Page 126 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

No.

That wasn’t what this was between them, no matter how his body craved hers. Emmeline was only doing that as an agreed upon signal. Roremar lifted his gaze to the balcony, but the shadow was already gone.

It only took one more hand of cards—plus a few long minutes of Roremar talking himself off the ledge of wanting Emmeline—until a dancer with platinum hair in a sleek curtain to her waist and barely any clothing at all approached their table. A delicate tattoo of jasmine flowers wove up her arm.

With a bored look, Emmeline glanced over her shoulder. The woman extended a polished silver tray, a note folded in the center. While Emmeline’s expression didn’t so much as flicker, Roremar didn’t miss the slight tremor in her hand as she reached for the paper.

“He wants to see us,” she muttered to him.

“Right this way,” the dancer said, gesturing for them to follow, tray tucked beneath her arm.

Winnings from their ruse forgotten, Roremar helped Emmeline off her stool and kept one hand braced at her back as they wound through the packed card tables and bodies.

“You going to finally tell me who we’re meeting?” Roremar muttered in her ear as they ascended the stairs to the balcony. Emmeline pressed back into him at his touch.

Those faceless shadows he normally studied from the hall below lined the walkway, bodies writhing, drinking, smoking.

He tuned them all out, though, when Emmeline tilted her head back and said, “The Snake Charmer.”

Chapter Forty

Roremar

“He’ll be up in a moment,” the dancer said as she led them into a room framed in emerald velvet curtains and shining silver adornments. Giving Roremar a sultry smile and toying with an orange blossom locket around her neck, she added, “Can I get you anything?”

Roremar looked to Emmeline, brow raised. “Need anything?”

She shook her head. Spirits, she was so unbelievably still.

“No, thank you,” he dismissed the dancer, her pout only aggravating him, but his attention was all for Emmeline.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Emmeline whispered, “Do you know who the Snake Charmer is?”

“I’ve heard of him,” Roremar said, coming to her side in the front of the room. The name had chilled his skin when she first said it, and he was glad he had his sword strapped to his back. “On the continent, he’s involved in a number of illicit activities.” Or he had been, but rumors reached even Lyra that he’d disappeared. “Heard he was out of business, too.”

“He should be,” was all Emmeline responded, words clipped. “His real name is Brutus Celvo.”

“Is he a suspect?” Roremar checked.

Though a part of him wished he was, Emmeline shook her head. “We’d know if it was him.”

The unspoken threat in that statement had Roremar’s shoulders squaring as he evaluated her. Mystlights hovered overhead, the orbs dangling on silver chains. Their gentle sway played a game of shadows with Emmeline’s expression as she kept her stare locked on the head of the room.

Between the curtains, the lower half of the walls were dark-paneled wood, the top green and black brocade. The entire space oozed an essence of riches Lyra hadn’t seen in years. Even the ceiling was inlaid with what Roremar assumed were real jewels, spelling out some constellation he didn’t care to note.

The curtains were pinned back at the sides of the room, sectioning the chamber into three parts if closed. The first, where he and Emmeline stood, bore a scuffed wooden floor a step above the rest, extinguished mystlights above.

Slowly, he ventured into the second segment. A bar stocked with much more expensive alcohol than he’d found on most of Lyra sat to one side, small round tables and leather chairs scattered through the rest. And in the third, private alcoves bore settees topped with mountains of pillows and silks. On the back wall, a cage was lit by a singular warm mystlight. And inside, onyx serpentine bodies slid over one another.

Ice dripped through Roremar’s stomach.

He should be.

Just what sort of operation was the Snake Charmer running here?

Roremar had always assumed the private rooms were reserved for fucking, no matter the proclivity one preferred. But this room was the size of three, and it was set up for…

He turned slowly, eyes landing on Emmeline across the room. On the mystlights gilding her.