Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
W ant a reading?” A low voice came from the shadows near me.
I’d stepped away from Duke, looking for some peace and quiet while he talked to his business associates.
I held back a laugh at the pinched look on his face as he turned to speak to them.
I hiked the voluminous layers of my dress up and stepped toward the shadows.
Reading was a magic word in my world, but I didn’t understand the context and was enticed by the chance to learn something new.
A woman sat at a small table. Opulent maroon curtains with gold embroidery hung around the space and electric candles were strategically placed to cast long shadows while providing low light to the table.
The woman was dressed just as extravagantly in a midnight blue gown that shimmered in the low light.
Simple black cloth with the sun, moon, and stars embroidered on it in a riot of colors covered the table in front of her. Colorful, metallic threads wove through the stitching, dancing in the candlelight, drawing me in like a moth to a flame.
Set against the backdrop of the iridescent black cloth laid a deck of cards, almost as black as the cloth, but somehow, they sucked in the light rather than reflecting it. The cards had a brilliant sun motif on the back outlined in gold leaf that matched the thread on the curtains perfectly.
I’d never had a tarot reading before and something swooped low in my belly at the thought of having one now. It wasn’t like it was real. So why did I feel so drawn in?
I sat down without even talking to the woman or asking if I could. She didn’t send me away or scold me, so it must have been fine.
“I’m Lyra,” the woman said. “I take it you want a reading?” Now that I sat there, I could take her in properly.
Silver shot through her hair, making her look ethereal against the backdrop she had crafted and though her face initially appeared youthful, there were lines gently fanning out of her eyes and lips.
The swooping sensation in my stomach increased the longer I looked at her, trying to understand how she could appear both ancient and somehow youthful at the same time.
“I—but it’s not even real,” I protested weakly. Clearly, this was just a fun little thing for the party. “Yes, I’ll take a reading.”
That swooping sensation stopped when I said that, like acknowledging that I was interested, settled something inside me.
“What can I call you?” Her voice easily carried to me in this peaceful little corner, despite the noise of the ballroom.
“Lily.”
“What would you like the cards to tell you?” She picked up the deck and started shuffling. Her movements were so casual and precise that I wondered just how many hours she spent with them.
I didn’t answer. I had no idea what questions I had. I didn’t even know how to start figuring them out.
“Nothing? Well, let’s see what the card can tell me about you that you aren’t.
” Three cards fell out of the deck as she spoke.
They slipped from her hands despite the practiced and precise movements of her shuffle.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they flew out of the deck on their own power, but no, it was just gravity and slippery hands.
She flipped each one over exactly where they fell. The colors of the cards caught my attention first. They were so vibrant that they seemed almost… alive. Figures danced across the face of the cards, seeming to call out to each other, whispering their secrets to the universe.
I’d seen pictures of tarot cards before, but nothing that looked quite like this. The images were somehow obvious and abstract at the same time. I couldn’t quite understand them. The cards and their meanings leaped away from me the more I tried to focus on them.
This was silly. Of course, they didn’t move. They were inanimate objects. When I looked away from them, Lyra’s stare pierced me. She didn’t seem to examine the cards at all, like she didn’t even need to see them to know what they said. It unnerved me and made me want to be anywhere but here.
“You’re a very intuitive person.” She tapped a card in front of her, still not looking at it.
“The ace of swords talks about what goes on in your mind. You watch everything and can put together the pieces of life before anyone else. This is very frustrating for you.” She didn’t ask that.
She stated it like it was the most obvious thing in the world and yes, I did feel like no one could see what I saw. I hated it.
“You seek love, but maybe you don’t know it yet. Or you do know it, but something is standing in your way. You’re afraid. Perhaps afraid to take what you want.”
She pushed two cards toward me, and I saw images of water falling in both, one into a rosebush and the other from two cups into the abyss below. I realized then that the card was upside down and if it were right side up, the water would fall into the cups instead of out.
Black spots danced behind my eyes before I realized I had been holding my breath.
I sucked in air and the spots cleared, but the images on the cards were still there, taunting me with their truth.
I wanted love. I wanted Duke. Chills spread through me, solidifying this inside me like it changed every cell in my body.
Three more cards fell out of her dexterous hands. This time they were face up, and I was just as lost as I had been when the first three fell out.
“I don’t need this card to see that you are overwhelmed.
” This card showed a woman surrounded by nature.
A snake emerged from her head and, like the card with the cups, it was upside down.
The snake’s mouth opened on a scream directed right at me.
Overwhelmed was exactly how I felt when I looked at it.
“You feel stuck.” She pushed an upright card toward me.
The colors on this one were muted compared to the others on the table.
Two women sat in an open field on the face.
Except that wasn’t right. The same woman simply stared at an alternate version of herself in a mirror.
The woman in the mirror was bound and pleaded with the woman in the field for her freedom, but she already was free.
I could see it on the card as clear as day now. She only thought she was bound.
Sparks lit along my spine, sending tingles through my whole body at this realization.
“You doubt yourself. You’re afraid.” She pushed the last card to me.
This one had a young girl with vibrant red hair that flew around her in a riot of color and shapes that solidified into a lion on one side and a lamb on the other.
She faced a raging storm but seemed unafraid.
Bravery, the card said, except it was upside down.
Rather than halting like before, my breathing kicked up, causing my head to swim. I didn’t like being bared so completely.
Yes, this was me. She wore the parts of myself I didn’t like to examine, the parts I liked to keep tucked away, but here she sat in front of the stranger with all the bits of her ripped open—raw and bleeding.
“No, they don’t always tell us what we want to hear. The cards can be a real bitch sometimes. These especially.” She spoke of them as if they were sentient as she gathered them and took up her practiced shuffle again. “Now, did you come with a beau? Someone special?”
“I—I came with Duke. He’s…” I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
He was my best friend. Yes. He blew my mind with sex better than I could have imagined.
Yes. He was kind and knew me, and I never felt invisible or judged.
He saw me in a way no one else did. He was all of it.
Everything. How could I explain any of that and not sound insane?
“Oh, the cards will tell us who he is,” she said confidently. Five cards fell out of her hands at that declaration and landed with an echoing thud on the table. I leaned forward, drawn in by the glinting gold lines despite the uncertainty spiraling through me .
Carefully, like she could sense my hesitancy, or maybe because time seemed to slow around me, she flipped each card and arranged them on the table. Three on top and two below.
The last card drew me in like a moth to a flame. A man stood with his hand out, beckoning me in. His hair hung long and wild, alluring, like not even nature or gravity controlled him.
As I stared at it, the face transformed, the hair lightened and curled into gentle waves, still defying gravity.
An achingly familiar smile played at his lips that asked me to join him.
Duke. The Devil. Both. One. I knew exactly what would happen if I grabbed that hand and followed him into the dark.
Arousal burned low in me at the thought.
Lyra’s low voice rolled through me, but I couldn’t concentrate on her words.
Thoughts of Duke crowded out everything else, leaving me with memories of his touch that brought me so much pleasure as he reverently traced every inch of me, of the way he tasted, smelled, felt.
My body cried out for him, even now, wondering when I could be with him again.
I wanted to follow him into the dark, and that realization thrilled and terrified me in equal measure.
“This Duke of yours is quite the catch… well, traditionally speaking. Wealthy, good in bed, and a heart of gold. So, what is it? Why am I sensing that you aren’t sure about him?”
“He’s not mine.” The words sounded foreign to my ears, but not untrue. Sure, we were having sex, and he’d been my best friend since we were little. My friendship with him was the most significant relationship in my life and wasn’t that a little pathetic. None of that made him mine, though.
Lyra shuffled the cards again .
A sinking feeling pulled at my gut as several cards fell out of her shuffle. Part of me believed this. I stared at the cards, eager and terrified in equal measure.
She flipped each one over and the riot of colors matched my swirling emotions.
Eight cards filled the space between us. More than either my reading or Duke’s. Enough cards that they tested the limits of what this table could hold.
The first card on the table showed a girl being swept up in a storm, “the fool” written clearly on the bottom. I felt like a fool sitting there desperate for more and terrified of what they were going to say. My heart thumped loudly in my ears.
“A beginning. A chance.” She tapped the card that had me entranced, surprise surging through me at the meaning.
“Most people get this one wrong when they first see it. We are all fools at some point. Innocent is a better word for it, but it shows that whatever this is between you is just the beginning.”
I gasped. A persistent part of me, one I tried desperately to ignore, was afraid that my time with Duke was about to come crashing down in a fiery ending.
It terrified me he might finally see me for the freak I was and ran.
Of course, he had thirty years as my friend to see that, but it’s different now and I only had myself to blame. I literally begged him for this.
“Hmm.” She tapped the second card. A set of scales filled the card held by a woman with a bright red blindfold across her eyes, on the verge of flying away in the wind.
I didn’t need her to tell me this one meant justice, but knowing those symbols and understanding what they meant for my…
time with Duke were two different things.
She touched the card next to it. Three women embraced each other, clearly very close. Friendship, companionship, happiness, the card promised me.
“Were you friends first? Close in some way?”
“Yes, for my whole life.” We were so young when we met I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t in my life, my closest—and sometimes only—friend.
“You balance each other out,” she said, tapping the justice card again.
She looked at me and smiled. I didn’t know what that smile meant, but tingles ran down my spine anyway, like she looked inside me and read everything.
“That’s good. Friendship is always a good place to start a relationship. I’ve had to learn that the hard way.”
She smiled at me, and I huffed. I couldn’t muster a full laugh, though, because the last card on that top row was upside down and worry clawed at me. I didn’t want to risk our friendship. I couldn’t.
“You’re afraid.” The piercing, all-too-knowing eyes were on me again. I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat, but it didn’t budge. “You want something you feel you can’t have and you’re afraid to take it.”
You want Duke forever , a small voice in me whispered, and it felt like an arrow straight through the center of me.
I wanted more from Duke. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
We were just supposed to be friends having sex.
I promised him nothing else would change.
Tendrils of panic wrapped around the lump in my throat, making it hard to breathe.
Yes. I was afraid.
There was still another row of cards, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what they said. They rooted me in place, though, the party around me forgotten, the low flickering light of the candles making me dizzy.
A crash sounded from the other side of the curtain, and I jumped. My already pounding heart ratcheted up even more.
“I have to go,” I said, quickly gathering my skirts and dashing out of the small corner. Lyra’s voice faded behind me. I didn’t stop to hear what she had to say. The intensity pressed in on me, choking me, forcing me to run.
My eyes immediately scanned the room, looking for a tall, blonde Devil in a suit.
I spotted him and my blood went so cold my heart seemed to stop entirely.
There he stood, in a dark corner not far away, another woman in his arms. She stared up at him like he was hers.
I felt sick. The room blurred around me, and I turned to run. I didn’t see where I went. All I knew was that I needed to get out of here.