Chapter 60
Chapter Sixty
Emmeline
“I’ll wait up here,” Desmond whispered at the top of the stairs.
Emmeline’s head whipped around, both of their faces shadowed by their hoods. “You don’t want to see him?”
“If I go down there I’ll break those damn bars to get him out, and that’ll end worse for all of us but especially him.” Desmond glanced over his shoulder. “Besides, who knows when a sober guard will show up. We probably have time given that it’s the first night of the Revels, but just in case.”
Her lips pressed into a firm line. “Thank you.”
“It’s for him,” Desmond reminded her. His tattooed hands fisted at his sides, and Emmeline nodded.
Her heart thundered as she descended the stairs. At the base, she pried a lantern from the wall, the mystlight illuminating a small circumference for her to see by.
The iron from Nico’s blood still clung to the air, each step pricking up her nerves more.
Her magic beaded beneath her skin, as if it wanted a physical release, but she suppressed it.
All the different strands, everything Anphrosia had said to her tonight, she stuffed it deep into that endless well that slumbered within her.
The cells barely seemed familiar from this morning. She’d been following instinct then. Now, the air was clouded with grief and death. She wondered what Fates watched this space tonight, which would tell tales surrounding it.
The first hall was nothing but empty cages, doors hanging open.
There were scattered bits of cloth and overturned buckets in some of them, rodents scurrying through others.
No prisoners were here tonight besides the one she sought.
She ventured deeper, her heart beating through her entire body, down to her toes.
Every breath was a crescendo in the silence.
When she finally rounded the last corner—the depths reserved for the criminals deemed most vial—she found the only locked cell and the man slumped against the wall within, hands chained, chin drooped to his chest.
Her ribs splintered, something within her crying out.
“Roremar,” Emmeline whispered as she sank to her knees. Sliding her hood back, she wrapped a shaky hand around one bar.
The eyes he lifted to her were lifeless. Solid, cloudy grey. No hint of remorse or desperation. No hint of anything at all.
He averted his attention quickly and leaned against the back wall. The cage was so small his outstretched leg nearly grazed the bars. She could reach out and touch him if she dared.
“Roremar, are you okay? Have they done anything to you?”
“What are you doing here?” he spat. The cutting words pulled at the part of her that cared for him—that had dared to hope she may belong with him.
“I’m here for you,” she said, swallowing that pain as every soft and heated moment with him flashed through her memory. The vulnerable and the broken, the sweet and tender, they all choked her. “I needed to speak with you.”
“Why?” he sneered.
The tone was a slap to the face. This wasn’t him. This wasn’t her Roremar.
Shifting closer, she silently begged him to look at her. “Because I know you didn’t do this.”
He huffed a laugh, head tipping back against the wall. He was the image of defeat, not a deranged mass murderer proud of his conquests.
“Fates, Emmeline. Looking for the best in me now?” His gaze finally sliced to her, swirling with ghosts. Chains rattling against the ground, he pulled his knees up and draped his arms over them. “I’m guilty of so much more than you know.”
“We all are,” she asserted. “None of us are innocent in every way. But I know you wouldn’t have killed all these people, Roremar. I know you are not guilty of this crime.”
“And what if I am?” he gritted out, leaning forward. “What then, Emmeline? If I tell you the truth—that I’m responsible for this—will that get you to go away?”
Her throat went dry at the iciness to his words. It was harsher than she’d ever heard him, even back when they were biting each other’s heads off every moment they were together.
Will that get you to go away?
To leave, as so many people had left her before. As she’d been telling him she would when this was all over.
But it wasn’t over. Not yet.
“Nothing will make me give up on you, Roremar.”
“Well, you should.” Dismissive, he leaned back against the wall. “I’m better off in here. No one else will get hurt.”
It was an odd way to phrase it, but that had to have been a tinge of remorse in his voice. And a small hint was all she needed to shift closer to the bars, to reach her hand inside, and urge, “Please, Rore, just tell me what happened. Tell me, and we’ll get you out of here.”
With every minute he was silent, her heart cracked into more and more pieces. She’d wait as long as he needed, though. Even if it left her in shattered ruins, she’d wait an eternity for him.
“Fine,” she said, lifting her chin. “You don’t have to talk yet, but I’m not going anywhere.”
Then, just as he had for her following the incident with the Snake Charmer, Emmeline pressed her back to the wall beside his cage, and there on the cold stone floor, she held a vigil in the silence.
Only unlike her, Roremar didn’t speak.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, but all the while, he didn’t utter a damn word.
Eventually, footsteps echoed down the tunnel, and Emmeline swore Roremar flashed her a nervous glance that gave her hope that he was truly still in there. She shot to her feet, hood up and ready to disappear into the shadows, but Desmond rounded the corner, torch in hand.
“Emmeline,” he whispered, but he halted when he saw Roremar.
“What are you doing here?” Roremar snapped, eyes bouncing between the two of them, more alert than the whole time she’d been down here. “Why are you guys together?”
“Because we want to help you,” Emmeline practically whimpered, her heart cracking further.
“Not possible,” Roremar scoffed.
“We have to go, Emmeline,” Desmond said, pointedly not looking at his friend. Emmeline had a feeling if he did, he’d break. His amber eyes were sharp, features stoic as he waited for her.
With one last desperate try, Emmeline turned back to Roremar’s cell and sank to her knees. The stone was cold and damp through her leathers, and it drove a wedge into her chest to think about Roremar trapped down here, but she pressed closer.
“Look at me. Just tell me what happened,” she begged. “Tell me the truth, and I promise we’ll fix it.”
“None of this can be fixed,” he hissed, leaning closer to the bars so the grey of his eyes shone in the torchlight.
Finally, a bit of life from him. It was wild and desperate, but it was life.
“Don’t you see, Emmeline? It’s all beyond ruined.
And I should have seen it coming. It was the only way for any of this to end. ”
“I don’t understand,” she sobbed, hot tears thick in her throat.
“We need to go,” Desmond reminded her, his voice tight as he placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s nearly dawn. The shifts will change. We’ll come back.”
Roremar glared at him. “Do not come back. If you really want to help me, do not come back here.” It was a warning—for whose good, she didn’t know. Leaving him here couldn’t be the right answer.
“Please, Roremar.” Her voice cracked, shrinking as magic pounded in her chest and that damn thread tugged, tugged, tugged. “Please give me anything. Anything that can help us figure this out.”
Roremar wrapped a hand over hers on the bars, and the touch echoed all the way to the core of her being. “Anything? Emmeline, I would have given you everything. But I can’t anymore. It’s all ruined. And I am so fucking sorry.”
“You still can,” she whispered. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Emmeline,” he whispered, and it sounded exactly as he’d said her name in the apartment last night. When they’d poured out their secrets to one another and sliced off pieces of their souls.
His other hand slipped through the bars, grazing her cheek.
Drifting across her collarbone and down her arm.
His touch emblazoned a permanent reminder on her, a stain that would forever be written in her flesh.
Or a gift, a treasure and a lingering prompt for whenever the days became too heavy and lonely, and she needed a reminder of what it was like to find a place she belonged.
I want to remember, she’d told him last night.
As if she’d ever forget him.
She didn’t dare move as his hand traveled down her body, memorizing every inch. He stopped on her thigh, and his thumb stroked over where her worst scar hid beneath her leathers, like a silent goodbye.
She shivered, words caught in her throat, not noticing as he slipped the dagger from her waist until he was holding it out to her. Pressing it into her open palm and angling it toward his chest.
“Take it, Emmeline,” he pleaded, still trapping her other hand against the bars.
“Plunge this knife into my heart and claim my life, because somehow in this mess, it’s become yours.
And I’m in no way worthy after the ruin I’ve caused, so put me out of my misery and take it.
A death at your hand is a sweeter sentence than I deserve. ”
“No,” she bit out, pulling her hand from the blade and cupping his cheek. “I won’t. I told you I’ll tell the stars about you, and this is not where that story ends, Reckless. You’ll see.”
His grey eyes—still so flat—flicked between hers. Sighing, he rocked back, the dagger clattering to the floor between them. The thing in her chest that belonged to him pulled agonizingly tight.
“Never mind,” Roremar muttered, utter defeat painting his frame. “I’d rather rot with my misery than have you live with a stained soul.”
He slumped against the wall again, and Emmeline knew there would be no more words from him tonight. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she watched him.
“Come on,” Desmond said, gripping her arm and pulling her to her feet.
Just as they were about to leave, Roremar’s voice cracked the air again. “Desmond?”
They both froze, turning back, and Emmeline watched as something unspoken passed between the two men. “Yeah, Rore?”
“Don’t bring her back here.”
The words snapped the last restraint Emmeline had.
Turning toward the tunnel, she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other.
To keep walking, keep breathing, until the air was fresh and they were outside of the Trade House, hoods pulled up.
The tears kept rolling, the hole in her chest dug deeper, but she spun her opal ring around her finger to ground herself.
“That didn’t feel like him,” she whispered as she and Desmond walked back to Fated Ink, the encroaching dawn already too bright. Her head was aching from the lack of sleep and the pent-up emotions. “Something’s gravely wrong.”
“I know,” Desmond agreed. “He’s blaming himself for all of this whether he did it or not. That’s only going to get worse.”
“There’s something he isn’t telling us. Some piece he put together,” Emmeline muttered as stragglers who had stayed out all night wandered past, lively in a way that made Emmeline sick. As they frolicked down the Promenade, she whispered, “How long until that secret breaks him?”