Page 182 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

Roremar wrapped a hand over hers on the bars, and the touch echoed all the way to the core of her being. “Anything? Emmeline, I would have given you everything. But I can’t anymore. It’s all ruined. And I am so fucking sorry.”

“You still can,” she whispered. “Just tell me what happened.”

“Emmeline,” he whispered, and it sounded exactly as he’d said her name in the apartment last night. When they’d poured out their secrets to one another and sliced off pieces of their souls.

His other hand slipped through the bars, grazing her cheek. Drifting across her collarbone and down her arm. His touch emblazoned a permanent reminder on her, a stain that would forever be written in her flesh. Or a gift, a treasure and a lingering prompt for whenever the days became too heavy and lonely, and she needed a reminder of what it was like to find a place she belonged.

I want to remember, she’d told him last night.

As if she’d ever forget him.

She didn’t dare move as his hand traveled down her body, memorizing every inch. He stopped on her thigh, and his thumb stroked over where her worst scar hid beneath her leathers, like a silent goodbye.

She shivered, words caught in her throat, not noticing as he slipped the dagger from her waist until he was holding it out to her. Pressing it into her open palm and angling it toward his chest.

“Take it, Emmeline,” he pleaded, still trapping her other hand against the bars. “Plunge this knife into my heart and claim my life, because somehow in this mess, it’s become yours. And I’m in no way worthy after the ruin I’ve caused, so put me out of my misery and take it. A death at your hand is a sweeter sentence than I deserve.”

“No,” she bit out, pulling her hand from the blade and cupping his cheek. “I won’t. I told you I’ll tell the stars about you, and this is not where that story ends, Reckless. You’ll see.”

His grey eyes—still so flat—flicked between hers. Sighing, he rocked back, the dagger clattering to the floor between them. The thing in her chest that belonged to him pulled agonizingly tight.

“Never mind,” Roremar muttered, utter defeat painting his frame. “I’d rather rot with my misery than have you live with a stained soul.”

He slumped against the wall again, and Emmeline knew there would be no more words from him tonight. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she watched him.

“Come on,” Desmond said, gripping her arm and pulling her to her feet.

Just as they were about to leave, Roremar’s voice cracked the air again. “Desmond?”

They both froze, turning back, and Emmeline watched as something unspoken passed between the two men. “Yeah, Rore?”

“Don’t bring her back here.”

The words snapped the last restraint Emmeline had. Turning toward the tunnel, she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other. To keep walking, keep breathing, until the air was fresh and they were outside of the Trade House, hoods pulled up. The tears kept rolling, the hole in her chest dug deeper, but she spun her opal ring around her finger to ground herself.

“That didn’t feel like him,” she whispered as she and Desmond walked back to Fated Ink, the encroaching dawn already too bright. Her head was aching from the lack of sleep and the pent-up emotions. “Something’s gravely wrong.”

“I know,” Desmond agreed. “He’s blaming himself for all of this whether he did it or not. That’s only going to get worse.”

“There’s something he isn’t telling us. Some piece he put together,” Emmeline muttered as stragglers who had stayed out all night wandered past, lively in a way that made Emmeline sick. As they frolicked down the Promenade, she whispered, “How long until that secret breaks him?”

Chapter Sixty-One

Roremar

She shouldn’t have been here. Fucking Fates, why had she come? Why had Desmond? Were they trying to make this even harder for him?

It was the torment he deserved. A penance after all the crimes he’d committed—and fuck, there’d been so many. Sitting in this damp cell surrounded by his own vomit and piss wouldn’t be enough. Being plagued with images of his brother wouldn’t be enough. Not even torture would be enough.

To see her, though. Her crying and desperate and wrecked over him in a way he’d promised them both he would never leave her…that twisted a fear he hadn’t expected to meet in here.

He’d stopped crying over Nico at some point. The tears had run dry, the impossibility of it settled. It became real. A raw ache in his chest that he’d pry open again and again, because he fucking wanted to bleed out.

The shadows in the corners of the cell wavered in his delirium. They’d always cloaked him—this darkness he couldn’t shake. For so long it had slumbered. For so long, he’d thought perhaps he’d outrun it. Or better yet, maybe even imagined it.

He scoffed as he laid flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. “A fool’s hope.”

The cold seeped into every inch of his skin, and he closed his eyes. The darkness waited there too, taunting. It waited everywhere, and while Emmeline’s starlight had been working to burn it away, it won now.