Page 27

His whole body stiffens, and it’s that reaction that snaps me back to my senses. I release him, absolutely mortified that I’ve just held him and cried as if he were a dear friend. His expression is utterly unreadable. He’s doing a good job at concealing what I can only assume is equal horror.

The silence of the room is broken only by the sound of my pounding heart and my thin, shallow breaths. My panicked thoughts are so loud that I’m shocked he can’t hear them. Yet his eyes search mine for an explanation I’ll never give him.

What did you see? is the unspoken question. The one to which, I feel in my marrow, he already knows the answers.

Kaelis was the one to pull me from the endless tortures of Halazar both in that dream world and in this one.

In his way, he was the one to offer me salvation and comfort.

But he was also the one who put me there in the first place.

Who turned my life into some kind of game to get me into the academy.

Who’s been the orchestrator of everything that has ever brought me suffering.

I hate him, I remind myself. I hate him and all his ilk.

Every noble who treats us like tools rather than people.

Who turns a blind eye to our suffering. All of them.

And Kaelis is the head of that serpent. Hisfather might make the laws about Arcanists, but it is Kaelis whois charged with their enforcement.

Kaelis who manages the flow of all arcana throughout the kingdom.

Which is why I’ve never doubted that the trap sprung to capture me was orchestrated by him all along.

“I…” I try to find words, but none come. Kaelis finds them for me.

“It was a card.” He releases me hastily and stands, turning his back to me. He walks to the windows as if to give me space to pull myself together.

“Obviously,” I mutter, rubbing my eyes. In the stars that bloom behind my lids I can catch glimpses of the visions that tormented me. “But, it was so real…” I murmur. I hadn’t intended to let the errant thought escape, much less for Kaelis to hear.

“A prison of the mind, conjured by the Hanged Man.” The twelfth tarot of the Major Arcana: a man suspended upside down by a single foot; one arm covers his face and conceals his expression. Kaelis’s tone of voice is unreadable and somewhat detached.

“The Hanged Man…it isn’t a card that can be inked, or used.” I straighten and try to get my sluggish mind working again. I can still feel the hands of the two men as they manhandled me with ease. I must regain my strength quickly if I’m to survive here.

“I assure you, it can be inked. That was what was used against you.”

“The Major Arcana cards are too powerful for any Arcanist to use.” The only one said to have ever harnessed them was the Fool, which was what made him so legendary.

“Too powerful for most. Not all.”

“Eza…” I heard his voice in that place. Could it really have been him controlling what I saw?

Is that how he knew about me and my time in Halazar in the first place?

A Major Arcana card? “He knows how to use the cards of the Major Arcana?” I try to focus on the factsat hand—on what Kaelis is saying and implying…

Literally anything is better than thinking for too long on what I just experienced.

“He is a Major Arcana.” Kaelis turns to face me.

“What?” That gives me pause.

“I assume you are familiar with the mythos of the Fool and the origin of the arcana?”

“I am.” Just the mention of it fills my mind with stories Mother told me every night about the journey of the Fool.

Stories similar tothe ones other children knew, yet different enough that Mother told me they were never to be repeated.

I might not have had a formaleducation, but I didn’t go without intellectual pursuits, thanks to her.

“Tell me.”

“You want me to tell you children’s stories?” I fold my arms.

“I want you to tell me what you think of as history, so I can then tell you how wrong you are.”

“And what if I’m not wrong?”

“You will be.” He’s goading me into speaking, I know it, but I can’t stop myself.

“The Fool was the first to feel the whisper of the arcane,” I start in as dull and dry a tone as I can manage, trying my best to accurately capture just how frustrating I find Kaelis’s antics.

“No one knows where the magic originated from, though some suspect the world was young and the primordial essence of creation still lingered, manifesting in some individuals.

“The Fool—because his name was lost to the ages, and we only know him through the accounts of those who at the time thought him ‘foolish’ for pursuing these ‘magical currents’—set out on an odyssey tounderstand the truth of this power he felt. To comprehend and harness it.”

I pause, allowing Kaelis an opportunity to say I’m wrong. He remains silent. As still as a perfectly carved statue. Well, I guess I know more than he thought…

“Along the way, he encountered trials that changed him. He first learned of the four elemental powers that would become the suits, working to harness them through objects first—Swords, Cups, Wands, and Coins—later as cards. Doing this transformed him into the Magician. He studied the sacred mysteries of the world and, in so doing, gained insight as a High Priestess would. He ascended to leadership and ruled as both Emperor and Empress. He—”

“You never thought it odd,” Kaelis interrupts, “that the Fool ruled as both Emperor and Empress? That he embodied the High Priestess?”

“The tarot lives in us all. It is both feminine and masculine; it is also neither. It is the essence of life and nature in all its forms.” I fight against my voice going soft and somewhat wistful.

These words are an echo of Mother’s own, and her face is so sharp in my memory right now that I ache.

“You keep this tradition, even now, in the academy. Those who are the truest embodiment of a card’s essence become King or Queen of a house.

It does not matter what clothes they wear or if they prefer people to call them he, or she, or they. ”

“This is true,” Kaelis admits. I think I’ve won, but with him? Of course not. “However, it is not true of the Fool’s story. The story you know is centered solely on the Fool. His journey is far too long for one man’s life, his roles and deeds too great.”

“He was the first to master the arcana. Some say he became immortal after gaining all that power.”

“And where is this immortal being now?” Kaelis holds out his hands and motions to the room, as if the Fool could stroll in at any second. “Clearly, not all the stories can be trusted.”

“And what do you propose is the truth behind the legend?” The notion that he’s right and I’m wrong—that I’m more ignorant than I think when it comes to tarot—is unwelcome and uncomfortable. But I work to shove this aside to hear what he has to say.

“The Fool was real. He did go on his odyssey. But what we know as the legendary Major Arcana do not stem from the Fool himself—from his own deeds or evolution. No.” Kaelis tsks, but I don’t rise to the goading.

I stay silent, genuinely curious what he’s about to say next.

“The Fool met others along the way, others who embodied the aspects of the Major Arcana—who had mastered those powers—and these individuals shared their wisdom with him. What the Fool gave them in return was his knowledge of how to contain their powers within cards.”

It’s not utterly implausible. I can see how this truth could evolve over time and simplify to become the story of a single hero rather than a band of twenty-one individuals.

There were times when I was a child that I even imagined it to be so.

But in the end, Mother had always stressed it was only ever the Fool.

Him, and his greed—aforce I always imagined to be the ancient origin of keeping arcana from the masses.

The way she told his story, the Fool was an entity of evil.

“And so…Eza is one of these original followers of the Fool?” I try to reason what he’s implying and am met with a howl of laughter from Kaelis.

“No.” He’s barely composed himself. “And here I thought you were smarter than that.”

“We were just talking about immortality,” I say flatly.

“Eza is a magical descendant of the original Hanged Man—the one who first captured the essence of that Major Arcana.”

“Magical descendant?” I’ve never heard that phrasing before.

“It’s an honor passed along not by bloodlines or titles, but by destiny itself.

Random chances of fate. The magic of each figure of the Major Arcana is always alive, transferring from one individual to someone new upon their death.

” Kaelis takes a step forward, and then another.

The gap between us closes, and with it, my heart quickens once more.

“And you, too, Clara, are one of the Twenty.”

“What?” I breathe, barely audible. I’m not sure he heard me this time at all, even though he’s just about upon me.

Would you have inked a Major Arcana, if you knew how?

His words from Halazar echo back to me. I’d told him no one knew how to ink the Majors.

Not even Mother could teach me how to harness that power.

She discouraged me from ever even trying.

But, she also discouraged me from ever entering the fortress, and here I am…

A smirk arcs across his lips, and Kaelis tilts his head slightly. “Shall we go and formally introduce you to your other Major brethren, Fortune?”