Page 46 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

“I’ll certainly be asking later,” Emmeline huffed as she blindly hurried after Alana. Her skin prickled at how foolish she was to follow someone she barely knew onto a desolate property. “Late for what?”

They reached a bend in the path, a small, two-story wooden farmhouse standing at the end. The property’s main home was a ghost in the distance. Abandoned.

“You’ll see,” Alana said.

She led Emmeline inside, not pausing to show her around. Mystlights blinked to life as they climbed the stairs, sconces lined with cobwebs. Moth-bitten sheets were thrown over furniture and paintings on the first floor.

“Whose home is this?” Emmeline asked as Alana led her into one of the two bedrooms at the top of the stairs. This one at least wasn’t as deserted as the rest of the place. The wood burning stove in the corner was lit, and candles decorated the wooden shelves beside the door, flames casting alluring shadows across a double bed and settee. A small glass tray with a decanter and two tumblers waited atop the dresser.

“Someone I know from one of the galleries I worked at owned this place. He passed recently—old age—and left the land to his family, but they won’t be in Valyn for a few months,” Alana said. “Wait here.”

She was gone before Emmeline could ask why, the door clipping closed behind her.

It wasn’t locked—Emmeline tested it—but when she poked her head into the hall, no one was there. Rather than follow Alana through a decrepit house, Emmeline clung to the sliver of trust she was trying to offer her new friend. Giving in to the exhaustion taking over her body from the emotions of the day and Rocarri’s threats, she retreated back into the room, removed her cloak, and draped it across the bed.

After many long minutes of stewing and twisting her opal ring, Emmeline crept to the window, careful to notice which floorboards looked warped or might squeak beneath her steps. She peered around the edge of the curtain. Two shadows inched along the perimeter of the farmhouse, one small and lithe, the other much larger.

Her heart lodged in her throat as she pulled the dagger from her boot.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs.

Emmeline spun around as the door flew open. “Alana, there’s⁠—”

But it wasn’t Alana who stood in the doorway.

Shock rushed through her, followed by the silent splintering of her heart.

“Roremar,” she breathed, her dagger clattering to the floor.

Grey eyes landed on hers, flaring silver. “Emmeline.”

In the space of a blink, his arms were around her. Warm sandalwood and a hint of sea air flooded her senses—the scent of him, of a comfort she’d rarely known—and Emmeline truly breathed for what felt like the first time in her life.

Roremar cupped the back of her head, holding her tightly to him as his lips pressed to her hair. All eleven of her Fate ties sighed in bliss at his touch, his kiss burning into her spirit and sending a soothing ripple down her bones.

“Thank the Fates,” Roremar whispered.

His relief unwound his frame as her hands pressed against his back, every tense muscle relaxing beneath her trembling fingers. He was here. She didn’t know how, but he was here, and he was hers, and she was safe within his arms. They both were.

She hadn’t realized the extent of her fear in this city until his presence siphoned it away.

Roremar asked, “Are you okay? I’ve been thinking about you every day, and when I saw you today I—” His words cut off, as if he didn’t know how to encompass everything he’d felt.

“I’m okay,” she whispered into his chest, though it didn’t even scratch the surface.

It was an odd comfort to have someone care so deeply about her well-being, to have his voice shredded with a tangle of panic and relief to be able to touch her. It nudged against that old bruise, the need to belong that Rocarri had agitated earlier.

And…Fates.

Stay in line. Or you may forfeit Roremar the Reckless’s life.

She stiffened, hands sliding to his chest to put distance between them as Rocarri’s tainted words ripped at her spirit.

Roremar couldn’t be here. They couldn’t be here. Not alone—no, they shouldn’t even be interacting if Rocarri’s threats held true. She didn’t think she and Alana had been followed, but the Chancellor had known when she snuck out of the manor before, and Emmeline wasn’t sure how far his eyes reached.

Fates, what would happen if Rocarri knew they were together so soon after he’d warned her to stay away?

“Roremar,” she choked out, the thought of letting him go when she’d barely gotten him back sawing through her. She didn’t even know where he’d been, how he was coping with Nico’s death.