Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Emmeline
A sickly-sweet silk handkerchief pressed over her mask as that arm banded around her waist. Something familiar and floral clouded her mind. She knew the scent, but she couldn’t place it through the haze, could barely remember where she was.
Reflexively, Emmeline’s hand shot to the wrist of her attacker, pulling to keep them—him, based on the size and feel of his arm around her waist—from pressing it tighter against her face, drugged liquid seeping beneath her mask.
She held her breath to keep from inhaling any more of the venom and dug her nails into his forearm.
“Ah-ah, Fateblessed.” He tutted, snickering in her ear, but it wasn’t a laugh she recognized, at least not now. Not like this.
But from the way his voice curled around the word Fateblessed, he knew exactly who she was.
Desperation beating through her, Emmeline curved her nails in deeper, ripping down until he was bleeding. Maniacal laughter rolled from his chest into her spine as he relished the pain, his breath warming her neck.
The florals made her head spin, his amusement echoing in her ears.
“You’re quite the fighter, aren’t you?”
She couldn’t answer. Her tongue was thick, her limbs leaden, but she lifted her foot as best she could and slammed it down, driving her heel into the top of her attacker’s arch. Though his boots were thick, he grunted, clever insults and more strained laughter spilling from clenched teeth.
Down the way, the door of Angel Brew opened, music and cheers wafting over the cobblestones.
Footsteps. Those were footsteps, right? They grew fainter, though, pattering away as her attacker pulled her back against the apartment building, deeper into the shadows.
Emmeline’s vision was hazy. Magic swarmed her mind, the readings drenched in longing and tears and crazed glee, but she was lucid enough to know she shouldn’t let this man get her somewhere dark. Somewhere others wouldn’t be able to see them.
The tavern. She needed to get closer to the tavern. Into those warm pools of mystlight spilling across the stones—pools that rippled as the lanterns swung out front.
Emmeline shoved an elbow into the man’s gut. It was a weak attempt, but it surprised him enough that his body curved forward. She used what strength she retained to brace her stance, twisting to send his cloaked form stumbling around her.
And all the while she kept those nails digging into his skin. Ensured his blood continued to spill. As he steadied himself, he ripped his arm from her grasp, flesh tearing. Her exhale was the only satisfaction she could show as she scraped out long claw marks, deep enough to scar.
The cloth fell from her face as he staggered back a step.
Emmeline shoved aside her mask, gulped down clean air, and screamed.
Or she tried to.
But her tongue was too heavy, her throat thick as tar. Words slurred in a jumbled, hoarse cry.
Emmeline ripped a triple dagger from her thigh and threw it at him. The silver blades were a shooting star in the night, soaring toward her target and—
Missing him.
She blinked rapidly, knees weakening. She was seeing double, and she’d thrown two feet to the left of where he actually stood.
“Fate’s tits,” she slurred, and she thought she heard him chuckle again, the sound ingraining itself in her drugged memory.
“You want to tempt the Fates?” he cooed. The words pulled at a string in her blurry mind, but she couldn’t place them.
The man tucked the oiled cloth into his cloak with a casualness entirely disjointed from the panic gripping Emmeline’s chest. The residue still dripped down her neck, seeping into her skin and making her dizzier.
Readings thrummed through her blood, all as jumbled as her vision.
Stone towers wrapped in dancing silver threads.
Blood spilling over lips and crimson-stained smiles.
Her attacker took a step forward.
Emmeline pulled another dagger from her boot. She’d never get away if she tried to run, not in her state. Her only option was surprise.
This time, she didn’t let the weapon fly. Instead, she charged.
He caught her wrist and bore down, pressing her into the wall. Emmeline shoved a knee between them, connecting with his groin, and he doubled over in pain.
She slammed her dagger into his wrist.
Readings burst forth as his blood spilled—forges in inky oil and feathers morphing into arrows, Valyrie rising among it all.
Emmeline gritted her teeth, pressing the blade deeper. Her pulse reverberated through the steel, the force of her readings desperate and consuming.
Silver light flared.
Warmth gushed across her hand as she pulled the blade out, crimson splashing over her favorite boots and staining the street. The sweet floral scent was tinted with iron, and Emmeline couldn’t help but grin.
It may have been the drugs warping her vision, but she swore, for a flash, beneath his hood and with a bleeding arm cradled to his chest, her attacker smiled back.
The door to Angel’s Brew swung open. Light splashed over the ground at his feet, and Emmeline froze.
On the cobblestones, darkening as the rain flecked it, was a very familiar symbol.
“Next time, Fateblessed,” the man said as he fled.
Emmeline didn’t notice which way he went.
Her attention was locked on the wings imprinted on the stone, roses in bloom on one half and withered on the other. A mark that had been at every murder scene on Lyra, scattered on the walls in Dryvius’s secret cavern near the Silventa house.
Emmeline’s knees weakened.
“What? How?” she wheezed out, wings fluttering in her blurring vision.
So many pairs of wings, she couldn’t keep track.
Emmeline stumbled forward onto the main avenue, her fingers crawling to the feathered tips. They weren’t burned or carved, not a slip of paper soaked into the ground by the rain. They were simply there, glittering in her drug-dazed vision.
As her eyes closed, all she could think was, The Warders of Selene.
Emmeline’s throat was dry as the Soulguider’s Deserts when she woke, the sickly floral smell piercing her memories.
For a moment, she was waking up somewhere else. On an isle across the sea, surrounded by worried voices.
It was the Storytellers of Arenothos, Aevollon, and Anphrosia, but for the thousandth time, I don’t know why.
The whole place is a fucked-up tribute to Anphrosia.
But it wasn’t Roremar’s voice muttering nearby now.
It wasn’t Myrella or Desmond or Nico…certainly not Nico.
Her stomach churned as she came to, alone in a foreign city that was supposed to be full of opportunity, blinking her eyes open in her bedchamber in the Chancellor’s manor.
Her head spun, vision taking a moment to focus.
Or perhaps it was her heart taking the time, preparing itself for whom she wouldn’t find waiting at her bedside.
But while Roremar wasn’t there, Alana was.
Alana and…someone else hovering in the shadows at the edge of the room. Emmeline was instantly alert.
“You’re awake.” Alana exhaled, fingers curling around the post at the foot of Emmeline’s bed, smudges of color staining her hands.
The curtains hanging from the frame were pulled back on one side, sheer white fabric blocking out most of the light from the chandelier hanging over the center of the room.
Based on the sun spilling through the balcony doors, it was midday. Last night…the floral scent…it all came back to her. And her skin went cold.
The cloth she’d been smothered with was drenched in oil from the flowers on Lyra. The large pink blooms that had been burned beside each of the murder victims, that had been in the Storyteller’s Lair and wreaked havoc on Emmeline’s mind and magic every time she was near.
The ones Dryvius had grown in the caves near the Silventa’s home and used in his ritualistic killing.
And the insignia stamped into the cobblestones belonged to the Warders of Selene. The cult she’d found out was not a cult at all but a reference to the Fates themselves.
Had her attacker been connected to the murders somehow? A worshiper of the Fate of Chaos and Revelry who’d heard what had happened on Lyra? While most scorned him, there were some fanatics out there who revered Dryvius.
Emmeline’s gaze flicked to her dressing chamber where her notes were hidden, but she didn’t want to voice any of this in front of strangers, nor did she want to tell them whom she’d been hunting for. Alana was friendly, but Emmeline couldn’t trust her so easily.
“What happened?” Emmeline asked, feigning forgetfulness to find out what Alana thought had occurred.
“You were unconscious and covered in blood,” Alana said, shaking her head.
She wasn’t frightened as Emmeline had first thought.
If she wasn’t mistaken, Alana almost seemed to be fighting off a laugh at the absurdity of it all.
“For Fate’s sake, Emmeline, when you were brought back here I thought you’d been stabbed. ”
“I was the one who did the stabbing,” Emmeline assured her.
“Yes, and that is something I want to hear more about.” Alana nodded. Definitely amused at Emmeline’s dagger-wielding tendencies, then.
The tension bracketing Emmeline’s shoulders eased. If Alana was entertained, she wouldn’t be as likely to dig too far into any lies Emmeline spun. She’d only want a good story.
“And where did those come from?” Alana pointed to the wooden chair beside the door where Emmeline’s bloodied leathers had been dumped, the ivory cushion now smeared with red.
Her boots sat tipped over beneath it—at least she still had her favorite pair, though they were bloodstained again.
A curse she’d never see the end of, apparently.
Alana crossed her arms, lips pursed in mock thought. “Those certainly weren’t in the wardrobe the Chancellor gifted you.”
“No, they weren’t,” Emmeline admitted, mind spinning. Her clothes were over there. With mystlights and fires warming the room and the feather-stuffed comforter, she hadn’t noticed she wore nothing more than a silk slip.
Her voice shrank, but she tried her best to pretend nothing was wrong. “Who undressed me?”
“I did,” Alana said.