Chapter 12 #2
Something happened that day, something she doesn’t want to share.
She flips the third card.
Death.
It’s not represented as a skeleton, or a reaper, but a beautiful man who looks eerily similar to the one she was embracing in the previous card. An angel of death, with no wings this time, his platinum-blonde hair falling in bright, cold strands around his strong jaw.
Freckles of ice dust his cheeks, and he looks…sad.
Max studies the card longer than she should. Her fingers hover above it, brushing the outline of that sorrow. Her throat tightens on a tiny groan she tries and fails to hide.
“Death. That’s me, right?” I ground out. “That’s what I am.”
Her lashes flutter. She leans back to brush against me—not fully, not consciously—but enough that I know how close we are to crossing the line she drew between us. That friendship palisade she raised is already crumbling.
I press my ethereal lips to her pulse point, and goosebumps rise along the sensitive skin of her neck.
“You’re doing it again,” she scolds.
“What?”
“Flirting.”
If only she knew how much worse it is inside my head. The things I want. The things I would do if I had a body.
I smile anyway. “Should I stop?”
Her cheeks flush, answering for her as she squares the cards with trembling fingers.
“What card didn’t you finish?” I ask softly.
She hesitates, then slides open a hidden compartment at the bottom of the box, prying free one last card.
“The King of Wands.”
There he stands, sketched in graphite. The branches of a tall, white-barked tree with golden leaves snake across the card. I want to ask what happened on that last afternoon—what made her leave this masterpiece unfinished—, but I sense she’s not ready to tell.
“So,” I murmur, “you abandoned a king in need. It’s tragic. Heartless. Possibly treasonous.”
She gently strokes the sketched line of the king’s jaw, and it hits me like a blow—how lucky this man is. How much I envy him, even in black and white.
“I didn’t abandon him,” she bristles. “I simply…left him waiting.”
She exhales and leaves the incomplete card on top of the deck, returning him to his friends before sliding them all into the box. “The cards never lie.”
“And what do they say?” I ask, my voice low. “You still haven’t explained.”
She swallows hard, and the fairy lights flicker above our heads.
“That I should go to bed,” she says too fast.
“It’s still early,” I counter.
She shifts on the bed, turning away to sit at the opposite end, as if space alone could change how we feel.
Then, without a word, she rests her feet in my lap, her injured calf lying on top.
The lacerations are barely scratches now, thanks to the effects of her poultice, and the otherwise smooth skin beckons.
I reach for her, my fingers sliding along her calf without quite touching it. We hang there, suspended in a bubble neither of us will burst. Her breath catches, and the sound pulls me apart at the seams.
“Maybe,” I say, voice low, “you never finished painting the card because you weren’t ready to face what it would reveal.”
She lifts a brow. “About him?”
“About you. Why did you save him for last? Your king?”
“Maybe I was waiting to meet someone…fitting,” she says, her voice feather-soft and deceptively casual.
My heart gives a long, hard thud. I don’t ask if she means me, because this delusion of intimacy and longing might have been blown out of proportion by my screwed-up head. We linger there, close enough to almost touch. Close enough to fall.
Blood flutters at the base of her throat as though it’s desperate to leap toward me. She painted a king without a face because she hadn’t yet found the man who fit the crown.
“The King of Wands represents attraction. Intensity. Someone who walks into a room and shifts the axis of your world…”
Her cheeks warm. “I know what he represents.”
I lean closer, enough to feel the heat of her skin. “You left him undone for years. Almost like you were afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of someone who matched your fire.”
She clutches the card box to her chest.
“Maybe.” I graze the length of her upper arm. “You couldn’t finish him because he wasn’t ready to be seen.”
She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, a hint of determination burns in her gaze.
Like she’s about to tear herself away from a craving she can’t keep indulging.
I don’t know how I sense all of that, but it’s there in the growing tether between us—like she’s just decided to grab her gardening scissors and cut me loose. Permanently.
The mist presses harder against the window, greedy and endless.
“Listen, E—” she starts, and my blood runs cold, a sudden need rising in me to stop her before she finishes that sentence.
“Wait. I think I figured out a way to get into the attic.”
She squints at my outburst. “I’m all ears.”
“We need to do another séance. With enough concentration, I could burn the runes off the walls. Would that work?”
She chews on her bottom lip. “If you kept physical form long enough to destroy a few of them, it might work, but last time you barely got three seconds to nudge that cane out of the way before the effect of the séance faded.”
“I might be more efficient this time around. Practice makes perfect,” I suggest with exaggerated pep.
She’s unsure. Either she doesn’t think it’ll work, or she’s guessed the real reason I want to do another séance. Why I cut her off now when I’ve been so keen on listening before. What I really plan to do with another shot at touching her. Because fuck, we’re not friends.
We could never be friends, not the way my soul howls for her. And I won’t give up without a fight.