Page 4 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

A breeze wrapped through the alley, the crisp, early fall night soothing Emmeline’s anger. The mystlight lantern hanging overhead swung, gilding the terror streaking through her victim’s eyes.

“You’re despicable, but you’re also a coward. And I’m done with you.”

Emmeline didn’t give him time to panic before she wrenched his jaw open and stuffed the petals in his mouth, his teeth gnashing at her gloved fingers as she covered his nose.

His red-rimmed eyes, bloodshot from the incense den, widened as the flowers melted across his tongue.

But it was too late.

The toxins of the midnight bulbs were already seeping into his bloodstream, potent and bathed in her own retribution. For a moment, doubt doused Emmeline’s fury, tightening her ribs.

This wasn’t the first life she’d taken, and she wouldn’t regret her actions, but it never became easier to live with. Each kill widened the grieving ache in her own chest. Each added a claw around the hole ripping through her spirit.

But as awareness drained from the man’s eyes, as his breathing slowed and his pulse faded to a level hum of silence, she remembered the emptiness left behind from her own losses thanks to men like this. The many hearts that no longer beat.

The jaws of doubt snapped closed within her.

With a grunt, Emmeline shoved the man to the corner of the alley, sprinkling the remains of herbs and ground petals around his lifeless form. Her thoughts were jumbled from the relief of getting an ounce of information, but she forced herself to focus and carefully placed extra slivers of yarrow root steeped in dandelion oil beside his hand. No one would look too closely at a bruised-up man behind one of the dens, anyway. That was a saving grace of the drug problem on the Isle of Lyra.

Once she untied his wrists, Emmeline’s gaze flashed to her boots.

“Ugh,” she scoffed at the extra mess that last injury had left behind, and she fled out the rear of the alley, avoiding the island’s main thoroughfare. Even in the narrow back walkways, she had to dodge drunken tavern-goers and warriors high from the Rogue Spirit, nearly colliding with a man as he charged toward the back door of a nearby tattoo parlor.

Emmeline ignored his complaints, grumbling to herself, “I’m going to need another pair of boots.”

Chapter Two

Emmeline

The washrooms of the instructors’ dormitory wing in the Lyra Temple Academy were crowded at this time of night after the students were in bed. Emmeline approached the door, her pack slung across her back, and listened carefully.

Fuck. She counted at least three, maybe four voices mingling within. She wouldn’t be able to hastily rinse her blood-spattered clothes in the wash basin as she liked. The material was dark enough that she could afford to wear them on her next venture into the city, but the smell would ripen. At least it wasn’t the height of summer, when sticky humidity pressed across the jungle isle.

With a deep breath, she pulled down the skirt she’d slipped into after her hunt so it sat low enough on her hips that the ribbed, lavender chiffon trailed on the floor, hiding her boots, and she pushed the door open.

Eyes swung her way as the hinge squeaked, and for the briefest moment, the chatter hushed. Such a small stutter that some people might not even notice it. Not if it hadn’t happened in every room Emmeline walked into in this Academy since the day she’d arrived.

“Hello,” she said as she strode to the wash basin and rummaged through her bag.

She was used to the pauses, the discomfort from them. When one was given the prestigious job title of Lead Fate Tie Instructor without even having attended the Lyra Temple Academy, odd looks and curiosity made sense. It didn’t help that she was otherwise reclusive.

But the attention and inexplicable otherness she carried still twisted behind her ribs, a subtle sawing sensation tensing her lungs. Emmeline forced herself to breathe through it as she pulled out her soap, towel, and comb, kicking her pack and boots into the shadows beneath the ledge of trough-style wash basins so no one would spot the bloodstained leathers.

“Hi, Emmeline!” Myrella, a fellow instructor, greeted with a cheery smile that smoothed out Emmeline’s breaths. Her voice was eager, genuine care in her round eyes. Myrella’s soothing presence seeped across every room she entered, which was beneficial since she worked with the Academy’s first-year students who had only just begun to learn their magic and were easily spooked by it.

As if a spell was broken, the others resumed their chatter, and Myrella asked, “How was your walk to the cliffs tonight?”

“It was peaceful. Thanks for asking.” Emmeline gave Myrella a soft smile in the mirror. Her round tawny cheeks lifted in response, giving way to dimples.

“Anything interesting in your readings?” Myrella stepped up beside her, dragging a comb through her wet hair.

Emmeline offered a little more to sell her ruse. “The Fate was loud tonight, but she tends to be when I prolong tapping into the magic throughout the day. There weren’t any particularly impactful fortunes, though.” She left it intentionally vague, but that wasn’t uncommon with Starsearchers. Every member of the fortune-reading warrior clan was aligned to one of Valyrie’s twelve Fates, and many considered the readings passed through that tie to be very personal. A detail Emmeline used to her advantage to avoid talking too much about her magic or the readings she conducted each night.

“How was your night?” she quickly asked.

Myrella’s cheeks darkened, hands pausing on the comb. She was about to answer when a sharp voice preened, “Oh, little Myrella had quite an evening.” The speaker, Charisse, was perched in the circular windowsill with a rolled paper containing some kind of crushed herbs dangling in her hand. Her waist-length braids were piled upon her head and tied with a silk scarf, bare feet tapping against the pale stone ledge with each of her teasing words. “We went to the Mezzanine, and she was with one of the boys who came in on the latest ship all evening. They even disappeared for a long stretch, nowhere to be found.”

Giggles bounced off the stone floors, the other two instructors clearly as entertained as Charisse. Emmeline ignored the lump crowding her throat at the mention of Lyra’s most popular gambling and dance hall, wiping her sweaty palms on her dress and blinking through tunneling vision.