Page 143 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

“What are you doing here?” Emmeline asked.

“I saw you from overhead.”

Emmeline’s gaze tipped toward the clouds, parting after the light rain earlier, the moon and stars peeking through. “Were you looking for me?”

“I was simply looking,” Valyrie answered, turning to gaze out over the city, mystlights in windows and lampposts like tiny starflies. “I knew where you would be.”

“Because you read me?” Though any Starsearchers could have asked the Fates about her at any time, it felt like an intrusion for the Angel who toyed with mortal lives so beautifully to be plucking at their threads of Fate.

Who was to say she didn’t simply rewrite one because she was bored?

“No,” Valyrie said, not elaborating, only gazing over the city with longing in her navy eyes.

Just as Emmeline found herself doing so often on Lyra. Perhaps they were not as different as she thought.

Despite her frustrations with the Angel and the endless questions bubbling up her throat, Emmeline was content with the silence. In a sense, it was familiar. So similar to all the years she spent with nothing but her own magic as her companion. And here was the being who’d birthed it.

Perhaps Valyrie could hold answers for her.

As if hearing that thought, the Angel said, “You may ask what you are wondering.”

Emmeline almost asked about Roremar immediately, but the wistfulness in Valyrie’s stare had her pausing. “Did you live here?”

“In the manor?” Valyrie shifted to look at her, wings held high. That eternal lilac ether shimmered off the feathers in a constant waterfall, as if it was an endless well. “No, I did not live here. While certain buildings and monuments sustain from my rule, most of the city was rebuilt many years after my time.”

“But you lived in Valyn?” Emmeline asked. Valyrie lifted a quizzical silver brow, and Emmeline added, “I’ve read a lot about your life.”

Cosmo-swirling eyes scanned Emmeline. Seeing what? She wasn’t sure. Didn’t think she liked it. Her thumb twirled the opal ring on her first finger.

“What else do you know?” Valyrie asked.

“I know this city was founded in your name as all the capital cities of the warrior territories were for their Angels. I know of the disputes legends speak of between you and your comrades. I’ve deduced each district is made for a Fate, like a puzzle of the Starsearcher’s cause.”

“You have?”

Emmeline paused. She hadn’t found it difficult to decipher, but something about that being the fact to catch the Angel’s attention piqued her interest. She nodded, but Valyrie only blinked patiently at her, as if waiting for Emmeline to elaborate.

Not knowing exactly what the Angel wanted from her, Emmeline went on, “I know what your tournament was originally created for.”

It came out more challenging than she’d intended, the accusation hanging in the night air like a secret.

It was Valyrie’s turn to swallow uncomfortably. The clouds shifted above, moonlight illuminating a flicker of pain in her expression, there and gone so fast, Emmeline wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been so attuned to the Fates and their master.

“I saw it,” Emmeline whispered. “I saw the truth about all of it. You created the Fates using this tournament. You gave them kernels of your own magic.”

At that, Valyrie’s head tilted. “You found my seeing chamber?”

Emmeline nodded, and the Angel’s eyes fogged over, silver swirling in her navy irises. Ice skittered down Emmeline’s spine as she waited, twirling her ring around her finger.

“Odd…” Valyrie mused, long lashes blinking as she thought.

“What is?”

“I knew someone crossed the threshold. I felt the tremor two nights ago.” Ether shimmered off her feathers. “But I could not see who.”

“You felt it?”

Valyrie lifted a hand, lilac and blue twirling around her delicate fingers. “That chamber is sacred, thus the magic is, too.”