Page 131 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

Picking that one up, he inhaled it. “Bitter.”

The Fate of Chaos and Revelry was known for lavish parties flowing with wine and depraved decadence. He had no room for anything bitter at his table.

Satisfied, Roremar placed the tin cup before him and dropped the bitter herb in, analyzing what he was left with. That damn box…

Shoving the book aside, deeming it unnecessary until later, he pulled the box over. Everyone had one. It had to be crucial to surviving. A quick glance at Rian said he’d arrived at the same idea, the polished wood gleaming as he tried to work it out.

Roremar’s side ached. He hunched over the table, shutting out the world and focusing solely on the puzzle before him, hearing the hum of the sea in his mind instead of the roaring crowd.

He felt around every edge. There were no obvious latches or hidden compartments, but he’d done these as a boy with his father. The answer was never the first thing he found, so he’d trained himself to skip over the most blatant, often wrong path.

With delicate fingers, he pressed gently on each panel of wood, until⁠—

“There,” he whispered, his heart rate speeding when one side clicked so quietly he easily could have missed it if he hadn’t been so focused.

The panel popped out half an inch, and Roremar carefully pulled it out the rest of the way, not wanting to force anything. If you had to use too much pressure, it was always the wrong answer.

Roremar stretched the drawer out, but it was empty.

Holding the box to his ear, he slowly pushed the panel back in. About three quarters of the way, it locked into place with an almost imperceptible click

Once in place, the front of the panel twisted. Roremar unscrewed it from the rest of the box. He set it down, half expecting something venomous to strike out at him. Instead, a series of metal chips fell into his palm.

“What in the Fates?”

More men screamed around him, the poison wreaking havoc on their Fate ties. He distantly wondered if it was similar to the pain he felt in the seeing chamber as the resin in the stone had tried to wrench his alignment away.

If it was even half as bad, he felt for the fuckers, and he didn’t know how any of them were managing to keep at this trial. A few had gotten the first panel of the puzzle box open, some had abandoned it completely and were hurriedly chopping at different herbs and petals, stuffing them down their throats.

Perry and Rian seemed to be the furthest along after him, studying the drawer intently. The former seemed the least affected from the poison next to Roremar, his eyes bloodshot and his chest heaving, tunic sweat-soaked, but nothing else visible. Khasson was intently focused on the box, head down so Roremar couldn’t tell how he was faring.

Roremar swept the metal chips into one palm, looking closely at their little grooves and indents.

“Puzzle pieces,” he breathed, and he started clicking them together.

As they took their shape, they resembled the trinkets that had been on his table originally.

His attention swung to the dirt where they were scattered, winking up at him in the sunlight, like tiny silver stars cut from sheets of metal.

Roremar collected them, dumping them on the table.

He paused to catch his breath, assessing himself once again for hints of the poison taking root.

There was nothing.

He didn’t have time to worry about it, though. Poison or no, he had to finish this task if he wanted any chance of keeping Emmeline from being bonded to someone else.

Roremar fully removed the pieces of the puzzle box he was done with—that went without resistance—and looked into the shadowed interior. He ran his fingers along the wood.

“Grooves,” he whispered.

And one by one, he started slotting the tiny stars into their places. Until each found a spot it clicked into easily. But there was an extra groove inside the box.

“I’m missing one.” Roremar scanned the ground. “Fucking Svalla.”

A chip of metal glinted, half-buried in the dirt near the leg of his table, and Roremar dove for it, ripping his stitches wider.

He cried out, pressing a hand to the wound. Sticky blood seeped through his tunic, but he didn’t stop. He squinted into the box, and scoffed as Dryvius’s constellation stared back at him, every line full of taunting metal stars.