Page 30 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

Without taking her eyes off the flicking tail that lazily wove up the aisle, Emmeline pressed one ear to the window again and used the arguing tones to recenter herself. Waited for her heartbeat to calm and breathing to level out so she could catch the end of their conversation.

“You’ll take care of them, then?” one man asked, and she could no longer differentiate the two, her mind still humming with that hiss.

Take care of what?

The other man agreed, the conversation concluding. Her nerves were on edge, but an instinct nagged at her mind, a reading violently stealing her attention.

Go, it told her, flashing Roremar’s bloodied eyes at her again.

Emmeline froze at the image. “Does it have to do with the case?”

Yes. Go, the Fate repeated, more insistent this time.

Shoving down her panic, stifling the trembling hands and racing heart, she wrapped her spirit in the isolation that got her through her hardest days. She stuffed all those fear-flecked memories and images of Roremar’s blood-streak face into the cavernous ruins, and she ran.

Chapter Ten

Emmeline

Emmeline made quick work of switching out her everyday wear for the spare leathers she kept stuffed in the back of a cabinet overflowing with old scrolls within what was once the office of the temple ruins. They weren’t as fitted as her usual pair, the material gaping in some places, nearly worn through in others. But she didn’t have time to complain.

Not if she wanted to follow those men. The pounding in her chest had her quickly lacing up the ties at her waist and sliding a handful of triple blades and regular daggers into their sheaths.

She tore out of the sanctuary and toward the vineyard, skidding to a halt as she searched for footsteps. Two sets—one back through the grapevines and another in the opposite direction. Toward the jungle path that wound through the fields of Apothecary Lands until it hit the Eastern Port.

She took a hurried step after that pair, remembering Roremar’s idea of searching the docks for any relation to the disappearing women, but a pounding behind her ribs pulled her to a stop.

Quickly, she took a steadying breath and unlatched her lock on the fortunes.

What path will end in finding out what those men were up to? she asked.

She was prepared to be assaulted with the unfinished readings from before, but a fresh wave of starfire blared behind her vision. Voices barreled down on her, a barrage as it always was—even without incense. The tunnel of hot white fire seared as it roared back to life around her. Spirits, she hated this pressure, this unyielding hurricane that whipped her focus back and forth with dizzying force.

Her skin heated, pulse pounding with the cataclysmic celestial power, as if the stars were within her.

Hurry! she begged and screamed, needing one ounce of clarity to tell her which path to choose. Not that the Fates ever spoke blatantly. It was a part of the magic they wove, being vague as all realms. Unable to actually tell a warrior what to do, only offer a multitude of fortunes as to where the current path could lead.

Endless ruin.

It will not be long now, Reignarria.

The time the Fates took didn’t normally frustrate Emmeline, having grown used to it in the more than two decades she’d been practicing, but now, as her boots sank into the soft soil with every passing second and the footsteps stretched further away, anger roared within her.

And that furious demand was enough to stir up a response.

Left leads to tragedy, right leads to revelry.

She took a second steadying breath to parse through the riddles. Revelry. That had to refer to the Promenade that cut through the isle. The man who went right would likely head there from the docks.

But the left…

Tragedy.

Emmeline didn’t think twice. She dove down the vineyards back toward Lyra Temple Academy, careful to stifle her panting breaths and keep her footsteps as light as a jungle cat.

She may not be a physical trainer at the Academy, but she’d learned self-defense as a girl and now she worked hard to keep herself in shape for her nightly hunts, stealthy as could be. It proved useful in moments like this, when she could hear her target’s footsteps over her own, sloppy through the dirt paths.

She slowed to a prowl as the Academy loomed into view ahead. Her target stuck close to the pools of shadow created by the towers poking up from its stone facade but not close enough to raise alarms with the guards. They cut around the high exterior wall and down through the jungle-covered hills that led toward town.