Page 108 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

She swallowed, and Roremar’s eyes tracked the motion, branding her skin. When he looked at her like that, it was hard not to remember how he’d looked kneeling between her legs, how his hands felt gripping her thighs possessively, how he’d sounded when he found release at her pleasure.

“Thank you,” Emmeline whispered, heat flooding her cheeks. Even with her hood up, she knew he saw it or perhaps felt it. The wild beat of her heart and her staggered breathing.

“Always.”

Roremar stepped aside, exercising a self-control she was quickly losing sight of, and gestured for her to lead the way.

Damp soil cut pathways between the graves, fog clinging to aged, moss-wrapped tombstones and tickling her skin. Angelic statues with wings spread wide to the heavens embellished some of the resting places, others adorned with carvings of animals, monuments, or sigils of notable families, Fates, or whatever the dead cherished most. All of them seemed to watch Emmeline and Roremar as they passed, memorizing who walked among the spirits.

They followed a trail between crooked, cracked tombs, their shallow breathing loud in the night. A light drizzle picked up, dampening their cloaks and pattering the stones, turning the greys of death deeper.

Emmeline kept one eye on her Fate ties, Serchus in particular, following the beat they pounded through her veins with every step. It was increasingly easier to see both places at once.

“That way,” she whispered when they came to a fork in a row of warriors who had been resting here for thousands of years if she was reading the dates etching their graves correctly. A towering tunnel of branches wove above one side of the path, the other bare to the sky.

She stepped toward the former.

“You’re sure?” Roremar whispered, following.

Emmeline nodded. “Serchus was in a tree,” she explained, tipping her head back to look at the wooden limbs crossing into a hatch work overhead, so reminiscent of the Fate of Secrets and Greed’s perch. “It’s this one.”

Ravens cawed overhead as they crept beneath the branches, their beady eyes burning into her. Even here, she was watched.

Coveted.

Desired.

Kept.

But with Roremar beside her, so close she could touch, though she wasn’t allowed, she didn’t fear it. She revolted. Indignation turned every step more confident. Wind whispered through the trees, the storm picking back up outside the tunnel and locking out the rest of the world.

A while into their silent walk, Roremar asked, “The Fates couldn’t tell you what we needed to find here?”

“Does that sound like the Fates to you?” Emmeline challenged, a brow raised.

Roremar laughed. “You’re right. But this place is fucking creepy.”

“You don’t relax in graveyards casually? Where’s your thrill-seeking side?” she teased, leading him quicker down the path when she spotted an opening ahead.

“If you want to see me take a risk, all you have to do is ask nicely.”

“Pretty please, oh, Reckless one, show me something witless,” she joked, as they emerged at the edge of a small clearing, halting among the ring of cyphers. Broken monuments scattered the spaces between the trees, most no more than ruined rubble. Rain beat down on the grass, the clouds shifting overhead briefly enough for the moon to beam through, lighting a square mausoleum in the center in a ghostly glow.

Emmeline stepped forward, watching the Fates in her mind. Watching this building spring to life on that night-drenched plane, beside Serchus’s tree.

“Come on,” she said.

She waded through the tall, unkempt grasses. It appeared no one had visited this space in centuries. Around them, the trees were packed so tightly together, even if there were any surrounding paths, no one would know the structure was here. It only had that one ominous, tunneled entrance.

The stone structure in the center was cracked and coated in layers of dirt, a few of the pillars lining the facade crumbling. Behind them, blocking the doors, was a statue of a woman. Carved of the same stone as the building, her features had been dulled by time, but the wings at her back were impossible to miss.

“Valyrie,” Emmeline whispered.

“Do you think she’s the one calling you here?” Roremar whispered from over her shoulder. Emmeline jolted at his proximity but didn’t allow herself to turn around.

“I—I don’t know. Valyrie has never spoken to me before, and you can’t read the fortune of an Angel.” Her gaze dropped over the stone floor leading to the entryway, and she gasped, grabbing Roremar’s wrist on instinct. “Look.”

Roremar crouched, keen stare studying the carvings in the ground. He brushed away a layer of dirt and windswept debris from the recent storms, fingers tracing the patterns.