Chapter 80
Chapter Eighty
Emmeline
Emmeline’s magic became her compass as they walked. She did her best not to let it fully consume her, especially not with Myrella tucked into her side, but all eleven of her Fates were excited, their heads lifted and voices pulling her in directions she relayed to Desmond.
“Left ahead.”
“Take the second right.”
“The furthest offshoot.”
She periodically felt for the Fatesworn bond in her chest, Roremar’s life still beating along it, but she wasn’t able to send any thoughts down with the tar-like sensation blocking it. Whatever they’d done to him for the trial was still impacting him.
She didn’t know where Roremar was or what he was facing, but she had to trust that he’d take care of himself while she focused on his sister.
Eston was quiet the entire time they walked, but tension rolled off him. Emmeline realized, aside from his entanglement with Lola and the fact that he had a twin brother, she didn’t know much about him or what he’d be risking to be here tonight.
She scanned the tunnels carefully with every turn, noting the different indentations in the stretches of stone, the way the colors fluctuated or how different cross-sections looked as if they’d once been decorated.
In the tunnel they’d started in, everything was dim, the stone a dark-purple hue.
In the next, tiny, withered petals had been scattered, from night-blooming flowers if she was correct, and the entire tunnel where Myrella claimed to first hear that sound had that iridescent sheen, some walls almost seeming carved with scales.
In the one Desmond now led them down, jagged scratches marred the stone walls between mossy curtains, almost like—
“Lightning bolts,” Emmeline breathed.
“What?” Desmond called over his shoulder.
Wisteria Falls flashed through her memory, the similar marks carved beneath the first waterfall. The districts were each dedicated to a Fate, as the falls were. Was it possible the tunnels were, too? What purpose did that serve, though?
“I’m not sure,” Emmeline answered. “Keep walking.”
She tried to map out every discerning detail she’d tracked down here and build the map, but it was a maze in her memory, and Fate voices trickled through her mind, blurring the images further.
A fortune spun by Fated hands,
A choice taken from forsaken bands.
An image of her and Roremar in the seeing chamber earlier, utterly lost in each other as they claimed their Fatesworn bond.
Light flashed, and it was two other bodies writhing, in an entirely different room, but she couldn’t tell who or where.
Two hearts staked through with malice,
A sacrifice proclaimed by the Balance.
She’d been told all these fortunes before, but she hadn’t been able to figure out what they meant then. Hadn’t lived the pieces. Now, as she kept an eye on the Fates leading her down this tunnel, her mind raced.
Two hearts, a fortune spun by Fated hands.
Urgency bubbled through her veins, like the Fates were screaming it was time—
All eleven threads tugging violently, and Emmeline gasped as readings poured down on her, a barrage of phrases like the tap had been dripping, and now it was uncapped.
A fortune spun by Fated hands,
A choice taken from forsaken bands.
Two hearts staked through with malice,
A sacrifice proclaimed by the Balance.
For Him to fall, and Her to bleed,
A future that we all must heed.
Give one heart of greed entrenched in kin,
And many dancing with sweet sin,
To remedy a past scorned daring,
And cross with bloodied footsteps faring.
A hand pulled her forward.
“Ahead!” Emmeline called as she breathed over the magic, her vision splitting between here and elsewhere, the images too fast to explain.
Desmond and Eston ran down the dim stretch of tunnel, Emmeline helping Myrella along as hurriedly as her shaking frame would let her, but even she was eager, her panting breaths stuttering with every racing step.
The tunnel curved, spitting them out into the back of a mountainous cavern, and Emmeline froze.
Twelve monuments towered around the oblong space, six on each side, stretching all the way to the high ceilings. They stood atop marble plinths lined with an abundance of candles, statues built directly into the walls like they were one with the earth—the city and the tunnels beneath it.
Some didn’t even have faces, the details carved away over time. Two wore helmets, one an elaborate mask, vines wrapped the head of another, and one bore a veil with features dull beneath.
“This is it,” Emmeline exhaled, the force of her magic whipping through her. Those fortunes pouring down. “I’ve been here before.”
Not physically, not even for long. But she’d seen it.
In her reading in Valyrie’s seeing chamber, she’d seen this place lit up with starfire. Now, it was a damp stone floor beneath her feet, walls etched with murals and ancient artwork, dripping candles lining the steep monuments, flames flickering against the cracked marble bases.
All the monuments faced a thirteenth being at the front of the room, palms open at her sides, the ceiling sloping to meet her towering wings, each feather carved in detail.
And before Valyrie was an altar—
“Lola!” Emmeline gasped.
Desmond and Eston were already running to her. She was spread atop the marble, wrapped in only a thin silk dressing gown.
“Come on, Lols,” Desmond was whispering when Emmeline and Myrella stopped at the altar, Emmeline’s nails digging into the stone. Fates, Lola was so pale—too pale—her eyelids and lips tinged blue. “Come on, please, Lols, you can’t leave. One more night. Give me one more night, come on.”
Even at such a low volume, Desmond’s pleas were excruciating.
“Is she breathing?” Emmeline asked.
No, no she couldn’t lose another one of them. None of them could, and Roremar—
“Yes,” Desmond said as he brushed a hand across Lola’s cheek, and Emmeline’s fear unwound slightly.
“But she’s unresponsive, and she’s fucking freezing.
” As if to double check, Desmond’s hand slipped back to Lola’s pulse point.
His head drooped under the weight of relief, but his brow creased. “What in the forge?”
Gently, Desmond tugged aside the top of Lola’s dressing gown, and his skin turned ashen. “Fucking Fate.”
Emmeline leaned closer, Myrella’s gasp echoing in her ears.
On Lola’s chest, dark ink red at the edges, was the twelve-pointed star tattoo.
One spoke stretched further than the others as it always did, pointing toward whatever direction the Isle of Byron would have been when it was inked.
At least, that’s what they’d hypothesized once they learned it was Dryvius doing this.
Dryvius and Anphrosia were the patron Fates of that isle, as Arenothos and Aevollon were of Alvan.
“No,” Emmeline whispered.
Bodies flashed before her eyes. All limp and pale and so strikingly similar to how Lola appeared now.
“That’s fresh,” Desmond said, not tearing his eyes away from the ink, as if his stare alone could scourge it from her body. A mark she’d always carry, even if they saved her. “Probably a few hours.”
“It’s him, right?” Eston asked, panic edging his voice. “That’s one of the things the Fate does?”
“Yes—” A piercing chime cut off Emmeline’s explanation.
All four of them cried out. Emmeline pressed her palms to her ears, stumbling against the altar. Desmond covered Lola’s body, and Myrella shook even more than she had been before.
“What the fuck is that?” Eston yelled.
“No idea!” Emmeline answered. Her magic hated it, though. It spun faster and faster within her, the readings a tangle of urgent warnings she couldn’t parse out.
Myrella whimpered over and over, dropping to a crouch, and Eston cried something unintelligible. Desmond kept talking to Lola, protecting her, but even the unending ringing didn’t wake her.
It went on for what could have been minutes or mere seconds, until all of a sudden it sliced off.
Emmeline’s ears still rang like the echo of a gong, but she forced herself to her feet. Myrella was still huddled behind the altar, trembling.
Desmond cradled Lola against his chest, trying to get some warmth back into her body. “Let’s get her the fuck out of here before that happens again.”
Emmeline and Eston agreed, the guard mute, and they helped Myrella to her feet. They started back the way they came in, but footsteps shuffled down the tunnel.
“Dryvius,” Emmeline breathed. Had that sound been signaling his arrival? Is that why her magic was warning her?
Eyes meeting Desmond’s, she could practically feel the color leeching from her face. They hadn’t been quick enough. Hadn’t gotten to Lola soon enough.
Pulling a triple blade, Emmeline looked around for any other way out of here. Her eyes landed on the carving on the floor—the one that had been blurred in her reading of this place, that she hadn’t been able to make out—and she froze.
She’d been too focused on Lola to notice it before, but now, it was slowly starting to glow silver, a vein of starlight in the stone. The brighter it ignited, the easier she could decipher it, and the tighter panic clenched her chest.
A feathered pair of wings surrounded by twelve unique renditions.
The Warders of Selene. What was a version of their sigil doing down here?
The footsteps grew closer, and the walls closed in. She was a mouse in a trap, watching the spring snap.
“I’m so sorry,” Emmeline whispered to her friends, but especially to Lola—the person who’d extended so much kindness and warmth when she arrived in this strange new city, though she hadn’t offered any in return initially.
Emmeline clenched her triple blade tighter. “I promise, Lola, he won’t get you.”
Emmeline’s eyes flashed back up to Desmond. “You get a chance, you go. Doesn’t matter which route you follow. It will lead somewhere that’s better than here. These tunnels emerge in different spots around the city. Get above ground wherever you can. You, too,” she added to Myrella.
They both nodded.
Emmeline’s heart pattered as the final footsteps tensed the air. She waited for the Fate to appear across the chamber—wondered what exactly he looked like, what face had been haunting them these recent weeks.
She held her breath, listening closer—
“He’s not alone,” she whispered.
But before anyone could answer, the approaching party spilled out of the tunnel, all twelve Fate monuments between them.
And it wasn’t Dryvius at all, but—
“Roremar,” she breathed, his allies and Cirre at his side.