Chapter 9
Nine
The sun melts behind the dunes, turning the sky the color of overripe peaches.
Wind slithers through the Kingdom of Wands like it’s hunting, snapping silk against tent poles and lifting sand in tight, angry spirals.
Torch flames carve through the twilight, casting the world in glints of gold, flickers of red, and trembling shadow.
This time, we’re led deeper into the open-air backstage area.
Performers dart between embroidered silk screens that divide the space into narrow lanes.
Low tables overflow with makeup pots, bowls of pigment, and trays of polished gemstones.
I pace a strip of carpet worn bare by nervous feet, clutching my affirmation cards in a death grip.
Each one is a neon pop of glossy lamination.
They’re supposed to calm me, center me, but instead I’m one deep breath away from projectile vomiting.
I chose these instead of pulling from my tarot deck for one very specific reason: I cannot, under any circumstances, deal with being harassed by the Wheel of Fortune right now.
Declan saw the image move too. The wheel turned, the flames shimmered, the figures chased each other around the edges.
I know what I saw. I know what we saw. I’ve also built my entire adult life on ritual and energy and manifestation, but always within the realm of metaphor.
Symbolic magick. Not fire portals and kingdoms that shouldn’t exist.
The most terrifying thing is that, if the Wheel of Fortune actually brought us here, then I’ve been messing around with forces I don’t completely understand.
A hush ripples backstage, followed by the sharp crack of a staff against the boards. The Player strides out from one of the narrow alleyways past the curtains in a sweep of crimson silk, bell sleeves spilling down her arms like fresh blood. “Prepare yourselves. Your queens are waiting.”
“Shit,” I whisper, pressing a shaky hand to my chest as she disappears around the next curtain. “Okay, okay. You’ve got this.” I force air into my constricted lungs. “You can do hard things. Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
I keep breathing deeply, struggling against the fact that it feels like I’m not getting enough oxygen. My fingers flex around the deck, and its laminated corners dig into my palm, leaving tiny divots in my skin.
“You look nervous.”
Declan’s voice jolts me. He leans against a screen post, arms folded, jaw set. He left his shirt unlaced, the open V stopping in the middle of his sternum, and his loose sleeves are rolled up to the elbows.
Not that I’m keeping track of how much skin he has exposed.
He shifts, and his forearms flex with the movement.
I didn’t know forearms could be sexy. Like, deliciously sexy. Like I want to lick the ridge of that tendon, taste the sand and the salt.
I have absolutely no business staring, so naturally, I can’t look away.
“Isn’t public speaking the number one thing people are afraid of?” he asks, voice like a splash of cold water on my tendon-licking fantasy. “Even above death?”
I let out a shaky laugh that’s barely able to escape my body. “Lucky us. Looks like we’ll get to experience both public speaking and a flaming hot death.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “We’ll be fine.”
“That’s not helpful.” My hands won’t stay still, nails tapping against the cards.
“Is it helpful to know that I’m not worried?”
“No,” I say flatly. “Not even a little.”
“Then honesty it is.” He drags his hand through his hair, tugging lightly on the ends.
“Normally, I’d say the queens have already made their decision.
That this”—he gestures in direction of the ramp leading to the stage—“is just optics. They’re not looking to be impressed.
They’re looking to feel correct, and that it’s all about confirmation bias. ”
“But…?” I prompt.
He exhales. “But this is not a dinner meeting at Oma, and I have no fucking clue what’s about to happen out there.”
“In some weird way, that actually does make me feel better. A teensy tiny bit.” I hold up my thumb and forefinger with only a small gap between the two. “But better. Sort of.”
Declan flashes me a white-toothed smile. “Amanda Ward, are we becoming friends?”
The question makes warmth spark deep in my chest. I refuse to let it show. “Don’t ruin it,” I mutter, rolling my eyes and pulling an affirmation card from the middle of the stack. Before I can read it, the wind snatches it out of my hand and carries it into the dark.
“Ominous,” Declan says as we both watch it disappear.
I try to shrug it off, even though my nerves are eating a hole straight through my stomach.
I want to concentrate on something simple, something manageable.
A mantra that’ll drown out the sound of musicians tuning their instruments, the audience’s applause, the Player’s directions, and my own thoughts trying to outpace them all.
I shuffle through the stack with trembling fingers and pull another card.
I trust the winds of change to carry me where I’m meant to go.
I lift my chin, close my eyes, press the affirmation card flat against my chest, and take a deep breath, letting it out slowly, the way every audio meditation app insists I should.
I trust the winds of change to carry me where I’m meant to go. I trust the winds of change to carry me where I’m meant to go. I trust the winds of change to carry me where I’m meant to go.
The words run on a soft, rhythmic loop inside my head, smoothing the edges of everything sharp inside me.
Each repetition packs another feeling away—fear, doubt, the creeping sensation that the air around me has started to shift.
I keep breathing, keep reciting, tucking the mess of what I’m feeling and what’s actually happening into a neat little box labeled Later. Or, ideally, Never.
“I trust the winds of change to carry me where I’m meant to go.”
Tent flaps rustle. Torches hiss. Sand whips around my ankles.
A smoke-filled gust slams into my chest and knocks me back a step.
I open my eyes in time to see Declan push off the screen post. His brow is furrowed, mouth parted like he’s halfway through a thought. His eyes track me slowly, head tilted the smallest fraction, dark hair falling across his brow.
More smoke barrels toward me. It rips the cards from my hands, yanking them skyward in a shiny cyclone of neon confetti.
I shriek as they whip around me, catching in my hair, smacking my cheeks, laminated points biting my skin.
The ash-thick wind howls, wrapping around me in a twisting column of pressure and movement—tugging, yanking, lifting.
My feet hover off the ground, and suddenly, I’m airborne.
The cyclone whirls around me in a cloud of smoke and sparks.
I flail, limbs flapping. My skirt whips my thighs as the tunnel of firelit haze drags me through the backstage maze and up the ramp.
The roar of wind fills my ears, and hot air claws down my throat as I’m spat forward, flung through the curtain with zero regard for my dignity.
I slam down flat on my ass in the center of the stage, the impact rattling my spine hard enough to make my teeth clack.
Coughing, eyes streaming, I paw at the top of my dress to make sure my nipples aren’t peeking out at the crowd. My fingers snag on sweat and static cling as I rake them through my hair and plaster on a smile even though I’m sure it looks like I’ve been licked by Clifford the Big Red Dog.
Torchlight halos the crowd, every expression wide-eyed, stunned. I wheeze and scramble to my feet, legs shaking. Somewhere in the audience, a child starts to cry.
Declan’s boots pound the ramp, his stride just shy of a run as if he’s desperate to reach me but hell-bent on not looking like it.
His brows lift enough to crease the space between them, lips pressed into a tight line, jaw tense and twitching like he’s biting back ten different versions of what the fuck happened? !
From the center of the windswept stage, I give him a tight, frantic smile and a helpless shrug that says, I don’t fucking know!
The audience stretches out before us, seated cross-legged on vibrant rugs and patchwork quilts spread across the sand. Through the shifting smoke, they look less like people and more like undulating dunes scattered across a desert of color.
At the very back is the queens’ platform. Dozens of flame-shaped lanterns sway gently around it, while braziers pour out so much resin and dried herb smoke that it looks as if the platform itself has created its own atmosphere.
The queens sit there like two treasures unearthed from the sand.
The golden-haired one wears an elaborate mantle of copper chains and hammered coins.
Her ivory gown is stitched with threads of reddish-orange that wink like glitter the firelight.
The dark-haired queen is crowned in a circlet of polished opals and draped in a lavish burnt sienna and carnelian gown, her wrists wrapped in bangles that flash whenever she moves her hands.
Their high-backed thrones are decorated with gilded accents and velvet cushions that spill over with honey-colored tassels.
A clear, cool voice slices through the thick haze of incense and the dramatic entrance I’ve managed to stage without even trying.
“A superb start.” The golden-blond queens claps from her velvet-draped dais. “To what promises to be a most eventful evening.”
A smattering of applause rises from the audience, building into cheers. Someone in the back even lets out a high-pitched woo!
I blink into the torchlight. They’re cheering. For me.
So this is what it feels like to have more than two people join a livestream.
I smooth my skirt, lift my chin, and raise both hands dramatically in the air like I’ve rehearsed this moment a hundred times—which, to be fair, I kind of have. Albeit, usually in the shower.
“Yes,” I say, loud and proud. “Thank you. I am the Story Witch, and this is my brooding assistant…Mister, uh, Thorne.”