Page 15 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

He’d been eighteen, just coming off his Fatorum and still growing into his frame. But that adventurous spirit that earned his reputation had been a strongly beating heart, his blood laced with keen instincts and mind poised to discover. He’d been fearless, indestructible.

Reckless.

“Yes,” Aldryn said with a curling smile that sent doubt over his uncle’s true motives twisting through Roremar. “Yes, that is precisely why.”

He shoved aside the discomfort and strode to the front of his uncle’s desk to address the real problem with this assignment. The one he bit back in front of Emmeline. It was none of her business.

“I don’t care what this mission is or how many people continue to go missing—it cannot interfere with my responsibilities at home.”

Aldryn’s eyes narrowed, and satisfaction at wresting a shred of control from his uncle painted a smirk on Roremar’s features.

“You have my word.” The Temple Master leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “And I’ll make this deal even better for you. You solve this case—including taking care of Miss DeLeoste—and I will ensure that your siblings’ schooling is covered through their Fatorums.”

Roremar couldn’t stop his eyes from widening. “All of them?”

He nodded. “Every year.”

His mind whirled with calculations. He hadn’t known how he was going to afford their schooling for this term, let alone years. The money he’d save if he wasn’t allocating the residuals from his father’s business ventures to lessons might allow his mother to cut back at her own job, and their basic necessities would still be covered, no matter how her headaches faired.

Suspicion reared in the back of his mind. Why was his uncle offering this now? What about this case was so important when he’d never been this generous before? While he’d given them small monthly stipends, it never came close to this.

But Roremar wasn’t stupid. Especially not where his family was involved.

“Deal.”

“Remember our previous agreements. My funds only flow so long as everyone remains taken care of and attending to their duties. Yours now include this case and protecting Miss DeLeoste. Fail and repercussions will have to be instituted.” Meaning the money would dry up. Roremar hid his disgust at his uncle’s threat. So much wealth, yet he resorted to threatening his own family. “Do not give me any reason to doubt your capability.”

Annoyance rumbled in Roremar’s chest, teeth grinding.

Shadow-shrouded memories pummeled Roremar’s mind, blood sticky and slipping between his fingers. The void he was now accustomed to widened where his heart had once been.

A keening laugh barreled down his bones.

Aldryn leveled Roremar with an expectant stare, clouds obscuring the sun outside the high windows that flanked his desk and darkening the Temple Master’s features.

“I assure you,” Roremar growled, “my priorities remain straight.”

If there was one thing he would go to the Spirit Realm to protect, it was his family. They had been his sole focus since he left the army, a job that felt built for him alone, and nothing would distract him from that.

“Final thing,” Aldryn said, flicking back through his papers so rapidly, Roremar wasn’t even sure he could read them. He waited, scowling at his uncle’s long-fingered hands and muscled frame. He hated that he’d gotten that build from his mother’s side.

Where Roremar’s father had been tall and thin—and he’d certainly gotten the height—he received most of his appearance from his mother’s bloodline. His messy waves and complexion. Sure, he had his father’s night-dark hair and strong jaw, but his nose had been broken enough times that it was slightly crooked, and every time he looked in the mirror, it seemed more of his father was slipping away. Right down to his eyes that forged into more of a steel grey by the day instead of the cloudy blue he remembered from the man he missed.

A part of him was relieved the constant reminders of his father would one day fade. Another part—the part that handled a lot of his pain by having Desmond ink new tattoos on his skin as reminders—wanted the knife to twist eternally.

“Here it is,” Aldryn said, extending a piece of parchment stamped in the corner with the Isle of Lyra official seal, the ink long dry.

“What is this?” Roremar grumbled.

“To afford you the time necessary to work with Emmeline and provide a story of why you’re suddenly around the Academy so often, you are our new sparring instructor.”

What in the Fate’s fucking grave?

“We just clarified that I have prior commitments⁠—”

“Those have been adjusted as well.” Aldryn nodded at the document.

Sure enough, it had. His uncle had maneuvered that very precious control of his to set up this facade precisely as it suited him. Every detail had been accounted for. Lessons adjusted, enrollment of his three youngest siblings in the Academy quickly processed, his mother’s and Nico’s work schedules negotiated.