Page 132 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

Emmeline only hugged her knees to her chest. The water swirled with the movement, shapes morphing before her blurred vision. Her hair was plastered to her back and shoulders, a shroud to cover her deepest wounds.

Somehow, she felt like Roremar could see them still.

“Em?” Roremar asked softly, hand coasting over her hair in a barely there touch.

Em, he called her. It seemed so personal coming from this brooding, reckless warrior. From someone who had warred with the need to protect her tonight. Who came back no matter how hard she pushed him away. It was like touching fire when you’d already been burned, knowing how distinct that pain was but asking for it again and again. Roremar must have been a masochist to choose her.

Beneath the water, her thumbs stroked the crescent-shaped scars along her thighs. She dug her nails into each, as if making herself bleed would reclaim them somehow. As if she could cancel out the wounds she’d buried deep below her armor, the scars and secrets beneath her scales so ugly and wretched and unfathomable.

Perhaps she was the masochist, needing to feel the pain when everything else felt too real.

“Em, are you okay?”

Fates, his voice rolled along her skin in such a soothing way. But his touch—she couldn’t be touched right now. Every brush was sharp as the scales slicing against her skin. The way he kept the barest hint of distance between his palm and her hair told her he could tell. That he was reading her better than she cared to admit.

I know you’re able to do it all on your own. But right now, you don’t have to. Let me help.

Too real.

And she knew if he stayed this close, she’d lean into him. But that contact would catch on her heart and rip her wide open. Shred and pierce and bleed the both of them.

She didn’t think she could handle that.

“Alone,” she muttered.

She didn’t look up to see the disappointment and concern budding in his eyes, though she knew exactly how choking it would be. Didn’t let his answering silence puncture her resolve. She couldn’t.

It all felt too real.

Chapter Forty-Two

Roremar

Roremar remained by the bathing tub for a moment, a voice inside of him begging Emmeline to take that one word back. He didn’t fucking want to leave her alone right now. It went against every fiber of his being.

She was breaking.

Tonight had shattered her, and though they were only partners in this investigation—though the ground between them had been shredded—the tug in his chest yearned to be the one to hold her as she put herself back together.

Roremar wasn’t naive. He had seen Emmeline’s strength these weeks. Against his will, he’d memorized the way her expression shuttered when they danced too close to the topic of her past. The way her Fatesdamned teeth sank into her bottom lip and eyes squeezed closed when she gathered herself around whatever scars lingered there. She was exceedingly talented at holding herself up, all by herself.

But for once, he wished she’d allow him to at least gather the pieces.

To kneel before her and hand them to her, bit by broken bit.

But Emmeline excelled at being alone. She was freedom personified, leaping from rooftop to rooftop beneath midnight air, and he couldn’t leash her. Not even now, not even if it meant he was helping her. In the end, it would only drag her down.

Holding in a sigh, he stood, his pants and tunic soaked from the bath water.

“You don’t have to talk to me,” Roremar said, searching her scattered expression one last time as she gazed at the water. As her hands roamed those fucking scars. He swallowed at the sight of the bite marks. “You don’t have to talk to me, but I will be right here,” he swore. “Right. Here. When you want me.”

Emmeline shivered.

At the door, Roremar glanced over his shoulder one final time. Her back was to him, long hair plastered in serpentine paths against her skin. He had to clench his fists against the ache to touch her and force his feet into the hall.

But he didn’t go far.

He couldn’t go far.