Page 172 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

Emmeline’s throat thickened. Myrella always surrounded herself with people. Never wanted to be alone as long as Emmeline had known her. Now, she needed it.

“Write if you need anything at all,” Emmeline said as she stood, and Myrella promised she would.

As Emmeline traipsed back to her room, she knew there was a good chance she’d be late for the festival, but she needed a moment to breathe. She hadn’t had a single minute to process her own feelings about all of this. Once Darcy let her leave the Trade House, she’d gone straight to change and find Myrella, but she’d been in a state of shock through it all.

When she closed the door of her dormitory and leaned back against it, her bones were brittle with exhaustion, waiting for the right breeze to make them snap.

Her heart had become a block of sadness, denial, and betrayal. She’d lost so many people, how could she not be accustomed to it by now? How was this somehow the worst?

Because you allowed yourself to trust again, a voice in her head whispered. She wasn’t sure if it was her own or her mother’s or perhaps a Fate. But it was true. She’d let nearly every wall down, and this was where it landed her. Caring too much, another life to mourn—two, because she didn’t see how Roremar survived this.

As she kicked off her boots, all she wanted was to sink into the emotions warring through her. To let the sadness win because she was once again alone, and she didn’t think even the stars could handle the torment mounting within her.

“You knew this was how it would end,” she muttered, and her chest ached. Emotion welled in her eyes. “You knew you weren’t allowed to keep them.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she wiped them away. This was how it had to be.

She was going to leave anyway. Supposed it would be sooner now that the case was solved.

Perhaps Falliare could orchestrate her transfer as soon as the Remembrance Revels were over.

Even that possibility didn’t dull the slice to her chest because for once, she’d gotten comfortable. For once, though she hadn’t admitted it to herself, she’d allowed herself to see beyond running.

Sliding to the floor, she dropped her head into her hands. How had she gotten here? How had she gone from searching for a murderer to sleeping in the bed of one?

She couldn’t help but think about the irony that she’d spent so long wearing her armor for the sake of protecting those around her, but the moment she dropped a few pieces of it, the person she was letting in imploded. Not at her hand, but his own.

Was that part of her effect? Her father, Roremar, plenty of others had said she carried magic, but was it the destructive kind? The heat burning within a star that was beautiful from afar but would kill you if you ventured too close?

Tilting her head back to stop the tears, she eyed the stacks of journals and ledgers on her desk. None of them, not a single page, had pointed to this outcome. But…

The evidence was there.

She and Roremar had never been together when a murder occurred. The flowers used in the ceremonial incense were grown in the caves near his home. He’d had unlimited access to Desmond’s stores of ink and…

“Fates…” She sighed.

He’d had dark smudges on his hands before. She’d noted them at more than one murder scene and thought it was dirt from his ride there or his lessons at the Academy. She hadn’t thought it was ash or anything nefarious.

He’d been so tired all the time, he could barely stay awake. He’d nearly fallen asleep while they were working multiple times.

The grudge he’d always seemed to carry about the Fates and the small comments he made about them being untrustworthy…

Her magic thumped in her chest at the thought. Emmeline stood, striding around her room. She plucked a sprig of dried lavender from the windowsill, studying the wilted buds. Pressed them between two fingers and watched as they crumbled to the dusty wooden ledge. Dusty because she hadn’t been caring for the space. Because she’d been…

She didn’t know what she’d been doing. Living, perhaps.

But a shadow wrapped around her shoulders now. Dipped beneath her skin, teasing the secrets that lurked beneath her armor. The things she’d been trying to run from, to hide…

They all woke.

Magic pulsed through her veins, cracking the corked vial she’d stuffed it into for years, bright as starlight but sinister. Wanting and greedy. It had budded in her chest as Roremar watched her slip her hand between her thighs last night, but that had been laced with lust and desire. This was different. This magic wanted to devour all those who had hurt her. Who had wronged it. It wanted the world to taste the venom of a woman used and lied to, of a power suppressed and battered.

Twirling her opal ring around her finger, she thought of Roremar. Of the artwork he’d had etched on his body. Of how he would respond to this new vow inking itself into her skin.

As starfire swirled through her and she dressed for the Revels, her mind ventured into all the moments they’d spent together, when he’d care for her and⁠—

No. She shut out those thoughts.