Page 127 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

Roremar’s skinned prickled as he scanned the objects before him again, trying to make sense of them over that too-familiar vanilla scent. They had to have been precisely picked. Strategic.

He could do this.

“What you do after that will be up to you,” Rocarri said. He picked up a heavy silver bell, a crack up one side. With a dramatic swing, he struck the metal with a baton, an ear-splitting ding ringing through the arena.

“Fates fucking favor me,” Roremar breathed as he catalogued every item before him.

With two hands and before he could reconsider, having a pretty good idea of where this was headed, he threw back the smoking liquid. It was sweet as a decadent dessert, fit for the most luxurious of revels. Vanilla and a hint of cinnamon spice and berries that went down smoothly, images of silk clad dancers and overflowing cups spinning through his mind.

He waited for a reaction. For his insides to twist, his vision to go blurry, because he was certain he’d just ingested poison.

But he counted out sixty seconds, and nothing came.

His mind was clear, his limbs as strong as could be considering his recent injury, but⁠—

Retching echoed from the table to his right. The competitor—the kid barely twenty-two years old who had been speaking with Devinli in the tunnel—emptied the contents of his stomach across the dirt floor.

A screech wrenched the air from the table behind him, and Roremar whipped around, meeting the contestant’s bloodshot eyes, black tears dripping down his cheeks.

Roremar staggered back, bumping into his own table, the cups rattling. Pain flared in his side.

“What in all the realms—” His words were cut off when another man collapsed onto his workstation, splintering the table down the middle.

One by one they fell, many holding themselves up weakly as they searched their supplies for something to save them.

All but Roremar, who didn’t feel a damn thing.

Chapter Forty-Two

Emmeline

Emmeline’s nails dug so deeply into Lola’s arm she thought she’d pierce skin. All throughout the arena warriors coughed and spluttered. Skin paled and veins darkened, they clawed at their throats, the tables.

“No, no, no,” Emmeline whispered, her eyes locked on Roremar, waiting for it to hit him, too, an impending explosion she couldn’t look away from.

She’d begged the stars to help him survive this, and she prayed now that they’d answer.

Lola swallowed, voice shaking as she tried to reassure both of them. “We knew it would be poison.”

“Not like this,” Emmeline said. Her attention snapped to Lola, but her friend’s eyes were watering, shooting between Emmeline and her brother.

Her brother who had just ingested poison.

“I thought—I—” Emmeline stammered as she looked around. A few of the councilors in the box looked appalled, but many went on eating and drinking as if the men dying in the arena were of little concern. They cast her questioning glares as she floundered. She could already hear them, raising questions about her sanity once again.

Even Aldryn Falliare, Roremar’s own uncle, only looked on with mild curiosity. He reclined in a wide chair, elbow propped on the arm, watching.

What made them all so callous? Was it simply because they thought themselves better for not needing the status and security entering the tournament provided? Because of their proximity to the Chancellor, they thought they already had a hand on her magic?

Emmeline turned back to the arena and kept her eyes on Roremar, studying him as he did the table before him. His hands didn’t shake any more than Cyren had told them to expect—a side effect of the attack two nights ago, not the poison. Sweat gleamed on his brow—but that could have been from the sun overhead—and he favored his right side. But his stare was alert.

“I thought they’d have to identify a poison and risk drinking the cups they deemed safe. I thought he’d have a chance to use his mind first,” Emmeline whispered to Lola. “Not”—a man in the first row vomited across his table, his weight falling against the creaking wood—“this.”

This threw them all into the deep end with manacles around their ankles.

Emmeline’s heart pounded. Roremar’s hands flitted over his table, eyes scouring the supplies and the rest of the arena as he tried to put together the pieces.

“Why isn’t it hitting him?” Emmeline asked.