Page 85 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

One’s own rise or demise. That is where your fortune waits.

“Is this a warning?” Emmeline asked, her skin prickling as the Fate shared the haunting tale.

“Isn’t all of history a warning in one way or another?” Serchus asked. With a bubbling laugh, his voice slipped back into its usual giddy state. “What matters is what we decide to listen to. So much is hidden and rewritten.”

Hidden and rewritten. Like the Warders of Selene, Selene herself, and groups like Realmspinners. All wiped from historical records. What other legends had been rewritten in history?

As if Emmeline’s unspoken thought was what he’d wanted her to ask, Serchus nodded, and with a silver flash, he was gone. The Fate’s celestial shape receded into its initial bead of light, returning to the mask constellation overhead.

As Serchus’s star slipped back into place, each pinprick of light glowed brighter. Brighter.

A hum mounted on the air, like Aevollon’s music she’d heard recently, accented by cracking bones. It swelled to a deafening beat, and her ears rang. Her magic pulled against her skin. Her chest tightened.

Then, the entire sky imploded in a great crescendo of shattered glass. And the Fate Realm cleaved apart in a blinding red light.

“Fates,” Emmeline panted as she rocked upright in the Archives, gulping down air. “That was so much stronger than it has been.”

“You said it’s been doing that often?” Myrella asked from her side as Lola handed her a glass of water.

Emmeline nodded her thanks, drinking half in one go. “Yes, since I arrived in Valyn, but nothing as powerful as that.”

Anphrosia had warned her she would have to give up everything to save Roremar. Emmeline had thought she’d meant her secrets, not the control of her own magic.

“What did Serchus say?” Lola asked, huddling back in her chair and tucking her knees to her chest.

Emmeline explained how different this reading had been from most, writing down what she was able to recall verbatim.

“A key,” she repeated, underlining the word. “He kept referring to this person as a key, or a link because they knew something they weren’t supposed to.”

“Dryvius?” Desmond asked from where he leaned against the wall, arms crossed.

“I think so.”

Lola twirled a lock of hair around her finger, thinking. “Or Roremar is the key.”

“That’s the other guess,” Emmeline said. “It adds up to my reading with Anphrosia yesterday where she implied Dryvius was still using him.”

“What did she say?” Myrella asked.

“That Dryvius is lying in wait and will reveal everything soon thanks to the help of…his heir.”

A tense silence filled the room.

Emmeline hadn’t mentioned Anphrosia’s exact wording last night when she saw how much Roremar’s Fate tie was taking a toll on him, but the threat showed in Lola’s tight jaw, in Desmond’s cracking knuckles.

“We at least have hints of a cause now,” Emmeline assured them. “A lock and a key. Roremar is one and Dryvius the other, and the Fate used him to unlock something.”

“Maybe unlock his constellation,” Myrella guessed. “It hadn’t been seen since his death. And Roremar thought his reading was in the Fate Realm last night. Perhaps Dryvius is drawing power from the symbol being back in the sky and using it against the Fates.”

Emmeline’s stomach dropped at that prospect. “If that’s true, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about it or how we help Roremar.”

“We’re jumping to conclusions,” Desmond said. “We don’t know that Serchus was talking about Dryvius and Roremar at all.”

Desmond was right. They didn’t know.

But Emmeline could feel all the Fates looking at her, as if they were waiting for her to figure this out. It was as stark a pressure as the eyes in the capital. And when she leaned toward theories about Roremar, all that attention perked up.

“I want to go again,” Emmeline said, brushing her hair back and rolling her shoulders.