Page 204 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

There was that word again. Belong.

Warmth spread out from her chest, seeping along her limbs. It wasn’t lust this time. It was a security she’d never known. A comfort she’d been pushing away. One that was inevitable. It was a home, here in Roremar’s arms, a life drowning in silver irises and promises on the stars.

Her chest ached like a raw wound had been pressed in so many beautiful and terrifying ways.

“Why are you crying?” Hand still around her throat, Roremar kissed a tear from her cheek that she hadn’t realized had fallen. And it was that balance of intense passion and delicate tenderness that broke her.

“Because I’m so tired of pretending I don’t love you. And I’m so scared of what it will do.”

Roremar stilled. “You love me.”

Emmeline’s teeth sank into her bottom lip, her breath trembling. “I love you, Roremar.”

His lips slammed to hers, hand tightening around her throat with a soft pressure that had her gasping, her core clenching.

“Say it again,” Roremar panted against her lips.

“I love you,” she cried, rocking into him, needing all of him. The entire room buzzed, every inch of her skin sparking with magic like it was reacting to what lay between them.

“I don’t trust the Fates, Emmeline. Not for a starsdamned minute. But they gave me you, and for that, I believe in them, even if they’ve made me suffer so severely to reach you.”

It’s so rare.

I’m so scared of what it will do.

With us, it is so dangerous.

He huffed a laugh, brushing his mouth against hers. From right there, words against her lips, he whispered, “You wish I didn’t know.”

“Know what?” Her voice wavered over the whisper. The magic pulsing around them held its breath.

I’m so scared of what it will do.

I love you.

Roremar hoisted Emmeline higher so she had a perfect, unimpeded view of his starry silver eyes as he gazed up at her and declared, “That we’re Fatesworn, Huntress.”

She couldn’t look away from his decadent lips as that lethal word slipped between them, and she swore the realms poised to shatter.

Then, repairing and ruining everything within her in two simple syllables, the seeing chamber erupted.

Chapter Sixty-Six

Emmeline

This wasn’t like the explosion atop the seeing chamber in Valyn when Emmeline’s magic had been uncorked and flooded the air in a torrential storm—a release after being compressed for so long.

This time, the room didn’t shudder, the sky didn’t fall.

This time, everything claimed. Shooting stars swirled around the room in ecstasy, silver and sparkling. Dust and rubble whipped around them, ruins rising into the air on a steady wave of ether, shimmering along ripples of lilac magic.

Everything within Emmeline combusted, a burning, wanting ache that needed to be satisfied. Her magic beat demandingly through her veins. Starfire rippled along the base of the seeing chamber, climbed the shredded walls.

Through the blue glass of the skylights above, lights flashed in broken shapes.

“The constellations,” Emmeline whispered.

As they had atop Lyra when she revealed her last secret, the major constellations of the Fates spun, cracking and forging with every breath from her lips, every beat of her magic.