Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Roremar
“It’s related to the Fate ties?” Uncle Aldryn asked, incredulously, and no small amount of satisfaction purred beneath Roremar’s skin at discovering this fact before his uncle had.
Sure, he and Emmeline were supposedly assigned to this case, but after the interaction at his home before leaving for Alvan when Aldryn implied that perhaps Roremar wasn’t capable of this task, Roremar was sure he was conducting his own investigation.
He only suspected it had motives none of them knew about, which was part of the reason Roremar wanted to stage this meeting without Emmeline.
To observe his uncle’s behavior alone, without worrying about hiding his relationship to the Temple Master.
Roremar leaned against the low back of his curved leather chair in the Mezzanine’s main hall, elbows propped up on the edge as he took the cigar his uncle offered. He inhaled, the woodsy flavor dense in the air around them.
“Only Anphrosia Fate ties,” Roremar repeated as he blew out the smoke. He rubbed his thumb over the small slanted VV stamped into the wrapper, his mind tingling. “We haven’t clarified why. Maybe some fanatics obsessed with the mess of the Fates’ mortal lives.”
Though if that was the case, what was the purpose of the ritual?
They’d originally hypothesized it was to create new connections with the Fates, but that theory wasn’t as plausible with this new lead.
Revenge made more sense, especially considering the combination of Arenothos, Aevollon, and Anphrosia in that insignia.
He shook his head, eyes glazing over as a group of women danced on stage. Their silver beaded costumes tangled with the music, and low mystlights flashed across the dark wooden finishes.
“We’re still figuring out the rest,” he tacked on before his uncle could comment.
The crowd in the gambling hall roared, a small but rowdy group squeezing in their last thrills before closing.
Smugness lifted his lips. Roremar had tried to explain to his uncle that a lot of people wouldn’t care about the new curfew, but he was already searching for the murderer, he wasn’t going to police the Mezz’s crowd as well.
Plus, between the noise and the music the dancers rolled their hips to, Roremar and his uncle were able to speak privately about anything here, even without being in one of the upstairs rooms.
“Anphrosia…” Aldryn mused, working through his own theories. “Do we need to worry about your sister?”
Roremar’s jaw tensed, but another drag of the cigar had him loosening.
“No. I wrote to her today. She’s safe and we aren’t telling her the details of this mess until it’s cleared up.
” He flexed his hand, gaze dropping to the tattoo on his upper left forearm.
If she knew, she’d race home. Angels be damned, she never denied any kind of adventure, even if it could kill her.
“My mother knows not to let anything slip in their weekly letters.”
“Good,” Aldryn said. “And Emmeline?”
Roremar could barely hide his shock, his slowly blurring stare sharpening.
“What about Emmeline?” he asked casually.
“If this is true, she’s at risk.” The curling tone in his uncle’s voice had a violent chill spreading through Roremar.
He knew Emmeline was tied to Anphrosia? How had that knowledge been shared? Was it during her interviews for the instructor position? It had to have been. Roremar knew Emmeline well enough to be certain she wouldn’t give away private information readily. Not unless absolutely necessary.
But Uncle Aldryn was the head of Lyra Temple Academy. Very little occurred on the isle without his knowing.
Still, the quiet, wavering voice in which Emmeline had confided in him flooded his memory. I have an Anphrosia Fate tie.
It had been both broken and afraid—two things she’d rarely shown other than the night of the attack. She rarely allowed herself to be vulnerable.
Until this moment, when cold shadows wrapped his chest, Roremar hadn’t realized how much that singular confidence had meant to him.
Beneath his uncle’s pressing stare, Roremar remained impassive. “She’s as protected as ever. She’s at the Academy now with Nico and the regular patrol of guards. I’ll meet her when we’re done here.”
Aldryn blew out a ring of smoke, the oak undertones making Roremar cough. “And you?”
“I’m fine,” he answered.
“You’re not feeling vulnerable at all, correct?”
Roremar blinked at him, the haze of incense in the room making his uncle’s frame waver. “Should I be?”
“No.” Aldryn’s viperous smile had cold coiling in Roremar’s chest. “No, you shouldn’t be. You’re doing well.”
The praise had his lips curling in satisfaction, dimming his momentary wariness, but it quickly turned to a grimace. Typically, his uncle had more to share, theories or prompting thoughts that were always a touch chauvinistic but smart enough that he couldn’t be ignored.
Tonight, he internalized it all. And while Roremar didn’t really feel like talking longer than he had to, it only furthered his suspicion that Aldryn Falliare did have ulterior motives in this investigation.
“We’re waiting to hear from the War Master of Alvan,” Roremar said.
His gaze dropped to the cigar between his fingers—recognizing that stamped logo—and his heartbeat faltered for a moment, but he forced himself to continue.
“If you have a chance, a personal letter from you couldn’t hurt, as well as to the other isles to notify them of what’s happening and request they answer any correspondence from Emmeline or myself promptly. ”
Aldryn nodded, mystlights streaking across his features and highlighting deep-brown eyes that perfectly matched Roremar’s mother’s. They softened his nerves. “I’ll send it as soon as I’m home. Though I’m not sure what it will uncover now that you know of the ties.”
“Can’t hurt to investigate every lead. Especially now that we know something here is tied to Alvan.”
His uncle only hummed a non-committal response.
Roremar dragged his thumb across the VV stamped on the cigar wrapper as he waited out the rest of the evening’s show, and he tried not to wonder why the Temple Master had visited Viperous Vices.
Emmeline was pacing the apartment above Fated Ink when Roremar arrived back from the Mezz, his mind still spinning.
She glided across the moonlight spilling through the open window, a swift-footed shadow in her black leathers, daggers strapped to her person and one twirling between her fingers.
The sight of her effectively shoved all thoughts of his uncle into a drawer in his memory to be dissected later.
“Finally!” Emmeline blurted as the door clicked closed behind him. Her hair was falling loose of her braid, manic energy rolling off her in waves. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were unable to settle on anything, bouncing over Roremar and around the room she’d unmistakably tidied.
Roremar’s instincts perked up, and he rushed to her, gripping her shoulders. The contact may have been a mistake—fire immediately flared beneath his flesh, that echo of her ruin ringing in his memory with cackled laughter—but he didn’t care.
“What’s wrong, Huntress? I was supposed to meet you at the Academy, but Nico said you were here.” His eyes scanned her body, fury erupting when he got to her boots. “Is that blood?”
“What?” Emmeline’s gaze followed his. “Oh, yes. But I’m fine. I needed something to do while you took so damn long with Falliare, and I tracked some of my original targets through the Peddler’s District.”
Though he should have been mad at the risk she’d taken, Roremar had to fight a smirk at her flippancy. “What did you do there?”
“I only threatened someone. I don’t think he knew anything about…anything. I didn’t kill him, though.” She waved the explanation aside as if it was the least important piece of information of the evening.
Emmeline’s hands settled on his forearms, the contact seeming to ground her. Anticipation bubbled around her, roiling into him. Like they were twining together, finding resilience within one another.
“I got a letter from the War Master of Alvan,” Emmeline revealed.
“What?”
She nodded, explaining how she’d written a final plea not expecting anything in return.
The words were spilling so quickly from her, if Roremar hadn’t become so attune to Emmeline in recent weeks, he’d probably be lost. When she finished explaining the records—now spread across the bed in orderly stacks—her chest was heaving. He squeezed her arms.
“You have an idea.” He didn’t ask it. He knew. In his gut, he knew Emmeline had an answer, or at the very least another piece of this puzzle.
He reached for the first stack of papers—the ones listing the Fate ties of Alvan Starsearchers—but Emmeline gripped his wrist.
She bit her lip in the way that was quickly becoming his undoing. “I need you to trust me.”
“I trust you,” Roremar responded without a thought. It was strange for him, to give someone that answer wholeheartedly. But it wasn’t a lie. Call him Reckless, but Roremar willingly handed his trust over to her.
“Get changed,” Emmeline said. “We need to go.”
Roremar followed Emmeline without question, was beginning to think she was the moon and he the tide the way something in his chest pulled him after her—and that maybe, for one damn night, he could stop trying to stifle that instinct.
After Alvan and the way his body had craved hers, after finding out that she was slated as a victim for this murderer, perhaps he could indulge.
For himself, for once, he could allow a moment to give in.
Over rooftops and across alleys, they jumped, Roremar’s footsteps landing precisely in Emmeline’s, the only sound in the midnight air their breathing.
“What else was in the notes?” Roremar asked when they stopped on a nondescript roof. She’d whisked him out of the apartment before he’d gotten a chance to look at any of the specifics.
The alley below was painted with a variety of colors, a mural along the stone wall across from them. They were at the edge of the Peddler’s District not far from the Scholar’s Quarter and Cursed Markets, but he didn’t recognize the street.
“Mainly names. Some preliminary research on cult factions they’ve either uncovered or have historic record of on Alvan and the sacrifices, myths, and rituals tied to them.
” She paused, eyes locked on a building across the way.
Light poured out the small window, lace curtains framing the other side.
Shadowed forms wavered beyond, a family maybe.
The elongated rectangle of buttery yellow fell over a house cat’s slinking form as it ventured down the alley.
“Some records of shipments to Lyra, too.”
“Shipments?” Roremar asked, his skin tingling, but he mimicked Emmeline and kept his attention on the door, one arm braced against the ledge that dropped into the street below.
“It’s mainly art supplies. They haven’t sent a big weapons import recently—hasn’t been needed, I suppose.” She shifted along the wall, her body moving as effortlessly as a viper’s against the cool stone. “It was things like paint, ink…”
Emmeline trailed off, and Roremar finally looked at her. Her mask covered the lower half of her face, but her eyes—a different sort of boundary had risen there. He didn’t recognize the harshness after so many weeks together. And she wouldn’t meet his stare.
“What aren’t you telling me, Huntress?” His heartbeat pounded loud in the night, sword a heavy weight across his back.
“One transport in particular was flagged by the War Master. Ink with imbued properties.”
“Like for rituals?” Roremar guessed.
Emmeline nodded firmly. “There were multiple crates. Some with Mystique ink from the continent. Some for binding tattoos. Others for unclassified purposes.”
Roremar directed his attention back at the nameless door. At the silhouettes moving within. “And why has that brought us here?”
“This is one of the addresses of the recipients.” Emmeline seemed to consider her next words carefully, her fingers drumming silently against the tile. “And it’s the house the person I followed went into on the night of the first murder.”
Roremar stood, hand flying toward his sword. “What are we waiting for, then?”
The person who had attacked Emmeline was possibly inside that building. The person who had killed multiple innocent women.
But Emmeline placed a hand on his arm. “We can’t charge in there.” Her eyes twinkled slightly, and his chest eased with the sight. “No matter how much you prefer the reckless alternative, we need to see them first. Figure out what we’re facing. There could be a dozen of them in there.”
“How about we see them when we break down the door?” Roremar suggested.
Emmeline squeezed his arm and, tension returning to her frame, went on, “There was more in the documents.” Why in a Fate’s fuck did that matter right now?
She hadn’t told him details before dragging him out here.
“The War Master had the Accords give us records of known Fate ties. Of Arenothos and Aevollon, especially those who are no longer on Alvan.” Why were her eyes shuttering and the grip on his arm slacking?
Why wasn’t she burning with the need for vengeance?
Fates, he saw the bruises around her neck every time he closed his eyes.
“Of those who are aligned to both Arenothos and Aevollon.”
At her tone, ice spread down Roremar’s spine, but before he could say anything, the mystlights in the kitchen they’d been watching winked out.
A moment later, the door creaked open. Emmeline was over the edge of the building, descending the stone facade before he could say anything.
Roremar raced after her as he tried to make sense of what she was implying.
Their boots landed silently on cobblestones, and they flew up the narrow street. She’d been so reluctant to tell him this evidence. Nervous even. She couldn’t mean—
He pulled up short when a familiar silhouette exited the building and stepped beneath the mystlight lantern gilding the cobblestones.
“Desmond?” Roremar asked. “What are you doing here?”
He had the great, distant sense of a wave tossing him around like a rag doll. Tumbling head over heels until he came up spluttering, only to be blindsided by a second in quick succession.
Of icy sea foam in his lungs.
No clue which way was up as the current beat him.
It was that pounding that nearly took him out when Emmeline stepped in front of him, triple-blade raised, and said in a voice laced with ice, “I really didn’t want to be right about this.
” Roremar’s world cracked as she glanced sorrowfully at him, in a way that assured him nothing would ever be the same after her next words.
“I knew it was you, Desmond. You’ve been the murderer this entire time. ”