Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Roremar
Roremar had lost track of Desmond hours ago.
Spirits, he’d lost track of himself sometime after Nico had ditched them, yawning on his way down the road.
The whiskey club had turned into the Mezzanine, and Roremar and his oldest friend had sat there in their plush leather chairs in the main hall for…
fuck, he didn’t know how long. Sapphire velvet curtains framed the stage and archways designating private booths lined both walls, silver tassels swaying and shimmering as illicit activities sent the curtains rippling.
As his vision blurred, Roremar scanned the second story balcony that wrapped around the main hall, silhouettes roving, some leaning up against the wooden railings, some moving salaciously against other bodies.
All fucking foggy to him, but he had to admit the reprieve had loosened the constant constraint around his lungs, the compressed pressure that made it hard to breathe relenting for a few minutes.
He wondered briefly what sort of deals were being struck in the rooms beyond the balconies, but cheers from the gambling hall at his back sliced through any imaginings.
The main chamber he sat in extended into a long, pristinely stocked bar and a collage of tables, the raucous noise of the clientele luring him in.
Mystlight chandeliers swayed overhead to the beat of the music, and even the wood beneath Roremar’s boots shone.
The Mezz, it seemed, wasn’t subject to the same issues importing liquor as other businesses were.
He sipped his whiskey, fog drifting around them as patrons burned recreational incense and lit rolls of various herbs and crushed petals. None were designed for readings.
No, the Mezzanine was a haven of pleasure and sin, a place people went to forget everything else weighing them down. Even the phrase carved into the wooden doorframe when you entered declared it: Beyond these walls, worries wait. Within these halls, cravings sate.
And as Roremar gazed around the many Starsearchers littered throughout and dancers lining the stage, flowing skirts and glimmering silver chain jewelry showing off miles of smooth skin, he reveled in the release this place allowed.
But truly, he wasn’t looking at any of them. His mind was too fucking preoccupied with who wouldn’t have liked it there.
“Who hates the Mezz?” he mumbled as he took another hit of the drugs he and Desmond had been sharing before he zoned out, and the pungent scent melded into the others wrapping the air.
As he’d complained all night—to Desmond’s glee—he’d apparently taken one too many inhales of the substances he normally didn’t touch. At some point he couldn’t recall, Desmond had disappeared with a gorgeous woman whose curves his friend was ogling, but Roremar had opted to stay put. Stewing.
Combined with the whiskey, the drugs quickly made his limbs heavy.
His eyelids, too. They didn’t want to be fucking open anymore.
Fates, he was so tired, and suddenly all his worries melted away. His family. The breakfast this morning. The still-very-real threat of women going missing on the isle.
And his mind wandered…wandered…wandered…
Until a chilling scream traveled all the way down his spine.
He jolted upright, his mind struggling to clear as the music cut out. The Mezzanine’s more intoxicated patrons didn’t react, but the ones lining the gambling tables and the main chamber all turned toward the front entrance.
Brows creased, murmurs drifting over the air about what that could have been.
And when a second, undeniable wail echoed, feet pounded to the wide double doors that poured onto the Promenade of Revels.
Roremar followed, pausing in the entrance and reorienting himself with being upright.
He wiped his palms down his leathers to ground himself, brushing off the ash smeared across his fingers.
Other than the Starsearchers flooding the cobbled road toward the docks, nothing was out of place. There was no visible attack, no injury.
Not here at least.
Joining the throng of muttering warriors, he hastened with the crowd, his mind clearing more by the minute. Another scream sliced into the night, this one jagged. A lament he was all too familiar with as tears shredded the bearer’s throat. It sent his heart galloping.
Forcing his intoxicated limbs faster, Roremar wove in and out of the gathering warriors as they flocked down the Promenade toward the Eastern Port. He ignored the barked complaints as he pushed through, but how in the stars were they all moving so damn slow at hearing that wretched, brutal scream?
More heart-wrenching sobs had him racing down a narrow alley, stumbling to a halt when he collided with a wall of bodies.
With little grace, he shoved through them.
His mind was still a little foggy, but as soon as he emerged at the front of the crowd and his boots met a crimson puddle, the haze cleared.
On the stone, sprawled on her back with her throat sliced open and unseeing eyes reflecting the constellations, was a woman. Her ivory skin was splattered red, the lace crafting the bodice of her dress drenched. Two women sobbed and screamed on their knees beside her.
Warriors dressed in the fitted navy regalia of Lyra Isle Guard guided the crowds back and helped the friends of the victim to their feet.
Eventually, Desmond materialized at Roremar’s side. “What happened?”
“Pretty clear,” Roremar murmured, looking over his friend’s rumpled tunic. The laces weren’t even tied. “Pulled yourself away from your companion?”
Desmond smoothed back his tangled dirty-blond hair, knotting it at the back of his neck. “Bloody murder wasn’t the kind of screaming I was planning to hear tonight. So, what happened?”
“Like I said”—Roremar nodded to the body—“seems pretty clear.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Desmond whispered, giving his friend a pointed look.
Pursing his lips, Roremar studied the deceased.
He knew exactly what Desmond had been asking.
What did Roremar see here that others didn’t?
What had those practiced surveillance skills, honed during hours of reckless reconnaissance for their army, called to his attention that the insufficient law enforcement of Lyra would miss?
The crowd around them was still murmuring, many retreating with stricken gasps after realizing how gruesome the scene was.
Someone down the alleyway retched as they ran away, but the blood speckling the stone didn’t turn Roremar’s stomach in the same way.
He isolated the victim from the puzzle before him.
One was a life—a person with loved ones, dreams, and emotions.
The other was cold, cruel facts and clues he could collect to build the truth of what happened.
He’d always compartmentalized on a battlefield, separating the lives lost from the strategies and goals. Seeking out answers comforted him, the solutions providing a sense of achievement. Look at the bodies, the means, and the motives as separate from the lives being lost.
It worked for most deaths, anyway. His lungs constricted at the memory of the one it hadn’t worked for, but he rolled his shoulders back and grounded himself in the evidence like they were pieces of a puzzle.
The crowd around them murmured, crying, and another person vomited in the alley, but Roremar crouched down and observed the body.
Blood spilled through the fatal wound, down over the woman’s chest. Her neck and limbs were all bent at odd angles, almost as if she’d been dropped here.
A silver medallion was wrapped around her wrist, like a necklace she’d twined there instead of hanging it on her slender neck, and her elegant features bore barely any cosmetics.
Across her sternum, a twelve-pointed star was inked.
Typically used as a symbol of the Fates.
“You ever see that tattoo before?” he asked Desmond.
Des brushed a hand over his jaw as he leaned forward. In a whisper, he mused, “Not done by me. The work is shoddy, the lines uneven.” Roremar nodded, having noticed that, too. He counted the points on the star again to be sure. Twelve. “It looks like a partial rendition of the Lyra sigil, no?”
“Why isn’t it complete, though?” Roremar asked.
And why was it blatantly in the center of her chest, so on display in that low-cut dress, when she had no other visible tattoos? It wasn’t a spot he saw often.
Why would someone who didn’t seem to boast any other art receive one there of all places?
And judging by how dark the ink was, the edges of the design red, the piece was fresh.
“You know anyone else on the isle that could have done the tattoo?” Roremar murmured.
“Sure, three or four competitors,” Desmond offered. “A couple might still be open, though I’m sure they closed up with the commotion.”
“Can you get me a list?”
“Yeah, but I can’t say which would have that rough of a hand.”
Roremar stood, dragging a palm down his face and squeezing his eyes tight. Desmond was right. No professional would have drawn that messy work. Unless they weren’t entirely sober while doing it, which, if they’d already closed and were persuaded to reopen, was possible.
“Better start somewhere,” Roremar said on a grudging sigh.
When he blinked his eyes open, his gaze was pulled to a lithe figure in the alley opposite them.
What the fuck is she doing here?
And what was she wearing?
The all-black leathers had her blending into the shadows, the crowd obscuring her and a mask covering the lower half of her face, but those hazel eyes were imprinted into Roremar’s memory, as much as he wished it was otherwise.
And when they snapped to his, an invisible string of starfire ignited between them, the commotion of the streets fading beneath it.
An unspoken, reluctant solidarity.
Roremar was certain they both knew this was connected to the case.
How? He couldn’t say yet. Until now, they had only been dealing with disappearances.
But with a victim dead before them, they’d be cruel to turn away when—for whatever reason—his uncle thought they were the only two that could solve this.
Neither of them said anything. They didn’t need to.
Emmeline gave the body one last lingering glance, snapped her gaze back to Roremar’s, and nodded at him. He dipped his chin once in response, and in that motion, understanding was sealed. An alliance forged. A fate written.
Emmeline didn’t wait for anything else. With Roremar’s eyes still locked on her, she sank back into the shadows and slipped away.
And while they had an unstated agreement now, there were certainly things he was going to ask her.
It seemed Miss DeLeoste was more than just a magically gifted tutor after all. She was a huntress in the night. His stare dropped back to the body, her throat slashed open above the beacon of a tattoo.
And he wondered, who was Emmeline’s prey?