Page 109 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

Stars, he wished he could read her mind the way he’d somehow known she’d needed him the night she was attacked.

“Where are we meeting him?” Emmeline asked, tipping her chin toward Roremar and shattering the illusions of his dreams.

He dug his tongue into his cheek as he considered his answer. “I’ll meet him alone. You said you have late tutoring sessions. Nico will be at the Academy if you need anything.”

Tomorrow was their mother’s night off. Roremar may not have faith in the Fates, but at least someone had orchestrated that well enough.

Emmeline’s brows scrunched together, and he could practically see the war raging in her mind. The lack of control this meant, the resignation and trust it symbolized.

Give it all to me, Huntress, he wanted to say. To beg. Every last drop, he could handle it. Relinquish all that she withheld, every secret she kept wrapped so tightly around her heart. If she did, he’d hold them until his palms were bloody with restraint, until his lungs were shredded screaming her name on a battlefield and soul was etched with the promise.

“Okay,” Emmeline finally conceded with a sigh.

And it wasn’t all of her, but that trust was a start.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Emmeline

“You’re certainly not letting him off easy.” Emmeline laughed as she and Myrella patrolled the corridors of Lyra Temple Academy after her tutoring sessions wrapped the next evening. She’d been imploring Myrella for details of what had happened with Nico in the Mourning Gardens, trying to distract her mind from the endless string of theories.

Apparently Nico had showed up at Myrella’s door as her last lesson of the day was ending, six bouquets in hand—each a different shade of yellow because it reminded him of her—and Myrella had deemed them all adequate.

“Why should I? He did lie to me.”

“You’re right,” Emmeline conceded. “How did he manage to get this far in swaying you anyway?”

“He told me the full story of why he lied, for starters,” Myrella confessed. She didn’t elaborate, and Emmeline didn’t pry. “Then, before I’d even fallen asleep when we returned to Lyra, he sent me a letter with Mystique ink.”

“A letter?” They rounded the corner into the main foyer of the Academy, the dining hall on one side and the library on the other. Loud chatter echoed from the former, students congregating inside since the curfew no longer allowed them out after sundown. Guards had been doubled around the Temple Academy to ensure it.

“A lot of letters, actually.” Myrella blushed. “An envelope thick enough that he couldn’t possibly have written them all that night, each one dated between when we met and now. He said he wanted to send them when he first wrote them, but he couldn’t lie to me more, so he kept them for himself.”

“And the letters convinced you to give him a chance?” Emmeline asked.

“They convinced me that he was telling the truth. That he…felt what I had that night and lied because he saw no other option.” Her eyes shone, and Emmeline had no doubt that the initial connection had been powerful. “Truthfully, the letters only make him more convincing because they’re so honest. More like diary entries.”

Emmeline propped herself on one of the stone benches carved into the wall outside the library, the view of the doors into the outer courtyard making it the perfect spot to wait for the inevitable students trying to sneak out.

Where much of Lyra had been spooked into submission by the escalation of murders, the students didn’t seem to find it quite as dire locked atop the hill. Some saw it as a challenge, one student’s stubbornness earlier tonight reminding her immediately of Roremar when she dragged him back to his dormitory with extra readings assigned to keep him busy.

She tried not to think of the reckless warrior now, though. Every time she had since Alvan, her skin flushed and an ache throbbed in her core at the memory of his voice: I have been looking at you for longer than I care to admit.

Fear wound through her. Fear because she didn’t want him to look too close but also because Roremar thrilled her in a way no one ever had, and she couldn’t become reliant on that. On him.

Endless ruin.

And she had greater priorities. She hadn’t slept at all the past two nights since Alvan, thoughts of every student tied to Anphrosia racing through her mind. She held her breath each day until they walked into her classroom, despite the extra guards on rotation.

The killer had gotten in before.

“So you’ll forgive him?” Emmeline asked to distract herself.

“Not so easily,” Myrella said, taking the seat beside her. “Trust takes time to repair once it’s broken, but he’s taking it in stride.” Her soft smile told Emmeline that Nico being patient only won Myrella over more.

“Why don’t you just tell him what flowers you like?” Emmeline suggested.

“Because I’m nothing if not determined.” Nico’s voice flooded the corridor as he exited the tall wooden doors to the library, the mystlight chandelier above haloing him. A few lingering children whispered about Miss Corvus’s new friend as he flashed Myrella a sheepish smile. “Irises?”