Chapter Fifteen #2
Augustine swallowed as she took the card in.
The sky was almost the same shade as Theo’s eyes — that strange, bright blue that always seemed a little too vivid in the candlelight of her shop. And the green spilling across the garden floor reminded her, uncomfortably, of the hue of her own eyes.
Theo leaned closer, peering at the card.
“What does it mean?”
Augustine forced herself to breathe. “Well, the Lovers represents connection. A profound one.” Her finger hovered near the figures on the card. “Two lives tied together somehow.”
Theo tilted his head, studying the illustration.
Above the man and woman, an angel spread wide, watchful wings. Behind them stood two trees — one heavy with fruit, a serpent twisted around its trunk, the other aflame.
“It’s about relationships,” Augustine continued. “But also choices. Big ones. The kind that can change everything.”
Theo’s gaze moved between the two figures on the card.
“Is it romantic?” he asked. “This relationship?”
“Sometimes,” Augustine admitted.
He said nothing, just absorbed her with his eyes.
His eyes are that same impossible blue, she realized.
“And the snake?” he asked eventually, pointing to the coiled shape. “That seems like a bad sign.”
Augustine followed his finger.
“The serpent usually represents temptation,” she said. “Or transformation. A decision that can’t be undone once it’s made.”
Theo leaned back slightly, considering that. “So,” he said slowly, “my path forward is . . . a relationship and a terrible life choice? That’s what this card means?”
Augustine hesitated, because suddenly, the figures on the card didn’t feel symbolic at all.
They felt familiar. Far too familiar. She looked down at the man and woman again — standing side by side beneath that endless blue sky, reaching for one another for all eternity, and, for the briefest of moments, a strange thought flickered through her mind.
We look like them.
She pushed back from the table so abruptly her chair scraped hard against the floor.
“We should stop this,” she said quickly. “Now.”
Her hands had begun to shake, and that prickling feeling had returned to her skin; the same crawling awareness she’d felt earlier, like something unseen had stepped closer, listening to their every word. Watching their every movement.
“Stop? There’s still one card left!” Theo protested.
Augustine didn’t move, her eyes fixed on the final card like it might bite her.
“I know. That card answers your last question. Who she is,” she said. “But I still think we should stop. Something’s odd here. I’ve never felt like this when giving a reading before.”
This didn’t feel dutiful, she realized. It didn’t feel perfunctory.
No. It felt alive.
“I can’t stop. Not now,” Theo argued. “I need to know who she is, Augustine. I have to find her.”
Augustine felt for him, she really did. But something was wrong, and as if reading her thoughts, a nearby candle guttered, then went completely still.
“I just can’t,” she whispered. “We’re stopping this now.”
There was magic in this somewhere, she suddenly realized. A darker magic than she was acquainted with, but magic all the same. She should have known it from the first turn of the card. Should have sensed it in the air around them.
“No, please, I have to know,” Theo begged, stepping towards her. “Who is she?”
“Theo—”
“Augustine, please.”
Slowly, reluctantly, she reached forward, her fingers brushing the edge of the card.
Don’t, some small voice inside her whispered.
But the cards had already begun speaking.
Too late, she answered her own thoughts — as she turned the final card over.
The air left her lungs. A woman sitting beside a swirling sea, a cup cradled carefully in her hands.
The Queen of Cups.
Theo leaned closer to see it properly.
The woman on the card sat alone on a pebbled shore, an endless sea before her, a sealed cup cradled carefully in her hands as if whatever lay inside it was too precious — or too dangerous — to spill.
This was a card of blue, from the sky to the sea to the rick silk of the Queen’s cloak.
Augustine’s eyes blurred as she studied it, the blues blending together until it was impossible to tell where one shade ended and another began.
Just like his eyes, she realized.
Theo frowned slightly. “So what does this mean?”
Augustine didn’t answer, because suddenly the room felt different. The air had grown thick and heavy, like the charged stillness before a storm. The candle flames on the table flickered wildly, bending sideways, despite the lack of wind.
“Theo,” she said quietly, her eyes still fixed on the card. “I think we’ve made a mistake.”
Theo stepped closer to her. “What kind of mistake?”
Augustine didn’t know how to answer that, because now the woman on the card was moving. Not much, but enough that Augustine noticed. There was a gentle rise and fall of her shoulders, and the faint ripple in the water beside her.
Augustine’s breath caught in her throat. “This isn’t possible—” she began, before the words stopped on her lips, because then the woman lifted her head, and looked straight at her.
Augustine staggered back a step as the candlelight flared violently, shadows leaping up the walls. The edges of the room seemed to bend inward, the world tilting as if gravity itself had shifted.
“Augustine?” Theo said sharply.
She could barely hear him now. She could hear water, the sea; the sound of waves breaking against unseen rocks was filling her head. The colours of the illustration began to bleed outward, blue and green spilling across the surface of the card like ink in water.
“No,” Augustine whispered, and her fingers felt wet where they were still touching the card. Hurriedly, she tried to pull her hand away.
But she couldn’t.
The pull was gentle at first, then stronger, like a tide dragging her forward.
“Theo—”
The table vanished. The candles vanished, and Theo’s voice dissolved into the roar of water.
Suddenly Augustine was falling, not through darkness, but through memory. And when she opened her eyes—