Chapter 9 Fleur
The tavern feels…off.
There is something in the bones of this building. Something waiting for us to realize what it already knows.
I sit cross-legged on the rug in front of the hearth, the cards in my hands heavier than they should be. Not physically—they weigh the same as they always have, but there’s a pressure to them tonight. Like they’ve been waiting, too.
I breathe out slowly and begin to shuffle.
The deck whispers, paper sliding against paper.
Familiar. Grounding.
Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m not alone. Not just in the room—Winnie’s presence is close, sure, just outside the circle of firelight—but in the act. Like something older is watching. Like someone else is shuffling with me.
The cards warm in my palms.
I spread them across the rug, faces down, in a crescent curve. I don’t ask if she wants a reading; I just wait.
She lingers at the edge of the firelight for a while, arms crossed over her chest, holding herself in. Then, finally, she steps forward and lowers herself onto the floor across from me. Her legs fold carefully beneath her with a sort of uncertainty that maybe she shouldn’t be sitting at all.
“I don’t usually do this kind of thing,” she says, gaze flicking to the spread. “Magic’s real, sure. But the personal kind, the let-it-in kind?” She shrugs. “Not really my style.”
I glance up at her, letting the moment settle. “You don’t have to do anything but sit. The cards will meet you where you are.”
She snorts. “You might’ve better luck asking for blood.”
That makes me smile, but it doesn’t last, not when I reach for the first card and flip it over.
The Lovers.
My fingers still.
Not because it’s romantic, though it can be. The Lovers card is rarely about the surface. It’s about choice, duality, what you let in and what you keep out. Who you become when someone else sees you clearly.
It’s a beginning, but only if you’re willing to let something else go.
I draw the second card.
The Moon.
My breath catches.
It stares up at me, silvered and soft-edged. Uncertainty, deception, intuition that hasn’t found its voice yet. It’s a card of questions without answers, of shadows that don’t belong to anything you can name.
Winnie shifts across from me, and in the flicker of the firelight I think I see her brow crease—just slightly. She doesn’t speak, but I know she feels it…the weight curling around us.
I hesitate before turning the last card.
But the deck has already decided.
The Ten of Wands.
I swallow hard.
Burden, responsibility, carrying something alone for too long. It’s not a card of weakness—it’s a card of weariness. Of a soul near collapse but still standing. It says you’ve survived, but you’re also breaking under it.
The three cards hum like struck strings.
I don’t look at her right away. I can feel her gaze on the spread, though. I imagine the way it must look to her: strange and too specific, like it was pulled from her thoughts rather than from the deck.
“This shouldn’t be that clean,” I murmur.
Winnie finally speaks. “You saying I somehow cheated?” Her voice is light, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“No,” I say slowly. “I’m saying…I need to know if that was me.”
She blinks at me.
I hold out the deck. “Shuffle them however you want, and cut them yourself with your left hand.”
“Why?”
“Because if I do it again and it’s the same…then it’s me. My magic pushing through, trying to guide the reading. But if you do it, and we get the same cards—”
I don’t finish the sentence.
Winnie watches me for a long moment, like she’s deciding whether this is a game or something worse. Then, wordlessly, she takes the deck from my hands.
The shift is immediate.
The moment her fingers close around the cards, something sparks along my skin. My breath stutters. It’s not sharp, it’s not pain, but it’s real. It’s energy, drawn up like a tide.
Her hands move clumsily, not with the comfort of someone who’s done this before, but with the intent of someone who understands that it matters. She shuffles once, twice, then cuts the deck in half and stacks it again before sliding it back toward me.
The cards are warmer now.
Almost hot.
I draw the first.
The Lovers.
Something cracks open inside me.
I draw the second.
The Moon.
My fingers tremble.
And the third…
The Ten of Wands.
They’re not just the same cards. They’re the same cards in the same order.
And they’re louder this time.
The fire behind me seems to dim for a moment. The air between us thickens, pulling close around our shoulders. It’s not oppressive, exactly, but it’s present.
I look at her.
Winnie is staring at the spread, her mouth parted just slightly, like she might say something. Her fingers drift toward the corner of one card, the Ten of Wands, and rest there. Then, slowly, she pulls her hand back like it burned her.
She doesn’t speak.
But I can see it in her face. In the way she blinks, slow and careful.
“You felt it,” I say, voice low.
Still, no answer.
But she doesn’t deny it either.
The fire crackles next to us. One log shifts, a slow collapse into embers, but neither of us moves.
Winnie’s eyes haven’t left the cards.
I want to reach for her hand, but I don’t. I don’t know what would happen if I touched her right now—if the magic is running between us, or through us, or if it’s already in her, buried deep and shaking the dust off for the first time in years.
Or maybe ever.
“This doesn’t happen,” I say, not to explain, but to mark the moment. “Cards don’t repeat like that. Not without intent. Not unless something wants to be heard.”
Winnie finally drags her gaze up to meet mine. Her voice is hoarse when she speaks.
“Is it…me?”
The words hang in the space between us. Breath on glass. Fragile. Already fading.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But it’s not just me anymore, that much I’m sure of.”
She nods, slow and small, and looks back down.
The Lovers. The Moon. The Ten of Wands.
They’re not reflections of her. They’re answers; they’re the tavern speaking. Or the land, or something older still. Something that has been watching us both.
“This place has always been strange,” she says after a moment, so quietly I almost miss it. “My grandmother used to say the hearth had a heartbeat.” She huffs a short, breathless laugh—barely humor, mostly nerves. “I thought she meant the fire.”
I don’t interrupt, but I can feel the shape of memory forming behind her words, something long-buried shifting to the surface.
“This tavern was my mother’s before me. Her mother’s before her.
I never thought of it as magical. Just responsibility.
But I’ve lived here in one form or another my whole life and I’ve never felt it like this.
Not until you showed up.” She looks at me again, but this time there’s no accusation in her tone.
Just fact. “I think something’s waking up. ”
“I think something already has.”
We stay seated like that for a bit. Not speaking, not needing to.
And then, slowly, her hand moves again. Unable to resist. This time, she touches the cards more deliberately, fingers resting on The Moon.
“This one feels…wrong,” she says. “But not like a mistake. Like a warning.”
I nod. “The Moon’s not always gentle. It sees what’s hidden. Even if you don’t want it to.”
“Great.” Her voice is dry. “Love a good haunting metaphor.”
“Not a metaphor,” I say, and I can’t help it—my voice is softer now, almost reverent. “Not tonight.”
The tavern hums again, low and steady, a sound not made by wind or wood but by something lingering just beneath the surface of the floor.
And neither of us looks at our reflection in the tray on the wall.
Not this time.