Chapter 74
Chapter Seventy-Four
Roremar
Roremar’s tongue was cotton in his mouth, his eyelids hard to pry open. Each blink took monumental effort.
Where in the realms was he? What had happened?
Cool dirt was beneath him, flickering dots of fire blurry in the distance.
The last thing he remembered—
Lola.
A bolt of lightning shot through his veins at the thought of his sister. He flopped onto his back, the world spinning as he tried to catalogue his surroundings.
Cracked ceilings and walls draped in patches of moss and algae. Reinforcement beams every few yards. Fire flickering down the way, casting shadows over the dirt floors. Silver candelabras secured to the weathered stone. Everything with an odd purple film over it.
He didn’t think he’d been drugged. At least, he didn’t remember inhaling or being injected with anything.
He remembered dancing with his sisters and mother, talking with Leo.
He remembered needing Emmeline to calm him down when his uncle arrived.
Each memory was fleeting, only lasting a moment. But he remembered pieces until he…slipped away.
Roremar brushed a mental touch over the Fatesworn bond. It reacted sluggishly, a beast slowly waking.
He pushed himself upright, and the world spun with every slight move, like he wasn’t entirely present. Something crumbled beneath his hand. A note—
Say goodbye, my Heir of Chaos.
Her ruin will be your greatest loss.
“Fates,” Roremar grumbled. Fury burned through him at the handwriting that had become familiar without him realizing.
What did it mean again? He had to chase the thought through his mind.
It was the same handwriting as another note.
He will have her.
A violated, tainted feeling squirmed through Roremar’s gut, but he couldn’t fully reconcile why.
Dryvius. The Fate had kidnapped his sister.
Fuck, he had to get out of here.
Anger pulsed through him, and Roremar used it to fuel his movements, to steady his vision and pull his knees up so his boots were firmly planted on the cool earth.
To lean against the wall and stagger upright, like a fawn learning to walk for the first time.
He breathed deeply over his wavering surroundings.
“Be logical,” he reminded himself.
First step, figure out where the fuck he was.
The trial. That’s what this was. A sneaky fucking move on Rocarri’s part. Get the competitors wasted or relaxed with their families and then spring the greatest challenge on them when their guard was down.
Why, though? Was it purely for the added dramatics?
Roremar didn’t have the mental capacity to figure that out right now. The pieces weren’t lining up the way they normally would for him. Had enough time passed that it was the next day or had the final task been moved up?
And what in the stars did it entail? What had Emmeline figured out, again?
Roremar breathed in the damp air, palm slipping against the cool stone wall. Mossy stone. Dirt pressing down on him. Everything dim.
“Underground,” he whispered, tongue still heavy.
He was in the tunnels beneath Valyn. The ones that ran between catacombs and crypts and Fates knew what else. But what part of the city was he beneath? Was the goal to reach the arena?
He forced his feet to take stumbling steps in the direction that had more moss clinging to the walls. Life felt like a good sign to follow.
His mind was fuzzy, but coordination slowly returned to his limbs like a steadily dripping tap. With it, the icy fingers of a chill pressed into his spine. Something was off kilter down here.
“Think,” he instructed himself. The neat files of his mind were cluttered.
The first trial was physical. But Emmeline had another theory. It wasn’t only physical it was…moral?
The second trial had been poisoned Fate ties, he remembered that for sure. Morals, then magic. What was the third?
Sweat trickled down his neck despite the chill as he stumbled forward.
He tried to remember what Valyrie had told them. He couldn’t quite pick apart what had actually happened and which hazy conversations were mechanisms of his mind wishing for an answer.
Valyrie had challenged her potential Fates to face something. Words melted in his mind as he walked through puddles of wavering candlelight, no end in sight. That soft purple glow still surrounded everything, memories melting into it.
“Fates’ fucks,” he whispered, frustrated.
But he’d promised Leo he would fight, so Roremar stumbled ahead. Each step had strength returning slightly, a little steadier, but every inch of his body remained tense.
His tunnel eventually branched off into three, roots spreading beneath the earth. The center one was partially caved in, and he didn’t currently have the focus or precision to safely excavate it, so he looked between the left and the right.
Both were framed by stone-carved archways that had to be centuries old. Dull etchings lined the aged rock, too worn to make out right now. Stretching up, Roremar ran his fingers over one.
Letters.
He tried to remove a candelabra from the wall, but they were welded on.
Instead, he took one ivory candle from its holder, scalding wax dripping over his hand as he held it up.
Hissing at the sting, he tried to decipher the words, hoping for any hint of what either tunnel led to, but still he couldn’t make them out.
Roremar set the candle back in its fixture and looked at his two choices.
The right path was dimmer, the candles struggling to stay alight in their silver sconces, as if—
“A breeze,” he whispered.
He took that one, hoping to the Angel it meant that draft came from somewhere aboveground.
If his mind was working fully, he probably would have looked deeper into each route, but right now, he wasn’t trying to be clever, and he wasn’t daring to be reckless. He was fighting to survive.
And in this case, that meant putting one foot in front of the other and moving long enough for his mind to clear. Whatever this trial was, it felt deeper than the first two. Strength and morality, magic and myth…this felt like more, and he needed to focus on the most straightforward plan.
He’d only walked about twenty feet when the ground rumbled. A yawning growl, like something deep within the dirt walls was waking. It had magic sparking in his veins.
Roremar stumbled against the wall as his chest pulled tight, a stretching ache ripping down the center.
The curtains of moss sweeping down from overhead swayed, the light playing wavering games with the shadows.
Ahead, stones clattered along the base of the walls.
No, not stones, he realized as the candlelight flickered over them.
Bones.
Big enough that they were likely human. Fuck, who had they belonged to? How long had they been down here? He swore he wouldn’t become that.
Roremar paused in the silence that echoed after the rumble, breathing deeply as the pain ebbed from his body. The sound was familiar, but every thought was half-formed. Every conclusion an inch further than he could reach.
He brushed another mental hand along the Fatesworn bond, and at least that was steadier. Perhaps he was heading back toward the arena. Though, even with his confused mental state, he was certain this task would involve many more challenges than simply finding the arena again.
If that was all it took, he’d bow to Chancellor Rocarri himself.
As soon as he claimed Emmeline before all the other competitors, of course.
The thought had him pushing off the wall and his crooked steps quickening, all attention focusing on the tether in his chest. He thought he wanted her before?
Now that he’d felt her, now that he’d claimed this bond between them, even his addled brain knew one thing for sure: He would never get enough of Emmeline DeLeoste.
And it was her image dancing through his mind when he was tackled to the dirt.