Page 57 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

He’d been one of the two cloaked men on the cliffside the night of the first murder. When she’d first spoken to him in the Accords, a string had snagged in her mind. Now, after hearing his voice again on the docks—the slight drawl in the way he pronounced certain vowels, like he had all the time in the world—she traced that thread to its source.

But was he the stranger she’d tracked through the vineyard or the one who had escaped into the jungle? For reasons she couldn’t explain beyond the Fate within her insisting she follow them, Emmeline had been so sure those two men were involved in this case.

Who had he been meeting that night? Was it Roremar?

And if it was, what did that mean?

She glanced over at him as they sat in their familiar wood-paneled room within the Accords, sorting through a stack of books on the histories of various cults and ritualistic sacrifices. Dark waves tumbling over his forehead, he flipped a page, a graphic image of a body splayed on an alter staring up at them.

“Yes?” Roremar asked without looking up, as if he sensed her eyes on him. For someone so aware of studying others, he’d barely seemed to glance at her since they left the port, some inexplicable wall erected between them.

No more secrets.

Emmeline shook her head. “Daydreaming,” she excused, pushing back from the table and gliding around the room on the pretense of lighting a few candles. Nothing overpowering, but something indulgent—soothing, like vanilla and cinnamon—that wouldn’t trigger her readings.

She hadn’t told Roremar about her encounter with the hallucinating warrior near the Eastern Port last night. She was trying and failing to connect the dots in her mind.

Tucking away her concerns over Desmond, Emmeline exhaled slowly and resumed her seat at the table, recapping what she was sure of based on the research she’d done thus far. “Compared to these accounts, the two murders are clearly ritualistic sacrifices.”

Roremar grunted in agreement. “But there’s no mentions of twelve-pointed star tattoos or what they could be intended for.”

“If we’re assuming this is connected to the Fates, Anphrosia and Serchus have the strongest history of cult worship,” she added.

Roremar’s shoulders tensed at the mention of those two celestial beings. “Neither of them has a particularly loyal foothold in Lyra. It wouldn’t make sense for their followers to be striking here of all places.”

Emmeline studied him. “No, but Lyra has always been the most eclectic of the isles.”

As the largest population of the Constellation Isles, Lyra hosted the most even spread of Starsearchers revering each Fate, rather than greater groups culminating in one place. Emmeline had always preferred that, though right now, it trumped her budding theory that the Fate of Cruelty and Adoration or the Fate of Secrets and Greed were directly involved.

“It could just as easily be followers of Zorrahn or Hyllara,” Roremar argued, hand fisting atop the table.

“It could be,” Emmeline agreed softly. The Fate of Storms and Peaceful Stretches and Fate of Fertility and Betrayal were often painted as the epitome of divine love and celestial power, sometimes even revered as the leaders of the other ten, though many legends revealed darker truths about their entanglements.

Still, she didn’t point out the obvious to Roremar: None of the books they’d combed through mentioned either of those Fates. Overwhelmingly, it was Anphrosia and Serchus.

Given his clear discomfort, Emmeline redirected the conversation, shifting closer to look at the pages he turned. “There’s also the ash around the second body to consider—wait!” Emmeline leaned across Roremar, flattening the page and dragging a hand across the top. “Look at this.”

His eyes traced the path of her finger as if his life depended on it, his chest pressing against her body as he craned his neck to see, one hand falling to her waist. A line of heat spread out from his touch, her breath catching. Spirits, she’d all but jumped into his lap.

She ignored how his attention and proximity sent her heart stampeding, how the skin of her back where his thumb brushed just above her skirt was burning.

“The insignia,” she whispered.

Centered at the head of the worn page, a pair of angel wings were sketched, one feathered and artistically filled in, one brutish, as if made of iron.

“You think this is what the medallion is supposed to be? Not the tattoo parlor where the ink was done?” Roremar asked, his finger brushing against hers as he traced the design. It was much more detailed than what Desmond had shown them.

“I’m thinking it’s too similar to overlook,” Emmeline asserted, turning toward him. Her heartbeat pounded through her entire body, her fingertips tingling with awareness.

“I’m thinking you’re probably right, Huntress,” Roremar said, and when he lifted his gaze from the page, that molten steel pierced her.

Emmeline’s breath caught in her throat, her body tingling. Her face was only inches from his. The beat of his heart rumbled down her bones. Each of his exhales tickled her shoulder, and his eyes melted into quicksilver that scorched to her core.

That stare was magnetic, pulling her in, but two words looped through her memory.

Endless ruin.

Suddenly very aware of how she was still stretched across him, Emmeline shifted back into her seat. She swallowed and asked, “What does the footnote say?”