Page 173 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

Her mind spun, jumping from one waterfall to the next. All the way around the crescent, stopping at the twelfth. The water flowing from it was darker, maybe some sort of silt shadowing the reflection to a deep-purple hue.

Or a wine red.

“Dryvius,” she breathed.

“Come on,” Roremar said, voice hardening. He stepped aside to allow Emmeline to climb up to the next ledge first. He kept a hand on her lower back, and while her heart pounded at the prospect of what they might find, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing over her shoulder, grinning when she found Roremar’s eyes tracking her body.

As if sensing her amusement, his gaze snapped up. He didn’t try to hide what he’d been doing, only smirking back.

“You can walk slower if you’d like,” he teased. Emmeline rolled her eyes, scampering across the ledge.

The cliffs were cut into an uneven set of steps leading up from the tenth to eleventh waterfalls, the rocks slick and moss squishing beneath her bare feet. Carefully, they ducked behind the eleventh. A cave stretched so far back, Emmeline couldn’t see where it ended, but she kept going, climbing toward that wine-red fall.

The final ledge was taller, and Emmeline had to pull herself up. Scrambling to her feet, she hurried onto the shallow walkway behind the twelfth waterfall.

And she froze.

“Roremar,” she said.

“Yes?” he asked, panting as he scaled the lip and stood behind her, his hand on her hip.

“Do you see that?” She nodded up, and Roremar followed her gaze. She knew the moment he saw the cave a head above them and what peeked out from within.

“How in a Fate’s starry-eyed fuck did those get here?” Roremar muttered.

Climbing the interior walls behind the purple-tinted water, vines looking like they were cleaved from the jungle above, were familiar pink flowers. Large, floppy petals the size of her hand striking a cord of fear and curiosity in Emmeline.

“I don’t know,” she said, but she was already finding hand and footholds in the rocks, being extra careful where they were slippery. She scaled the cliff face and pulled herself into the cave, bracing her magic for the familiar scent that would try to drag her to unconsciousness.

These were the same flowers Dryvius used at the murder scenes. The ones he burned in his rituals.

Emmeline brushed her fingers over the velvet petals as Roremar asked, “Feeling okay?”

She nodded, though the fog was already pushing at the edges of her mind. She wandered deeper into the cave, Roremar’s careful gaze burning into her. “I’d have thought these flowers would be in Anphrosia’s section of the falls since they affect her Fate ties.”

“It seems she and Dryvius are more entwined than any of us thought.” Roremar’s words made Emmeline pause. “What?”

“Nothing.” His statement nagged at some prior consideration, something the Fates had once said or she’d read, but she couldn’t recall it right now with the haze pulling at her. She shook her head.

The flowers extended across one side of the wall. Vines cut between them, other variants and colors of flowers speckling the assortment. Rich hues curved around the pinks, the tips of the large petals dyed deep wine reds and purples, fading to starry hearts.

Emmeline wasn’t sure what possessed her, but she brushed a hand over the glimmering center point. Silver dusted her fingertips.

Her gaze dropped to the floor, her and Roremar’s wet footsteps shining as if carved from the skies themselves. Like the water was kissed with Fate magic, even here.

“The starlight doesn’t reach in here, though,” Emmeline thought aloud.

“Huntress?” Roremar asked.

But she couldn’t answer. The haze wrapped tighter around her mind. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, whistling with the calls of the Fates. The silver streaking her fingertips tingled, and the floral fragrance strengthened.

It wasn’t like before—in the Storytellers’ Lair or the caves beneath Roremar’s home—when the scent lured her to unconsciousness.

This was…power. This was the magic of her Fate ties igniting.

And she gave in to the call.

“Welcome back,” a giggling voice said as Emmeline blinked awake in her reading. She was back in her leathers, standing on the twilit plane that looked as real as Ambrisk.