Chapter 12
Twelve
The sky is a white-hot sheet of sunlight when we finally manage to slip out of our tent without being spotted.
It’s been five days since we landed in this kingdom.
Five days of performing, pretending, and trying not to die.
And this is the first time we’ve been allowed to wander unaccompanied, and by allowed and unaccompanied, I mean Dav is presumably off terrorizing some other poor soul with his trademark brand of aggressive chaperoning and unwavering eye contact.
“I give us fifteen minutes before he pops out from behind a barrel and makes good on one of his many threats to end you,” I say, squinting into the heat shimmer that blurs the path winding through camp.
Declan strolls beside me, hands tucked into the pockets of the harem pants he dug out of the bottom of the trunk back at our tent, radiating an obscene level of unbothered for a man trapped in a desert dimension with zero air-conditioning.
“Don’t worry about Dav,” he says, bumping his elbow lightly against my arm. “We’ll be back before he notices we’re gone. Actually, if your plan goes the way we want it to, we’ll be out of this world for good.”
He scratches at the stubble darkening his jaw, and heat flushes down my spine. My brain, traitorous as ever, supplies a flash of how it would scrape against my cheek, against my thighs, rasping sandpaper over soft skin—
“What’s the chance we end up in a different world that isn’t home but also isn’t this one?” he asks.
“About the same as hitting a bull’s-eye in the dark.”
Declan frowns.
“I have no idea how we got here, so I don’t know how to aim us back home. But I do know that the Wheel of Fortune card is our best lead, especially since Fortune hasn’t reappeared and your attempts to talk with the queens have gone nowhere. It’s the one consistent variable.”
“What I’m hearing is that we should take more time. Run an experiment, or five. Otherwise, best case scenario, we spend the rest of our lives dimension hopping.”
“This”—I hold up my emergency bag of witchy essentials—“is the experiment.”
He looks doubtful, which is not the vibe I need.
“We need high energy, positive thinking, maybe even a dash of delusion, if this has any chance of working.”
Rounding the next bend, I spot the woman I helped unload the camels with before. She’s kneeling in front of an open tent, quick fingers tying together bundles of dried herbs. Her gaze flicks up as we pass.
“Hi again!” I wave and veer toward her before I can talk myself out of it. “Could I ask you another question?”
“You are quite curious.” She takes a deep breath as she winds twine around the thick branches of rosemary. “Ask if you must.”
“I can come back if you’re busy.”
“You’re here now.” She wipes her palms on her apron and settles back on her heels.
“Thank you.” I bend down, lowering my voice. “I’m wondering if you’ve seen a woman—dark robe, copper threads in her hair. And this part is going to sound strange, but one of her arms looked like it had rubies and red crystals, I don’t know, fused into it…”
“I do not know this woman,” she says flatly.
“Are you sure? She—”
The woman rises swiftly, bundles clutched tight. “Too many questions call forth trouble. Curiosity often marks you as other than you are.” She glances over her shoulder, then lowers her voice. “Better to be overlooked than remembered.”
Before I can press her, she ducks into her tent, the flap snapping shut behind her.
Declan rejoins me, arching a brow. “She didn’t seem too interested in being friends.”
“No,” I say, unsettled. “She didn’t.”
Something about what she said scratches an in itch in my brain, a suspicion that’s been growing since we arrived.
Layers beneath the pageantry, this kingdom is hiding a truth.
And I want to be far, far away before it cracks open—because things like this never stay buried.
Secrets are like cards in a tarot deck—they can be shuffled to the bottom, far away from the next draw, but sooner or later they will reach the surface.
The strap of my bag bites into my palm as I tighten my grip.
I’ve been chewing this theory to death, tugging threads from every occult book I ever dog-eared, every WitchTok video I let worm into my brain at two a.m. And the truth is, my plan isn’t just wild guessing.
The wheel is the through line—the only thing that makes sense.
If it brought us here, it can send us back.
If this were a story I’d devoured under the covers in my childhood bedroom, I’d scrawl a furious note in the margin about how the heroine should’ve just trusted herself, how she should’ve spoken the truth before Act Three forced her hand when her beloved’s life was dangling in the balance.
Which means I don’t get to hold back now.
“I might not know how to do actual magick, but I’ve read enough books about it to have some idea where to start,” I finally say as we resume our trek and pass a woman in full gold face paint leading a camel draped in a silk cape.
The camel looks majestic. The woman looks exhausted.
“I understand tarot, and this is basically tarot on steroids. In tarot, and here in Towerfall, wands is the fire suit. It’s all about willpower and drive and creative potential, which seems to be the entire foundation of this glittering desert circus we’ve landed in.
“Fire as an element equals energy, passion, volatility. A spark that becomes a blaze that becomes, apparently, mandatory community theater.” I gesture toward a shirtless man twirling a flaming hoop over his head.
“And you think that plus your bag of tricks gets us home?”
“I think I understand the concept that got us here. Although, maybe not exactly how it happened.”
“Ah, yes, very reassuring. Every great escape plan starts with I understand the concept.”
“It does when you’re working with elemental theory and archetypal symbolism.”
He lifts a brow.
“I’ve created a theory—no, scratch that—it’s the only logical explanation based on observable tarot phenomena and energetic principles.”
“Tarot phenomena,” he repeats.
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
“Like what?”
I stop walking and stare up at him. “You’re patronizing me.”
“No, I’m not. I—” He scrubs a hand over his jaw, frustration edging his voice. “I’m not patronizing you, Amanda. I’m trying to—God, I don’t know—engage? Tease? Flirt, maybe? Except every time I open my mouth, you take it as an insult.”
“When were you flirting?”
He groans. “I don’t know how to do this, okay?
When it comes to talking to you, I’m shit.
I keep putting my foot in my mouth. It’s that way with pretty much everyone here except Tarek, which…
I’m not sure if that’s comforting or terrifying.
Fuck, I almost got us killed because, since the moment I met you in person, I’ve been off my game. ”
I open my mouth to respond, but he continues.
“I’m better at being a mirror than a window,” he mutters.
I wrinkle my nose. “I don’t think that’s the saying.”
Declan throws his hands up, pacing a step ahead before wheeling back to face me.
“I am great at projecting what people want to see. That’s what makes me so good at my job—so good that it’s become my whole fucking life.
” He shakes his head and drags one hand down the back of his neck.
“And my parents, especially my dad, they expect—no, they demand—a certain level of success.”
He exhales sharply, gaze fixed somewhere over my shoulder, like eye contact might break whatever dam he’s barely holding together.
“I can talk down hostile investors, restructure eight-figure portfolios, and negotiate buyouts with billionaires in boat shoes…” His voice cracks on a bitter laugh.
“But when it comes to a normal conversation with someone I actually—” He cuts himself off, the thought hanging unsaid between us.
His fists curl and uncurl restlessly at his sides.
“I say the wrong thing, you take it the wrong way, and then I fall into CEO-speak or turn into a fucking Chad as a defense mechanism.
“And yes,” he adds, “I know it’s annoying. For both of us.”
I study him in the golden light of the sun. “I thought you were just being a dick. Waiting for everything to sort itself out the way it always has for you.”
He lets out another short, humorless laugh. “That’s not how my life has gone.”
He stares out at the sea of glossy scarlet and tangerine tents, jaw pulsing as he clenches and unclenches his teeth like he’s weighing whether to bother saying the rest aloud.
“When you’re in full-on save-the-day mode, I don’t know where I fit. I’ve tried everything—talking to the locals, digging for information about Fortune, even finding someone who might get us in front of the queens. Nothing works. I hit a wall at every turn, and I don’t know how to push past it.”
His shoulders sink, the fight draining out of him in a single reluctant breath.
“I can’t remember the last time anyone tried to save me from anything.
Ever.” He looks down at his hands, flexes them once like they might hold an answer, then lets them fall uselessly to his sides.
“And I’ll admit, there’s a part of me that doesn’t know what to do with that.
A part that doesn’t know how to exist if I’m not the one driving forward. It’s…messing with my pride.”
Words bottleneck in my throat, and my thoughts swim in a disorienting loop.
Declan has been nothing but composed and infuriatingly calm since the second we landed in this tarot-themed kingdom.
But now, with the sun baking us in his admissions, and his voice rough around the edges, he looks less like the untouchable CEO who steamrolls boardrooms and more like…
a man. A man who doesn’t have all the answers, who doesn’t always know what to do, who’s just as scared and lost as I am.
My mouth goes dry, and I’m all too aware of how close we’re standing. How his dark hair curls slightly where it’s damp with sweat. How the sun makes his eyes look almost amber around the edges. How I could maybe fall for him—the real him—if I let myself.
Declan drags a hand through his hair, leaving one dark strand tumbling across his forehead. It clings stubbornly to the sweat beading at his temple. I reach up, brush it back, my fingers lingering against the heat of his skin.
“You can let it go. I’ll be your knight in shining armor.”
His jaw flexes, then his calm facade slips. His eyes lock on mine, and the shift there guts me. “That’s not how this is supposed to work,” he says, voice low, rough. “I’m the one who’s supposed to protect you.”
“I think we’ve both seen how well that’s gone,” I tease gently, but my heart squeezes.
I pull back, and he catches my hand as it falls away. He lifts it and presses a kiss to the pad of my thumb. The warmth of his mouth lingers, and when he draws in a breath against my skin, I’m dizzy.
“You don’t know what that means to me,” he murmurs against my fingers.
But I think I do. Because the ache in my chest is reckless and unguarded and reaching out to him.
A shadow wheels over us. A bird circles high, its wings cutting feathery brown pinwheels into the sky. Declan looks up and winces, rolling his neck.
“Everything okay?” I ask, tucking my hand against my stomach, holding his warmth for as long as I can.
“Thirty-five is too old to be sleeping on the ground.” He rolls his shoulders until the joints pop.
The motion makes him wince, pain flickering across his face before he tries to smooth it over with nonchalance.
“Tarek took me to see the healer, which sounded promising until she gave me honey drops, a clay jar of balm, and told me to lie on a piece of charred wood to draw out the bad spirits.”
I choke on a laugh and, before I can stop myself, loop my arm through his as we continue walking. His body is solid and warm beside me, the kind of anchor I’ve always wanted.
“I think I have something that might actually help.”
“Oh yeah?” He waggles his brows. “Is it in your bag of tricks?”
“Even better.” I give him a playful shove. “You can sleep in the bed.”
His arm stiffens against mine.
Ever since that first night when getting into the same bed would’ve been a fun but disastrous idea, he’s made a point of bedding down on the floor like it’s some kind of moral duty. And every night since, I’ve caught myself wondering what it would be like to tell him not to.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I say, not sure at all.
I feel his gaze on me, the slow curve of a grin tugging at his mouth. It’s the kind of look that would melt me on the spot if I let it. Which is exactly why I don’t look up. Because if I do, I’m not sure I’ll remember why keeping my distance ever felt like the smart decision.