Page 28 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

Endless ruin for you broken things.

Roremar’s face flashed before her mind’s eye, steel irises studying her as if he was truly before her now. She could write that expression from pure memory, the eyebrow hitch and pursed lips having ingrained themselves in her subconscious somehow. The tiny scars flecking his skin.

Then, something shifted. It was the same expression, but…

His eyes became the molten steel she’d only glimpsed before. Pure silver, mined and melted by a force as potent as starfire, something that screamed it would burn her if she ventured too close.

That heated gaze was trained on her, burrowed into her.

Saw her.

She had the distinct instinct to flee, to hide before she turned to ash. But her skin and bones were made of glass, windows to the parts of her she refused to bare.

“Don’t run, Emmeline,” he said, his husky voice the only thing in this celestial plane that seemed to truly touch her, every word slithering across her skin. “Don’t run from me.”

Roremar didn’t say a word beyond that, and neither did the Fates.

But after a long stretch of silence, his eyes shifted again. Liquid seeped from the corners. Not just liquid. Blood.

It dripped across his cheeks, down his chest, pooling in the splayed palms of his hands. Roremar watched it with creased brows, the scar indenting the left one stark as night deepened around him, the tunnel of starlight seeping away all color except that thick crimson trail.

“What’s happening?” Emmeline asked, but he didn’t hear her.

Shadows reared at Roremar’s back, great claws swiping the air with killing, cleaving blows that could carve apart realms. That seemed to sink right into Emmeline’s own chest.

Her palms were as translucent as she felt, starlight budding at her fingertips, her skin made of the cosmos.

“What’s—”

Roremar crashed to his knees, his form fading away in wispy pieces. As he went, she could have sworn a soul-shattering scream echoed through the stars, one that ripped her apart as well.

Emmeline panted, her fingers tingling with the magic swirling through her.

Ruin. This was their ruin. But how, and why? And would she be able to stop it? Would she have to be this exposed and vulnerable to do so?

Is this what would happen if she allowed herself to be seen?

She needed to end this reading. The earth was still cool beneath her body, the dull hum of the star flies and jungle creatures clear. Physically, she was on Lyra, but she had one foot in each realm mentally.

Before she could pull herself from the reading, though, she had one more fortune to seek, one more person.

No, the Fate stated before she could ask.

“Please,” she begged, all the no’s she’d received splintering behind her ribs. Starfire crawled up her arms, constellations devouring her ghostly skin.

I have told you before that we cannot find her.

“It has been over twenty years. Surely, you have something,” she nearly sobbed. Her desperation was bitter on her tongue. Here among the stars, with fortunes overwhelming her, she let herself break.

We cannot.

The same thing she was always told.

It will not be long now, Reignarria.

With a force she’d never before experienced, she was thrown from the session. Ripped from the plane in between the Fate Realm and Ambrisk where she believed she hovered subconsciously during readings, a painful wrench tore her veins, her magic screaming as she went.

That final word echoed on the air—one she thought almost sound like another language. Reignarria.