Chapter 39 #2
Emmeline’s entire frame was stiff as she turned back to the table, and it drove a knife into Roremar’s gut. Quietly, keeping his eyes on the next set of cards he was dealt, he asked, “Have you uncovered anything else new the last few days?”
“Nothing particularly helpful,” she responded, tapping the table to ask for another card.
Roremar did the same. “I went to Viperous Vices the other night and asked about clientele beyond the victims. Thought maybe our suspicion of the place being watched was right, but they get all matter of interesting patrons there, so there wasn’t anything unusual.
” They both handed their cards to the dealer, and the next hand began.
“They’re cooperative at least. I asked about specifics of the Fates, comparing different myths with their darker books.
Did you know they have a whole shelf on depraved legends? ”
It was the most consecutive words she’d spoken since she told him they had to come here, and Roremar relaxed with each.
He shook his head. “Did anything stand out?”
Emmeline shrugged, nimble fingers twirling her cards between them.
“I purchased a book and have been comparing it with one Nico found in the Academy library. So far nothing, but there are a lot of references to how the constellations and star maps may have different interpretations than is commonly accepted.”
While her demeanor didn’t loosen, her voice became more enthralled the longer she spoke, and Roremar fought the urge to stare at her.
Partners, he reprimanded himself.
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
“Nothing concrete either,” he began. “Isle Guard is still watching Viperous Vices, though. They haven’t seen anyone suspicious hanging around.”
Emmeline scoffed. “Useless without me.”
Roremar smirked, handing his losing cards to the dealer as Emmeline won a stack of coins. “Apparently,” he joked. “I looked through everything the War Master sent you and went back to the Trade House. There are some inconsistencies in the shipping logs.”
He didn’t mention that Desmond had helped him realize that through his own records of ink shipments, and Emmeline, so distracted by whatever sent them here, didn’t ask.
They played a few more hands, swapping stories mindlessly to keep her talking.
Emmeline was winning her eighth in a row when the back of Roremar’s neck prickled.
He scanned the balcony wrapping the second story of the entire Mezzanine, his eyes landing on a shadowed form directly behind them.
He couldn’t make out his face, but every instinct told him they were being watched.
Placing a hand on Emmeline’s back where the fabric dipped to the base of her spine, Roremar said, “You’re having good luck, Huntress.”
She flashed him a very forced smile. “The Fates are on my side.”
Roremar leaned in, hand drifting further around her waist. He relished in the forbidden feel of her, fingers curling against her hip as he whispered, “Balcony, directly behind.”
He could hear her breath quicken with his proximity despite how distracted she was. His lips drifted over her skin before he leaned back, resisting the urge to linger closer, and he smirked like the cockiest fucker in the world. As if he’d just said something salacious to earn her answering blush.
Emmeline’s eyes flicked up, then back to him, and in a move that nearly had Roremar abandoning this entire plan, she grazed her palm up his thigh and squeezed once.
Almost time, the touch said, but fuck did he wish it meant something entirely different.
No.
That wasn’t what this was between them, no matter how his body craved hers. Emmeline was only doing that as an agreed upon signal. Roremar lifted his gaze to the balcony, but the shadow was already gone.
It only took one more hand of cards—plus a few long minutes of Roremar talking himself off the ledge of wanting Emmeline—until a dancer with platinum hair in a sleek curtain to her waist and barely any clothing at all approached their table. A delicate tattoo of jasmine flowers wove up her arm.
With a bored look, Emmeline glanced over her shoulder. The woman extended a polished silver tray, a note folded in the center. While Emmeline’s expression didn’t so much as flicker, Roremar didn’t miss the slight tremor in her hand as she reached for the paper.
“He wants to see us,” she muttered to him.
“Right this way,” the dancer said, gesturing for them to follow, tray tucked beneath her arm.
Winnings from their ruse forgotten, Roremar helped Emmeline off her stool and kept one hand braced at her back as they wound through the packed card tables and bodies.
“You going to finally tell me who we’re meeting?” Roremar muttered in her ear as they ascended the stairs to the balcony. Emmeline pressed back into him at his touch.
Those faceless shadows he normally studied from the hall below lined the walkway, bodies writhing, drinking, smoking.
He tuned them all out, though, when Emmeline tilted her head back and said, “The Snake Charmer.”