Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Emmeline
Another body.
A phantom knife stabbed through Emmeline’s sternum as the open throat stared up at her, flesh turned inside out.
Crimson-stained skin, a brutal tattoo inked into her chest, the edges even rougher than the last. One spoke of the twelve-pointed star reached an inch further than the rest, nearing the hollow of the woman’s throat.
The fresh ink shone against her once-tan flesh.
That point was all Emmeline could see. Her heart seemed to hang off the edge of it. Another body found—another life gone. And she hadn’t come up with a single plausible lead as to who was doing this.
Her chest crowded as she stood on the beach, each breath tighter. Magic pressed closer to her lungs, but she shoved it down, bottling up the cloying readings in that tightly corked vial. Wax poured over the seal, packing them all away.
Her head swam, her readings more consuming each day. And while her magic built her, she resented the strength more than ever, needing to stay present.
She’d had dreams of jumbled readings last night, a barrage punctuated by starfire. Starfire in her blood, melting her bones. Starfire eating her from the inside out. A mad cackle sparking through her mind.
When the Fate of Prophecy and Demise had shouted through their alignment as the sun rose this morning, it had sent her careening out of bed. Despite the crisp autumn air wafting through her cracked window, her skin had been an inferno. Everything was hazy.
Then, the words that froze her feet to the floor shot down the alignment. Another sacrifice to the crossing.
Blood and ink faded together in the reading, and she knew what it meant.
“Where?” she’d whispered aloud, her voice hoarse.
She’d hastily written a letter to Roremar, slipped a cotton dress over her body, shoved her feet into her boots, and raced from the Academy on wobbling legs.
By the time she reached the beach at the western edge of the Residential District, she couldn’t feel the early morning sting of the salty ocean air. She couldn’t feel anything at all.
Now, the waves washed over her bare toes, the sand sinking beneath her, and for a moment, she wished it would wash her out to sea with it. Wash the stain of guilt from her skin and flood the failure from her lungs, making every breath leaden.
This had to stop.
At least two women had died, and not only was that horror enough to have the blood rushing in her ears and her skin cold, but she also hadn’t made a stride in her own mission since she and Roremar had been assigned this case.
She had to pull herself together.
“We need to take a closer look at Desmond’s list,” Emmeline whispered, her words barely audible as she crushed a piece of parchment in her grip.
Roremar’s steel gaze drooped over her, snagging on where she twisted her ring around her finger. When she stilled, he asked, “You notice the tattoo is off balance, too?”
“Was the other one like that?”
“It was hard to tell.” He inclined his head toward the sloping sand. “Did you also notice her things?”
“The bag.” A blue cotton satchel, the seam ripped, with a small insignia branded on it. Wings set atop a bed of roses.
“She’s likely been to Angel’s Draw,” Roremar agreed. “And given all the same signs, we were right about our culprit hanging around Lyra and the cases being connected. This beach gets a decent amount of foot traffic once the sun is up.”
“Wanted her found again,” Emmeline muttered, her head spinning. “I didn’t think Angel’s Draw would be connected, though. He’s off the isle anyway.”
“You’re right, it’s not in line with a killer wanting their victims found,” Roremar muttered, studying the body with a detached manner. “Maybe both women have been there, but it’s not him. Or maybe he never truly left. We’ll pay his shop another visit.” His stare flicked up. “What’s in your hand?”
Having forgotten the piece of paper she was now crumbling, Emmeline jolted to attention. “She was holding this.” She angled it to Roremar, the crimson stains on the tan parchment making her stomach turn.
His lips pursed as he read it, and Emmeline focused on the scar above his lip. “This is nonsense,” Roremar finally concluded.
Emmeline looked back down at the words.
sacrifice proclaimed
Her to bleed,
entrenched in kin and sin.
Fates of mercy
“Not to her it wasn’t. These were the last words she left for anyone.” And to hold them in her hands now and be tasked with finding the peace this woman desperately deserved was a weight Emmeline didn’t feel worthy of, but one she’d uphold all the same.
“You’re right,” Roremar agreed solemnly.
“I was trying to remember if it’s a poem or something I’ve read.”
“Anything?” Roremar asked.
She shook her head.
It had taken him a while to get to the beach, and Emmeline had been staring at the body for countless long, uncomfortable minutes on her own. Nothing but the sound of the tide rumbling around her and squawks of birds overhead.
The longer she stood here, the more her head swam. She inhaled deeply, focusing on Roremar’s steady breaths as he studied the victim. His exhales were buried beneath the soft roar of the ocean, but she pulled them apart, isolating that low rhythm.
She wanted—no, she needed, something to home in on.
As her own breathing steadied to the pace of his, Emmeline assessed the warrior.
His silver eyes flicked over the body, the blood-stained dress, the sand cradling her.
Something told her Roremar wasn’t missing a single inch of detail.
He categorized not only the scene before them, but the previous murder, and he was comparing them now.
“There’s not a lot of blood splatter on the ground, so she was likely not killed here. If she were, there’d be a lot more…mess.” Black waves flopped over his forehead, thick brows scrunching together. “What is this?”
He toed a faint mark on the ground. Emmeline stepped carefully around the woman with her skirt gathered in her hand, crouching beside Roremar. An ashy black line slashed through the sand, sweeping away from the body, curving around her head and down toward her feet.
“Is it…” Emmeline stood, her head spinning even quicker. “It’s circling her.”
She followed the dusty slash, Roremar on her heels as she rounded the victim’s sprawled figure from one side to the other. The tide had washed away part of the circle, but it clearly had been rimming her form.
Emmeline stopped when water splashed over her toes again, her boots abandoned among the cypher trees at the entrance to the beach.
Roremar was only an inch behind her, and Emmeline pretended not to notice how the heat of his body sent a flush across her cheeks or the low tone of his voice drew chills up her spine.
“Were they marking this spot for the murder?” Disgust layered his words, and it had Emmeline turning to face him.
For some reason, she needed to see the way his grey eyes turned molten at the cruelty they witnessed.
To know the same guilt that was thickening her own throat choked his words back, sealing them in this together.
From this close, with his labored swallow, she could tell it was. But there was something else in the way his eyes searched hers. Almost as if he was checking in with her. Seeing her fears and offering reassurance.
That transparency had her stepping aside and gulping down the salty sea air. She scanned the ground again.
“Is it ink?” Emmeline asked, eyeing that black smudge. “From whoever drew the tattoo?”
She knew Roremar was still studying her, but she didn’t meet his gaze as he said, “I don’t think so. Ink would have soaked into the sand. This looks more like…ash maybe.”
That captured Emmeline’s attention, a wave of nausea rolling through her stomach. There weren’t many reasons she could list for ash in such a uniformed shape. Except—
“What if it’s not just a murderer?” she breathed. She pointed to the first line of the victim’s note. “What if it’s a sacrifice? A ritual, maybe a cult?”
In her mind, she quickly ran through all the Starsearcher rituals she knew of. A few of the Fates were associated with eccentric worship. Primarily the Fate of Cruelty and Adoration, though the Fate of Secrets and Greed was a patron of mysterious societies.
Throughout history, the recorded tales of cult sacrifices were always extremely gruesome and lacking morals that—at least in Emmeline’s mind—the Fates and Angel would disapprove of.
At the thought, her magic rattled the bottle she’d contained it in. She’d have to read later.
“It could be,” Roremar suggested, though he sounded a bit skeptical.
“Think about it,” Emmeline urged. “We’re not far from the Cursed Markets. She could have been there last night, could have seen something she shouldn’t have. People from the jungle settlements often frequent those stalls, why not a cult?”
And the man she followed the night of the first murder had been in a home near the Cursed Markets, too. Perhaps he was connected.
“Running into trouble at those fucking stalls wouldn’t be surprising,” Roremar agreed.
“We should check the Accords again. Pull records of cult history on Lyra,” Emmeline mused, gaze tracking the ashy smudge along the sand. The haunting eyes of the woman.
They’d done research on mass murder cases, but they hadn’t thought to look into cults or rituals specifically. The longer she stood here, the louder her magic pulsed in her ears, and the more frantic she became.
“We’ll look into it,” Roremar promised. Folding up a piece of parchment she hadn’t realized he was writing on, he dropped it over a lantern and sent off the Mystique ink.
“Who was that to?” Emmeline asked, forcing down the waves of starfire budding through her veins. Her vision rippled along the edges.