Chapter 77
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Roremar
“How are they using our fears against us?” Rian asked. His jittery energy was back. He searched the central cavern, checking every small crevice around the perimeter, turning over every stone.
“My mind—my memory,” Roremar explained before the theory could dance away again.
“Everything is just out of reach. It’s worse than not remembering anything at all, because I know I’m missing things.
I know I’m supposed to remember why we’re down here and all of Emmeline’s theories.
It’s tormenting me instead. My mind has always been something I value, an asset, but somehow they’re twisting my thoughts to take it away.
They’re manipulating what I consider my greatest strength, so I can’t find the answers.
And the last time I couldn’t figure something out… ”
His words trailed off as he tried to remember.
“How is that a fear?” Rian asked, trying to keep him on track.
“Because…” Roremar thought, scanning the crossroads. The dark depths within the tunnels. It was like he was back on the cargo ship, scanning empty memories for a hint of what had happened. “Because I couldn’t remember anything after I killed my brother.”
“What?”
“Dryvius,” Roremar said, and it was like a thousand memories slammed into him, each there and gone in a blink.
“When Dryvius controlled me before, I couldn’t remember anything.
It was like I had amnesia for those specific moments.
The thought of what I did or could do while blacked out? That’s fucking terrifying.”
It took what was supposed to be his greatest strength and made it something he was the most afraid of. Just as this trial was wielding it against him now, bringing back that spotty darkness and drenching him in that lost, violated, and tainted feeling again.
His chest pulled tight, each breath hard to get down.
What happened in the darkness?
How did his victims cry?
Was his the last face they saw?
Roremar shook his head, trying to suck in deep breaths and ward off the panic.
Rian walked the perimeter of the central cavern, kicking up every fallen rock and dragging his dagger through the moss, leaving no spot untouched.
“Svalla said he kept seeing his brother’s death,” Roremar said, desperately trying to put the pieces together.
“That was his fear. His loyalty to avenging it was blinding him—that’s the piece that was being used against him.
All he could see, all he could focus on, was revenge.
He said so himself.” There had been a mad gleam in his eye as he swung at Roremar, one that had escalated since earlier tonight, that went beyond revenge.
Roremar poured out the theories while they were clear in his mind, feeling them slipping away already.
“All he could think about was killing me and making me hurt as much as his brother did. Nothing else mattered to him down here because he had to fight through the fear to survive.”
“They’re pulling strings to see what will make us each go mad,” Rian said. “How does that prove anything that helps win this trial, though?”
That, Roremar didn’t know. He shook his head, lost again.
The off-kilter sensation from earlier settled deeper into Roremar’s bones. He felt like the walls themselves were watching him.
“How have you felt since waking up? Is there anything different? Any confusion?” Roremar beat back the fog trying to claim his own mind. If they could place Rian’s manipulated fear, too, then they may be able to assist each other.
“Not confused. If anything, more focused. But on the wrong things.”
“Do you know why that could be?”
Rian was quiet for a moment, jaw grinding.
“Think about it,” Roremar encouraged. “With me, it’s taking away my greatest asset to maximize the fear of those dark memories and make it so it’s harder to puzzle my way out. With Svalla it played his nightmares on repeat and used them to distract him. What could it be doing similarly to you?”
“My father,” Rian whispered hoarsely.
“What about him?”
Rian cleared his throat. “He always accuses me of being too quiet and methodical, of not having the correct loud ambition.” Roremar had noticed Rian kept to himself when he’d met him, and he’d admired that he did what he wanted despite this tournament.
Rian’s quiet demeanor even reminded him of Leo.
He’d never considered it a weakness, but apparently Rian’s father did. And he’d drilled that insecurity into his son. But how was that a fear?
Roremar understood when Rian added, “My father takes out his misgivings with my behavior on other people.”
“You mean…”
“Think of really horrific punishments. Then make them worse. And I had to watch it on—” He paused, a muscle feathering in his jaw. “On the person I love most.”
Rian’s words were precise, so much anger seething beneath them, an intensity this manipulation was dragging up.
It wasn’t the fear of Rian’s methodical, quiet demeanor that the tunnels were emphasizing. It was the fear of what his father did because of it.
Roremar remembered the stern man he’d seen speaking to Rian at the first Presentation, whose voice itself was a reprimand. Distaste was bitter in the back of his throat.
And Rian had been so jittery since he found Roremar. He’d checked Roremar’s sling multiple times and said he’d inspected every artifact he found in that other cavern. He’d looked like he wanted to second guess each decision they made.
Rian said, “Whatever they did to us, it’s making me focus on every small detail in a way my father would hate. In a way he’d use against me. Giving me paranoia about taking a wrong turn or a misstep instead of trying to get out of here.”
These weren’t small, every day fears being prodded. These were the deeper complexities of their minds. They were taking their biggest traumas and spinning them against them.
Fates, this was more complicated than Roremar was equipped to handle right now.
They couldn’t just face them with a physical manifestation of their greatest fears?
Couldn’t throw Rian’s father down here for them to fight through?
Not spiders or rats or anything less horrifying than their deepest scars?
No.
The Fates were never straightforward like that. Why would the Angel or Rocarri be? Was he actually strong enough to fight through this, or would the darkness keep pressing in?
I want this life with you.
You need to fight.
He could be strong enough. For that future with Emmeline, and for his siblings, he could.
“Okay,” Roremar said, trying to focus. He adjusted his sling where it was digging into the back of his neck, his bare chest cold in the damp air. “You need to think about the bigger picture of what we’re facing then. And I need to think at all.”
It was easier said than done, though. Trauma wasn’t something to will away. They may as well be trapped in their own minds, not beneath the city.
“And if we can’t?” Rian asked.
Roremar crossed to one of the tunnels, picking up a shard of bone, ivory streaked with dirt. He held it up for Rian to see. “Then I don’t think we get out of here.”
Rian swallowed, mouth opening to answer, but a deep scream wrenched the air.
“What was that?” Rian asked, nerves cracking his voice.
“Come on.” Roremar forced him into motion before Rian could reconsider, the two of them racing sloppily down the tunnel the screams were echoing from.
As they got closer, Roremar recognized the voice. “Perry?”
Rian nodded, curls bobbing, and they picked up their pace.
Perry wasn’t screaming aimlessly. It was the same words on a loop.
“HELP! WE’RE TRAPPED!”
“We are not trapped!” another voice said, frustration burning through it as if he’d been at this for a while.
Roremar and Rian took another turn at breakneck speed, each stride aggravating his injured shoulder, and they screeched to a halt. Khasson had Perry slammed against the wall, his jaw caught in his grasp.
“We are not trapped!” Khasson was imploring him, but Perry’s eyes were frantic.
“HELP!”
“Shut up!”
“It’s his greatest fear!” Roremar blurted, and both Perry’s and Khasson’s attention swiveled to him and Rian. He had to fight through the fog trying to eclipse his mind again, trying to see how it was targeting Perry.
He didn’t know him that well, but Perry dreamed of traveling the realm. He was fascinated by the Constellation Isles because his grandfather—a man he loved and revered—had been mocked for his fascination and died without the respect he deserved.
Perry’s fear was being trapped on the continent, maybe, never honoring his grandfather’s legacy. Or it was being contained in a very small, very defined box.
Roremar scanned the low ceiling, the stone walls. Maybe this time, the challenge was more literal, convincing Perry he was stuck here.
Or maybe Roremar was missing the point entirely with his scattered mind.
“What are you talking about?” Khasson barked, long hair wild around his sharp features.
“The trial is targeting our greatest fears, preying on them…”
Roremar wracked his brain for the rest, but Rian jumped in. “It’s manipulating the trauma we’ve faced, each in a very personal way. Mine’s making me paranoid of the consequences of my decisions. Roremar’s is attacking his memory. And Perry…” He deferred to Roremar.
Whether he’d deduced the correct root cause of the fear or not, Roremar had to try something.
“Perry,” Roremar said softly, approaching as if he was a wounded animal. “Perry, it’s okay. You aren’t trapped down here.” He flicked a glance to Rian, asking him to go along with it. “We know a way out. We’re going to help you.”
“You know the way out?” Perry panted, eyes red and bloodshot from his screaming. One of the silver hoops in his ear was gone, his tunic ripped and askew.
“I do,” Roremar lied, but Perry’s entire frame relaxed. “I need you to be quiet though as we get there. Take deep breaths.”
Perry inhaled and exhaled slowly.
“Focus on your breathing like that, count each one, and follow us.”
He waited for Perry’s breathing pattern to return to normal, then Roremar nodded to Khasson. He released Perry, and Rian slid into his place, calmly explaining more of what he and Roremar had figured out as they started walking.
Roremar turned to Khasson. “Did you find him like that?”
Khasson nodded. “He was screaming his head off. Hard not to hear.” His gaze flicked to Roremar’s shoulder. “What happened?”
“Svalla,” Roremar grunted, pain radiating through the joint and muscles. He wouldn’t be surprised if something was torn, but he couldn’t worry about it right now. “He’s gone now.”
A cruel smirk hooked Khasson’s full lips. “Good.”
“How do we get out of here?” Perry blurted, rubbing the heel of his palm against his sternum.
It was clear from his tight frame he was trying to control himself, trying to harness the fear as Rian was coaching, but Perry’s control wavered in a way Roremar hadn’t seen. It made him think there was more to the fear than being trapped, but he couldn’t even begin to figure that out right now.
The buttons of Perry’s tunic were undone halfway down his abdomen. He rolled his shoulders repeatedly to calm himself, and the fabric shifted. It slipped off one shoulder, the mystlight catching a mark across his chest—
All sense of the trial fled Roremar’s mind.
“What in the Fate’s fucking grave is that?”
Everyone froze. Rian eyed him, instantly on high alert. Khasson chuckled at his outburst, backing up a step.
But Perry’s chin pulled back at the sharpness of Roremar’s tone. His gaze dropped to the spot on his chest that Roremar had seen him rubbing in an unconscious habit multiple times now, to the pale lines Roremar had glimpsed before, thinking it a scar Perry kept covered.
But now, disheveled as his clothing had become, the winged symbol was fully visible.
Two wings, one solid, almost looking like brushstrokes, and the other a vortex of flowers.
Perry swallowed, fingers brushing the sigil stamped or inked or damn branded across his chest, Roremar couldn’t tell. “That’s my Warder Mark.”