Page 231 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

It wasn’t typical poison. It bonded them to her, Emmeline had explained.

And he grasped one answer.

“She took something, too,” Roremar recalled. “In the poison trial, Valyrie took something to bond the contestants to her, to ensure a connection. Collateral.”

“She found out what their greatest fears were?” Rian guessed.

“Fear can be a weakness, and she wanted them to conquer it. For Starsearchers in particular, fear of the unknown can be the greatest.”

“Because we’re supposed to trust the Fates,” Rian agreed.

Roremar’s father’s words echoed through his fractured memory: Two things at once.

Starsearchers could be two things at once, and Valyrie used that in forging her Fates.

Roremar nodded as he tried to hold on to the budding theory, shifting his sling to sit more comfortably. “Valyrie took the competitors’ greatest fears or something that marked their past during the poison trial and wielded it against them in the third to decipher what their Fately spectrums would be.”

The tournament was always about the Fates, after all. How they’d be primed to become what she needed them to, how they’d be bonded to her. What they’d represent to Starsearchers…

How they’d manipulate them.

“Manipulation…” Roremar breathed.

His memory—the way he couldn’t recall the pivotal information he needed, how ideas kept floating away from his grasp.

Svalla, and how he’d claimed he kept seeing his brothers’ death over and over again, how he’d said he lost his vision again.

Roremar’s mind failing him, Svalla’s loyalty blinding him.

“It’s manipulating us,” Roremar whispered.

Rian scanned the cavern they’d stopped in, the five crossroads branching off. “How…”

Roremar stood at the head of one of the tunnels, staring into the piercing darkness. “They’re wielding our strengths and fears against us.”

Chapter Seventy-Six

Emmeline

“It’s right up here.” Emmeline panted as she pulled Myrella through the tree-woven tunnel and to the mausoleum that still looked like it hadn’t been visited in ages.

Her magic was demanding in her veins. At one point on the way here, it had screamed, a pain wrenching her chest as the stars spun faster overhead, and she only hoped it wasn’t Roremar.

Myrella hadn’t asked a single question the entire ride, simply hopping on the horses they’d found tied up outside and hurrying toward the graveyard, even though Emmeline knew she hated riding. She’d felt her thousands of inquiries bubbling within her the entire time, but neither of them stopped. Emmeline had barely breathed.

Her skirt caught on the brush as they raced up to the stone structure and Valyrie’s statue before it, but she let the expensive, jeweled fabric tear. Rain misted her skin as a storm rolled in.

“The entrance is in here,” Emmeline said. “Then, my Fate ties⁠—”

Footsteps pounded up the path behind them, and Emmeline and Myrella both froze.

“Fates, how did they follow us?” Myrella asked in a nervous whisper. “I thought we lost them in the districts.”

“I don’t know,” Emmeline said, discouragement winding through her. Guards had tracked them out of the arena, but they hadn’t been anywhere close when they scaled the fence into the graveyard. And this place of all was difficult to locate.

Emmeline stole herself against the frustration. She wouldn’t give up. She’d claw away from these men to find Lola if she had to. And then, as revenge for Nico and redemption for Roremar, she’d kill the Fate for good—no matter what it took from her to do it.

“We need to hide,” Myrella said, but Emmeline was already pulling another dagger from beneath her skirt. She’d lost one escaping the arena, but she’d come prepared tonight.