Chapter 56
Chapter Fifty-Six
Emmeline
“How could he have done this, Emmeline?” Myrella sobbed into her shoulder later that evening. The day had been a whirlwind of interrogations and tears.
After the guards took Roremar away, they’d walked her to an empty chamber in the Trade House. Given her a glass of water to calm her nerves and offered her incense or oils, which she promptly rejected.
She hadn’t realized how much blood had stained her until they emerged from the cells. With the bright mystlights and polished marble of the room they’d stuck her in, the crimson swiping the pale lilac of her dress and her bare hands was striking.
She’d needed to scrub her skin, her heart, get all that taint off.
She’d stuttered through every question from Darcy with the Lyra Isle Guard, unable to string logical sentences together because nothing about this made sense.
Roremar had lied to her—to all of them—and killed not only multiple innocent women but his brother, as well.
His brother who didn’t even have the correct Fate tie.
She could barely get a reaction out when Darcy told her he didn’t know what would happen to Roremar now, but the most likely guess was that he’d be executed.
How could he have done this?
It was the question she continued to ask herself, disbelief scrambling her thoughts. Was she in denial? Was personal investment making the facts seem illogical when she’d found him at the scene with evidence? Her stomach churned as her thoughts turned murkier.
“I don’t know,” she whispered to Myrella, holding onto her tighter.
Myrella’s fingers tangled in the duvet, the pale yellow and white pattern too bright for this day. “Nico didn’t deserve this. I know I didn’t know him long, and Fates, I was so difficult about it.” Regret fractured those words. She took a rattling breath. “But I know he deserved the entire world.”
Emmeline’s chest pinched. Bright yellow flowers—Nico’s effort to win her over—sat all around Myrella’s dormitory. On the table beside the bed Emmeline was on now, tucked away in a small alcove. On the dresser beside the door. On the windowsill.
They’d draped grey scarves over the mystlights to dim them for mourning, but it was only a useless symbol. It didn’t dull any of the hurt.
“He wanted to see it, you know,” Myrella said.
She reached for one of Nico’s letters she’d kept in her nightstand, now stained with tears.
This one was from shortly after they first met—one of the ones he never sent until after Alvan.
“He said maybe once his siblings were grown, he’d take a year and explore Gallantia.
Neither of us have ever been to the continent, and I was thinking—if things went well—I’d go with him.
” Her lips quivered. “I never thought this would be how that dream crumbled.”
“I’m so sorry, Myrella,” Emmeline said for the hundredth time today. She’d been the one to tell her what happened. It had only felt right on a day that was so wrong. She’d repeated that apology countless times.
Her sorrow meant nothing, but what else could she say?
Myrella’s mourning eclipsed the world, each sob feeling to Emmeline like it would cleave the realm apart. Her agony reached into Emmeline’s own chest and ripped a thread right out, seeping across the entire Academy. It was like she’d become entirely unwound, losing a vital piece of herself.
Not again, not again.
Words stuck in Emmeline’s throat, the memory of Roremar’s shaking body and trembling voice echoing through her. Her magic pulsed in her chest, as lost and confused as she was.
Myrella leaned back against her pillows, dragging a finger over a loose thread in her bedding. Her hair was limp around her frame as she traced the ink on Nico’s letter. A small hiccup bubbling out of her.
“I think he loved me. He never said so, but I saw it in his eyes. Felt it in his words. I think he didn’t want to say it because it was too quick and he didn’t want me to be afraid.” Another hiccup. She dragged the back of her hand beneath her eyes. “I wish he had.”
“Don’t regret anything.” Emmeline shifted, pulling Myrella to face her and swiping her thumbs across her cheeks. “Don’t regret the short time you had with him. Cherish it and remember him always, but don’t ruin it by thinking of what you could have done differently.”
Myrella nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks with each blink. “And to think he told me that first night that we couldn’t be together. That he was leaving.” Her voice broke. “I never thought he meant like this.”
“Neither did he.”
“If Roremar really did this, I hate him, Emmeline. I’m sorry to you, but I do.” Her voice was sharp as daggers, fingers curling around the paper in her hand so sharply, Emmeline thought she’d shred it.
The vow was a knife in Emmeline’s gut. She didn’t know what to do with it other than let herself bleed around the edge.
“I know” was all she could say.
But Roremar loved his brother. He devoted his entire life to protecting his siblings, providing for them and ensuring they each had the opportunity to achieve anything they dared to dream. Fates, the entire reason he hadn’t let Nico help him care for the family was because he wanted more for him.
When she held Myrella, though—looked into those wide eyes and wiped away heartbroken tears—when she remembered how Nico’s blood stuck beneath her boots, she couldn’t deny the facts.
She just wished she could make sense of them.
She sat with Myrella for hours, tucked into the piles of colorful pillows on her bed until the sun was setting, the sky outside streaked with pink and orange that felt too beautiful for this day.
“You should go,” Myrella finally croaked.
“Are you sure?” Emmeline sat up, looking for any hint of a lie.
Myrella nodded, exhaustion lining her body. “Falliare excused me from the opening ceremonies of the Revels tonight, but I know he didn’t extend that to everyone.”
“Not to be rude, but I don’t care about that. I’d rather stay here if you need me.”
Myrella cracked a smile. “Thank you, Emmeline.” She squeezed her hand. “But I need to be alone for a bit.”
Emmeline’s throat thickened. Myrella always surrounded herself with people. Never wanted to be alone as long as Emmeline had known her. Now, she needed it.
“Write if you need anything at all,” Emmeline said as she stood, and Myrella promised she would.
As Emmeline traipsed back to her room, she knew there was a good chance she’d be late for the festival, but she needed a moment to breathe.
She hadn’t had a single minute to process her own feelings about all of this.
Once Darcy let her leave the Trade House, she’d gone straight to change and find Myrella, but she’d been in a state of shock through it all.
When she closed the door of her dormitory and leaned back against it, her bones were brittle with exhaustion, waiting for the right breeze to make them snap.
Her heart had become a block of sadness, denial, and betrayal. She’d lost so many people, how could she not be accustomed to it by now? How was this somehow the worst?
Because you allowed yourself to trust again, a voice in her head whispered.
She wasn’t sure if it was her own or her mother’s or perhaps a Fate.
But it was true. She’d let nearly every wall down, and this was where it landed her.
Caring too much, another life to mourn—two, because she didn’t see how Roremar survived this.
As she kicked off her boots, all she wanted was to sink into the emotions warring through her. To let the sadness win because she was once again alone, and she didn’t think even the stars could handle the torment mounting within her.
“You knew this was how it would end,” she muttered, and her chest ached. Emotion welled in her eyes. “You knew you weren’t allowed to keep them.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she wiped them away. This was how it had to be.
She was going to leave anyway. Supposed it would be sooner now that the case was solved.
Perhaps Falliare could orchestrate her transfer as soon as the Remembrance Revels were over.
Even that possibility didn’t dull the slice to her chest because for once, she’d gotten comfortable. For once, though she hadn’t admitted it to herself, she’d allowed herself to see beyond running.
Sliding to the floor, she dropped her head into her hands. How had she gotten here? How had she gone from searching for a murderer to sleeping in the bed of one?
She couldn’t help but think about the irony that she’d spent so long wearing her armor for the sake of protecting those around her, but the moment she dropped a few pieces of it, the person she was letting in imploded. Not at her hand, but his own.
Was that part of her effect? Her father, Roremar, plenty of others had said she carried magic, but was it the destructive kind? The heat burning within a star that was beautiful from afar but would kill you if you ventured too close?
Tilting her head back to stop the tears, she eyed the stacks of journals and ledgers on her desk. None of them, not a single page, had pointed to this outcome. But…
The evidence was there.
She and Roremar had never been together when a murder occurred. The flowers used in the ceremonial incense were grown in the caves near his home. He’d had unlimited access to Desmond’s stores of ink and…
“Fates…” She sighed.
He’d had dark smudges on his hands before. She’d noted them at more than one murder scene and thought it was dirt from his ride there or his lessons at the Academy. She hadn’t thought it was ash or anything nefarious.
He’d been so tired all the time, he could barely stay awake. He’d nearly fallen asleep while they were working multiple times.
The grudge he’d always seemed to carry about the Fates and the small comments he made about them being untrustworthy…
Her magic thumped in her chest at the thought.
Emmeline stood, striding around her room.
She plucked a sprig of dried lavender from the windowsill, studying the wilted buds.
Pressed them between two fingers and watched as they crumbled to the dusty wooden ledge.
Dusty because she hadn’t been caring for the space. Because she’d been…
She didn’t know what she’d been doing. Living, perhaps.
But a shadow wrapped around her shoulders now. Dipped beneath her skin, teasing the secrets that lurked beneath her armor. The things she’d been trying to run from, to hide…
They all woke.
Magic pulsed through her veins, cracking the corked vial she’d stuffed it into for years, bright as starlight but sinister.
Wanting and greedy. It had budded in her chest as Roremar watched her slip her hand between her thighs last night, but that had been laced with lust and desire.
This was different. This magic wanted to devour all those who had hurt her.
Who had wronged it. It wanted the world to taste the venom of a woman used and lied to, of a power suppressed and battered.
Twirling her opal ring around her finger, she thought of Roremar. Of the artwork he’d had etched on his body. Of how he would respond to this new vow inking itself into her skin.
As starfire swirled through her and she dressed for the Revels, her mind ventured into all the moments they’d spent together, when he’d care for her and—
No. She shut out those thoughts.
She no longer would tolerate being the serpent who carried scars beneath her scales. She would inflict them on the world.