Page 48 of Scars Beneath a Serpent’s Scales

At the thought, her magic rattled the bottle she’d contained it in. She’d have to read later.

“It could be,” Roremar suggested, though he sounded a bit skeptical.

“Think about it,” Emmeline urged. “We’re not far from the Cursed Markets. She could have been there last night, could have seen something she shouldn’t have. People from the jungle settlements often frequent those stalls, why not a cult?”

And the man she followed the night of the first murder had been in a home near the Cursed Markets, too. Perhaps he was connected.

“Running into trouble at those fucking stalls wouldn’t be surprising,” Roremar agreed.

“We should check the Accords again. Pull records of cult history on Lyra,” Emmeline mused, gaze tracking the ashy smudge along the sand. The haunting eyes of the woman.

They’d done research on mass murder cases, but they hadn’t thought to look into cults or rituals specifically. The longer she stood here, the louder her magic pulsed in her ears, and the more frantic she became.

“We’ll look into it,” Roremar promised. Folding up a piece of parchment she hadn’t realized he was writing on, he dropped it over a lantern and sent off the Mystique ink.

“Who was that to?” Emmeline asked, forcing down the waves of starfire budding through her veins. Her vision rippled along the edges.

Roremar tucked the corked inkwell back into his satchel and dumped it in the sand a ways away beside his sword. “My friend at Isle Guard. Asked them to come clean up here. We should have a little time to finish taking notes before they arrive, then we can head back to the Academy. Work on this more between lessons?”

Emmeline nodded. At least she wouldn’t have to tend to the body, though a part of her felt she should. Didn’t her hands deserve to feel the blood of the victims if she couldn’t stop their pain?

Roremar pressed a hand to her shoulder. When she met his eyes, they were molten. “We’re going to find who’s doing this.” He waited for her to nod, her lungs tight with the pressure of the Fates. His voice deepened to a growl that rumbled low within her. “And they’re going to fucking pay.”

It was an olive branch—a sliver of comfort as they stood over a corpse. And while her answering, “We are,” was almost inaudible, from the way Roremar turned her back to the body so they could finish up, his hand lingering on her shoulder for support, Emmeline knew he agreed.

For some reason, he’d just set aside their ongoing feuds. Unspoken, untrusting of one another, they swore to be a team.

The ocean softly roared, crashing on rocks to the west, and birds called to one another overhead. Salty air filtered into Emmeline’s lungs a breath at a time. Her readings fought to push to the surface, her vision rimmed in white fire and head spinning, but just as Roremar had with their disputes, she forced it down.

She could bury it. Bend herself around the magic, rather than break beneath its weight.

She would, if it meant finding whoever was responsible for this.

Emmeline’s bones were leaden by the time she climbed the stairs back to the instructors’ bathing chamber late that evening. She and Roremar had spent hours in the Accords after dinner, pulling various books they hoped would help with this case.

Nothing did, but one bright spot was that he’d finally heard from the families of the missing women and had appointments to meet with them both in the coming days. The two friends of the first murder victim seemed to have fled Lyra thanks to the lack of law enforcement keeping an eye on them—which Roremar ranted about all evening—and the second body had yet to be identified.

As Emmeline stripped off her clothes and wrapped a velvety-soft towel around herself, sinking into a hot bath, all she could think of was blood-drenched bodies and wretched tattoos.

She’d snuck to the cliffs to read after Roremar escorted her back to the Academy, but she should have been out in the streets right now. Should have been back at the Rogue Spirit, finding the friends of the man she’d recently killed. Just because she was working on this case didn’t mean she could slack on her own goals. If anything, they were even more pressing. She needed answers before she transferred to Valyn, so she knew who she was trying to track down on the continent.

But today had been long and tiresome, and her head hadn’t stopped spinning since the beach.

Incense burned on the windowsill in the washroom, left over from whoever had been in here last, and it slowly lulled Emmeline’s senses open. With the rest of her body giving into the soothing heat of the bath, fortunes raced to the surface. Slowly, she siphoned them off one by one.

“Emmeline?” The soft inquiry broke through her session.

“Hi, Myrella,” she whispered without opening her eyes. Her lids were heavy.

“Are you okay?” Her voice was closer now, worry wavering through it.

Emmeline forced herself to crack an eye open. Myrella peered around the corner of the partition. “Just tired.”

“You sound half asleep.” When Emmeline didn’t answer, Myrella added, “You’ve been in here for two hours.”

That surprised her. Her readings were consuming, but normally she was aware of what was happening around her.

“I might have gotten distracted,” Emmeline mumbled.