Page 47 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

Having forgotten the piece of paper she was now crumbling, Emmeline jolted to attention. “She was holding this.” She angled it to Roremar, the crimson stains on the tan parchment making her stomach turn.

His lips pursed as he read it, and Emmeline focused on the scar above his lip. “This is nonsense,” Roremar finally concluded.

Emmeline looked back down at the words.

sacrifice proclaimed

Her to bleed,

entrenched in kin and sin.

Fates of mercy

“Not to her it wasn’t. These were the last words she left for anyone.” And to hold them in her hands now and be tasked with finding the peace this woman desperately deserved was a weight Emmeline didn’t feel worthy of, but one she’d uphold all the same.

“You’re right,” Roremar agreed solemnly.

“I was trying to remember if it’s a poem or something I’ve read.”

“Anything?” Roremar asked.

She shook her head.

It had taken him a while to get to the beach, and Emmeline had been staring at the body for countless long, uncomfortable minutes on her own. Nothing but the sound of the tide rumbling around her and squawks of birds overhead.

The longer she stood here, the more her head swam. She inhaled deeply, focusing on Roremar’s steady breaths as he studied the victim. His exhales were buried beneath the soft roar of the ocean, but she pulled them apart, isolating that low rhythm.

She wanted—no, she needed, something to home in on.

As her own breathing steadied to the pace of his, Emmeline assessed the warrior. His silver eyes flicked over the body, the blood-stained dress, the sand cradling her. Something told her Roremar wasn’t missing a single inch of detail. He categorized not only the scene before them, but the previous murder, and he was comparing them now.

“There’s not a lot of blood splatter on the ground, so she was likely not killed here. If she were, there’d be a lot more…mess.” Black waves flopped over his forehead, thick brows scrunching together. “What is this?”

He toed a faint mark on the ground. Emmeline stepped carefully around the woman with her skirt gathered in her hand, crouching beside Roremar. An ashy black line slashed through the sand, sweeping away from the body, curving around her head and down toward her feet.

“Is it…” Emmeline stood, her head spinning even quicker. “It’s circling her.”

She followed the dusty slash, Roremar on her heels as she rounded the victim’s sprawled figure from one side to the other. The tide had washed away part of the circle, but it clearly had been rimming her form.

Emmeline stopped when water splashed over her toes again, her boots abandoned among the cypher trees at the entrance to the beach. Roremar was only an inch behind her, and Emmeline pretended not to notice how the heat of his body sent a flush across her cheeks or the low tone of his voice drew chills up her spine.

“Were they marking this spot for the murder?” Disgust layered his words, and it had Emmeline turning to face him. For some reason, she needed to see the way his grey eyes turned molten at the cruelty they witnessed. To know the same guilt that was thickening her own throat choked his words back, sealing them in this together.

From this close, with his labored swallow, she could tell it was. But there was something else in the way his eyes searched hers. Almost as if he was checking in with her. Seeing her fears and offering reassurance.

That transparency had her stepping aside and gulping down the salty sea air. She scanned the ground again.

“Is it ink?” Emmeline asked, eyeing that black smudge. “From whoever drew the tattoo?”

She knew Roremar was still studying her, but she didn’t meet his gaze as he said, “I don’t think so. Ink would have soaked into the sand. This looks more like…ash maybe.”

That captured Emmeline’s attention, a wave of nausea rolling through her stomach. There weren’t many reasons she could list for ash in such a uniformed shape. Except⁠—

“What if it’s not just a murderer?” she breathed. She pointed to the first line of the victim’s note. “What if it’s a sacrifice? A ritual, maybe a cult?”

In her mind, she quickly ran through all the Starsearcher rituals she knew of. A few of the Fates were associated with eccentric worship. Primarily the Fate of Cruelty and Adoration, though the Fate of Secrets and Greed was a patron of mysterious societies.

Throughout history, the recorded tales of cult sacrifices were always extremely gruesome and lacking morals that—at least in Emmeline’s mind—the Fates and Angel would disapprove of.