Page 167 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

“A panther,” she whispered. “Is it Cirre?”

He nodded, picturing the outline of a striking black panther tangled with a snake that Desmond had spent hours on.

“The day I found her when I was fourteen, she was wrestling a serpent. I thought she was in distress, so I jumped in.”

“Reckless,” Emmeline admonished, and he laughed.

“Apparently, she was okay—as she made sure to show me with a slash to my side.” The scar was dull now, just a silver speck in the moonlight beneath the ink. “I got the piece done about seven years ago now.” Spinning back to Emmeline, he cradled her to him. “After my father. She stayed close those first years, and I know the kids felt safer having her nearby. I was getting pieces of everyone else. It felt right to get her, too.”

Her brows creased as her gaze trailed over the array of ink scattered across his body. “None of your tattoos are for you,” she commented.

“What do you mean? They’re all the most important parts of me.”

She nodded. “But they all represent other people. None of them are about who you are.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said, tracing the ink himself. “But this is who I am. None of us exist in isolation. We’re forged by the people in our lives, by the love they show us and memories formed with them, the lessons learned.”

The corners of Emmeline’s lips tugged down, and Roremar immediately realized his mistake. While his life drowned him in never-ending responsibilities, it was also full. Full of love and family and laughter. And she was…

I’m not free. I’m alone, her voice echoed in his memory.

Roremar tipped Emmeline’s chin up to his. “You have them, too, Emmeline. Those memories can’t be taken from you. And I have a feeling more people love you than you think.”

“I don’t know if love is what I need,” she said. Each word sounded like it was being pulled from her.

“What is, then?”

She swallowed, the silence stretching so long, Roremar thought she might not answer. Then, finally, she whispered, “To belong somewhere.”

Pressing his lips to her forehead—the closest he’d let himself get to breaking her rules—he answered, “You belong here.”

And it didn’t feel like an exaggeration. Some part of him, deep within his soul, written in his spirit and woven through his blood, knew she belonged with him.

They spoke of everything and nothing at all for the next few hours, folded beside the window where the constellations watched them.

“Rore?” Emmeline whispered later as her head rested on his chest, her eyes closed. Fates, that familiar version of his name rolling lazily off her lips sewed up one of the endless wounds in his chest.

“Yes?” he asked, running his fingers down her spine. She melted further into him, moonlight bathing her features in a glassy ease he rarely saw of her. As if in his arms she finally felt like she could drop her guard. Like she was safe.

“One day,” Emmeline muttered, “when I meet them, I’ll tell the stars about you.”

His throat nearly closed at her soft words and the yearning that stitched through his heart. Each of her breaths fanning across his skin seemed to meld them further together, as if the Fates had written them purely for one another.

Perhaps they had, he thought. He may be wary of becoming her ruin, but couldn’t only someone so intrinsically meant for you hold the power to destroy you? Didn’t that mean that he was hers, and she his in return?

He wasn’t sure how it happened. He didn’t deserve Emmeline DeLeoste. Not with all the magic she poured into the world, with her endless determination and strength and kindness. No, he didn’t deserve to walk the same realm as her, but he’d be stupid to reject that kind of gift from the Fates when she was placed in his arms.

By the time he gathered himself enough to respond, he thought she was asleep. With a soft kiss to her hair, he whispered, “My Em…I’ll write our story in the galaxies.”

Part Three

Wrath & Redemption

Chapter Fifty-Four

Emmeline

When Emmeline woke on the morning of the Remembrance Revels, the bed was cold. Not just the sheets, empty and chilled, but a loneliness that spread through her heart. If she remembered correctly, she’d fallen asleep with her cheek against Roremar’s chest, his arms wrapped around her and his heady sandalwood scent writing dreams to tell the stars about.