Page 199 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

His gaze dropped over his uncle, Aldryn’s face remaining neutral.

“No, that isn’t it,” Roremar said. “You may argue that’s the reason you set the Remembrance Revels as the deadline for the case on Lyra to be solved. Because you were planning to leave for the continent shortly after. But I think, if it was within your control, you’d have come here when things were quiet. You don’t like fanfare to overshadow your presence.”

“Get to the point, Roremar. We have somewhere to be tonight.” Aldryn crossed his arms, hands flexing, and Roremar’s gaze fell to the rings on his fingers, so similar to his own.

“Something changed,” Roremar asserted, tearing his attention from their similarities. “Something happened that gave you a hint—an answer you needed—so you came here to seek whatever it is you’re truly after.”

“That’s what you want to know, then?”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m a dying man, Uncle. I think I’ve earned the chance to leave this world with answers.” Roremar reached into his pocket, removing the stone Desmond and Myrella had bought and dumping it on the table. “I think it has to do with this and the ring my father gave me.”

When Aldryn didn’t answer, Roremar lifted his brows, adding, “Care to explain?”

Aldryn pulled a second glass from the shelf above the sideboard and filled them both, passing one to Roremar. As his fingers closed around it, his mind flashed to all the times he’d had to ask his uncle for help—to all the times he’d stood in the Temple Master’s office—and each time, he was handed a glass of liquor that didn’t solve any of his problems, but he’d taken it because he had to play the game.

Tipping the glass to his lips, this time was different. This was a shattering of a past. A cleansing of charades and removal of masks.

A final act.

“That ring,” Aldryn began. “What did Deacon say it was made of?”

“A unique steel,” Roremar answered simply.

“Didn’t entirely lie, then,” Aldryn muttered. Defensiveness prickled Roremar’s spine, though he wasn’t quite certain where the insult was headed, so he swallowed down his retort. “It was a unique, very malleable metal. It bends fairly easily to things beyond fire, but it’s nearly impossible to destroy.

“None of that is what makes it truly special, though. None of that is why he chose it.” Aldryn took a sip of his liquor, eyeing Roremar over the rim, clearly waiting for him to ask a follow up question.

Roremar didn’t oblige, but his mind was piecing together theories based on everything Valyrie had told them.

After a long moment, Aldryn smacked his lips and said, “Your father’s industrious personality led him to a few discoveries that interested men much higher in status than himself.” Roremar ignored the sneer in his uncle’s voice, hearing of his father both ripping open a wound and waking a predator. “Occasionally, when the findings were severe enough, they landed on my desk. I don’t believe Deacon ever knew that. He would have done anything in his power as investor and innovator on the projects to keep them from me.”

“You’re likely right,” Roremar agreed.

“Over the near-century that I knew him, a few of his ventures were of interest. One spoke of mining in the mountains on Zyon. Of a rare mineral they found—that had previously been found in very few other locations, most of which are on Gallantia. But this source—this was on the isles. This was ours.” Greed dripped off those words.

“You mean it was his.” Roremar’s temper battled him. “His and whoever worked on that project. Not yours.”

“You forget that the isles belong to me,” Aldryn claimed, his voice dipping into a lower realm of corruption than anything Roremar had heard from him before.

“The isles belong to all the warriors who live on them—those who founded them and care for them. They do not belong to solely one person.”

“That is what I let you all believe,” Aldryn said. “Do you wish to get the rest of your story, dying man?”

Roremar’s anger was boiling. He took another sip of his liquor, and it practically sizzled down his throat.

“This mineral found on Zyon, when paired with the correct, malleable metal, becomes defensive. The mineral itself is called Fatalium, and it is⁠—”

“Legends say it can carve a Fate’s constellation from the sky,” Roremar finished. He’d heard the name before—perhaps only once or twice. It was one of the dozen ways it was claimed Dryvius had been killed.

It was Fatalium that his father had the ring forged with? That his uncle was after now? In the Quarry Lock and beneath the earth at Wisteria Falls, it was all that rare mineral that could be forged into metal to defend against Fates.

Roremar’s heart stampeded.

“I do not know if that use is true or myth, but it can defend against a Fate’s magic,” Aldryn said. “It keeps Dryvius contained to you.”

Keeps.

His uncle didn’t know that Dryvius had broken that chain, then. Roremar kept that to himself.