Chapter 67
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Roremar
Yes, Emmeline had breathed into him, and it was every vow Roremar never knew he needed.
And when he kissed her, slow and indulgently like he would for eternity, he swore the Fatesworn bond sealed more with every brush of their lips.
Fuck if he didn’t want to keep her there—keep her from the rest of the world, from the threats.
What if they could simply run away from it all?
The two of them, alone where his reputation didn’t matter and her magic wasn’t the reason people pretended to cherish her?
Where he could love her properly, the only way he knew how, and Emmeline could finally learn what that felt like?
Where no one else mattered.
But with them, others would always matter. Emmeline had to find her sister, and Roremar had so many people whose happiness he had to prioritize above his own.
That was their reality, even if he’d known for weeks that she was his dream.
But this—them—was also their reality. And he’d be damned before he lost it.
For a long time, the greatest truth Roremar knew was he would go to the end of the realms to protect his family. Now, something was equally as important.
Now, the greatest truth of his life was he was made for Emmeline DeLeoste.
He wasn’t sure how that shift changed him, his life, or his purpose, but he knew everything was different. Was unfolding on some path the stars had written years before he’d even been born.
As Emmeline sighed against him, tucking her head beneath his chin, he knew it was right.
“We need to be smart about this,” she said a too-short while later as they redressed, admitting they had to attend Rocarri’s event tonight despite how badly he wanted her to remain unclothed, here. With no eyes or hands on her but his own.
Or perhaps somewhere with a proper bed they could put to use. As long as she was there, he would take either.
“I’m always smart, Huntress.” When he pulled his tunic over his head and shook his hair from his eyes, Emmeline was giving him an admonishing stare. “What?”
“I’m serious. No more public threats to the Chancellor.
No more taunts.” The worry creasing her brow wrenched his gut.
He stepped closer, and Emmeline braced her hands on his chest. “Between Dryvius, your uncle, the Chancellor, and whoever in the tournament may be working with him, we’re facing so many battles.
We need to focus on surviving tonight and the trial tomorrow. You need to survive.”
“Emmeline,” he sighed.
“Roremar,” she countered. “Do not tell me you’re a dying man.”
He wrapped his hands around hers. Emmeline’s shook, but Roremar had been trained to be strong against uncertainty, against pressure.
“A lot of people in this city want me dead. Saying otherwise doesn’t change it,” Roremar said gently.
“Then we need to find a way around it.”
The bliss he’d been in shattered. “Dryvius still—”
“No.” The word was harsh, silencing him.
“I know you feel guilty—and all the complicated grief and heartache inside you right now? It deserves to be felt, to wring the tears of it dry. But you don’t deserve the blame, nor do you deserve the consequences.
I know you’ll continue to say maybe you do, but Fates damn me, I’ll continue to remind you how good you are. ”
He couldn’t just turn it off—the grief, the depression. It didn’t work that way. It was like gasping over a constant hole in his lungs, a hand holding him beneath water.
He watched Emmeline to breathe through it. This city had tried to snuff out her fire, but she was fighting back. Fighting for him. He tried to do the same, but when he thought about lifting his head, the pressure of the world above engulfed him.
Roremar took a deep breath, emotions filling his lungs.
“The entire time I’ve been in Valyn, I’ve only been trying to get to you—to get you.
And I will fight for you until my dying breath, but I haven’t once considered what comes next.
How I’ll live with this constant burning hole in my chest that feels like it’s on fire at the edges?
Every breath hurts.” His voice cracked. “When I think about Nico…it all hurts.”
He may find a sliver of peace once he came to terms with the fact that he wasn’t truly guilty of his father’s murder, but he hadn’t even begun to process that. The wave of hatred for his uncle overshadowed it. Roremar’s mind was a dark place he didn’t quite get but sometimes felt he belonged.
Emmeline nodded, eyes watery, and he thought she might be the one person in all the realms who understood. He could feel her pain with every inhale.
“Can I tell you what I’ve learned about grief?” Emmeline asked.
“Of course, Huntress.”
“It never goes away.” She sniffed, wiping a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.
“I’ve blamed myself for my sister being taken—it was my magic that attracted the temple traders.
Mine was stronger, she was only four. And I’ve blamed myself for my mother’s death, too. They were looking for me.”
“Those weren’t your fault,” Roremar said.
Emmeline smirked through the slow tears staining her cheeks. “Hypocrite.”
Roremar narrowed his eyes, but Emmeline placed a hand on his chest, thumb tracing circles over his heart as she spoke.
“That blame doesn’t absolve the grief, though.
We think it’ll help to have someone to put responsibility on—to be angry at—but it only makes it worse because when we blame ourselves, we don’t allow ourselves to process the loss properly.
We punish ourselves by holding on to the pain. ”
Roremar never wanted to process his father’s death. He wanted to feel it.
If he was being honest, in the past ten years, he’d never tried to process what he thought he’d done. He hadn’t even told anyone. It had been a question in the night, one that rotted him, tricked him, and played games with his mind.
Emmeline went on, “Even if we don’t blame ourselves, the grief doesn’t go away, but it gets a little easier each day.
Then, some days it’s inexplicably harder.
Punishing yourself, though? Turning away from it?
That isn’t the answer.” Voice cracking, Emmeline whispered, “Don’t let the ones who are really responsible win. ”
It was that final plea that had him saying, “I’m trying, but I don’t know how. How I’ve been used…it’s a really hard thing to keep straight in my mind.”
“I’ll help,” she swore. “If you let me.” And something in his chest warmed, the tether to her they’d both suppressed for too long pulling him above water as he laid out all the dark truths staining his soul.
Fates, I don’t deserve her, he said to himself.
And from the way Emmeline’s eyes widened, a gasp slipping through her kiss-swollen lips, he knew she heard it. Through this rare bond that stitched them together, the Fates having chosen them for one another.
It explained how he’d always instinctually known what she was feeling, how he could read her expression no matter how hard she tried to hide it, and how he’d felt her distress from across Lyra when she was in trouble.
They stood in awed, charged silence for a beat longer, both of their breath speeding, heartbeats loud in the quiet seeing chamber.
Somewhere in the manor, a clock rang out the seventh hour. Emmeline shook her head, and reality slammed into him.
With a soft smile and a press of her lips to his, Emmeline laced their fingers and said, “I just promised myself to you. That wasn’t for the hour or the night. It’s for eternity, Reckless.”
“Trust me, Huntress. I know.” He squeezed her hands.
It was so natural to slip into this ease with her.
“Wherever I go after tomorrow, our souls, our bodies, our fates are entwined. One doesn’t exist wholly without the other.
And if I do happen to die in that arena, we will find one another again, no matter what galaxies I have to scour for you. ”
Emmeline lifted her chin stubbornly. “I don’t want another body or galaxy. I want this life with you.” The vulnerability in her words, finally asking for what she wanted after so long alone, nearly had him crashing to his knees.
He’d known all this time this side of her was waiting, which meant he knew the magnitude of her admitting these words to him. It was a gift for her to be so unguarded.
“I’ll tell the stars about every lifetime with you,” Roremar breathed, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“Promise me, you’ll fight for this one to begin with,” Emmeline whispered.
Roremar held her stare as he nodded. “I promise.”
And he meant it. Because of how she fought for him when he didn’t deserve it, because of how she loved him, and because of this tether pulling him to the surface, for the first time, Roremar felt like maybe he could do it.
He walked her to her suite, and as he slipped out the balcony door so he could get back to his cell before someone came to escort him, Emmeline place a hand on his wrist. “We need to be careful.”
“I promise,” he repeated.
Emmeline grinned. “Then how do you feel about playing a game tonight, Reckless?”