Chapter 62
Chapter Sixty-Two
Emmeline
Four days. Four damn days since Roremar had been locked up, and they hadn’t figured out who was actually responsible for this.
With lessons paused for the week of the Revels, all of Emmeline’s attention was being put toward unraveling the truth of this case. She’d pried into the Fates, pestered Falliare, pulled books from the Accords, and revisited the Trade House and docks for official ledgers.
Nothing made sense.
Her magic had been colliding in her chest like stars tumbling from the sky for days now, restless and unhappy.
She bounced in her seat at the table in Desmond’s basement as she dug through her research for what felt like the hundredth time, trying to stifle the feeling as she cross-referenced dates and locations of the victims.
“You’re doing it again,” Desmond muttered as he pulled himself from a reading.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Emmeline apologized, stilling her bouncing leg. “I can’t help it.”
“Is it because you need a session?” Desmond asked, waving at the kitchen counter. “We’ve got just about every tincture or herb you could want here, thanks to you.”
He’d been more welcoming to her as the week went on, their shared desperation to save Roremar smoothing over their previous issues. Emmeline had been bringing over more and more supplies every day, anxious for something that would unlock a path of the stars to help them.
Nothing worked.
“No, it’s not a reading,” she confessed. “Just…pressure.” Emmeline rubbed her chest to dispel it. “Falliare said they’re likely to make a decision about Roremar’s fate at the end of the Remembrance Revels, and they’re already halfway over.”
Three more days. The encroaching deadline was a knife poised at her throat, and she was sure whoever held that blade wanted her to bleed out. Fates, if she couldn’t save Roremar, she may as well.
Desmond rubbed his eyes, the hazy dove-blue cloud of smoke turning them red.
“Reading is clearly not the way to find any answer. All its doing is revealing the same fucking useless information over and over. Anphrosia this, revenge that.” He scoffed.
“Roremar’s right, the Fates are a bunch of witless fools. ”
“Don’t insult them now,” Emmeline chided, but she couldn’t bring herself to disagree. All her life, her magic had been her lone companion. The thing she knew and trusted more than anyone. Now, when it mattered, it was useless.
“Did your friend’s notes on the Warders of Selene give any insight?” Desmond asked.
“Not that I can see. It talks about an ancient ritual where the Warders promised themselves to Selene, but that’s all that’s clear.
The rest was a mix of ancient languages and half-legends.
” She rubbed her eyes. “The only thing it confirms is that the Warders existed—could still exist—but I don’t see how it connects to Roremar. ”
Flipping through another book on Anphrosia—this one on myths of her life—she asked, “What’s Roremar’s Fate tie, again?”
Emmeline didn’t make a habit of asking people what celestial being they were aligned to lest they pry into her own secrets, and she didn’t recall Roremar every mentioning his.
“Pheasantos,” Desmond said, rising to refresh their cups of tea.
Emmeline perked up at the name of the Fate of Passion and Exile. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ve known him a lot longer than you have,” Desmond retorted, his impatience surfacing. “I know what his Fate tie is.”
“I’m not denying that, but Roremar was born at the end of the sixth month thirty-two years ago, correct?”
“Yes?” Desmond intoned as he set the kettle on the mystlight stove.
Hurriedly, Emmeline shoved aside the books she was digging through, pulling over the piles of star charts.
There were a few ancient scrolls borrowed from the Accords, their corners tattered and ink fading.
She rifled through them, dropping to the floor and spreading them out alongside the ones she’d drawn in recent weeks until Desmond’s apartment was a map of the heavens itself, dotted with constellations that covered the Lyra sky at various times of year, and over years throughout history.
“Those born near the summer solstice can’t be aligned to Pheasantos.”
“They obviously can,” Desmond challenged.
“It is so rare, Desmond.” She looked up at him from her spot crouched on the floor, imploring him to understand. “Pheasantos historically goes silent for a week before and after the solstice every year to honor the Myth of the Lost Daughter.”
Desmond waved a hand, leaning back against the counter. “That’s an old legend.”
“Humor me for a moment, please,” Emmeline begged, dragging over Skies of the Fates, the book Nico pulled from the Academy library weeks ago, and flipping through it.
She also opened the book on dark legends she’d gotten from Viperous Vices, locating the history of the Lost Daughter—one of the darker moments in Fate history.
Desmond nodded for her to continue.
“Occasionally—and I mean occasionally—a tie will still occur to Pheasantos in that time surrounding solstice. It isn’t entirely impossible.
But thirty-two years ago was a quarter centennial of the anniversary of when the daughter was stolen.
Every twenty-five years, even his constellation disappears from the sky as he retreats into his home in the Fate Realm to honor her memory. ”
She pointed to the star map of the summer solstice seven years ago, the last quarter centennial that marked exactly that—a large blank spot took up residence in the sky, precisely where Pheasantos’s major constellation should have been.
“So Roremar had a rare Fate tie, what’s wrong with that? You and I both have two, that’s pretty fucking rare.” Desmond’s voice wavered, though. Behind him, the soft bubble of boiling water picked up.
Emmeline went on, her magic an aching pulse within her now, palms tingling.
“Without a constellation, it’s impossible for any Fate tie to be forged.
I teach my students about it all the time.
The constellations are the grounding forces.
Their positions at any given moment and the will of the Fates ruling them determine how a tie will be woven at birth. ”
“What about one of his minor constellations? Was the Hammer there?” Every Fate had their main symbol—their namesake—and a series of smaller ones.
“The minor constellations don’t write Fate ties.
” Emmeline’s fingers fluttered over the maps, mind racing as the kettle whistled fervently.
She wished Roremar were here. He would have already been completing her theory.
“Sure, I suppose, hypothetically, the other Fates could have written some sort of connection in his absence, but it would have been extremely intentional. Or Pheasantos could have woken his constellation for the day Roremar was born, pausing his vigil, but I’ve never heard of that occurring.
And if it did, it begs the question of why. Why Roremar? Why then?”
Desmond shoved the kettle off the stove and crouched beside her for a closer look, tracing the different lines that embodied this version of the night skies. “What are you saying, then? Roremar lied to me about his Fate tie? Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered, scanning the maps again.
“It’s a rare enough phenomenon for constellations to disappear that maybe he didn’t realize it happened during his birth year when he first told the lie.
You said it yourself, many think these are no more than stories.
Not everyone believes in the myths of the Fates. ”
And Roremar less than most. He wasn’t a skeptic, but she’d noticed how often he’d tried to distance himself from the celestial beings.
“I’ve never seen him read,” Desmond admitted, his brows pulling together.
“Never?” Emmeline’s brows shot up. “How in the stars is that possible?”
“I’ve always had to conduct sessions more frequently because of the two ties. Roremar always said he read when I did or on his own, but I suppose I’ve never seen it. He rarely has his own incense or tinctures, and he fucked around in as many classes as possible when we were at the Academy…”
She’d never seen him read either. Every time she did, he observed her. At first, she’d assumed it was because he was trying to figure her out. Then, because he seemed to love trying to put her pieces together.
“He faked it.” Emmeline’s heartbeat pounded, the thread in her chest that Roremar had tried to sever pulsed with magic, begging her to keep going. “Do you think it’s possible he doesn’t have a Fate tie at all?”
“Could be.” Desmond shrugged, seeming at an utter loss.
“It would be extremely difficult to get past all his schooling and the Fatorum Revelus without one though. The tests are all meant to prove the strength of your alignment,” Emmeline mused, spinning her ring around her finger as she hunched over her maps.
“I’m sure it’s been done, but why would he bother? ”
“He’s never liked talking about his own magic. I thought it had something to do with his father.”
“His father?”
“When he died, he said some things to Roremar that stuck with him.”
Emmeline straightened. “He told me his last words were to take care of the family.”
“Of course, that’s all Roremar repeated,” Desmond grumbled.
“He did tell him that. He also told him something about the Fates being inevitable, that fortunes can be changed but not once it’s too late.
I think a part of it made Roremar feel disgraced for letting his death be unstoppable.
He took it personally. He never really liked speaking of the stars after that, and I never forced him to. ”
The Fates being inevitable.
Those words clawed through Emmeline, trying to dig up some truth. Her chest tugged, a lock begging to spring free.
Frustrated, she pulled the notes Regina had given her on the symbol representing the Warders of Selene closer. Various renditions of the winged insignia stared up at her, notes scrawled beside each in both her handwriting and Regina’s.
One for each Fate, the history instructor had written.
“One for each…”
You speak of our purpose? That’s how the Storytellers had referred to the Warders. As if they were not the Warders themselves, but they were made in their image.
“Our purpose,” she muttered, gasping as the sigils clicked into place. “It’s the Fates.”
“What?”
“The Fates—they are the Warders of Selene. These symbols are all for them. It wasn’t a cult—it’s the Fates themselves.” Her mind was spinning faster than she could speak, blood pumping with the realization. “Let me try something.”
Emmeline sprang to her feet, gathering a dozen different vials from the shelf and setting up various oil wells around the floor, the star maps she was most interested in at the center of them.
Desmond watched her curiously, but he leaned against the counter, arms crossed and lips sealed.
Emmeline poured a bit of oil into each glass holder.
She pulled over the rewritten records of everything the Storytellers had revealed, all the evidence they’d gathered on Lyra, and Nico’s notes to cross-reference the myths of the Fates.
She opened everything to the pages she needed.
Then, she settled at the heart of the circle.
“Light them all,” she instructed Desmond.
He followed without complaint, interest piqued. “What’s your plan?”
“To use everything at my disposal,” she said, jaw setting.
And with all the information spread before her, she loosened the tap on her magic. For the first time in eighteen years, Emmeline fully dove into the pressure that had been thrumming between her veins, more insistent that ever. More desperate. More wild.
Voices exploded around her, begging and pleading. Some warning, others humming taunting songs.
The words Anphrosia had recently spoken to her played on haunting repeat. Be prepared to lose yourself along the way.
Reign and Ruin, a booming voice echoed.
Fall and bleed…
Two hearts staked…
The melodies overlapped, each one coming from a different direction. She tried to pry them apart, to organize each voice so she could categorize what the warnings might mean, but they were a maelstrom beating her down, the pressure of so many fortunes overwhelming.
A pair of wings expanded, twelve stars circling them. Faster and faster, they spun until they morphed into one. The solid white orb rose into the exploding sky, cracking open at its peak.
Feathers poured from within, drifting to her feet and sinking into the ground.
One name drifted on the roaring wind: Selene.
The longer Emmeline sat there, the hotter starfire flared around her. Her breathing turned ragged as she thought she heard someone calling her name, but she was stuck on this plane. Stuck as constellations ignited and extinguished above, over and over again, cracking and sealing.
For Roremar, she swore repeatedly as she dove deeper into that cataclysmic force awaiting her.
She reached out to where she knew Skies of the Fates and the dark mythology books were propped open, the notes on the Lair spread before her, and pressed her palm to the cool parchment on her realm.
Stars rippled through the violet sky, shattering. Instead of white fire, a shower of crimson exploded from them. Blood, she thought at first, horrified as it clung to her skin.
She couldn’t run. Couldn’t dodge it.
But a drop landed on her lips, much lighter than she expected, and when she flicked her tongue over it…
“Wine?” she asked.
Magic burned within her, anticipation bubbling in her chest, begging her to understand.
Hazy memories took shape in the wall of white fire before her.
Roremar and her at the reflecting pool. The caves beneath his home with Cirre, walls glimmering with veins of minerals.
The Storytellers’ Lair, the messengers of Aevollon, Anphrosia, and Arenothos no more than brief glimpses, a shadowed figure looming behind them.
“Oh, my Angels,” Emmeline gasped. The wine poured down on her, soaking her dress and hair until everything clung to her skin. The rich, fruity notes drowning her.
The reading imploded in a burst of fire, and she collapsed forward in the basement, clean of wine but panting as every flame winked out and smoke filled the air.
“What is it?” Desmond asked, dropping to a knee. “Emmeline? What did you read?”
She swallowed, throat dry and stinging. “It is so much worse than we thought.”