Page 230 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

He was pretty sure his lip was swelling and that he had a nice bruise forming along his cheek as well as a sticky trail from his hairline. With the remnants of Svalla’s blood on him, he likely looked even worse.

“Let’s figure out how to get the fuck out of here. Which way did you come from?”

Rian gestured in the direction Roremar thought he’d also started if he was remembering the layout and growth of the plants on the walls correctly, which he couldn’t be sure of given how fuzzy his mind still was. They turned the opposite way.

Roremar sighed. “Here goes nothing.”

As they began the trek, Rian looked like he wanted to second guess it, but he followed. Roremar’s skin beat the entire time as if he was being watched.

“Valyrie,” Rian said after they’d walked for a bit. They’d agreed to try to follow signs of life—plants, anything that looked recently disturbed—and had been doing so in silence. Roremar was still trying to put together pieces of the night, everything feeling an inch out of reach.

“What about her?” he asked, kicking a rock down the way. It skipped over the stone, the clatter ringing in the silence, but nothing answered.

“What else did she say?” Rian asked, gaze constantly swiveling around them.

Roremar thought back to that meeting in the Council House.

“I can’t remember it all,” Roremar admitted, frustration grating through his chest. “The first task was about strength and morality, pushing competitors to those limits. Seems the duel was pretty spot on with what she’d planned originally. The second was also similar—hers was about poison. They had to drink from cups and solve riddles to figure out which would poison her.” Roremar tried to recall not only what Valyrie had implied but what Emmeline had seen. “I think the original competitors were pretty nefarious even before they won, sabotaging one another. Valyrie allowed it because it proved what she needed of them.”

“What does that mean?” Rian asked.

Roremar paused for a beat but answered, “The Fates.” Rian blinked at him. “The initial purpose of this tournament wasn’t for entertainment. Valyrie used it to choose twelve warriors to turn into the Fates.”

Rian swore, gazing down the tunnel and at the stones overhead as if seeing everything in a different light. A new threat.

Roremar figured if they were stuck together, he may as well tell Rian the rest. Maybe talking would jog his memory. “Emmeline has a scroll. It’s written in Endasi⁠—”

“The language of the Angels?”

Roremar nodded, continuing their slow walk. “It’s about the original Races. She’s been trying to translate it, but we couldn’t get any clues about this final one outside of what Valyrie told us herself.”

“Which is?”

“She didn’t know what Rocarri planned, how he would spin it, but her initial purpose…” He picked through his memory. “It was something they had to face. A challenge…” He grasped at a fluttering, elusive thought. “Fears, I think. To see what they could withstand.”

Rian considered that as they came to a crossroads of five tunnels and paused. “That can’t be it.”

“What?”

“It can’t just be about their fears,” Rian reasoned. “This entire tournament plays on a fear of dying and what we’re willing to do to win. This final task only being about facing a fear is too simple. Aren’t you supposed to be clever?”

Right now, his mind didn’t feel clever at all, and that frustrated Roremar to the end of the realms. His greatest asset was failing him.

He groaned. “What do you think it is, then?”

“The Fates are known for being twisted, right? For giving fortunes that aren’t straightforward and requiring us to unravel what they mean? It’s about things being written in the stars and us trusting their guidance implicitly.” It was the most Rian had spoken consecutively since he’d told Roremar of his brother.

He saw his point. “So, you think Valyrie lied?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I think she left something out.”

Roremar thought back to Emmeline’s reading of the original Races. She’d said after the third trial, Valyrie had been pouring her power into the twelve warriors who won in order to turn them into the Fates. Not that they were ripped from the stars or taken from another realm as some legends said, but that she’d gifted them a drop of her own magic. Ordinary warriors made extraordinary thanks to her power.

But if Valyrie was going to give up her own magic…

Fates, his head spun, every answer dancing at the edge of his reach, but he stretched out a little further, exercised the muscles of his mind that were his greatest strength.

His greatest strength.