Chapter 68
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Emmeline
Emmeline’s vision was fading, tears streaking from her eyes as the guard crushed her windpipe. She summoned all the strength left in her body and threw her weight forward, turning to roll across the ground. The move surprised the guard enough that he toppled after her.
He didn’t let go, but he loosened his hold around her torso, and she wrenched an arm free. Her fingers danced across the rug, slicing on shards of glass, grappling for one of her discarded daggers. She nearly cried in relief when the cool handle slipped into her palm.
Black spots blinking before her vision, eyes still on that door, she swung the knife up.
The give of flesh and arteries as it sank into his neck was sickly satisfying. His blood exploded across her hand, flowing down her arm and sticking to her hair, and he sank forward on her frame. Emmeline shoved him off, pulled the dagger from his neck, and sprang to her feet.
She didn’t stop, more guards pounding behind her. She dragged in rough breaths as she ran, lungs screaming and throat bruised.
Only two guards and the Head of the Trade House remained before the seeing chamber door.
Without a thought, she threw the triple blade in her hand. It sliced perfectly across the throat of one guard. He fell as she rushed up, and she swiped a short sword from his body.
She met the remaining guard’s advances. Swords weren’t her preference, but she wasn’t entirely inept with them. And she used this one to distract the guard until she could slip around his defenses, swiping another fallen dagger from the ground and jamming it between his ribs.
That one wasn’t deep enough to kill, but his hands grasped the wound as he fell to his knees.
Braid flipping through the air, Emmeline spun on her heel and slammed the Head of the Trade House to the wall by the throat.
The fear in Brean’s eyes was satisfying. Emmeline never let this side of herself be seen in the day or by anyone who knew her name, but wielding a strength she’d hidden for so long was empowering.
“These aren’t the first lives I’ve taken, and they won’t be the last,” Emmeline confessed. “I have no problem adding you to the list.”
“Crazy bitch,” Brean spat, and Emmeline punched her in the jaw. The Head of the Trade House crumpled over, and Emmeline kneed her in the nose.
“I can do without the name calling. My students know better than that.”
Swiping the keys from where Brean had dropped them, Emmeline tried several in the lock, fingers fumbling as she checked over her shoulder repeatedly. Brean was staggering to her feet, hands clasping her bleeding face.
Two more Lyra Isle Guards charged down the hall. A third was on their heels, Desmond even further behind him, and all the isle officials beyond.
Emmeline tried another key in the lock. When she glanced back, the third guard came into view. Darcy. The one who’d been working so closely with Roremar. He grimaced in determination, and he lunged, tackling one of the guards ahead of him to the ground.
“Hurry!” Darcy yelled as he fought to pin the other man.
Emmeline didn’t hesitate. She shoved another key into the lock, and her heart inflated as it turned. Her magic was a pounding drum in her ears and a lightning storm in her veins.
She wrenched the door open and halted, toes on the boundary, expecting to see Roremar before her, but she had to brace an arm across the doorway so she didn’t topple forward.
The seeing chamber was nothing like what she’d expected. It was an explosion of the skies above, the scent of nearly every Fate slamming into her.
The glimmering white stone that comprised the walls, floors, and pillars were rippling reflections of starfire.
The resins that imbued them when they were forged to give them the power to strengthen readings shimmered like a thousand tiny stars dotting every surface.
Trails of white fire shot between them, forming a web around the room and pulling at Roremar’s body as if they could rip his Fate tie from his soul.
And overhead, the ceiling was a perfect circle of stained glass, split into twelve panes.
One lit up now, flickering like lightning struck it.
“Dryvius,” Emmeline breathed as a panther blinked in and out of view, etched in the glass.
Roremar was sprawled in the center of the room, his body convulsing with each burst of power that shimmered off the walls—each wave of starfire that flared and slammed into him.
“No,” she breathed.
There’d be no getting him out of there. He couldn’t run to her as she desperately wished.
His agonized scream bounced off the marble, her chest ricocheting with his pain. From the heart of the web of fortunes and starfire, Roremar cracked an eye open, finding Emmeline in the doorway. He shook his head.
Her magic beat erratically, shaking every inch of her body. Her nails dug into the doorframe.
She couldn’t leave him there. And he couldn’t run to her.
The remaining guards and officials were only strides away—hands outstretched toward her—and Emmeline realized there was only one option. If she wanted to save him, they needed proof that he wasn’t a danger.
Knowing what this was about to do and ripping herself wide open, giving up every part of herself, she dove into the seeing chamber.
And the explosion that followed as her body crossed the threshold could have wrenched apart realms.