Page 169 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

On the dagger beside his body.

Sticking beneath her boots, coating the hem of her dress and cloak.

Painting Roremar’s hands and cheeks and the stone of the altar.

“No, this can’t have happened,” Roremar was still muttering to himself. “I kept him safe. I kept them all safe. Not this…not…” He clutched Nico tighter to his chest.

Emmeline’s entire body was numb with the terror and devastation rolling off him. The air tasted of salty tears and iron as she took shallow, gasping breaths. The lingering incense made her head spin.

She forced herself to step closer. Forced a hand to Roremar’s quaking shoulder and her lips to form his name again.

At the contact, Roremar jumped, her heart racing with it, and he spun toward her. His eyes were such a dark grey, they were nearly black in the dim candlelight, gaze flicking hurriedly around the cell as if he was searching for something to make sense of all of this.

She longed desperately to help him. A part of her soul withered further into devastation with each ticking second.

“Emmeline,” he whispered. “I—I didn’t mean—You can’t be here.”

A commotion echoed through the cells, boots on stone and distant voices.

Her grip tightened on his shoulder. “I know, Rore. I’m here for you, though,” Emmeline tried to soothe, but her own voice was shaking. Tears rolled down her cheeks, her chest ripped in two. “I’m not leaving you.”

Nico…Fates, what was going on here? How had this happened? Not Nico. He was so good. With his charming smiles and genuine care. With how desperately he pursued Myrella, eyes lighting up each time she gave him a moment of attention.

Spirits, Myrella. This was going to devastate her, too. She’d been holding back from Nico, but Emmeline saw how much she cared—how much it scared her.

And their mother…Leo, Vivienne, and Siena…

None of them deserved this. Nico didn’t deserve this. He was working so hard to be a good brother, to take the load off Roremar’s shoulders. All he’d wanted was to help.

Emmeline forced down all her emotions, trying to be steady. Later, she’d mourn. Later.

She cupped Roremar’s cheeks. Nico’s blood was sticky beneath her fingers, smeared from where Roremar had held him close. He flinched at the touch.

“Talk to me,” she whispered.

“No, no,” he repeated, wincing as she dragged her thumbs over his cheekbones. The words weren’t to her, they were to some far-off person, like he was begging the Fates to turn back time and rewrite this fortune.

“Roremar, I need you to tell me what happened,” Emmeline said, trying to speak slowly and hold his attention. Trying to keep him together, this man who always held everyone else up.

Those distant voices drew closer, cell doors swinging on rusty hinges as they threw them open in their hunt for her. They must have followed her down here when the clerk alerted them of her trespassing.

“Tell me how you got here,” she pleaded as their shouts choked her. “What were you two doing?”

At that word—two—Roremar’s gaze dropped to Nico. He clutched him tighter, fingers nearly shredding his brother’s woven tunic as he gripped the neckline, hands coated with blood and dirt.

So much blood coated the two of them. As she had when her mother died, Emmeline wondered how it all came from one body. Why did it seem so much worse the second time? As if her distant memory had tried to paint over the image, soften it in her childhood mind, but this time it dragged up all the feelings of both deaths. Slammed them into her with each breath.

“I—I—” Roremar stuttered again, adjusting Nico’s body in his arms. “I can fix this.”

Nico’s tunic slipped open.

And that was when Emmeline noticed it—the fresh tattoo on his chest. An uneven, twelve-pointed star with other markings around it, visible through a slash to the neckline.

The slit throat.

The dark smudges peeking through the blood on Roremar’s hands.

Her heart could have stopped beating in that moment. She took a step back as the footsteps in the corridor drew closer.