Chapter 69
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Roremar
Roremar knew even the most confident competitors were getting nervous. With their families here, it pulled them out of the bubble of the tournament’s adoring public and cast the possibility of their deaths into a starker reality.
Unlike the rest of them, he was more alive than he’d been previously.
Hearing his sisters laugh as he swung them around the dance floor, seeing the light return to Vivienne’s eyes after he’d caught her crying about Nico earlier, healed him. Knowing they’d feel the loss forever but still had glimmers of happiness reminded him he could, too.
He wasn’t caged tonight, thank the Fates. He would have asked his mother not to bring his siblings otherwise. But he hadn’t questioned the Chancellor on the decision. There was obviously an ulterior motive to unleashing him, and Roremar was still trying to figure him out.
Desmond was escorting Lola—all of them agreeing it was safest to have someone who knew about Dryvius watching over her—and they would arrive any minute.
It took monumental effort to stay away from Emmeline.
If his family hadn’t been here, he didn’t think he would have been able to, but that was the game she’d proposed before he snuck out of her suite, and he loved a challenge.
One more night away from one another—one night sneaking their Fatesworn bond beneath everyone’s noses, and then tomorrow, he’d fight for her. For them.
Huntress, he pushed the word down the bond and waited for Emmeline to stiffen across the room. It was so subtle, he would have missed it if he wasn’t so attuned to her.
You look divine, he tried again.
Emmeline’s cheeks flushed. An effect of the wine in her hand, surely. Not his voice in her mind.
He didn’t understand how the bond worked, but Fates, it was fun to make her squirm in this crowd without any of them knowing why.
Emmeline had more control than he did. Not once had she answered no matter how often he teased her.
It only made him want to try harder.
Roremar laughed as the song he was twirling Vivienne and Siena to came to a close. “Come on, let’s take a break.”
“Aw, one more?” Siena asked, blinking blue eyes up at him through her mask, utilizing an adorably pleading expression he could rarely say no to.
“We’ll dance some more, but there’s cakes over there.” Roremar gestured to the banquet table lining one wall. “Why don’t you go grab us some?”
Vivienne, dessert aficionado that she was, was already prancing to the selection, and Siena raced after her.
Good. There was one person he still had to speak to, and while he loved his little sisters, it needed to be private. As he approached his mother and Leo, the former kissed him on the cheek, then disappeared. Fates bless her intuition.
Roremar stood beside his fourteen-year-old brother, and they looked out over the ballroom together.
“Have you gotten to visit Museum Row?” Roremar asked.
Leo shook his head, hair flopping into his eyes.
“Once this is over, you should. You’d love it.” He hadn’t seen it himself, but he’d spoken to Desmond and Lola about it earlier. Said they had to take Leo, no matter what happened tomorrow. Had to show him all the world had to offer.
Roremar didn’t have the heart to promise Leo he’d take him himself.
“Valyn is a cool city,” Roremar said when Leo didn’t comment. “It has a lot of art and history. Lola knows all about it. I’m sure she’d show you.”
“It’s not Lyra,” Leo said beneath his breath. Not with an attitude, like he was shirking Roremar’s opinion, but…longingly.
“Is that what’s wrong?” Roremar asked, turning to face him. “You’re homesick?”
Leo slipped his hands into his pockets.
“You’ll go home, Leo. Soon. This whole mess is almost over, and in a few weeks, you’ll all be back on the isles. This is all temporary.”
“Yeah, Rore, and where will you be?”
The words were a blow to Roremar’s chest. “What?”
Leo’s harsh gaze sliced up to him. Fates, he’d grown so quickly in the past year, he was only about six inches shorter than Roremar.
All gangly limbs and stretched out frame, but in his formalwear, he looked so much older than Roremar remembered, and that stare that spoke of experiences well beyond his years added to it.
“Where will you be when this is over, Rore? Vivienne and Siena don’t get it, but I do. These people want you dead.” His voice cracked on the last word.
Maybe Roremar shouldn’t have let Leo sit in on the conversation the other night, but while he wanted to protect his siblings, it felt wrong to shield Leo when he was smart enough to put together what was going on.
Roremar wouldn’t lie to him.
“Yeah, Leo a lot of people do want me dead.” Pain slid over his little brother’s features, and it wrecked him. No matter how old Leo got, he was still his little brother. Without Nico, it was just them. “But I’m not letting them win.”
“Won’t they put you through another trial when this tournament is over?”
“They might,” Roremar admitted. “Or they might take it as a sign of the Fates if I survive. The truth is, I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or any day after that. None of us do, and that’s fucking scary.”
Leo’s gaze dropped to his shoes, hands still shoved in his pockets. “I hate it.”
“Of course you do. You’re too smart not to understand that the unknown can be one of the scariest things about life.
” He gripped his brother’s shoulder. “If I’d known when I last saw Nico that it would be the last time I saw him, I would never have let him leave that night.
I would have told him I love him extra, and I would have hugged him tighter.
” His eyes stung, words choked in his throat.
“But I didn’t know, and that’s how life goes. What matters is what we do about it.”
“What do you mean?”
Roremar had to dig deep for the next words.
They were fucking terrifying to admit to someone whom he only wanted to see good in the world.
“When it first happened, I didn’t want to keep going—to live.
I didn’t know how I could. But all of this—you guys being here, us getting to be with Lola again, and Emmeline—it’s reminded me why we have to.
So, no matter what, I’m going to keep fighting, Leo. Tomorrow, and every day after.”
Not only in this tournament, but his own fucking demons. He’d fight them every single day to show his brother it was possible.
The words landed, Leo nodding like he was summoning his own strength. “With you gone, I’m the man of the house. I don’t know how to be.”
Roremar’s heart broke for his brother. He was only fucking fourteen. He didn’t deserve that kind of pressure. “For now, you be a kid. You look out for the girls, you help Mother when she asks you to, but you do things you love, too.”
“That’s not what you did,” Leo accused. Fates, how much had he noticed over the past ten years?
“I was wrong. I didn’t know how else to function, but I should have figured it out.”
“I don’t want to have to figure it out,” Leo said quickly, eyes widening.
“I don’t want you to have to,” Roremar confessed. “I wish Nico was still here, that we were all back on Lyra like we were a few months ago.” He swallowed, gaze shifting to the stars spinning outside the window. “But everything is changing. The Fates never let things remain too peaceful for long.”
“You have to survive tomorrow,” Leo pleaded. “No matter what else changes, you need to fight.”
“I’m fighting. I promise, Leo. I’m fighting for all of you like I always have, but this time, we’re being smarter about it.” He wasn’t only fighting to get to the next day, he was fighting for all of them to have the true happiness they deserved.
One Falliare and Dryvius had robbed them of.
And finally, Leo’s facade crumbled. He threw his arms around his brother, face buried in his shoulder. “I love you, Rore.”
Roremar held him tight, eyes squeezing closed. “I love you, too, Leo. So much.”
No matter what changed, that never would. He’d go to the end of the realm to protect them all.
As they pulled apart, movement shifted out of the corner of Roremar’s eye, a familiar navy cloak whipping through the entrance, and he stiffened. Aldryn Falliare was striding toward the center of the dance floor, where Emmeline spun with Rian.
Leo noticed Roremar’s shift in demeanor. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Roremar said.
“Rore, tell me,” he insisted.
And Roremar supposed, if his brother really was going to grow up, he had to start treating him like it.
“I can’t explain everything right now, and I know you aren’t going to like this, but you can’t trust Uncle Aldryn.”
“What?” Leo balked. “But he always—”
“He hasn’t done as much for our family as you think,” Roremar said, gaze flicking between Leo’s shocked expression and his uncle. He braced his hands on his brother’s shoulders. “Right now, I need you to dance with Mother, Vivienne, and Siena. Make sure he keeps away from them.”
Leo straightened, the responsibility clear in his fierce expression. “Okay.”
He ran off, and Roremar took quick strides for the center of the dance floor. He placed a hand on Rian’s shoulder. “Mind if I steal her?”
Emmeline’s eyes widened behind her delicate silver mask, a silent reprimand in the hazels.
Rian stepped back without a word, verbose as always, but Roremar knew his ally could tell from his frantic entrance that something was off. Casually, Rian drifted to the side of the room where Perry and Khasson stood. They chatted with a few guests, all their eyes boring into Roremar and Emmeline.
The entire room’s eyes.
Good. That meant Falliare couldn’t speak with them without everyone else noticing.
Roremar’s hand landed on Emmeline’s waist, his other taking hers, and every tense part of him relaxed. The freckles across her nose were visible along the edge of her mask, and Roremar memorized each, pulling her so close, their chests nearly pressed together.
“A bit improper,” Emmeline teased.
But her breath hitched, the patter of her heart loud and clear. He couldn’t tell if it was down the Fatesworn bond or because of the flush in her cheeks, but hunger danced between them. This thing was a puzzle he was going to love figuring out.
“I want to be improper with you, Miss DeLeoste,” Roremar teased. “You didn’t seem to mind earlier.”
Her cheeks scorched, the tether between them igniting. A few days ago, she would have pushed him away. But everything had changed tonight.
Instead, she teased, “I don’t recall.”
“Really?” Roremar asked as the music mounted. He dipped his mouth closer to her ear. “You don’t remember me filling you? Begging the Fates for me to make you come? I remember what you felt like—you’re burned into my skin—but perhaps I need to do better next time.”
Her chest rose on a sharp inhale, but she pulled back as if snapping to reality. “We agreed not here.”
“We did,” Roremar said, hating to let the distraction slip away.
Understanding dawned in Emmeline’s silver-flecked eyes, those starry specks still there from when they’d fucked beneath the constellations. “What’s wrong?”
Roremar leaned forward to whisper in her ear again.
Fuck propriety, she was his, and he was tired of acting like she wasn’t.
“Falliare is here. He was headed for you, probably to get my attention.” He pulled back, all his fury reflected in Emmeline’s rapid blinks.
“I don’t think he would make it out of that conversation alive, and I’m trying not to be charged with murder again. ”
“Yes, let’s keep that from happening.” Emmeline dragged her hand over his shoulder soothingly. “Are you okay?”
He pulled her a step closer. “Better now.”
“Reckless,” Emmeline admonished.
“You know, Huntress, I’m starting to think you like it when I’m reckless.” Roremar couldn’t help himself. He tightened his grip on the next pass across the floor. “Besides, the room is lined with guards. If I tried to do anything untoward, I’d have a knife through my back before I moved.”
A stinging lash burned from her end of the bond. It speared right through his chest matching the splintering behind Emmeline’s eyes.
“A joke, Huntress.”
“Well, don’t joke about it.”
“I can’t help it. I have this wild instinct that refuses to not touch you—that’s had to watch you dance with other men all night and not be near you.
I crave you. Because you and I”—he lifted a hand but stopped himself before he traced her cheek, settling his palm back in hers and tilting his head toward the window—“well, even the Fates think it’s ridiculous if we stay apart. ”
“That’s why we’re faking it. A game.”
Their masked faces were so close, the proximity combined with the shrouds elicited a forbidden thrill. A hundred deadly stares were on them, but all he cared about was hers.
“A game,” he repeated.
One he’d gladly accepted he’d lost when she walked in here, gown a vision of starlight, mask highlighting her silver-flecked eyes, and his Fatesdamned ring hanging proudly around her neck.
It woke a possessiveness inside him unlike anything he’d ever known. And while he was desperate to claim her in front of everyone, it was also deeply satisfying to watch them all honor her while they scorned him. If only they knew what hid behind these masks.
“I’ve loved watching you tonight as much as I’ve hated it,” Roremar admitted.
Emmeline preened. “I’ve loved having you watch me.”
“I remember. And I can’t wait to watch again.”
Her breath hitched, but before she could scold him, a commotion ricocheted outside the doors, guards yelling and a very familiar voice telling them they could go fuck themselves.
Desmond tore inside. His frantic gaze searched the crowd—all staring at him questioningly—before landing on Roremar.
As Desmond raced up to him, Roremar’s world tipped. He wasn’t sure why, but his instincts were bracing for impact, tightening every muscle and looking for exit routes, seeking out his siblings. Every bit of heat he’d been teasing with Emmeline slid from his body.
Desmond’s hands were streaked with red.
Lola.
Lola was supposed to be with Desmond.
Where was Lola?
Why were his hands red?
“What’s happened?” Emmeline asked, pulling them to the side of the room and waving at everyone around them to carry on with their evening.
“He got her,” Desmond panted, holding out a piece of crumbled parchment. Roremar could barely see straight enough to read the message, but he heard Des’s next words clearly. “Dryvius has Lola.”