Page 234 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

How did his victims cry?

Was his the last face they saw?

Roremar shook his head, trying to suck in deep breaths and ward off the panic.

Rian walked the perimeter of the central cavern, kicking up every fallen rock and dragging his dagger through the moss, leaving no spot untouched.

“Svalla said he kept seeing his brother’s death,” Roremar said, desperately trying to put the pieces together. “That was his fear. His loyalty to avenging it was blinding him—that’s the piece that was being used against him. All he could see, all he could focus on, was revenge. He said so himself.” There had been a mad gleam in his eye as he swung at Roremar, one that had escalated since earlier tonight, that went beyond revenge. Roremar poured out the theories while they were clear in his mind, feeling them slipping away already. “All he could think about was killing me and making me hurt as much as his brother did. Nothing else mattered to him down here because he had to fight through the fear to survive.”

“They’re pulling strings to see what will make us each go mad,” Rian said. “How does that prove anything that helps win this trial, though?”

That, Roremar didn’t know. He shook his head, lost again.

The off-kilter sensation from earlier settled deeper into Roremar’s bones. He felt like the walls themselves were watching him.

“How have you felt since waking up? Is there anything different? Any confusion?” Roremar beat back the fog trying to claim his own mind. If they could place Rian’s manipulated fear, too, then they may be able to assist each other.

“Not confused. If anything, more focused. But on the wrong things.”

“Do you know why that could be?”

Rian was quiet for a moment, jaw grinding.

“Think about it,” Roremar encouraged. “With me, it’s taking away my greatest asset to maximize the fear of those dark memories and make it so it’s harder to puzzle my way out. With Svalla it played his nightmares on repeat and used them to distract him. What could it be doing similarly to you?”

“My father,” Rian whispered hoarsely.

“What about him?”

Rian cleared his throat. “He always accuses me of being too quiet and methodical, of not having the correct loud ambition.” Roremar had noticed Rian kept to himself when he’d met him, and he’d admired that he did what he wanted despite this tournament. Rian’s quiet demeanor even reminded him of Leo.

He’d never considered it a weakness, but apparently Rian’s father did. And he’d drilled that insecurity into his son. But how was that a fear?

Roremar understood when Rian added, “My father takes out his misgivings with my behavior on other people.”

“You mean…”

“Think of really horrific punishments. Then make them worse. And I had to watch it on—” He paused, a muscle feathering in his jaw. “On the person I love most.”

Rian’s words were precise, so much anger seething beneath them, an intensity this manipulation was dragging up.

It wasn’t the fear of Rian’s methodical, quiet demeanor that the tunnels were emphasizing. It was the fear of what his father did because of it.

Roremar remembered the stern man he’d seen speaking to Rian at the first Presentation, whose voice itself was a reprimand. Distaste was bitter in the back of his throat.

And Rian had been so jittery since he found Roremar. He’d checked Roremar’s sling multiple times and said he’d inspected every artifact he found in that other cavern. He’d looked like he wanted to second guess each decision they made.

Rian said, “Whatever they did to us, it’s making me focus on every small detail in a way my father would hate. In a way he’d use against me. Giving me paranoia about taking a wrong turn or a misstep instead of trying to get out of here.”

These weren’t small, every day fears being prodded. These were the deeper complexities of their minds. They were taking their biggest traumas and spinning them against them.

Fates, this was more complicated than Roremar was equipped to handle right now. They couldn’t just face them with a physical manifestation of their greatest fears? Couldn’t throw Rian’s father down here for them to fight through? Not spiders or rats or anything less horrifying than their deepest scars?

No.

The Fates were never straightforward like that. Why would the Angel or Rocarri be? Was he actually strong enough to fight through this, or would the darkness keep pressing in?

I want this life with you.