Chapter 9 #2
“Please,” she begged, all the no’s she’d received splintering behind her ribs. Starfire crawled up her arms, constellations devouring her ghostly skin.
I have told you before that we cannot find her.
“It has been over twenty years. Surely, you have something,” she nearly sobbed. Her desperation was bitter on her tongue. Here among the stars, with fortunes overwhelming her, she let herself break.
We cannot.
The same thing she was always told.
It will not be long now, Reignarria.
With a force she’d never before experienced, she was thrown from the session. Ripped from the plane in between the Fate Realm and Ambrisk where she believed she hovered subconsciously during readings, a painful wrench tore her veins, her magic screaming as she went.
That final word echoed on the air—one she thought almost sound like another language. Reignarria.
Emmeline collapsed onto the cliff, sweaty and heart beating in her ears. The constellations spun overhead as she gulped down the cool night air. What was—
Heavy steps rustled the trees bordering the vineyard.
Alarm bells blaring in her mind, Emmeline was on her feet, extinguishing the incense she’d lit and twirling into the shadows of the ruined sanctuary. Her skirt swished through the dust as she ducked behind the crumbling pillars.
Jungle cats prowled this region of the isle, but that gait had been too dense for the feline predators.
Besides, they never touched her. Occasionally, one would approach while she read on the cliffside and settle beside her hazy incense as if listening to the Fates themselves, but they never crunched through the brush the way whoever was approaching now did.
The effects of that powerful reading were still fading, her vision rippling at the edges with starfire.
On featherlight feet, she stepped over the debris littering the perimeter of the sanctuary and swiveled so she didn’t bump the wooden slabs propped against the archway or send gravel skidding across the floor.
Her skirt dragged through dust as she scampered along the side aisle of the main room, careful to avoid the pools of light from the cracked stained-glass windows on either side. The gentle breeze whispered through their broken panels, a melody to her steps and pounding pulse.
Dropping to her hands and knees, Emmeline crouched beside a crumbled area of the wall, facing the tree line. And as her own heart rate calmed and the effects of the reading dissipated, she held her breath and listened.
For the thump of boots on the path.
For the patter of a heartbeat or racing breath that her warrior senses amplified.
For a clink of glass vials or swish of blades.
Voices rose in the distance. Soft enough that it was clear they were whispering.
Two people who didn’t want to be found.
Were they students sneaking out past curfew or instructors rendezvousing between the grapevines when affairs were forbidden?
Her magic pressed at her chest, whispers of readings creeping through her veins as Emmeline crawled along the wall toward the voices, settling behind a dusty window. She suppressed the insistent Fate, palms skidding on dust and gravel digging into her knees, small slices stinging in their wake.
The only light illuminating the edge of the vineyards was the stars, no mystlights out here on the dusty, hallowed grounds.
Silently, Emmeline cursed herself for never hanging lanterns outside, wanting to preserve the space.
By the starlight, she could barely make out the two cloaked figures who emerged from the orderly rows.
Both broad and tall, one less so than the other, but features hidden beneath hoods.
They certainly weren’t students, though. Possibly teachers?
Emmeline pressed an ear to a hole in the lower corner of the window. One voice rose, the smaller figure gesturing sharply. Not wildly—the movements were controlled. It struck a familiar chord within her, though she wasn’t sure why.
“It doesn’t matter,” the second figure growled in response to the first. She didn’t recognize the voice, so he wasn’t from the Academy at least. His shoulders stretched the worn fabric of his cloak, no weapons peeking out from beneath, though that didn’t mean he was unarmed.
“It does,” the first retorted in a biting whisper she could barely make out. His back was to Emmeline, the fine make of his clothing evident even in the night. “You need to be careful if you want my continued silence.”
“I’m as discreet as they come. You know that after all these years,” the second insisted. “Now, the other issue.”
They turned to the cliff, and she prayed the winds didn’t shift and blow the scent of her recently extinguished incense toward them. At least she’d used a clear variety tonight.
The smaller figure bristled. “That is not an issue. He needs—”
“What he needs is…” The second voice dropped to an imperceptible level.
Emmeline shifted closer to the glass to try to hear, but a hiss echoed at her back. Heart stuttering, she whirled, her spine flattening against the stone.
Her breath caught in her throat as a snake, blackest onyx with scales iridescent in the moonlight, slithered from beneath a broken bench. Emmeline pressed closer to the wall, her entire body quaking as the serpent’s form nimbly slipped over jagged edged debris and piles of stone.
Every slight twitch and coil echoed with a dull buzz that hugged Emmeline’s flesh.
That burrowed within her.
Short, shaking breaths wracked her frozen frame.
A broken whimper slipped from her as the scaled body slithered over the toes of her boots, and she imagined it rearing up, turning beady eyes on her. But it continued toward the door of the ruins and into the night, scales glinting in the moonlight.
Her heart pounded, breath no more than stuttered gasps through her trembling lips, but Emmeline willed herself to focus. She couldn’t get lost to panic. Not now.
Without taking her eyes off the flicking tail that lazily wove up the aisle, Emmeline pressed one ear to the window again and used the arguing tones to recenter herself. Waited for her heartbeat to calm and breathing to level out so she could catch the end of their conversation.
“You’ll take care of them, then?” one man asked, and she could no longer differentiate the two, her mind still humming with that hiss.
Take care of what?
The other man agreed, the conversation concluding. Her nerves were on edge, but an instinct nagged at her mind, a reading violently stealing her attention.
Go, it told her, flashing Roremar’s bloodied eyes at her again.
Emmeline froze at the image. “Does it have to do with the case?”
Yes. Go, the Fate repeated, more insistent this time.
Shoving down her panic, stifling the trembling hands and racing heart, she wrapped her spirit in the isolation that got her through her hardest days. She stuffed all those fear-flecked memories and images of Roremar’s blood-streak face into the cavernous ruins, and she ran.