Page 133 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

Roremar left the door cracked and leaned beside it, head thudding back against the wall. The aching hole that lived in his chest seemed bigger tonight, like a fist had punched straight through his sternum. It had stolen all his air, all the fierce determination he’d been wielding against the broken woman in the bathtub now.

With a breath that took tremendous effort, Roremar slid down the wall. And he began his vigil.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there, elbows on his knees and head in his hands, when her voice cracked from beyond the door. “I was seven when they took my sister.”

Roremar’s head snapped up, blood running cold at the hollow tone of her voice.

“I was nine when my father disappeared.” Every syllable seemed to be coming from between shuttering breaths, but the words…the words were as empty as he felt. She’d always embodied the life the stars breathed into the world, but tonight, telling him these truths, she sounded like the darkness between them.

His darkness that he’d come to know so well.

“And I was eleven when my mother was killed in our home.”

Fucking Spirits. His nails dug into the wooden floorboards. It was the only thing keeping him grounded. The only Fatesdamned contact that kept him from launching himself into that bathing chamber right now and falling to his knees beside her.

That, and the undeniable instinct that she needed him to not be visible while she spoke. To not answer or show pity but just listen and hold these broken fucking pieces of her past between them, because even though she tried not to, she’d let him past her walls.

He’d let them slice up his flesh before they hurt her again.

“It wasn’t the home I grew up in. We left that one shortly after my father left us—he went to find my sister and never came back. This cottage was secluded. Where no one was ever supposed to find us. Find me, I suppose.” The stream of consciousness spilled from her as if she was in a trance. “It was a rainy night. I loved storms—my father called me his little storm of stardust as a girl. Said I brought magic in my footsteps, but I always told him that was my sister, not me. Until she was taken, that is. Then we didn’t talk about her much anymore. Addie. That was her name.” A cracking breath. “I haven’t said her name in years.”

She paused, and Roremar pictured her hugging her knees tighter to her chest. Digging her nails into the scars on her thighs. Building that sense of self-security she relied on so desperately but that might only be breaking her further.

Splinters pierced beneath his nails as he grounded himself to keep from moving.

“One night, I asked my mother if we could leave the windows cracked to hear the rain. I slept in her bed that night, but the man broke in through my room.” The water sloshed gently, and Roremar pictured her dragging her hands atop the surface. “I’ve always wondered why. That wasn’t the window that was open, but it’s where he entered. Doesn't really make sense, does it?”

Hollow, broken words.

“I think the fact that he came in through there is the reason I lived. My mother shoved me under the bed when we heard the glass shatter.

“He crashed through the halls—not stealthy at all. Not as I learned to be. It happened so quickly after that.” Another long pause. “You must be the girl he said. My mother was young, my age now and looked even younger. I guess he didn’t know how old his target was. Just any girl, and she was who he found. Because it was me he needed—not her.” The loss echoed through him. “He did it quickly, at least. Then, he left.”

Fates, he couldn’t help himself. Roremar peeked around the edge of the door.

It was a mistake. Emmeline was staring coldly at the wall. So still, like a corpse given life without a spirit. No sign of a storm of stardust. None of her magic that man was after in her wake.

“He left her on the bed. The mattress was so thin, her blood soaked through it. I’d never realized how much blood a body contained before that night. It pooled over the edge and dripped to the floor. I watched it gather. It sounded like the rain. I didn’t like storms as much after that night.”

Angels be fucking damned. He was shattering with her now, too. He didn’t think he had any more room to break—he broke irreparably years ago—but somehow, Emmeline DeLeoste defied the Fates for him to get there.

He’d help her like storms again. He’d help her find the way back to being that magic if it killed him. Emmeline’s father was right; she was born of it. The strength she retained to shoulder this unfair, brutal hand the Fates had dealt her proved it.

“I sold most of our belongings to buy the oils to properly give my mother a burial. That was the only death I ever anointed.”

How much death had she seen to be able to phrase it like that?

And he realized—the starfire. It paralyzed her when she saw it in her dormitory because the last time she’d truly seen it—not in a reading—was her mother’s burial.

“Then, I ran before anyone could make me stay. I didn’t want them to take me like they did my sister. And anyone who helped me would just wind up dead like the rest.” An inhale. “I ended up in the pleasure houses after that.”

Roremar’s stomach lurched, his next breath stalling. She was only fucking eleven.

As if she heard his stuttered exhale, Emmeline said, “Not like that. First, I did chores. Washed sheets, swept floors. When I was thirteen, they trained me to dance in the halls. I performed with other girls my age, but I wasn’t touched.

“I was passed from hand to hand, from owner to owner. But the dancing…some men have wicked preferences for what they pay for. And I was just a young girl without any power in the world against them. Cruel how the world treats us, isn’t it?”

She paused as if considering that question herself. Roremar nearly shouted yes. Yes, it was so unfair, and he wanted to go back in time to anyone who mistreated her and cut off their hands for doling out the coins, their eyes for watching.