Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Emmeline
After the night she accused Desmond, Emmeline kept finding herself returning to the one place on the isle that felt as though it belonged to her. It didn’t—she knew that. The ruins beyond the vineyards belonged to no one save the Fate it once worshiped perhaps.
But when everything had gone wrong with Roremar and Desmond, the cords she’d slowly been braiding snapped. She hadn’t even realized she’d been doing it—allowing herself to belong somewhere—but the desire she’d smothered for eighteen years had taken over.
She’d known what her accusation would do to Roremar—to the friendship they’d built.
Yet she did it anyway. And while it was because she truly had believed Desmond was guilty, she knew a part of her used that excuse when in reality it was also a way to drive Roremar away, which was a lot easier than letting him in.
For Emmeline, it was more comfortable to bask in known solitude than share foreign warmth.
She may be looking over her own shoulder now, but at least it kept a knife from sinking into her back.
Or her heart.
One would have been inevitable if she’d stayed.
Now, as much as she longed for him back, she pushed them all away.
Roremar wasn’t speaking to her, but Myrella kept trying.
Even Nico insisted his brother would come around.
Emmeline hadn’t returned to the apartment to find out.
She spent her spare time either working on the murder case or searching for the men who spoke of the trading second-in-command, the Averian.
They’d abandoned their spot beneath the Rogue Spirit, and she had yet to track them again.
Regardless of the emptiness of the nights, she didn’t want Myrella and Nico to get closer to her. Not now that she was tracking—and was a target of—a serial killer all on her own.
She’d pushed people away all her life. What was a little more time behind her steel walls?
The temple ruins, the vast starry sky, and the lively jungle.
That would be enough for her.
She sat on the cliff, bare feet dangling over the edge. Given the time of year, she should have boots on, but she needed to feel the air on her skin. Wanted it to sting.
A shift behind her caught her attention, but based on the soft, padded footfalls and gentle swish against foliage, it was only one of the jungle cats. Soon, a night-black panther was lying beside her, her tail curled protectively around Emmeline’s back. She looked into the feline’s jade-green eyes.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” she whispered. A tiny spot of grey marked the cat’s fur, right in the center of her head, between her eyes. Emmeline squinted at it. “A crescent moon? No, I certainly would remember you.”
Gently, she brushed her fingers over the beast’s mark, stroking along her nose. A deep, content purr rumbled through the panther’s chest.
“You can sit here if you’d like,” Emmeline whispered, the words thick as her chest splintered, “but I can’t keep you.” The panther leaned its head on her lap, its body warm against the chill of her leathers. “I can’t keep anybody.”
For a few moments, she stroked the animal’s silky fur in silence, telling the stars her worries and asking them for guidance in return.
“Okay, Emmeline,” she whispered to herself when the sadness didn’t feel so large it was going to burst her lungs. “We won’t pity ourselves for our decisions. There’s still a murderer on the lose.”
She wouldn’t forget that beneath all the regret in the world. Not for Liana and not for any other Starsearcher with an Anphrosia Fate tie.
Shifting carefully to avoid upsetting the sleepy cat beside her, Emmeline dug through the vials in her satchel.
She withdrew small portions of crushed rose petals and jasmine, dousing them in a gentle myrrh oil.
Setting the combination aflame, she exchanged a glance with the feline now blinking curiously up at her.
“Wish me luck,” she whispered, anticipation bubbling in her chest.
Then, she took a deep breath and opened the connection she’d been avoiding for days.
A tunnel of starfire sped around her, deep amethysts whirling with silvers and whites. The stars bloomed and died at alarming rates, like all the fortunes she’d been shoving aside were racing to the surface now.
Emmeline, the Fate whispered. A female form shimmered within the burning white fire, outlined in silver and made of stars, a veil rippling around her. Her features were indiscernible, but Emmeline knew her. In her bones she knew her.
“Anphrosia,” she breathed. It had been ages since she’d spoken to the Fate of Cruelty and Adoration, this vixen who left a train of ruined hearts in her wake. “Have you seen what’s happening? The women dying?”
I have, child of the stars. I have.
Tears stung Emmeline’s eyes on this other plane, stars swirling past them in hurried blurs. On Ambrisk, she ran her fingers over the dark, silken fur of her new animal friend, grounding herself in the connection.
“Why is it happening?” she whispered.
To disclose that would shift too much.
“But can you tell me how to stop it? Who’s guilty? I’ve—” Her voice caught in her throat. “I’ve ruined so much trying to uncover the answers.”
The female form flickered in the fire as she searched for an explanation, white flames rippling down her frame like a waterfall.
As much as Emmeline’s magic had taken in her life, as much as she spent years trying to hide from and compress it into something smaller, this was a part of it she loved.
When communicating with the Fates felt like a conversation more than a one-way imparting of fortunes where she was nothing more than a vessel.
When she was one of the stars, that was when she felt alive.
What is it you hope to achieve in this endeavor? Anphrosia asked.
“What?” Emmeline gasped. “What do you mean what do I hope to achieve? I want to save the women being pointlessly killed.”
How are you so certain it is pointless?
“Because they don’t deserve to die!”
But doesn’t all life lead to death? If this is their time, then it has been written in the paths of fate for all eternity.
Her fingers curled into fists against the panther. Her head pounded with the force of the stars, but anger bubbled through her.
“These murders are meant to happen? But how? How could something so brutal be anything but an act against fate?”
How could this be planned? Who wrote it to be so, and what purpose could it possibly derive?
All life is a Balance. Just as Cruelty and Adoration must uphold one another, so must Life and Death.
And that is a beautiful thing. While some departings are peaceful, other losses are rooted in nothing more than savagery.
To rewrite star paths, to try to change fate and stop these things, would shift the Balance beyond catastrophic effects.
“But there has to be something you can do. Something any of the Fates—”
No, Anphrosia declared, the melodic tone of her voice sharpening. It was the harshest Emmeline had ever heard her speak. Not even a Fate can change fortune, child. We only communicate and advise, but we are not the writers of these tales.
“Tell me something at least. Please. Are they doing this for you?” Emmeline chose her words carefully, desperate for any hint. “Is it an act against you, to honor their Fate ties?”
Anphrosia was silent for a long moment, and Emmeline had the instinct of the Fate growing further away from her. In a sense, she finally said, voice gentle again.
“Is everything we learned of your past true, then?”
Her history with Arenothos, the bloodied hearts she’d left in her wake.
You sought the Warders, Anphrosia said.
“Are we on the right track with the Storytellers?” We. She needed to stop saying we. There was no more we in this case.
They gave you your next step, you only need to recall.
Emmeline ran through the conversation in her memory—the three who had shown up, the scorned hearts, the land dedicated to Anphrosia—but it was all through a thick fog before she fainted. She couldn’t trust any of it.
Frustration burned through her chest as she fought.
As if sensing her distress, the celestial form before her shifted.
In her place, a window of white flames opened on a reading.
Gold light splashed across rolling hills, stringed instruments echoing in the distance.
A barefoot, silk-draped woman danced through the grass, giving Emmeline a knowing look as if she could see her, too.
With a wink, she held her hands loftily at her sides.
Emmeline’s heart pounded as the snake appeared across her shoulders, its tail winding lazily up her wrist. Emmeline swatted her own wrist as if to flick away a phantom creature.
Chase the past that hurts, Anphrosia said. Open the scars beneath the serpent’s scales, and unveil the truth within.
Dark, beady eyes lifted, a forked tongue flicking out. Emmeline’s skin pebbled beneath that look, tainted oil coating her from head to toe.
Beads jingled through her ears, crowds jeering and music thudding with her pulse.
Numbness crept along her limbs. Her fingertips tingled, and the scars on her legs ached.
Do you understand?
“Yes,” Emmeline barely whispered as the Storyteller of Aevollon twirled across the marble floors with her serpentine accessory. “Yes, Anphrosia, I know what I am to do.”
Good. I will see you soon, child.
The stars dissolved, but even once the reading ended, Emmeline couldn’t get the Storyteller belonging to the Fate of Artistry and Trickery out of her mind.
The knowing, wily stare and the snake around her shoulders plagued her as she sat on the cliff, begging the stars for any other answer.
The only response she got was the comforting purr of the panther beside her.
She knew what the reading meant. Spirits, she’d already suspected she’d have to do this, but now…now she could no longer hope she was wrong.
Tingles spread through her limbs, the piercing scars along her thighs throbbing. A familiar, self-imposed numbness encased her heart, slowly seeping along every vein and nerve ending, dulling the soul-deep stings. A defense. So she wouldn’t feel what came next.
The vulnerability, the exposure.
None of it would matter as long as she stuck to the goal.
For her transfer to Valyn and for those who had been needlessly killed, she could do this.
Her fingers stroked the panther’s velvet fur as she made her peace with the inevitable. But despite that shield, if the Fates wanted her to do this—to revisit that past—she couldn’t do it alone.