Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Roremar
Roremar Silventa was stuck in an endless loop of blank fucking memories.
The Fate of Chaos and Revelry had used him to kill eight women plus his brother, and he couldn’t recall a damn moment of it. He tried to fill in the blanks, but there was nothing. And that emptiness—the knowledge that he was guilty without being able to remember it—was slowly driving him insane.
Not that he wanted to know how it felt to kill, but didn’t he deserve to remember those horrors? To be plagued by the silence that followed a life being ended?
Or perhaps the gaps were a better punishment. Never being able to flesh out what had happened, always searching for an explanation.
Fates fortunes, he didn’t even know where he was now. He’d been escorted from the Trade House after Emmeline’s magic blew it to rubble and was imprisoned by Lyra Isle Guard. He hadn’t seen any of his family before a hood was slipped over his head and he was loaded onto a cargo ship.
From there, he’d been passed between multiple boats, some transfers in the dead of night, some on rocky coasts he couldn’t recognize thanks to the scratchy burlap blocking his vision.
Whatever punishment he received, it wouldn’t be enough, but Roremar would happily take the repercussions if it meant everyone he loved was safe from the threat beneath his skin.
That was the one saving grace in all of this, and even that wasn’t enough of a light to bleed into the darkness of killing Nico.
Nico.
Guilt sharpened in his chest, piercing deeper with every inhale. Each time he breathed and his brother didn’t was a punishment.
He couldn’t get the feel of blood off his hands, sticky between his fingers. Iron clung to the stale cabin air.
Roremar’s stomach rolled as the boat rocked. His head dropped back against the wooden wall, the sway of the lantern overhead not helping to steady his nausea. The cracked, clouded glass cast dizzying, broken shadows on the floorboards, chain squeaking repetitively with every swing.
He tried to remember both the recent murders and when Dryvius used him to kill his father ten years ago. The amnesia the Fate’s possession caused had become Roremar’s own personal abyss.
Maybe if he could pick up all the pieces, he could put images to those lost hours. Like one of his puzzles. That’s all he had to do, and then he would be able to see it better.
If he could see it better he could fix—
Fates, he didn’t know what he could fix anymore.
His breathing quickened.
Why had Dryvius killed Nico? What had they even been doing beneath the Trade House? Was Nico a target or was he simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to help Roremar as he always did?
Roremar analyzed every interaction, relived all he could remember. He had to put it together. Had to know.
His chest ached as the memory built and built, a tidal wave rising over him. The knives in his chest dug deeper. The bruises on his wrists from Nico trying to force him off throbbed, the ones he kept pressing to ensure they wouldn’t heal.
He was supposed to protect him—protect them all—and instead, he’d—
He couldn’t—how—
Roremar’s skin was clammy. The cabin spun.
Lurching, he crawled to the corner of the room and heaved. It was barely more than water and bile since he hadn’t been given food since…yesterday?
The small space reeked. It wasn’t the first time he’d been sick since being locked in here. Whenever his mind wandered to Nico for too long, when the cyclical nature of his thoughts became too dizzying, his stomach pitched.
Roremar dropped his forehead against the wall, body trembling.
He should be dead. Everyone would be better off.
But despite how much he deserved execution, he still had one reason to live—one Fatesdamned star he couldn’t let go of even though his mere presence would ruin her.
Don’t you understand, you’ve already ruined me?
Kiss me, Roremar.
In between the endless darkness, there was her.
Emmeline—her lips against his when she’d finally, finally, let him kiss her. When she’d given herself over to him at that last pleading moment, dropped her final barrier, and told him everything words couldn’t convey.
“My beautiful torment,” he whispered as his head spun and the memory played again and again.
He wished the Fates would have frozen time in that moment with Emmeline.
But living knowing she was out in the world—knowing what it was like to kiss her, to watch her come undone—and not be able to have her?
That was the kind of torture he expected of the tragically romantic, fortune-spinning bastards.
He laughed, madness pressing on his mind with each thought of her.
He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, seeing her in the exploding colors behind his lids.
Emmeline DeLeoste was imprinted on Roremar’s spirit.
Her stubbornness, her bravery, her strength.
Her laugh, her beauty, the fucking feel of her as she trembled against him, as she clung to him and begged for his life.
He was designed to want her, had suspected that for a while now. She was the beacon that kept him breathing. There’d never be another.
Just as there wouldn’t be forgiveness for killing his brother.
Why Nico?
Why now?
What happened in the darkness?
Roremar sank into the questions, letting each empty moment and every bout of longing shred through him as he deserved.
It was all better than the one fact he’d been avoiding. The eerie, unnatural silence he couldn’t explain.
Since the seeing chamber—since Nico—Roremar hadn’t heard Dryvius in his head once. Not so much as a whisper or a rumbling laugh from the Fate Realm.
And it terrified him to consider what that might mean.