in the shimmering moonlight and wrapped among the stars, leaving the dangerous alleys of her city behind for a moment, she felt as though her entire world had the potential to be one.
Though, as she sat on the cliff and the crescent-shaped scars along her thighs pulled against her skin, an ever-present reminder of everything she’d done to survive, she wondered if her fairytale was of the bleaker variety.
Born of loss and torment that bred isolation and incomplete endings.
Gazing out over the glass sheet of lake, a kinship with the night wrapped her bones, and she thought perhaps that sort of twisted, dark fairytale suited her.
It was said if a Starsearcher could find a body of water that reflected the Fate of Eddies and Lost Luck’s constellation they would never be lost. For he would guide them home.
And though this spot was only a short distance from the Lyra Temple Academy, near the Fatetouched land that blessed the isle—areas where it was believed the stars themselves had left magic behind—as she located the precise constellation in the mirrored surface, Emmeline silently admitted to herself that she didn’t know where home was.
Her eyes stung, but she blinked away the bone-deep ache and tried not to think about the family she’d lost or the things she’d done while trying to find them again.
At least she had this solitary asylum on the cliffs when her readings were too loud. When she felt like she was alone in a sea of people and desperately needed quiet air to breathe.
In a life where magic had walked step by step beside her for twenty-nine years, she often found it overstimulating.
Magic crowding her on one side, a vast emptiness on the other.
Neither welcoming, neither relenting. Funny how the Balance of Power ruled the realms yet seemed to ignore her completely.
But out here, with the constellations watching over her and the magic of Ambrisk steeping in the soil beneath her feet, there was peace.
And for one brief moment, without the eyes of students or colleagues or reckless warriors baring down on her—with nothing but loneliness to keep her company—she was seen in a way that didn’t scare her.
“How sad is that?” Emmeline murmured to herself as she hugged her knees to her chest, resting her cheek against them. “To feel the most understood when you’re the most alone?”
Her chest pounded, magic surging to the surface.
Sighing, Emmeline removed her tinctures from her pack and filled a well with clear oil.
She lit the incense, opting to place a singular drop on her tongue to hurry up the process.
It tasted of night-blooming white lilies, earthy pine, and the nectar of sweet peaches as the liquid slid across her taste buds and her connection to the Fates flew open.
Readings rushed through her mind, voices colliding. She was in a tunnel made of starfire. Celestial beings warped and whirled around her. The sigil of a winged deer and white gryphon before a pair of golden arrows flashed.
Wild Spirits and Broken Things and all those that remain between, a voice sang through Emmeline’s mind, Atrinias’s image swimming to the surface.
Roremar, she asked of the stars. Show me Roremar.
She’d tried not to read of him last night, focusing solely on the case from Falliare, but after this morning at Fortuna, she’d been unable to rid her mind of him.
The Fate giggled, a high and unsettling sound that raised goosebumps on her arms.
Endless ruin for you broken things.
Roremar’s face flashed before her mind’s eye, steel irises studying her as if he was truly before her now. She could write that expression from pure memory, the eyebrow hitch and pursed lips having ingrained themselves in her subconscious somehow. The tiny scars flecking his skin.
Then, something shifted. It was the same expression, but…
His eyes became the molten steel she’d only glimpsed before. Pure silver, mined and melted by a force as potent as starfire, something that screamed it would burn her if she ventured too close.
That heated gaze was trained on her, burrowed into her.
Saw her.
She had the distinct instinct to flee, to hide before she turned to ash. But her skin and bones were made of glass, windows to the parts of her she refused to bare.
“Don’t run, Emmeline,” he said, his husky voice the only thing in this celestial plane that seemed to truly touch her, every word slithering across her skin. “Don’t run from me.”
Roremar didn’t say a word beyond that, and neither did the Fates.
But after a long stretch of silence, his eyes shifted again. Liquid seeped from the corners. Not just liquid. Blood.
It dripped across his cheeks, down his chest, pooling in the splayed palms of his hands. Roremar watched it with creased brows, the scar indenting the left one stark as night deepened around him, the tunnel of starlight seeping away all color except that thick crimson trail.
“What’s happening?” Emmeline asked, but he didn’t hear her.
Shadows reared at Roremar’s back, great claws swiping the air with killing, cleaving blows that could carve apart realms. That seemed to sink right into Emmeline’s own chest.
Her palms were as translucent as she felt, starlight budding at her fingertips, her skin made of the cosmos.
“What’s—”
Roremar crashed to his knees, his form fading away in wispy pieces. As he went, she could have sworn a soul-shattering scream echoed through the stars, one that ripped her apart as well.
Emmeline panted, her fingers tingling with the magic swirling through her.
Ruin. This was their ruin. But how, and why? And would she be able to stop it? Would she have to be this exposed and vulnerable to do so?
Is this what would happen if she allowed herself to be seen?
She needed to end this reading. The earth was still cool beneath her body, the dull hum of the star flies and jungle creatures clear. Physically, she was on Lyra, but she had one foot in each realm mentally.
Before she could pull herself from the reading, though, she had one more fortune to seek, one more person.
No, the Fate stated before she could ask.