Page 21 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

“Near daylight, though it was early,” Emmeline added with a grim nod, eyes lingering on the plate he’d moved to her side of the table, crisped slices of bacon staring up at her.

“And the second was taken from her home, time uncertain, but likely in the middle of the night.”

That detail twisted Emmeline’s heart, and the scent of iron burned her nose. She took a sip of water to collect herself, nibbling on a strip of bacon as she thought. “The first was almost two hundred, the latter in her fourth decade and worked part time at an apothecary shop.”

“And the other tentative victims seem to be travelers. They could have slipped off the isle without anyone knowing, or they disappeared while they were here.”

“We should check the ports to be certain,” Emmeline suggested. “There may be more extensive records Lyra Isle Guard hasn’t bothered to verify yet.”

“I wanted to ask the Guard about the missing women’s families, too. Find out if they’ve already been in contact with them and what they’ve learned. I can do that this afternoon,” Roremar offered. “Falliare gave me a copy of your lesson schedule. Looks like you won’t need me to play bodyguard today?”

She did have back-to-back lectures all day, and she’d need to conduct her own sessions afterward. At the thought, magic beat in her chest, rattling like she’d kept it corked in a vial and it wanted to break free. Stifling it, she cleared her throat.

“Right,” she agreed, gazing out the windows and into the calm sea far below. “I’ll search fortunes tonight to see if the stars can share anything about what happened to these women or where the next strike will be.”

It wasn’t entirely a lie. She would read for this case.

But she would also carry on her own hunts in pursuit of the friends of the man she killed a few nights ago.

Tension bracketed Roremar’s expression, his hand fisting atop the table as he looked around Fortuna. Almost seeming reluctant, he suggested, “You could try now.”

“What?” Emmeline asked over the press of magic. Starfire flickered along the edges of her vision. She blinked through it.

Roremar watched her closely, his brow creased but a spark of intrigue in his grey eyes. “Try reading now.”

“I can’t here,” she argued, twisting her tarnished opal ring around her finger.

“Why not?” Roremar retorted. Shrugging, he knocked his knuckles against the table. There it was—that reckless side. The one she’d been hoping wouldn’t surface. The one whose very nature could tip this precarious truce they’d built today if he pushed her too far and jeopardized any piece of this mission and her transfer to Valyn.

Sometimes her magic was simply too much. She preferred to be alone with it. But she didn’t want to tell Roremar that for fear of other questions it would raise.

“Why don’t you do it?” she challenged.

“I’m not the one Aldryn recruited for her magic.”

“I don’t have the supplies.”

“I saw you pack and could hear those vials jingling in your satchel the entire walk.” Roremar leveled her with a knowing look that dug beneath her skin, an infuriating knife worming under hardened armor.

Emmeline folded her arms. “I don’t want to read here.”

“You’re going to have to read somewhere, and we don’t have to leave quite yet. The owners are reading out on the patio now, and you can smell lingering incense from another patron in here before us, so they clearly don’t mind. You may as well do it here rather than back where students could interrupt you.” Despite his words, there was a tightness lingering in Roremar’s jaw.

Emmeline watched it tick, not answering.

“Unless there’s a reason you don’t want to?” he prodded.

“They should call you the Relentless,” she muttered to herself.

Roremar actually laughed at that, but the rolling sound didn’t unknot any of the tension lacing Emmeline’s muscles.

Her obstinance only seemed to spark his curiosity. He reclined in his chair, showing no sign of vacating. It would make him more insistent—make him look closer at her—if she kept resisting.

“Fine,” she conceded. Unpacking her supplies, she selected a blend that wouldn’t be too powerful but should allow her to unload the weight of her magic and navigate smoothly through the readings.

Some mixes were stronger than others; some would consume her entirely. She had to be very careful where and when she allowed those to burn. But the gentle sandalwood tincture she poured into the well didn’t even need to be lit, and the crushed lavender buds would be tame enough when singed beside it.

Soon, a cloud of pale violet smoke filled the air around their table. The lulling siren song of the Fates pulled at Emmeline’s senses, a medley hungry to tug her within their grasp. Would they devour her heart like those in the stories she read as a girl? Pull her to the depths of herself as they did Seawatchers to the dark ocean bottoms?