Page 247 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

Everyone tensed as the Chancellor strode across the Warder wings in the center of the room, their glow reflecting in his silver-trimmed robes, and stopped feet from Emmeline and Roremar. She didn’t pull her hand from his, didn’t bother to act like she wasn’t Roremar’s in every way.

After weeks of torment, weeks of her heart being torn from her body and swearing she couldn’t have him, she was taking what she wanted. What was made for her. Emmeline loved Roremar, and no one could make her say otherwise again.

“What do you want with us?” Roremar asked.

Instead of answering, Rocarri smiled, nodding at the others in the room. “Do they know?”

Emmeline’s brows pulled together. Roremar’s confusion rippled down the bond, too.

“Know what?” Emmeline asked.

“About you two.”

Roremar’s gaze dropped to their entwined hands. “Give them a little more credit than that, Chancellor.”

“Always with the smart mouth,” Falliare muttered, shaking his head.

“Be quiet!” Roremar snapped.

“Do they know?” Rocarri repeated, not even flinching. Emmeline’s magic spun faster, her chin lifting higher. “That you two are bonded?”

Silence ricocheted through the cavern.

“You’re what?” Desmond asked finally at the same time Perry spat, “No fucking way.”

Rian only looked at the two of them with his brows raised. “Would have been nice to know.”

“We didn’t hide it,” Roremar said without looking at them.

“Not maliciously, at least,” Emmeline corrected. “It happened tonight.”

“We knew you were gone for each other, but we didn’t know you’d officially bonded,” Perry clarified.

Myrella’s eyes shone with both pain and joy. “You completed the ceremony? The vows and everything?”

Emmeline stiffened. “It isn’t that kind of bond.”

“What kind…” Desmond’s words trailed off, his eyes widening.

Myrella smiled knowingly as she guessed, but it was Falliare who announced, “Emmeline and Roremar are Fatesworn.”

The words cracked across the room like a prophecy, Emmeline’s skin tingling. She swore the starfire in the Warder Mark below their feet glowed brighter.

“How long have you known?” Roremar snapped at his uncle.

“I didn’t when I first paired you together. I knew Emmeline had powerful magic and suspected your Fate tie.” Falliare’s attention landed on her. “When you revealed your eleven alignments on Lyra, I wondered what it could mean. The two of you—all twelve Fates brought to life. It wasn’t until Balmour and I exchanged theories on the inner workings of bonds that I guessed it.”

“Was that before you sent me here?” Emmeline asked, a lump in her throat. Her fingers twitched toward the triple blade sheathed at her thigh.

She had to know. Had to know how deep the betrayal ran. How many people in this Fatesforsaken realm had only looked at her as an opportunity?

Falliare nodded. “We corresponded the night you blew up the seeing chamber.”

She shouldn’t be shocked that a man who craved power had never cared for her beyond hers, yet her eyes stung. A part of her—another childlike part that yearned for nothing more than belonging—broke off.

She was used.

Disposable without her magic. Priceless enough to cage with it.