Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Roremar
Opening the apartment door and finding Emmeline at the top of the stairs sent such an overwhelming rush of solace through Roremar’s tense bones, his knees almost gave out.
“Huntress,” he greeted stiffly, pretending he wasn’t breathing freely for the first time in days at seeing those hazel eyes.
“Reckless,” she said much softer, the mystlight lantern above bathing her features in dim yellow light.
He didn’t allow himself to smile. The word—that she still called him that, saw him as that—grated on him now more than it had before, but the familiarity pushed against a knot in his chest, forcing it to loosen, as it had been every day they’d spent together.
He hated that a part of him was relieved to see her. Relieved to know that her heart still beat. Though, despite their argument, he was convinced he would know if it didn’t.
“What are you doing here?” Roremar asked, bracing a hand on the doorframe. His rings clacked against the wood. He was shirtless, tattoos on full display, and he didn’t miss how her eyes tracked his movement, studied the ink decorating his skin. Didn’t hate it either.
“I came to apologize.”
“That belongs to Desmond.”
Her eyes met his, the tug in his chest straining. “I know,” she said. “And I’ll give him his due apology, too. But yours is different, and I wanted to start here.”
“Why?” He squinted at her.
“Because I need your help.”
He huffed a soft laugh. “At least you’re being honest with your motives this time.”
She sucked in a breath, sadness splintering her stare. “I deserve that.”
“You do.” But he stepped aside, allowing her to enter. He didn’t quite know why after how she’d lied to him. Maybe he thought she deserved a chance, too.
Emmeline crossed the room silently. There was something different about her, but he couldn’t name what.
Perhaps it was just nerves. Her back was spear straight, her shoulders held in the perfect impression of that woman she tried to present to the world.
The one he had somehow coaxed to unravel over the weeks.
Her guard was up again.
But why? It had to be more than just this argument between them if she was asking for help.
She perched stiffly on the wooden bed frame and held her chin high. For all the discomfort rolling off her, she didn’t even fidget with her ring.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I suspected Desmond,” Emmeline began, words rigid.
“I’m not sorry he was on my list. Even he admitted I had the right pieces.
But you and I were supposed to be partners, Roremar.
” Fuck, when she said his name, when her guard dropped and a hint of sorrow laced through it, it drove a sword through his heart.
Opened a way for him to forgive her. “I shouldn’t have hidden my theory from you.
Not only because it could have hindered the investigation or ended up with more people getting hurt, but it wasn’t fair to you.
” She sighed, the sound enveloping him, and all her pain pressed against his lungs. “I’m sorry.”
Keeping his distance, Roremar leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. He had obliterated way too many boundaries with her recently, and all it wound up with was him being hurt.
“That was a good speech.”
“Good enough to forgive me?” That Fatesdamned lip bite. Not every piece of her was tucked behind that mask after all.
He held back a groan. They were going to have to be professional here. Nothing more. “To begin. Only because you actually sounded like you mean it.”
“I do,” she swore. “It was wrong of me to hide such an influential secret about this investigation.”
“You can’t keep something that big from me anymore, Emmeline,” Roremar said. “It could have wound up with you or someone else getting killed if you let your guard down chasing the wrong lead.”
“Trust me, Roremar,” she whispered, “one thing I’m never doing is letting my guard down.”
Stars, did he know it.
And a part of him wanted to dismantle the entire Fatesdamned thing. He’d put her back together afterward—he was good at that part—but his chest ached as if he needed to know what was behind the mask.
He couldn’t, though. No matter how badly he wanted to, she had crossed a line, and he had his siblings to worry about.
“Trust me, Huntress. I’ve noticed.”
It wasn’t like he hadn’t lied and cheated before, but to deceive him into accusing his best friend of murder? It was a different level of dishonesty. Even just the consideration of it choked him.
But he’d watched Emmeline closely these weeks.
He’d tucked away plenty of facts about her.
What candles she gravitated toward. How she’d folded and refolded the corners of her papers or books while she worked.
That Fatesdamned lip bite. But most importantly, he’d learned how much she isolated herself.
He’d thought about it since speaking with Nico at the Trade House yesterday.
He didn’t understand why yet—hadn’t cracked that puzzle—but maybe that was a part of this.
Every time they’d danced closer to each other, the threads were being pulled, an unraveling.
She fought at the slightest sign of kinship forming.
Maybe she didn’t understand his friendship with Desmond because she had never experienced something with that intrinsic level of trust.
Perhaps it went a step further, and that was why she fought to keep her guard up every Angel-forsaken moment of her life.
Sighing, Roremar pulled out a chair from the table and spun it around, bracing his arms on the back as he studied her. “I won’t force you to open up about other things, but when it comes to evidence in this case, you have to.”
“Agreed.”
In so few words, it was a line drawn. A bargain struck.
One corner of his lips quirked up, but he tugged it down.
“I’m still mad,” Roremar tacked on—more as a reminder to himself than to her. “Desmond will take time, but I’ll work with you. That’s all this is, though. A partnership.”
A fraction of his relief from earlier seemed to slip beneath her mask. “Good because I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I need your help.”
He leaned forward, the familiar thrill of their hunt pumping through his veins. “Tell me.”
She took a deep breath, every emotion wiping from her features. “We need to go to the Mezzanine.”
“We can’t just walk in and request an appointment,” Emmeline repeated for the third time as they approached the Mezz.
The structure was gilded in moonlight, music flowing from behind the closed doors. Couples littered the steps outside, the balconies above strung with mystlight lanterns casting wavering pools of light over their forms.
“Then what’s your plan?” Roremar asked.
Emmeline had insisted he change into a finely made black tunic trimmed in velvet before they walked over, her own dress lined with lace and dainty gems, an elaborate pattern of straps crossing her open back.
Wealth. That was their image tonight.
Emmeline glanced at Roremar over her shoulder as they stood before the towering doors to the Mezzanine, the music within already thumping through his blood. The words carved into the frame caught the light: Beyond these walls, worries wait. Within these halls, cravings sate.
“We gamble,” Emmeline said, voice dull.
“Curfew is in less than two hours,” Roremar reminded her as he held the door.
“Afraid of the Temple Master, Reckless?” Emmeline teased, but it didn’t have her usual mocking tone, and dammit he missed it.
“Depends. You have those pretty knives on you, Miss DeLeoste?”
Emmeline pulled up the hem of her dress, revealing a palm-sized dagger strapped to her ankle. Roremar was sure it wasn’t the only one on her. His throat dried out when he met her eyes again.
“Then, no, Huntress. I’m not afraid.” He swallowed, holding her stare.
That’s all this is. A partnership.
He was a Fatesdamned fool.
As if Emmeline heard his thoughts, she straightened, facing the door again. “We’ll be done by curfew anyway.”
Any hint of playfulness was gone from her tone, and she didn’t elaborate as she led him inside. Sleazy stares swept over her, sharp-eyed and a bit too keen on the sheer lace leaving very little of her figure to the imagination.
A figure they had no damn right to look at.
Silently, Roremar met one man’s eye as they crossed so closely their shoulders brushed. He paused for a moment, scowling down at him with a look akin to pure death.
The man gave Roremar a once over, and he saw the recognition dawn. He swallowed and kept walking, his steps a bit quicker than they had been before. At least his damn reputation was worth something.
Emmeline led him to a table in the middle of the gambling hall, sapphire velvet centered below a silver chandelier strung with eleven equivalent constellations and one dark one. Light glinted as they swayed daintily overhead, splaying spotlights on the crowd below.
She took her seat, Roremar claiming one beside her.
He still hadn’t put together all the pieces of why they were here, but the budding theories Emmeline had explained on the walk from Fated Ink had shredded him.
With each step, she’d visibly shut down further, yet she proceeded to this place that haunted her because her reading from Anphrosia had shown her a Storyteller, and that Storyteller had directed her here, to meet with some man Roremar didn’t know for a reason she had yet to fully explain.
Anphrosia hadn’t given her much to go on, and agitation rolled through Roremar at the fact.
“Fucking Fates,” he muttered as the dealer gave them their first round of cards. The deck was modeled after the celestial beings, each suit bearing twelve different symbols with numerical values.
“Bad hand?” Emmeline asked, chestnut waves swaying over her shoulder when she looked at him.
“Yeah,” Roremar deflected, folding his cards though it actually was a decent hand. “Not a good start.”