Chapter 76
Chapter Seventy-Six
Emmeline
“It’s right up here.” Emmeline panted as she pulled Myrella through the tree-woven tunnel and to the mausoleum that still looked like it hadn’t been visited in ages.
Her magic was demanding in her veins. At one point on the way here, it had screamed, a pain wrenching her chest as the stars spun faster overhead, and she only hoped it wasn’t Roremar.
Myrella hadn’t asked a single question the entire ride, simply hopping on the horses they’d found tied up outside and hurrying toward the graveyard, even though Emmeline knew she hated riding.
She’d felt her thousands of inquiries bubbling within her the entire time, but neither of them stopped. Emmeline had barely breathed.
Her skirt caught on the brush as they raced up to the stone structure and Valyrie’s statue before it, but she let the expensive, jeweled fabric tear. Rain misted her skin as a storm rolled in.
“The entrance is in here,” Emmeline said. “Then, my Fate ties—”
Footsteps pounded up the path behind them, and Emmeline and Myrella both froze.
“Fates, how did they follow us?” Myrella asked in a nervous whisper. “I thought we lost them in the districts.”
“I don’t know,” Emmeline said, discouragement winding through her. Guards had tracked them out of the arena, but they hadn’t been anywhere close when they scaled the fence into the graveyard. And this place of all was difficult to locate.
Emmeline stole herself against the frustration. She wouldn’t give up. She’d claw away from these men to find Lola if she had to. And then, as revenge for Nico and redemption for Roremar, she’d kill the Fate for good—no matter what it took from her to do it.
“We need to hide,” Myrella said, but Emmeline was already pulling another dagger from beneath her skirt. She’d lost one escaping the arena, but she’d come prepared tonight.
“I’m done hiding.”
This city and its rulers had tried to turn her into a shell of herself, so she’d tucked her strength away. She’d fought from within their walls, and they’d called her unsound.
They’d pushed and pushed her—taken and taken. They’d stripped her of so much, she had nothing left to hide. And only reasons to fight.
Bracing her feet in the wet earth, Emmeline gripped her dagger tighter, picking apart the grey trees through the drizzle, the unkempt grass rustling in the breeze.
Water droplets flecked her bare arms as the footsteps grew louder up the path, slicked the handle of her dagger, but she didn’t retreat. Their pursuers drew closer, and she recognized the cadence. Not footsteps—horses. Two of them, if she heard correctly.
Shadows loomed up the path.
She ripped her arm back, prepared to aim high enough not to hit the animal, and was about to let it fly when—
“I thought we were past this,” Desmond called as he tore into the clearing, ducking low to his mare’s back.
Myrella panted, “Oh, thank Artrinias it’s you.”
“Desmond,” Emmeline gasped, dropping her weapon. Her blood was still pounding with anticipation as he and Eston slid off their horses. “What’s happened? Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” he repeated. “You’re supposed to be at the arena.”
Myrella immediately spilled, like Desmond’s arrival released all the questions she’d been boarding up.
“We were, but Emmeline thinks she figured out where Dryvius took Lola, and it involves going underground into those crypts she and Roremar found. We snuck away—well, it wasn’t exactly sneaking as it was fleeing.
Rocarri’s guards came after us but Cyren—the General, you remember—and Graves jumped in to defend us.
We don’t know what’s happened to them, but they told us to go quickly. Fates, I hope they’re okay.”
Desmond soothed, “Take a breath, little dreamer.”
Myrella hiccupped, her eyes overflowing with worry. The rain picked up, steadily slicking her hair to her face, and Desmond studied her with thoughtful wariness.
“Graves stayed to defend you?” Eston asked, face ashen.
“He did,” Emmeline confirmed with a tightlipped nod. Her magic was still pounding through her entire body, eager to get moving. “If you want to go check on him, you may. We won’t tell anyone why you weren’t there or that you were helping us.”
Eston looked between them all. “No. Graves would only call me a cowardly ass if I left. He’d tell me I can be more proactive doing my job. At this point, whatever’s happened”—he swallowed—“has happened. I’m with you.”
Desmond looked reluctantly impressed by that, and Emmeline couldn’t help but wonder what had transpired between them since she left them earlier. Maybe they were getting along better for Lola’s sake.
“How did you find this place?” she asked, leading them all under the cover of the mausoleum. Rain pattered against stone, picking up fast.
Following, Desmond said, “Valyrie showed us.”
“Valyrie?” Emmeline repeated.
She scanned the skies, as if the Angel would drop from them, but Desmond said, “She has no Fatesforsaken clue what Dryvius is doing, but she thinks this is the place to be.”
“Where is she?”
Desmond glowered. “She also said she couldn’t interfere.”
“She said a lot of other fucking weird stuff,” Eston added beneath his breath.
Desmond cracked his tattooed knuckles, looking like he was resisting throwing a punch. Perhaps not as much had changed between them as Emmeline had thought.
“We’ll deal with the rest of it later,” Desmond told Eston with a slicing glare. The guard shut his mouth.
Emmeline waved their drama off. They didn’t have time for it.
“We need to hurry,” she said, turning and shoving all her weight against the door to the mausoleum. “Des, help me with this.”
The wood scraped over the ground, disturbing the dirt and brush Roremar had so carefully replaced last time they were here. Emmeline eyed the wings carved into the stone surrounding Valyrie.
The Warder of Selene.
Fates, watch over us, she said internally. And she scampered inside.
“I don’t think Dryvius’s note literally meant midnight,” she explained as the others looked around.
Emmeline carefully stepped on each stone lining the front of the Fate of Secrets and Greed’s portrait on the wall.
When she found the one that triggered the hidden staircase and it groaned open, she added, “Lola is the twelfth sacrifice. The other rituals didn’t not work, they were only the first steps.
But we shouldn’t assume midnight isn’t literal. ”
Eston peered into the underground tunnel, his hand on his sword. Myrella stood a step behind him, and Emmeline swore a swirl of wary curiosity ebbed off her.
Desmond stood before the twelfth Fate portrait, lost in thought.
She crossed to him, placing a hand on his arm tenderly. “Des?”
It reminded her of how Roremar had stopped to look at this image, but with a different kind of pain radiating off Desmond. Roremar’s had been so complex, confused and betrayed and full of unremorseful hatred.
Desmond’s was pure loss.
“He took her.” His voice was rough, amber eyes shining.
“And we’re going to find her. But we have to hurry.”
Desmond waited for a beat, then he nodded. Fingers clenching and unclenching, knuckles cracking, he turned his back on the portrait and went straight for the stairs, not stopping to say anything else. The dark gems in the sword on his back glinting in the low mystlight as he descended.
Emmeline studied Dryvius’s portrait one more time. His face was indiscernible, as all the Fates’ faces were. But there was an air about him. Even in a millennia-old fresco, the chaos he derived shadowed him, like the entire world was a game, and they were all his pawns.
And though she couldn’t see his facial features, there was something familiar about him.
Shaking her head, Emmeline turned away.
Only Eston waited for her.
“You first, Miss DeLeoste,” Eston said as Emmeline approached, the tattered hem of her gown swishing through the dust, the gems so out of place in this ancient burial ground.
With a deep breath, she asked, “Guard our backs, Eston?”
He nodded. “Always.”