Chapter 47
Chapter Forty-Seven
Emmeline
He’d confined her to her suite. Not outright, but Rocarri was smarter than Emmeline had feared. He’d known if there were guards at her door that weren’t her own, she was unlikely to leave, especially after the Council House.
But the thing Rocarri didn’t know about Emmeline: She liked being confined to her own shadows.
It was that need that had her slipping into her leathers, extinguishing her lights—even the mystlight lamps on the balcony in case any guards were patrolling the orange groves—and using the ivy to scale the side of the manor.
She’d spent the hours in her cage counting out their rotations, timing everything perfectly so she knew precisely how long she’d have to get to the roof.
Then, she hopped silently across the palatial space until she found what she was looking for. In the east wing of the manor, attached to a glass observatory with all the lights dimmed, sat Balmour Rocarri’s private study.
This was incredibly risky, especially after how clearly the Chancellor had eyes on her, but Emmeline’s patience grew thinner by the day.
She’d written to Lola to ensure Rocarri was busy tonight.
She and Desmond were following him to a cigar den in the exclusive sector of the First District with some of his closest advisors.
Thanks to Lola’s status, they’d been granted access.
Emmeline should have at least another hour.
Still, she hastened to find an unlocked glass panel among the observatory’s expansive windows and ease it open, freezing momentarily when the hinge squeaked.
She counted her inhales, breath fogging in the frigid night air. Her gloves slipped over the condensation as she clung to the building, but when no one in the halls or grounds came running, she slid the window open the rest of the way and ducked inside.
Embers crackled in the hearth from the fire Rocarri had lit earlier, the smoky and fruity scents of extinguished incense lingering on the air. On the low table before the hearth, two wine glasses sat, a bottle drained to the dregs between them.
Certain that nothing would be in plain sight, Emmeline scanned his bookshelves first to cross that off her list. The dark wooden slats bordering the mantle were packed to the brim with volumes and files, but there were no boxes or small wooden lockers typically found for storing incense.
Particularly, incense that could support the budding theory that he was tied to Dryvius.
Whatever nefarious purposes Rocarri may have for her and this tournament, it was clear he was extremely well-read.
And he seemed to have a subject preference: history.
Most of the weathered text embossed on their cracked leather spines referenced magic and mythology rather than battle strategy or government, though there were a few of the latter, dust-covered and tucked into the lower corner.
Emmeline pulled a chair over to climb to the top shelves and grabbed a few leather files, rifling through them.
“Case studies,” she whispered.
Some were conducted by Rocarri himself years ago when he attended an Academy in the southern city of Tortorria.
Others were records by notable scholars he’d obtained either for his own research or in previous schooling.
All were focused on legends and Fate magic, a few tied to a specific jungle region in the southwest of Starsearcher Territory.
Emmeline pulled up a mental map of the continent as she scanned more case studies.
It had been six years since she’d been here, but she knew her clan’s history and terrain fairly well.
Valyn was the city furthest north, taking advantage of the proximity to rivers and ports on the coast. What was the Chancellor’s fascination with the south, then?
Was it simply because he’d studied in Tortorria?
Making mental notes of everything, Emmeline slipped the files back onto their shelf, careful to replace them in the same order she’d found them and ensure nothing else was disturbed.
She moved the chair back before the desk and smoothed out any indentations it left in the rug before the bookcase, then ducked behind the large wooden surface where Rocarri conducted business and took in the world from this angle.
An ash tray, ink, spare paper. The top of the desk was rudimentary. She quickly picked through his recent correspondence, finding a few with Temple Masters across the territory and various governors, but most pertained to trade and the tournament.
Nothing that indicated any keen interest in or connection to the Fate of Chaos and Revelry.
One letter stopped her, her attention lingering on the mention of bonding ceremonies. Her skin prickled, but she kept up her search. If Rocarri was connected to Dryvius, evidence wouldn’t be in plain sight.
Emmeline crouched, pulling open the drawers one by one. Magic swished through her veins, anticipation sending her heart racing.
“Something has to be in here,” she whispered as she reached the bottom drawer.
When she pulled it open, a few empty vials clinked together. Her gaze flashed toward the door.
Carefully, she moved them aside, sniffing each to check what they’d housed, but all were clean. Beneath a number of other metal and glass trinkets, a thick leather file was neatly tucked away. In a place an intruder would have to make plenty of noise to dig out.
At least, one who hadn’t spent years sneaking through the shadows would.
Emmeline had the thing liberated in seconds, the pages flipped open on the floor before her, reading by the light of the moon.
She wasn’t certain what she was looking at initially. She feverishly scanned for any mention of Roremar, Dryvius, or the moniker Chaos and Revelry, but she came up empty.
It appeared to be transcribed records of myths that had previously only been passed down verbally. Like someone didn’t want to risk losing them. There were also maps, all focusing on the southwest jungle regions.
Her gaze flicked up to those files on the top shelf again, pulse pounding.
What was the fascination? Were there any monuments or temples to Dryvius there, or was she perhaps building a case out of nothing more than desperate hunches?
Emmeline flipped another page and paused.
These were very in depth legends. Charts and maps that outlined histories of each of the Fates, dating back to when they walked Ambrisk.
Stories that were typically told around bonfires or over too many glasses of wine to forge mortal myths.
But Rocarri’s notes in the margins went further.
Evidence for why each was true and what it could mean.
Emmeline’s heart pattered faster.
Perhaps she and Lola were closer than they thought when they theorized Rocarri wanted to create his own Fate with this tournament.
Desperate for an explanation, she turned a few more pages, stopping on a wax pressed sigil of a shooting star circling around itself.
“Fate Bound Seekers,” Emmeline read the unfamiliar name beside the sigil. Her hands shook as she read the doctrine on the next page.
This was information on a cult.
According to the map, this group—the Fate Bound Seekers—originated in the southern jungles. Based on the guidelines recorded here, the Fate Bound Seekers deeply honored the Fates, beyond mere Starsearcher reverence.
All of the Fates.
Their doctrine didn’t cross out Dryvius’s name. There were scores of notes about his life and relationship to the others before his supposed death.
The stack of papers was thicker than she could read in detail, but there were theories about branches of coveted magic Starsearchers were responsible for uncovering, research on how different bonds formed, and a lengthy record of star maps that had her pausing.
Were the Fate Bound Seekers the root of Rocarri’s bid for Chancellor and this entire tournament? Were they the ones backing Dryvius? Had Rocarri always known Dryvius wasn’t dead because he had a connection to him through this cult or otherwise?
Or was this all more evidence for his goal to use this tournament to create a new Fate? To perhaps strengthen Dryvius’s power now that he’d revealed he was alive?
She wasn’t sure which possibility was worse.
Emmeline’s magic hummed louder as she paced the roof above the east wing, not ready to return to her cloistered suite. It beat through the balls of her feet, pounded against the tile as if it were trying to break through—
A form landed lightly beside her, much more quietly than she would have ever expected given the weight of those feathered wings.
“Valyrie,” Emmeline clipped, guarded after the Angel’s lack of interference in the meeting today.
“Hello, Emmeline,” Valyrie greeted. Her wings beat softly at her back, and Emmeline straightened, recalling how they’d felt when she’d inhabited Valyrie’s memory in the seeing chamber.
“What are you doing here?” Emmeline asked.
“I saw you from overhead.”
Emmeline’s gaze tipped toward the clouds, parting after the light rain earlier, the moon and stars peeking through. “Were you looking for me?”
“I was simply looking,” Valyrie answered, turning to gaze out over the city, mystlights in windows and lampposts like tiny starflies. “I knew where you would be.”
“Because you read me?” Though any Starsearchers could have asked the Fates about her at any time, it felt like an intrusion for the Angel who toyed with mortal lives so beautifully to be plucking at their threads of Fate.
Who was to say she didn’t simply rewrite one because she was bored?
“No,” Valyrie said, not elaborating, only gazing over the city with longing in her navy eyes.
Just as Emmeline found herself doing so often on Lyra. Perhaps they were not as different as she thought.
Despite her frustrations with the Angel and the endless questions bubbling up her throat, Emmeline was content with the silence. In a sense, it was familiar. So similar to all the years she spent with nothing but her own magic as her companion. And here was the being who’d birthed it.
Perhaps Valyrie could hold answers for her.