Chapter Twenty
Theo’s hand rested against hers, warm and real, and heat spread where their skin met, carrying a faint, trembling energy up Augustine’s arm. Her eyes were fixed helplessly on the point of contact; on the subtle touch where his fingertips touched hers.
She could feel him. That soft give of skin, as well as a faint, uneven rhythm beneath it, so slight she thought she was imagining it at first. A flicker. A pulse.
A heartbeat, she realized in wonder. He has a heartbeat.
It was distant but undeniable, and her breath came slower now as she inhaled deeply, her world now narrowed to the single, impossible sensation of his hand next to hers.
She looked up, but Theo didn’t move. He only stared at where their skin met, just as transfixed as she was.
His eyes traced the line of their hands with a hint of mistrust at what he was seeing, as though looking too quickly might break whatever fragile thread had allowed this to happen.
Then, carefully — almost reverently — his fingers shifted.
He turned his hand, hesitated for the briefest second, and then laced his fingers through hers, deepening the contact. His grip tightened, not enough to hurt her, but just enough to prove to the both of them that this was real. That this was happening.
“Do you know,” he began, his voice hoarse, “how long it’s been since I’ve touched someone?”
“Well, it’s been a week since you died—”
“No.” His words were firm. “Since even before then. I don’t remember the last time I held a woman’s hand like this. Since I felt like this.”
His words were weighed with wonder, yet something that sounded almost like grief. She swallowed, still staring at their hands. She watched as his thumb moved against the palm of her hand, the strokes small and uncertain, in a way that told her he was memorizing the texture of her skin.
She didn’t answer him right away. She couldn’t, and for another heartbeat neither of them moved.
Augustine looked down at their joined hands, her mind stumbling over itself as realization struck her, sudden and bright.
“Theo, I . . .” she whispered, almost to herself. “I know this.”
Theo’s grip tightened slightly, seemingly afraid she might vanish if he let go of her for even a second. “Know what?”
She lifted her gaze to his. “Your hands. I know them. I know the feel of them.” Her words hung there, strange and intimate all at once.
“I felt this before,” she carried on, her voice unsteady now.
“In the memory. When you touched her—” She broke off, her throat tightening faintly. “I learned it. Somehow. How you feel.”
Theo didn’t pull away.
But then, neither did she.
“It carried over,” Augustine finished softly, almost in awe. “From there . . . from that memory. It carried to here.”
Neither of them moved, then, slowly, almost without thinking, Augustine lifted her free hand.
Theo’s eyes followed the motion, something unreadable flickering through them as her fingers hovered, just short of his face, just short of the faint shadow along his jaw, of the shape of his mouth, of the quiet stillness he’d fallen into. She hesitated only a second before reaching the last inch.
Her fingers passed straight through him.
Augustine flinched, pulling back sharply, the absence of contact as startling as the touch had been only moments before. The space where his skin should have been felt cold and empty, and so entirely wrong to her still skin-warmed hands.
“Oh,” she said, exhaling with disappointment, even as understanding settled in, slow and certain, and she glanced down at their hands again — still joined, still real — and then back up at him, her thoughts racing to catch up with what her body already seemed to understand.
“The only reason I can touch your hands . . .” she said carefully, “is because I’ve already felt them. In the memory. So if I . . . if I went back . . . if I saw more . . ” Her voice trailed off, but the conclusion hung plainly between them.
If I learn the rest, I can touch the rest.
Theo swallowed. “Augustine—”
“I should go back,” Augustine said, the words coming quicker now, before she could second-guess them. “Into her memories. Through the cards. I’ll find out what happened. Find out what you’ve forgotten.”
She almost expected Theo to seize on her idea immediately, to agree without a second thought. It was what he wanted, wasn’t it? What he’d asked for. To know what happened. To learn who his girlfriend was, and if she was okay.
But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything at all, in fact.
His gaze was still fixed on their hands, his expression gone distant in a way she hadn’t seen before — not blank, but caught somewhere deeper, somewhere she couldn’t follow, and Augustine’s breath slowed, her certainty faltering just slightly as the silence stretched.
“Theo?” Augustine watched him, a small, uncertain knot forming low in her chest. “Theo. You need to choose a card. Choose a card, and I can go back. Find her again.”
With her free hand, she nudged the deck towards him, but he didn’t move.
Then, with the hallmark of someone surfacing from somewhere far away, Theo blinked and drew in a quiet breath.
His focus shifted — first to her face, and then, almost reluctantly, back to their hands.
“Why . . .” he started, his voice rougher now, less certain.
He swallowed. “Why do your hands feel so familiar to me?”
Augustine hesitated. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and for once there was no cleverness in it, no attempt to soften the truth. “I wish I did.”
Theo studied her for a second longer, like he might find the answer written somewhere in her expression. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t seem to find it.
“Choose a card,” Augustine told him again. “I can go back . . . see more. Learn more.”
Theo didn’t reach for the deck. “You’re talking like what you’re about to do is nothing.”
She frowned. “It’s not nothing.”
“No?” His gaze dropped briefly to their joined hands before lifting back to her. “When you were there, before—” he shook his head slightly — “you came out of it shaking.”
Augustine opened her mouth. “But I’m fine—”
“You ran,” Theo continued gently. “You looked terrified.”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “This time it won’t be a surprise. I’ll know what to expect and—”
“Augustine.”
She looked away. “We’re close to something,” she said quickly. “I can feel it.”
“What if you’re not meant to get close to it? What if it hurts you?”
“Then it hurts me.”
“But I promised you I would never hurt you.”
“I know, but look, Theo . . .” She forced herself to take a breath. “Whether I understand it or not, you were sent to me. That has to mean something.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about yourself, too.” Frustration mixed with a little concern crossed Theo’s face. “You matter, Augustine. I don’t want you to be so busy saving me that you forget about yourself in all this.”
“Theo—”
“No.” His voice gentled, but he didn’t let her wriggle free of it. “Why are you like this?”
Augustine blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“Like this.” His free hand lifted in a small, helpless gesture between them. “You throw yourself at problems like getting hurt is just . . . administrative. Like your wellbeing is somehow negotiable.” He shook his head faintly. “Why?”
The answer rose instinctively to her lips. Because somebody has to.
But the words caught there, and for a strange, disorientating second, Augustine found herself thinking of council tax bills and overdue homework.
Of packed lunches and permission slips and reassuring phone calls she hadn’t felt qualified to make.
Of standing in her mother’s kitchen at twenty-one, pretending she knew how to hold a family together simply because there was nobody else left to do it.
After their mother disappeared, life hadn’t paused long enough to ask Augustine what she wanted.
Clem needed stability and Maddy needed protecting, and Celestine was too clever, too brilliant, to give up her studies. Augustine, meanwhile . . .
Well. She did what was needed and stepped up.
She’d put aside plans, dreams, whole possible versions of herself, and slipped into the empty space their mother had left before anyone could notice how terrified she was.
Now, she’d been sacrificing things for so long that sometimes she genuinely didn’t even recognize it as sacrifice any more. It just felt normal. It felt like life.
Theo was still watching her, waiting, and Augustine looked away.
“Please just choose a card.” She didn’t want him to prod any further at the painful points of her past.
“No.” Theo’s voice was firm. “Not until you tell me why you’re so determined to go back.”
Because stopping feels impossible now. Because I need answers, and because standing this close to you without them feels somehow worse.
“Choose a card,” she said one last time, almost pleading now. “Please.”
Slowly, he let out a breath. “Fine.” It didn’t sound like agreement so much as resignation.
His hand shifted from hers, not fully letting go, but loosening just enough that he could point one finger towards the spread of cards.
“That one,” he told her, and Augustine nodded.
Carefully, she reached forward and turned the card over.
The artwork bloomed into view: a young figure stepping out into an open landscape, the world stretching wide before them.
There was movement in this card, as well as possibility.
There was an untethering from what had been before, and a quiet, almost reckless invitation towards what might yet come to pass.
“The Fool,” Augustine said softly. “A new beginning. A step into the unknown. Growth, change, and new experiences waiting just beyond the edge of certainty.”
Her fingers lingered on the card a moment too long, and then the air shifted in a way she remembered all too well. The edges of the room seemed to soften, like the world itself were holding its breath.
Augustine’s gaze dropped back to the card, but the figure within it was no longer still.
It was subtle at first. A trick of the light, she thought. The suggestion of movement in the painted lines. But then the fool tilted — just slightly, appearing to adjust their footing at the cliff’s edge. The little bundle slung over their shoulder swayed. The dog at their heels lifted its head.
And then—
The fool looked straight at her, and Augustine’s breath caught, because for the briefest of moments, and almost impossibly, the figure seemed to smile at her. Not the fixed, painted curve of ink and colour, but something knowing. Something alive.
A flicker of mischief. A dare. Augustine watched as the fool tipped their head, and winked at her.
“Theo,” she began, but the room began to spin, and then—