Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Emmeline
Serchus was so whole.
About her height, his body was still made of swirling cosmos, but the edges were complete, and there was enough dimension for her to tell his clothing was finely tailored. She could even make out the elegant cut and detailing, every inch sharp.
As usual, the Fate of Secrets and Greed’s face wasn’t visible, but instead of it being a haunting, empty void, an elaborate mask covered half, flaring up and over his head, a feathered wing stretching around one side of his skull.
“Hello, Emmeline.” His voice was a laugh on the air, and his mouth. She could actually see the clear movements of the muscles in his cheeks when he spoke.
It almost sounded like he was greeting her for the first time ever. Like all the times she’d read him before were incomplete.
“What’s happening? How is everything so”—she swept her fingers over the tops of the feathery grasses, their soft bristles tickling her skin—“real?”
“That is a tale fair for my ears but not yours,” Serchus said, another peel of boyish laughter slipping from him as he straightened his lapels.
It appeared the changes to her surroundings didn’t extend to the celestial being’s personality.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. Serchus was the Fate of Secrets and Greed. His readings were notorious for complex riddles, often requiring you give something over in return. Many of his searchers rarely read beyond what was necessary, the exchange more of a hassle than an aid.
But she was desperate.
“What tale can you tell me?”
Serchus bobbed up and down on his toes. “Oh, a great many things, Emmeline DeLeoste, but I require you give something in return.” He snapped his fingers, vanishing, only to blink back to life behind her, perched in the sprawling branches of a tree, reclining as if he didn’t have a care in the realms.
Three unmarked graves popped to life among the tangled roots, the tombstones’ weathered marble gleaming in the reflection of Serchus’s body and contrasting with the gnarled, dark bark of the trunk.
Serchus hummed, the melody carrying on the breeze. “Give me a secret, and I shall tell you a fortune.”
His song carried all around her, haunting her every step as she walked closer to the Fate.
“What sort of secret are you after?” Emmeline asked, scanning the unmarked graves for any hint of whom they buried. “I’ve given up so many.”
“I only dabble in the richest truths.” Serchus swung down from the branch so he hung from his hands. The stars making up his form rippled with each kick of his feet. “One that pertains to your soul, my dear, and all those at the other end.”
Emmeline’s heart thudded, and deep in her bones she knew what he wanted—who waited at the other end of her soul—but she couldn’t voice the words. Couldn’t or it would shatter her crumbling resolve when she already felt too much.
“Must I say it?” she whispered hoarsely.
Serchus dropped down to the earth, landing completely silent as an eerie giggle slipped from him. “That is as much a confession as I require. A fair tale you have earned, but I shall choose which, and no negotiations will precede.”
A creaking echoed far off, like a rusty hinge swinging open and closed again. The breeze picked up, wrapping around Emmeline and misting over her skin as if she stood beneath the spray of a waterfall.
“May I return for more if the one chosen does not aid me?”
“Oh”—another boyish laugh—“you and I will be seeing much more of one another, Emmeline DeLeoste.” The stars flashed overhead, and Serchus smiled up at them. “But yes. The more secrets you give, the more I shall share in return.”
“You have an agreement,” Emmeline swore.
“The story I have for you today is one of both past and fortune.” He held out a hand with each of those words, stardust shimmering around his palms. “It is of a key who was forged and a lock that turned when he bled.” Serchus’s young voice took on the mystical tone of the Fates, maturing with each sentence.
“The key held a secret, you see? He did not mean to, but he learned of deviled plots and forsaken schemes. He saw they would be wielded to one’s own rise or demise—that part has yet to be determined, and that is where your fortune waits.
So, the key made himself an instrument, a link on a long chain of dancing fortunes, and now you are in his game. ”
“I’m not the key, though?” Emmeline clarified, and Serchus shook his head.
She wasn’t the key, but her fortune was entwined with it. Was the key Roremar? He did not mean to form this link. That could be speaking of his Fate tie to Dryvius.
Or perhaps Dryvius was the key, and he hadn’t meant to form the link to Roremar. Perhaps Dryvius never meant to develop another Fate tie after his supposed death.
A key that was stolen, and a lock that turned when he bled. That could definitely be about Dryvius’s death.
Truthfully, if what she guessed from Anphrosia’s reading yesterday was correct and Dryvius was still trying to use Roremar, it would make sense why Serchus chose this story.
One’s own rise or demise. That is where your fortune waits.
“Is this a warning?” Emmeline asked, her skin prickling as the Fate shared the haunting tale.
“Isn’t all of history a warning in one way or another?” Serchus asked. With a bubbling laugh, his voice slipped back into its usual giddy state. “What matters is what we decide to listen to. So much is hidden and rewritten.”
Hidden and rewritten. Like the Warders of Selene, Selene herself, and groups like Realmspinners. All wiped from historical records. What other legends had been rewritten in history?
As if Emmeline’s unspoken thought was what he’d wanted her to ask, Serchus nodded, and with a silver flash, he was gone. The Fate’s celestial shape receded into its initial bead of light, returning to the mask constellation overhead.
As Serchus’s star slipped back into place, each pinprick of light glowed brighter. Brighter.
A hum mounted on the air, like Aevollon’s music she’d heard recently, accented by cracking bones. It swelled to a deafening beat, and her ears rang. Her magic pulled against her skin. Her chest tightened.
Then, the entire sky imploded in a great crescendo of shattered glass. And the Fate Realm cleaved apart in a blinding red light.
“Fates,” Emmeline panted as she rocked upright in the Archives, gulping down air. “That was so much stronger than it has been.”
“You said it’s been doing that often?” Myrella asked from her side as Lola handed her a glass of water.
Emmeline nodded her thanks, drinking half in one go. “Yes, since I arrived in Valyn, but nothing as powerful as that.”
Anphrosia had warned her she would have to give up everything to save Roremar. Emmeline had thought she’d meant her secrets, not the control of her own magic.
“What did Serchus say?” Lola asked, huddling back in her chair and tucking her knees to her chest.
Emmeline explained how different this reading had been from most, writing down what she was able to recall verbatim.
“A key,” she repeated, underlining the word. “He kept referring to this person as a key, or a link because they knew something they weren’t supposed to.”
“Dryvius?” Desmond asked from where he leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
“I think so.”
Lola twirled a lock of hair around her finger, thinking. “Or Roremar is the key.”
“That’s the other guess,” Emmeline said. “It adds up to my reading with Anphrosia yesterday where she implied Dryvius was still using him.”
“What did she say?” Myrella asked.
“That Dryvius is lying in wait and will reveal everything soon thanks to the help of…his heir.”
A tense silence filled the room.
Emmeline hadn’t mentioned Anphrosia’s exact wording last night when she saw how much Roremar’s Fate tie was taking a toll on him, but the threat showed in Lola’s tight jaw, in Desmond’s cracking knuckles.
“We at least have hints of a cause now,” Emmeline assured them. “A lock and a key. Roremar is one and Dryvius the other, and the Fate used him to unlock something.”
“Maybe unlock his constellation,” Myrella guessed. “It hadn’t been seen since his death. And Roremar thought his reading was in the Fate Realm last night. Perhaps Dryvius is drawing power from the symbol being back in the sky and using it against the Fates.”
Emmeline’s stomach dropped at that prospect. “If that’s true, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about it or how we help Roremar.”
“We’re jumping to conclusions,” Desmond said. “We don’t know that Serchus was talking about Dryvius and Roremar at all.”
Desmond was right. They didn’t know.
But Emmeline could feel all the Fates looking at her, as if they were waiting for her to figure this out. It was as stark a pressure as the eyes in the capital. And when she leaned toward theories about Roremar, all that attention perked up.
“I want to go again,” Emmeline said, brushing her hair back and rolling her shoulders.
Myrella eyed her warily. “Are you sure?”
She nodded, meeting each of their eyes as her magic stirred wildly. “I have one more reading in me.”
“Me, too,” Desmond said. He kicked off the wall and took a seat in front of the low table, rearranging the vials he’d need. He splashed orange blossom into a well and dropped crushed laurel leaf in it.
“I’ll try Aevollon.” Emmeline reached for the lily of the valley incense, another of Aevollon’s favored scents.
“You sure?” Desmond asked, eyeing her from behind the blond strands that slipped from the knot at the back of his neck.
Emmeline nodded. The haunting notes of his music wafted through her memory. “He’s involved in all of this.”
His Storyteller had been one of the three—four if she counted Dryvius—who appeared to her and Roremar when they visited the Lair on Alvan during their investigation. That had to mean something.
“Let’s try,” she asserted. She took another sip of water. Then, with Myrella hovering over them, clearly biting her tongue, she and Desmond lit their incense.
Emmeline closed her eyes, and shortly after her last visit, she returned to the place between realms.