Chapter 64
Chapter Sixty-Four
Roremar
Roremar paced the corridor, the clock at the top of the stairs counting down his demise. He only had hours before Rocarri’s event tonight. He should be using this time to try to figure out what or who or where Dryvius might be.
But ever since Valyrie had told him the truth about the ring from his father, Roremar couldn’t get this idea out of his mind, as reckless as it made him.
The silver clock at the end of the corridor ticked away. He turned on his heel as he paced the fine carpet, his cloak flaring behind him, hood shadowing his face.
There’d been no guards at his prison again today, and it unnerved him. He couldn’t figure out what Rocarri was up to. Was he trying to toy with him?
“Hello?” Aldryn Falliare asked, and Roremar froze. His head snapped up, and he took in those solid brown eyes, strength radiating from them. Strength and a flicker of uncertainty.
Good.
After everything Roremar learned, his uncle deserved to be uncertain. He was sure sewing enough of it. All without even ruining his pristine appearance.
“Roremar.”
“Uncle,” Roremar said, hiding his derision.
“What are you doing here?” Aldryn looked down the stairs but the rest of the building was silent.
It was a wealthy apartment house, not one of the overcrowded ones in less equipped parts of the city. The floorboards didn’t creak and dust didn’t linger in the corners. No, it reeked of privilege and the guarantee you wouldn’t be overheard.
Still, Aldryn said, “In my apartment. Now.”
Rolling his eyes, Roremar followed him. This was a conversation best had in private, anyway.
He took slow steps across the sitting room, leaning against the windowsill and watching birds flit around the garden outside. The street was quiet in this private neighborhood, but Roremar’s mind was loud.
“I was told you were imprisoned,” Aldryn said. Roremar couldn’t tell from the statement whether he’d known it was only a half truth or not.
“I am.”
He turned his back on the window, picking apart the neatly furnished room around them.
Falliare’s spare cloak hung by the door.
A set of silver brushes and combs lined the shelf beneath the mirror on one wall, and a row of crystal glasses sat on the sideboard.
Aldryn poured a measure of whiskey from an artfully etched decanter.
He drained it, set the glass down, and turned to Roremar.
“What brought you here, then?”
Roremar smirked, challenging, “What brought you here?”
Aldryn flicked a brow up at his sharp tone, and Roremar felt the wall shatter with that one motion. A dance they’d been waiting to do for years, the first notes had finally played in the cells beneath the Trade House when Aldryn hinted at how much he’d suspected about Roremar’s magic.
The Temple Master sighed, his poor attempt at a doting uncle facade slipping away as if submerged beneath the truth-saying waters of Wisteria Falls. “I’m here for the interest of the isles.”
“But why now?” Roremar straightened, slipping his hands into his pockets.
“You could have come to Valyn any time over the past two years since the prior Chancellor’s death if you wanted to manipulate the new appointment for trade deals.
Or you could have waited until I was gone if you were truly trying to distance yourself from me.
You haven’t done anything to assist me since you’ve been here, but you haven’t denounced me either.
You’ve acted like I don’t exist.” Roremar took slow strides forward, stopping when they were eye to eye.
“So why now? Was it simply the opportunity of the tournament? The heightened events giving you a chance to blend in seamlessly?”
His gaze dropped over his uncle, Aldryn’s face remaining neutral.
“No, that isn’t it,” Roremar said. “You may argue that’s the reason you set the Remembrance Revels as the deadline for the case on Lyra to be solved.
Because you were planning to leave for the continent shortly after.
But I think, if it was within your control, you’d have come here when things were quiet.
You don’t like fanfare to overshadow your presence. ”
“Get to the point, Roremar. We have somewhere to be tonight.” Aldryn crossed his arms, hands flexing, and Roremar’s gaze fell to the rings on his fingers, so similar to his own.
“Something changed,” Roremar asserted, tearing his attention from their similarities. “Something happened that gave you a hint—an answer you needed—so you came here to seek whatever it is you’re truly after.”
“That’s what you want to know, then?”
“Haven’t you heard? I’m a dying man, Uncle. I think I’ve earned the chance to leave this world with answers.” Roremar reached into his pocket, removing the stone Desmond and Myrella had bought and dumping it on the table. “I think it has to do with this and the ring my father gave me.”
When Aldryn didn’t answer, Roremar lifted his brows, adding, “Care to explain?”
Aldryn pulled a second glass from the shelf above the sideboard and filled them both, passing one to Roremar.
As his fingers closed around it, his mind flashed to all the times he’d had to ask his uncle for help—to all the times he’d stood in the Temple Master’s office—and each time, he was handed a glass of liquor that didn’t solve any of his problems, but he’d taken it because he had to play the game.
Tipping the glass to his lips, this time was different. This was a shattering of a past. A cleansing of charades and removal of masks.
A final act.
“That ring,” Aldryn began. “What did Deacon say it was made of?”
“A unique steel,” Roremar answered simply.
“Didn’t entirely lie, then,” Aldryn muttered.
Defensiveness prickled Roremar’s spine, though he wasn’t quite certain where the insult was headed, so he swallowed down his retort.
“It was a unique, very malleable metal. It bends fairly easily to things beyond fire, but it’s nearly impossible to destroy.
“None of that is what makes it truly special, though. None of that is why he chose it.” Aldryn took a sip of his liquor, eyeing Roremar over the rim, clearly waiting for him to ask a follow up question.
Roremar didn’t oblige, but his mind was piecing together theories based on everything Valyrie had told them.
After a long moment, Aldryn smacked his lips and said, “Your father’s industrious personality led him to a few discoveries that interested men much higher in status than himself.
” Roremar ignored the sneer in his uncle’s voice, hearing of his father both ripping open a wound and waking a predator.
“Occasionally, when the findings were severe enough, they landed on my desk. I don’t believe Deacon ever knew that.
He would have done anything in his power as investor and innovator on the projects to keep them from me. ”
“You’re likely right,” Roremar agreed.
“Over the near-century that I knew him, a few of his ventures were of interest. One spoke of mining in the mountains on Zyon. Of a rare mineral they found—that had previously been found in very few other locations, most of which are on Gallantia. But this source—this was on the isles. This was ours.” Greed dripped off those words.
“You mean it was his.” Roremar’s temper battled him. “His and whoever worked on that project. Not yours.”
“You forget that the isles belong to me,” Aldryn claimed, his voice dipping into a lower realm of corruption than anything Roremar had heard from him before.
“The isles belong to all the warriors who live on them—those who founded them and care for them. They do not belong to solely one person.”
“That is what I let you all believe,” Aldryn said. “Do you wish to get the rest of your story, dying man?”
Roremar’s anger was boiling. He took another sip of his liquor, and it practically sizzled down his throat.
“This mineral found on Zyon, when paired with the correct, malleable metal, becomes defensive. The mineral itself is called Fatalium, and it is—”
“Legends say it can carve a Fate’s constellation from the sky,” Roremar finished. He’d heard the name before—perhaps only once or twice. It was one of the dozen ways it was claimed Dryvius had been killed.
It was Fatalium that his father had the ring forged with? That his uncle was after now? In the Quarry Lock and beneath the earth at Wisteria Falls, it was all that rare mineral that could be forged into metal to defend against Fates.
Roremar’s heart stampeded.
“I do not know if that use is true or myth, but it can defend against a Fate’s magic,” Aldryn said. “It keeps Dryvius contained to you.”
Keeps.
His uncle didn’t know that Dryvius had broken that chain, then. Roremar kept that to himself.
“What do you want with the Fatalium?” Roremar demanded, forcing his voice to steady. The empty spot on his finger where that ring used to sit ached.
“A mineral that can control Fates?” Falliare’s grey brows lifted. “Surely you see how valuable that is?”
How dangerous, in the wrong hands.
“So that’s what you came here for? To chase sources of this mineral?”
“Yes, and as I work toward it, I’m befriending the Chancellor. He has his own…interesting plans. He tasked me with a few accompanying requests while I work. I think it will be a mutually beneficial partnership.”
Roremar purposely kept his face impassive, not letting on he knew anything about those rituals. He couldn’t begin to decipher the cold tone to Falliare’s voice. The threat. His mind was thrown by the revelations about his father.
No matter how hard Deacon Silventa had tried to keep his family from Aldryn Falliare—no matter how hard Roremar had worked in his wake—the Temple Master always won.
“And you knew? This entire time, since my father gave me that ring, you knew what it was?” He was breathing heavily. “You knew about the protection my father left me, and you didn’t think it was important to tell me? Especially after Dryvius killed him.”