Page 166 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

“I am nothing like you.”

A smooth huff of glee. You may think that now, but you will see. We are the same. Dryvius paused. My victory is inevitable.

Roremar’s nails dug into the stone ground until he thought they’d crack. “And so is your ruin.”

The smirk was clear in the Fate’s next words. Then let the games begin, shall we?

“Rore!” A sharp sting rang across Roremar’s cheek. His head jerked to the side, and the reading dissolved, the connection with the Fate severing.

His eyes snapped open, and he rocked upright, panting, shooting pain beneath his nails from where he’d clawed the stone.

Desmond crouched over him in his cell, a full moon shining outside the window now. “Thank the fucking Fates.” Desmond sighed. “Thought you were unconscious.”

“I was reading,” Roremar answered, shaking his head.

“What? Why? How?”

He ignored the first two, not wanting to get into the explanation of what Rocarri had told him. “Don’t know how, but the fucker finally answered.”

“What did he say?”

Roremar swallowed the memories, the threats. “Nothing good.”

Desmond eyed him. “Are you okay? Can you feel him?”

Tentatively, Roremar inhaled the incense still lingering on the air. Desmond looked prepared to slap him again if need be.

But nothing happened.

“Same as it was before.” Roremar dragged a hand down his face, rubbing his eyes. That reading was short but powerful enough to drain him. “He’s there—he’s always fucking there—but he’s blocking the tie somehow. I bet that’s why the poison didn’t affect me the other day.”

“You still want to be kept out of everything we’re doing, then?”

Rocarri’s revelations echoed in his memory, along with Dryvius’s taunts. Roremar had been in the dark these past few weeks, and it was getting them nowhere. Maybe if he hadn’t been so fucking stubborn, he’d have figured out why Emmeline was staying away from him or why his Fate tie wasn’t affected in the poison trial before everything got so dire.

He already did the most Reckless thing of all by allowing Dryvius back into his mind. Why stop now?

“No,” Roremar said, pushing to his feet. “What’s going on?”

Desmond held the unlocked door wider. Fuck it, Rocarri was already aware he was sneaking out and didn’t seem to care. “Guards will be gone for a while, thanks to Myrella. Let’s go.”

Chapter Fifty-Four

Emmeline

Sharing a horse with Roremar, his arms around her waist and chest warm against her back through her leathers, set all of Emmeline’s nerves on edge. She could still feel his voice rumbling against her neck, his lips pressing into her skin, hear his ragged breaths, desperate to remove all those final barriers between them.

But they couldn’t.

And based on his poor temper as they rode out of Valyn and south of the capital, Desmond and Myrella on a horse behind them, Roremar had finally accepted her lies.

“We should stop here,” Roremar said, dismounting when they were about a quarter mile from their destination. “The horses might get spooked if we ride too close.”

Emmeline swung down after him, but Roremar didn’t look at her. The avoidance pinched in her chest. It’s what you asked for, she reminded herself.

Truthfully, she’d been surprised he agreed to come with them. He’d been so adamant about not knowing any of the details of the latest murder. Perhaps the poison trial and the clear malfunctioning of his Fate tie changed that.

“We’ll stay back with them,” Desmond said, Myrella nodding in agreement as he took the reins. Roremar stomped off into the jungle.