Page 30 of Revels on an Angel’s Grave

Emmeline turned the tap, splashing cold water on her face to wake herself up. She would find a way out of this.

“And why in a Fate’s fuck didn’t you run?” Alana blurted.

Emmeline spun, water splattering the marble. She blinked at Alana, moisture clinging to the tips of her lashes. “What?”

“Why aren’t you running, Emmeline? Why are you letting him trade you off like this?” Alana grabbed a towel from the rack and held it out to her.

“Because.” Emmeline ground her teeth as she took the towel, pressing her face into the thick, soft fabric. Her eyes stung with all the emotions she’d suppressed over the last two days. The Chancellor’s deal, the attack, the Warders of Selene insignia, the cage closing around her in this city. She was hovering over a ledge.

“Because why?” Alana prodded, nudging her toward that jump for reasons Emmeline wasn’t entirely sure of.

And a toe at a time, she fell.

“Because I need something,” Emmeline snapped into the towel, nails digging into the fabric. “I’m not here because I was forced to be. I’ve been asking for a transfer from Lyra to Valyn for years—I’ve been working to get here. To find—” She panted, the sting of revealing this much already burning through her. She couldn’t tell Alana about her sister. She couldn’t tell anyone from this city now that she was so coveted. It would only put Addie in danger. “Something. I can’t leave until I do, and Rocarri said if I didn’t agree, he would banish me from Valyn.”

“And it’s worth this?” Alana argued. “It’s worth letting him trap you into a bonding ceremony with a veritable stranger?”

There was defiance in Alana’s stare, like there was one answer she desperately wanted Emmeline to give her.

“It’s worth letting him believe I agree. For now.” Emmeline’s arms fell to her sides, the towel dropping to the marble floor.

The understanding in Alana’s eyes—even though Emmeline refused to tell her everything—had so much gratitude ebbing through her tired limbs, it forced tears down her cheeks and a truth from her lips.

“I don’t trust anyone in these walls.”

She could hear the apology in her own voice, but it was compassion, not pain, that broke across Alana’s features.

“I don’t trust most of them either,” Alana admitted. She said it like it was the simplest fact in the world. Shrugging, she leaned a hip against the door frame. “Not for the truly important things, at least. I’m not going to say you can trust me because words are futile for building trust, but you’ll see. We’re going to figure a way out of this.”

“We?” Emmeline asked.

“We.”

In the nineteen years since her mother died, there’d only been one person she felt like a we with—perhaps two if she could admit she’d gotten to that point of friendship with Myrella, but there was still so much Emmeline had been hiding from her.

There was only one person who had her using that word intentionally and doubtlessly.

Even now, with Alana, the two letters scratched against her ribs. Told her to pull away and bury everything deep down.

But Alana affirmed, “I may have said I believed Rocarri would make a good Chancellor before, but that was based on other events. There are some things we can’t tolerate, no matter how good we think a person is. You and I…we have to stick together.”

Those words burrowed into Emmeline’s old bruises, her desperation to belong, to fit, healing a small part of them.

Alana pushed off the doorframe and retrieved the tea before sliding to the floor right in the center of the bathing chamber and pouring them each a cup.

Silently, Emmeline sank down across from her, unplaiting the messy braids she’d fallen asleep in last night and combing through the waves with her hands. As Alana filled her in on what rumors were circling about the trials, Emmeline tried not to think of the time Roremar had washed and combed her hair for her after they went to see the Snake Charmer.

As she dressed in another dazzling gown and tucked his ring beneath her neckline, she fought off nausea as she considered how the tournament could end with another man claiming her.

And as she left for the arena with Alana at her side, she couldn’t hold back the tear that rolled down her cheek at having her future ripped away from her.

Alana squeezed her hand. “It will be okay,” she whispered.

Emmeline wasn’t yet sure if she trusted her, but she wanted to try. She didn’t want to be alone in this.

And that was a start.

The arena was even louder than during the opening ceremonies. Emmeline stood in the Chancellor’s box with Alana and Cyren, Graves and Eston stationed outside the curtained entrance.