Chapter 2 #3
Gritting her teeth, Emmeline dragged herself through the corridors of the foreign manor. She stopped at every turn to breathe over the pain splitting her skull, the flickering lights and crippling, mad laughter, repeating,
A fortune spun by Fated hands,
A choice taken from forsaken bands.
Two hearts staked through with malice.
Star’s Reign and Star’s Ruin.
She didn’t know how long it was until she collapsed inside her suite, spine pressed to the door. Until the Fates’ voices settled into their dusty hum in the back of her mind and she had enough energy to cross to her dressing chamber.
The mystlights ignited, and Emmeline winced as her sensitive eyes adjusted. Dropping to her knees, she shoved aside piles of skirts, hangers squeaking against one another.
Emmeline didn’t look at the pieces of parchment she’d tacked to the wall right away or the lists and arrows upon them.
She dove for her journal and scratched out those haunting words the Fates had spoken, adding the music and bones to the strict record she’d kept of everything they’d told her since the seeing chamber.
A fortune spun by Fated hands,
A choice taken from forsaken bands.
Two hearts staked through with malice.
Star’s Reign and Star’s Ruin.
Not long now.
When she was done, she fell back on her haunches.
She had no Fatesforsaken clue what the reading meant—what fortune it was referring to, what choice.
But Star’s Reign and Star’s Ruin were two of the things the Fates had proclaimed above the destroyed seeing chamber, so she was almost certain it all had to do with Roremar.
Blinking, she studied the wall before her. The notes. The theories.
The name in the center of it all: DRYVIUS.
The giant question mark she’d drawn beside those seven letters had icy shame dripping down her spine.
She’d assembled this wall her first night in the capital, pinning up her lingering theories and the pieces that were still unanswered after toiling through them for two weeks aboard the ship that brought her here.
The Fate of Chaos and Revelry was responsible for the murders on Lyra—he’d used Roremar to do it—and it had something to do with his relationship to the Fate of Cruelty and Adoration since all the women were tied to her.
But she couldn’t figure out why.
They thought Dryvius was trying to complete a ritual, an act of revenge, each woman a failed attempt, but the specifics were a mystery.
She scanned the list of evidence from every scene, remembering the twelve-pointed star tattoos and the sigil of the Warders of Selene—the cult they’d discovered that wasn’t a cult at all but a reference to the Fates themselves—the background on the victims, and myths they’d uncovered in trying to connect it all.
Nico’s movements those final days were charted on their own page, and her throat tightened as she skimmed the records. His joking laugh echoed through her memory, how he’d confided in her that all he wanted was to lighten his brother’s load.
Tears stung Emmeline’s eyes.
“Roremar,” she whispered, shoulders curving in. “Where are you?”
She tried to look at the evidence wall as she knew he would. With that unique, keen mind. The analytical observation that peeled apart the surface details to reveal the reasoning beneath.
But she couldn’t make the pieces align.
With each second that passed without an answer, the walls of the manor pressed in tighter. A trapped feeling crept up her throat and secured her wrists in chains.
She needed out.
Emmeline shoved upright and fled the dressing chamber, crossing to her balcony doors and pressing a hand to the glass.
Orange groves unspooled across the Chancellor’s land, mystlight lanterns dotting the paths between the trees. Beyond the silver gates, Valyn sprawled. A city thrumming with life that overwhelmed her but right now seemed a lot more informative than where she currently was.
Her sister could be out there somewhere. For the first time in years, they were likely on the same continent—perhaps even in the same city. Emmeline’s heart inflated at the thought.
But there was also a chance Addie was still within the temple network, and that could have led her…anywhere.
She needed to be out there, not on this side of the looking glass.
Turning her back on the view, Emmeline crossed to her writing desk.
If there was any news, she would have received a letter already, but writing one more time tonight couldn’t hurt.
She pulled a piece of parchment to her, ignited the mystlight lamp hanging on the delicate silver chain overhead, and opened her top drawer.
She froze.
“Fate’s fuck,” Emmeline hissed.
With her distraction at the market today, she’d skipped out on Mystique ink. The empty jar laughed up at her now.
Emmeline glanced over her shoulder at the allure of a night-cloaked city beyond the manor’s walls. Then, her gaze drifted to her dressing chamber, thoughts on the bag she’d stuffed behind the racks beside her evidence wall.
“I guess the night awaits.”
Before she slipped outside, she peeked back over her shoulder at the rack of overly expensive skirts hiding the notes that held her shredded dreams.
“Roremar,” Emmeline whispered, “I’m going to find you.”