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I’m kept unconscious. Every time awareness creeps back to me, someone shoos it away again by both draughts forced down my throat and ripples of magic cast across my body.

Slivers of light shine into the room, and I open my cracked, dry eyelids only for them to be closed again by gentle fingers.

Voices fade in and out, but none are distinguishable.

When consciousness finally settles upon me, I jolt awake, trying to capture it before it can flee again. Before they—whoever “they” are—can take it from me again.

“There, there,” an elderly woman soothes. “You’ve been through a lot. Rest.”

The room around me is nowhere I’ve ever been before. I’d remember somewhere this… obnoxiously ostentatious.

Every piece of furniture and framed painting is embellished with silver.

On each side of the room stand ten black marble pillars.

There are two sitting areas, one at the foot of the bed I lie in and one before a distant hearth large enough to roast an entire bear in.

Chandeliers cast soft candlelight across the excessively dark space.

The light illuminates every oddity and curio that cram the walls so extravagantly that the effect would be claustrophobic were the room not so large.

However, thanks to the size of the space, the number of curiosities just makes the room feel almost…

museum-like. Cold. Far more sterile than a typical bedroom.

And despite its size, I do presume it is a bedroom. I’m dwarfed by a four-poster bed the size of a small apartment. It’s made of black stone and lined with heavy curtains. An endless ocean of quilted velvet with islands of fur at my feet drowns a vast expanse of silken sheets.

“Where in the four suits am I?” I demand, glaring at the woman and wishing I had some kind of weapon. Unfortunately, I have nothing. Not even my tattered clothing from the prison. I’ve been dressed in a chiffon nightgown by hands that I hope were hers.

“Arcana Academy,” she answers easily, though I’d half expected her to play coy. “I’m Rewina, his highness’s maid.”

A maid? Not a butler? How odd… But the prince’s unorthodox staffing is the least of my concerns.

“Why am I in the academy?” Beyond the windows that are framed in—unsurprisingly— more heavy velvet drapes, Eclipse City glows in the distance on the other side of the mouth of the Farlum River.

An imposing wall barricades where the river meets the sea.

It serves both as the bridge that connects city and academy and as a means for the royal family to control all trade to the kingdom and territories beyond.

“The prince will tell you, I presume.” Is that her deferring to Kaelis’s authority?

Or does she not know why I’m here, either?

The truth is hidden behind a seemingly warm smile, crinkling eyes, and wispy gray-and-white hair.

Rewina reminds me vaguely of Bristara, though she’s older than the matron of the Starcrossed Club.

“Speaking of, he will want to know you’re awake.

Please excuse me,” she says, as if I have any power here to excuse anyone.

The maid leaves, and I am alone.

Instantly, I throw aside the covers and swing my feet off the bed.

It feels like it’s two stories high, and my knees pop as I push myself off.

Every bit of me aches and creaks. My legs wobble.

My stomach is hollow against my ribs. I somehow feel worse than when I left my cell. How long was I unconscious for?

I might be a mere twenty years old—maybe even twenty-one by now, depending on the date—but regardless, I feel three times my age.

First things first: weapon. I head directly for the fireplace, fighting the distractions of the view of the city out the window and the curiosities that line the walls.

I grab the fire poker. The hook at the end would be a nasty thing to sink into a skull.

Though I struggle to lift it in my current state, it’s better than nothing.

Now to investigate the shelves for something more practical, perhaps concealable. Cards, ideally…and then—

“Are you going to attack me with that ?” Kaelis’s voice shivers over my skin. He makes me aware of just how naked I am under the paper-thin nightgown barely covering me.

“I was considering it.” I turn, not allowing him to see my discomfort. Kaelis leans against one of the posters of the bed and shuffles his deck nonchalantly. The cards fly as effortlessly as the threats he doesn’t need to speak.

“I’m glad to see you’ve recovered enough to be your wretched little self again.”

I don’t rise to his insults. “Why am I here?”

“You’re in no position to make demands of me.”

“Just fucking tell me.” My fingers tighten against the iron. I can’t shake the sense that I’m staring into the face of my mother’s killer. Was it really Kaelis who ordered her rope cut? He oversees all Arcanists and laws binding them.

“Language, language, Clara. That’s no way to speak to a prince. You’ll have to work on that.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway, what does it matter?” I shrug, as if my own mortality is little more than a trivial matter. “At least I’ll die without playing into your hands.”

“Haven’t you already?” He’s referring to my escape attempt. Damn it. My suspicions were right. But even if I’d known for sure and not just suspected, I still would have tried my luck and attempted to escape.

“I have too much dignity to do it again,” I say, goading him into telling me his plan. Because if he’d wanted it, I would already be dead.

“Dignity? The woman who was crawling through mountain tunnels and scavenging in back alleys claims to have dignity ?” He scoffs. “Forgive me, I didn’t know I was talking to the queen of the rats.”

“I’d rather be queen of the rats than king of the snakes,” I jab.

All my life, I’ve heard stories of the Oricalis family.

I have seen how they have ruled the Kingdom of Oricalis.

I have seen the glittering spires of the rich neighborhoods of Eclipse City and the poorest shacks that lie in their shadows, filled with people hungry, cold, and desperate for a moment’s compassion.

He hums. “Then, by that logic, we are well matched indeed, as you are my most perfect prey.”

I grip the iron tighter, willfully ignoring the involuntary quivering in my muscles that I don’t possess the strength to stop.

I’ve no cards and no power against him. Nothing to defend myself with other than my fading strength and a poker.

Meanwhile, if he wanted to, he could flay the meat from my bones with one flick of his fingers.

“Fine.” I drop the poker with a clatter and hold out my empty palms in a gesture of surrender. “Why am I still alive?”

“Now you’re asking the right questions.” He pushes away from the poster, pockets his deck, and approaches me.

As Prince Kaelis grows near, I briefly think of hooking the poker with my toes and seeing if I have enough strength to shove it right through his breastbone.

I suspect I do not. And I know that with a thought he could magically summon a card from his pocket; my safety is an illusion.

But it’d be a satisfying experiment. “I need you.”

“You? Need me ?” I snort.

“Why else do you think I liberated you from that prison? That I didn’t let you die there?

” A glint in his eyes tells me he’s not lying.

A prison you put me in, I want to say. The prince takes another step closer, and so I take a step back.

I hit the wall by the fire. “What do you know of the twenty-first tarot card?”

Twenty-first tarot card? There are fifty-six cards in the Minor Arcana, fourteen of each suit, and twenty in the Major Arcana, not counting the illustrious Fool—the start of it all and so numbered at zero…Unless…

“The twenty-first tarot is nothing more than a myth.” Mother would tell us legends of the twenty-first tarot, the World.

The stories say it gives the wielder the power to change anything— everything.

It’s like the Nine of Cups but infinitely more powerful.

One card so mighty it can bend reality and change the world itself. But a card like that is a dream…

“I assure you, it’s not.” He looms over me. “Think about what you could do, if the World was in your hands.”

I do. Before I can stop myself, I’m imagining how a carefully worded wish and the mysterious card known as the World could make me the most powerful Arcanist to ever exist. I could own all of Eclipse City—the entire kingdom.

I’d end Kaelis and his family. I could bring my mother back to life, and no one would ever hurt me or anyone I loved ever again.

Kaelis appraises me with intent, eyes shining in the flickering firelight, as if he can see all my thoughts, even the ones involving his demise. Yet, the more I fight him, the more it seems to delight him.

“Do you want it?” His voice has dropped to a whisper, heavy with purpose.

“It doesn’t exist.”

“It does. And you, Clara, are the final key to getting it.”

“What?” This man has lost his mind.

“You look surprised.” The arrogant little smirk he’s been wearing widens.

“Are you not the master thief who was rumored to be able to acquire anything? The woman who stole ancient inking brushes from the grand museum of Oricalis? Who would smuggle Unmarked Arcanists and illegal tarot throughout Eclipse City and beyond? All before she even reached the age of twenty?”

“I see my reputation precedes me,” I manage to quip, despite my throat being as dry as the vast desert in the east of the kingdom.

But he continues as if my voice had been swallowed by the encroaching shadows.

“The same woman…” With a slow, deliberate movement, Kaelis rests his hand on the wall by my head, a mere whisper from my short-cropped hair, and leans even closer, until there’s not enough air in the room for me to breathe.

There’s only him, igniting every inch of me with the heightened awareness of his shape.