Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
Roremar
Roremar remained by the bathing tub for a moment, a voice inside of him begging Emmeline to take that one word back. He didn’t fucking want to leave her alone right now. It went against every fiber of his being.
She was breaking.
Tonight had shattered her, and though they were only partners in this investigation—though the ground between them had been shredded—the tug in his chest yearned to be the one to hold her as she put herself back together.
Roremar wasn’t naive. He had seen Emmeline’s strength these weeks.
Against his will, he’d memorized the way her expression shuttered when they danced too close to the topic of her past. The way her Fatesdamned teeth sank into her bottom lip and eyes squeezed closed when she gathered herself around whatever scars lingered there.
She was exceedingly talented at holding herself up, all by herself.
But for once, he wished she’d allow him to at least gather the pieces.
To kneel before her and hand them to her, bit by broken bit.
But Emmeline excelled at being alone. She was freedom personified, leaping from rooftop to rooftop beneath midnight air, and he couldn’t leash her. Not even now, not even if it meant he was helping her. In the end, it would only drag her down.
Holding in a sigh, he stood, his pants and tunic soaked from the bath water.
“You don’t have to talk to me,” Roremar said, searching her scattered expression one last time as she gazed at the water.
As her hands roamed those fucking scars.
He swallowed at the sight of the bite marks.
“You don’t have to talk to me, but I will be right here,” he swore. “Right. Here. When you want me.”
Emmeline shivered.
At the door, Roremar glanced over his shoulder one final time. Her back was to him, long hair plastered in serpentine paths against her skin. He had to clench his fists against the ache to touch her and force his feet into the hall.
But he didn’t go far.
He couldn’t go far.
Roremar left the door cracked and leaned beside it, head thudding back against the wall.
The aching hole that lived in his chest seemed bigger tonight, like a fist had punched straight through his sternum.
It had stolen all his air, all the fierce determination he’d been wielding against the broken woman in the bathtub now.
With a breath that took tremendous effort, Roremar slid down the wall. And he began his vigil.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there, elbows on his knees and head in his hands, when her voice cracked from beyond the door. “I was seven when they took my sister.”
Roremar’s head snapped up, blood running cold at the hollow tone of her voice.
“I was nine when my father disappeared.” Every syllable seemed to be coming from between shuttering breaths, but the words…
the words were as empty as he felt. She’d always embodied the life the stars breathed into the world, but tonight, telling him these truths, she sounded like the darkness between them.
His darkness that he’d come to know so well.
“And I was eleven when my mother was killed in our home.”
Fucking Spirits. His nails dug into the wooden floorboards. It was the only thing keeping him grounded. The only Fatesdamned contact that kept him from launching himself into that bathing chamber right now and falling to his knees beside her.
That, and the undeniable instinct that she needed him to not be visible while she spoke. To not answer or show pity but just listen and hold these broken fucking pieces of her past between them, because even though she tried not to, she’d let him past her walls.
He’d let them slice up his flesh before they hurt her again.
“It wasn’t the home I grew up in. We left that one shortly after my father left us—he went to find my sister and never came back.
This cottage was secluded. Where no one was ever supposed to find us.
Find me, I suppose.” The stream of consciousness spilled from her as if she was in a trance.
“It was a rainy night. I loved storms—my father called me his little storm of stardust as a girl. Said I brought magic in my footsteps, but I always told him that was my sister, not me. Until she was taken, that is. Then we didn’t talk about her much anymore.
Addie. That was her name.” A cracking breath. “I haven’t said her name in years.”
She paused, and Roremar pictured her hugging her knees tighter to her chest. Digging her nails into the scars on her thighs. Building that sense of self-security she relied on so desperately but that might only be breaking her further.
Splinters pierced beneath his nails as he grounded himself to keep from moving.
“One night, I asked my mother if we could leave the windows cracked to hear the rain. I slept in her bed that night, but the man broke in through my room.” The water sloshed gently, and Roremar pictured her dragging her hands atop the surface.
“I’ve always wondered why. That wasn’t the window that was open, but it’s where he entered. Doesn't really make sense, does it?”
Hollow, broken words.
“I think the fact that he came in through there is the reason I lived. My mother shoved me under the bed when we heard the glass shatter.
“He crashed through the halls—not stealthy at all. Not as I learned to be. It happened so quickly after that.” Another long pause.
“You must be the girl he said. My mother was young, my age now and looked even younger. I guess he didn’t know how old his target was.
Just any girl, and she was who he found.
Because it was me he needed—not her.” The loss echoed through him.
“He did it quickly, at least. Then, he left.”
Fates, he couldn’t help himself. Roremar peeked around the edge of the door.
It was a mistake. Emmeline was staring coldly at the wall. So still, like a corpse given life without a spirit. No sign of a storm of stardust. None of her magic that man was after in her wake.
“He left her on the bed. The mattress was so thin, her blood soaked through it. I’d never realized how much blood a body contained before that night. It pooled over the edge and dripped to the floor. I watched it gather. It sounded like the rain. I didn’t like storms as much after that night.”
Angels be fucking damned. He was shattering with her now, too. He didn’t think he had any more room to break—he broke irreparably years ago—but somehow, Emmeline DeLeoste defied the Fates for him to get there.
He’d help her like storms again. He’d help her find the way back to being that magic if it killed him. Emmeline’s father was right; she was born of it. The strength she retained to shoulder this unfair, brutal hand the Fates had dealt her proved it.
“I sold most of our belongings to buy the oils to properly give my mother a burial. That was the only death I ever anointed.”
How much death had she seen to be able to phrase it like that?
And he realized—the starfire. It paralyzed her when she saw it in her dormitory because the last time she’d truly seen it—not in a reading—was her mother’s burial.
“Then, I ran before anyone could make me stay. I didn’t want them to take me like they did my sister. And anyone who helped me would just wind up dead like the rest.” An inhale. “I ended up in the pleasure houses after that.”
Roremar’s stomach lurched, his next breath stalling. She was only fucking eleven.
As if she heard his stuttered exhale, Emmeline said, “Not like that. First, I did chores. Washed sheets, swept floors. When I was thirteen, they trained me to dance in the halls. I performed with other girls my age, but I wasn’t touched.
“I was passed from hand to hand, from owner to owner. But the dancing…some men have wicked preferences for what they pay for. And I was just a young girl without any power in the world against them. Cruel how the world treats us, isn’t it?”
She paused as if considering that question herself. Roremar nearly shouted yes. Yes, it was so unfair, and he wanted to go back in time to anyone who mistreated her and cut off their hands for doling out the coins, their eyes for watching.
“At fourteen, the Snake Charmer bought me.” A breath hissed through her teeth, stinging his own damn chest. “Clearly, tonight was not the first time I’d met him.
I was in his employ for three years. At first it was nothing out of the ordinary.
Rudimentary performances, leering and comments, but I could ignore all that. It didn’t change who I was.”
“One night, though…he was high out of his mind and wanted a truly unique experience. He wanted me to use his pets. The snakes. Wanted to see his namesake with his prized possession.”
Her fear churned through Roremar’s own blood, his hands shaking.
“They became props in an act, but the thing about live creatures? When you let them out of their cages, no one can control when they bite.”
The scars.
He’d let snakes bite her? Put her on a stage, as a scantily clad teenager—which was sick enough as it was—and watched her be tortured?
Watched a fear take root within her as a form of entertainment?
Fire raged in his veins, and if Emmeline hadn’t been in such clear distress, he’d already be hanging that pathetic excuse for a man from the Mezzanine balcony as he’d promised.
“Sometimes he put the snakes in my bedchamber at night so I would be more comfortable with them. I’d wake from nightmares about my sister and mother to their fangs. Training, he called it.” She nearly choked on that word.