Chapter 21 Atlas
Atlas
I went back to the market the next morning.
Not because I wanted to. Because I had nowhere else to start.
Neve’s trail had died in her house—with her blood on the floor and furniture overturned, a door hanging open like a mouth frozen mid-scream. There was no body. And the only witness worth listening to couldn’t give me much.
All I had was silence and the crawling certainty that she’d been taken by men who made a profession out of making people disappear.
But someone always knew something. And I knew exactly who that someone might be.
The market was half-awake when I arrived.
Vendors yawned through their setups. Tents snapped open like tired wings. Crates thumped onto wood as brooms scraped stone in lazy, rhythmic swipes.
They were the normal morning sounds expected of a market.
The tent I was looking for was already open.
Purple fabric hung heavy, swallowing light instead of letting it through. Silver beads framed the entrance, clinking in a soft, unsettling rhythm. Incense curled from a burner near the doorway, sweet enough to sting the back of my throat like a truth I wasn’t ready to hear.
The tarot card reader.
She sat at a low round table, shuffling cards without looking at her hands. Her fingers moved with old familiarity, like she wasn’t reading the future—just rearranging what she already knew.
Her dark eyes lifted the moment my shadow crossed her threshold.
She didn’t smile or greet me. She just watched, slow and piercing, like she was mapping every sin tucked under my ribs.
I stepped inside. The beads rattled a warning against my shoulders.
She set the deck down.
“You’re not here for the cards,” she remarked, voice low and rough.
“No.”
“You came looking for someone.”
I stopped a few feet from the table. “I need information.”
She tilted her head, eyes narrowing with knowing weight. “Everyone who comes to me needs something. The question is what you’re willing to give in return.” She paused for a beat. “Tell me what you want.”
I inhaled slowly. “Neve.”
She leaned back.
My jaw clenched.
“What do you want with her?”
There was suspicion in her voice. And something else—something protective. It made the back of my neck prickle.
“I’m looking for her.”
“You are not the only one.” Her voice went tight. “And the others… they are not kind men.”
Cold spread through my chest. “You know something.”
She stared at me, her eyes unmoving. “Sit.”
“I don’t have time—”
“Sit,” she repeated. “If you want answers, you sit.”
I lowered myself into the chair across from her.
She shuffled the deck with smooth, practiced hands, then placed it between us.
“Cut.”
I didn’t believe in this shit—but I did it anyway.
Her fingers hovered, choosing without hesitation.
One card.
Then another.
Then a third.
Her face drained of color.
I watched her intently, my eyes never wavering.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You.”
I frowned. “What about me?”
She tapped the first card.
The Chariot. Violence. Upheaval. Destruction.
“You have destroyed many lives,” she stated. “Your hands are red. Your spirit… darker than most I’ve read.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Her hand drifted to the second.
The High Priestess. Secrets. Intuition. Hidden weakness.
“You are losing something,” she whispered. “You think it’s power. But it will be so much more than that.”
I kept my face still.
When she turned the third card over, she inhaled deeply, then set it down between us.
The Devil. Fate tangled in blood. A bond twisted by danger.
Her gaze lifted to mine, heavy as a verdict.
“A girl,” she whispered, “is tied to you. Not by love or fate. But by violence and danger. By something you cannot outrun.”
“This is her card,” Zelda whispered in a low voice. “Neve’s.”
My jaw locked. “Explain.”
She leaned forward, voice dropping, urgent. Like she was afraid the tent itself might hear her.
“She is in danger. Real danger. And you—” she pointed at me “—you are the man in her cards. The one in her alignment.”
The air thickened.
Crackled.
Turned wrong.
“She didn’t tell me about you,” Zelda continued. “But her cards did. Every reading. Every single time. A shadowed man. Grey eyes. A past soaked in violence.”
My spine went rigid.
“I didn’t know who you were… until now.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“You have something to do with her suffering. Something old. Something that stained her childhood.”
The words hit like a dagger to my chest, but she went on, refusing to stop.
“But the cards say this too.” She pressed her palm flat against another card before she turned it over.
Swords.
“Whatever your original sin… your redemption is tied to saving Neve.”
Pressure tightened in my throat.
“And if I don’t?” My voice came out low and lethal.
Her stare went dead serious.
“She will die,” she said. “And so will you.”
I stared at her.
“How do you know any of this?”
She gathered the cards slowly. Calmly.
“Because fate is louder than you think,” she murmured. “And when fate wants two people to collide… the whole world bends to make it happen.”
I stood so fast the chair snapped backward and hit the ground. I needed air. Distance. Something solid.
The reader watched me rise without blinking.
“Find her,” she warned. “Before the men who took her finish what they started.”
I turned to leave.
“Wait!”
I stopped.
“You’re running out of time.”
I walked out without another word—angry, shaken, furious that she’d crawled under my skin.
But her words followed me through the market like smoke.
No matter your original sin… seek your redemption in saving Neve.
And for the first time in my life—I was terrified that she might be right.