Page 118 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

Brutally, crushingly wrong.

And the hurt on Roremar’s face as he finally looked at her…the betrayal turning his once-silver eyes a murky grey…that drove a knife into her heart.

“Emmeline,” he breathed, disbelief breaking her name on his tongue. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She forced herself to hold his stare across the barrier. “I couldn’t. Not until I knew for sure.”

“For sure?” He scoffed, the harshness of his features emphasized by the moonlight. “How’d that turn out?”

“I’d thought⁠—”

“No, you didn’t think, Emmeline,” he said. “If you had, you would have shared your theories with me. Instead, you collected this evidence in a tunnel, allowed it to stew and warp into something impossible. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times across both sides of a battlefield, but I didn’t think you’d fall prey to it.”

The insult ricocheted off her defenses, and she yelled, “He’s your best friend, Roremar! I didn’t know how to tell you he was a person of interest without you telling him or denying it immediately.”

And she hadn’t wanted to break his heart until she had to. As desperately as she’d wanted to find the person responsible for this, a silent, miserable part of her truly had hoped it wasn’t Desmond.

Because this moment right here, Roremar staring at her with a thousand stars shattering behind his eyes—the mistrust rooting in their place—this was what she’d been trying to avoid.

Inevitable, the way her heart now shredded.

Endless ruin was inevitable after all.

“He’s my best friend, Emmeline,” Roremar echoed, voice hollow and broken. Then, he took off after Desmond up the beach, leaving Emmeline alone on the shore.

As the silence of a vacant night howled around her, she sank to her knees in the sand and let the emptiness consume her. She had been so wrong.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Roremar

Roremar stormed through the Trade House, shadows drenching the world around him. It had been five days since he’d spoken to Emmeline. Five days, and the darkness that eclipsed his mind in the wake of her accusing Desmond was consuming him.

Outside of the sparring lessons he still had to teach at the Academy, he’d spent nearly the entire time at home, losing himself in a new set of correspondence from Zyon and the mountains of research that unraveled from the Alvan War Master’s letter.

Last night, he’d uncovered a sacrificial ritual from nearly two centuries ago at the hands of a now-exiled cult on Alvan. Worshipers of Anhala had flocked to the isle and kidnapped searchers of Arenothos, the two Fates having a brutal and bloody history. They tattooed ancient star maps on the back of their victims, allegedly trying to piece together some final image that would doom the Fate of Wrath and Redemption.

They were unsuccessful, and all ended up banished or executed.

The example aligned with their theories that the killer’s motive was rooted in the Fates themselves, but something about it bothered Roremar, keeping him up at night. While there were similarities, that case didn’t help him figure out why these present-day murders were occurring on Lyra or why the victims were tied to Anphrosia.

It was proof that this shit had happened in the past but nothing more.

He’d followed the path, trying to draw connections, eventually ending back at the records of imbued ink shipments they’d been sent from the War Master of Alvan. He needed to know more about what was currently occurring between the Constellation Isles.

Thus, the Trade House.

With the Remembrance Revels growing closer, every isle was restless, but Byron in particular, with their focus in star maps and celestial studies. Their broken telescope seal had been appearing on more and more papers addressed to him as his father’s ward. Apparently, Deacon Silventa had been an active investor in their largest astrological academy, and a research project was due to wrap up around the Revels when a pair of planets or stars or some shit Roremar couldn’t recall finished a path years in the making.

As if the Revels themselves weren’t enough to set Roremar on edge, he now had to hope this investment turned out to be lucrative. He couldn’t give a Fate’s fuck about the details, truthfully.

He bypassed the front desk at the Trade House with a wave to the courier—familiar with him since he’d been visiting Nico more frequently—and strode down the hall to the first-floor office his brother had been assigned.

It was a cramped space with enough room for a desk in the center and a set of shelves beneath the window, but the view overlooking the small gardens sloping down toward the cliffs behind the Trade House tricked you into thinking it was larger. Nico had the windows thrown wide, the fragrant scents of lavender bushes and orange trees drifting in.

“What are you working on?” Roremar grumbled as he entered, not bothering to knock.

“The job you so lovingly insisted upon?” Nico said it as if it was a question, eyes flicking up though he barely lifted his head from whatever reports he was reviewing. Picking up a chunk of a silver-edged crystal, he dropped it onto the rickety scale at the corner of his desk. “I’m helping track the expenses incurred for the Remembrance Revels.”