Page 50

“Halazar was too kind for someone like you.” A card lifts from his deck, spinning around him.

With every twirl, the visage of the Hanged Man flashes at me.

Whatever he needs to ink that damned card isn’t enough of a cost. “Maybe we can find somewhere else in your history that’s more fitting.

Somewhere darker still. Or I could invent a little mental prison of my own design for you. See whose mind is stronger.”

I release the pen, heart racing.

“After all, it took only a few strikes and a pen through the hand to make you snap. Hardly anything at all.”

How does he know what happened in the vision down to such a specific detail? An icy rush coats me, freezing hard, stopping my movements. Could he somehow see my vision? Did he design it, as he said?

No matter how hard I’ve trained myself, around Eza I am once more left raw, exposed, and vulnerable. The notion that he was watching what played out in my mind while I was under the influence of his Hanged Man is sickening.

“Resorting to a single Major Arcana card to always win is hardly impressive.” I stand, wanting to be ready for anything. The tension in the air is about to snap. “It makes me wonder just how strong you are if you’re always forced to rely on one trick.”

His nostrils flare. Men like him are so predictable. “I could beat you without my Major.”

“If you say so.” I almost sing the words, partly mocking.

I’m goading him into a fight and I know it.

But I’d rather see the attack coming than have him launch into one when my back is turned.

“Not that you’d try without Nidus and Cael.

Or Alor, I suppose. Incredible how unwilling you are to fight when you’re not outnumbering your opponent. ”

I expected that to be his breaking point. I didn’t expect him to lunge over the table and forget his card entirely. The Hanged Man falls like a silvery star, abandoned. He grabs for me, hands at my throat.

The world tilts. We hit the ground.

Eza and I roll across the floor. Every bit of my training with Gregor over the years, every street fight, every close call with enforcers, it’s all called into action along with all the strength I’ve regained.

My fist connects with his jaw, eliciting a sharp grunt.

It feels so bloody good to destroy that too-pretty face of his.

He loses his grip on my throat and rolls off.

Retaliation comes in the form of a crackle of ice across the floor, created by an Ace of Cups.

I scramble out of the way, my hand swinging over my own deck.

Old habits die hard in an actual fight. A card rises magically at my summons.

Fire explodes around me as the Ace of Wands burns, holding back his ice with a hiss.

Breathing heavily, we both regain our footing and circle each other. Moonlight dances along with the flickering candlelight of the sconces. Ice and fire illuminate our faces.

“You have quite the punch.” He moves his jaw around, blood dripping from his lips.

“You have quite the weak jaw.”

Face twisting into a scowl, he grunts, two cards rising from his deck. I’m ready for him. I dodge another blast of ice, but my feet stumble as one of his cards releases a pale purple haze that fills the air around me. My eyelids feel heavy.

Four of Cups. Sleep. Sluggishness. I call the Four of Swords from my own deck—healing—before I collapse into a dreamless sleep.

The haze clears with just enough time for me to see Eza moving toward the Hanged Man card he dropped earlier.

The card quivers to life in response. Before he can reach it, I retaliate with a mental attack of my own—the Two of Swords.

Eza staggers as the world no doubt spins before his eyes.

Confusion causes his body to go limp instead of continuing its pursuit of his Major Arcana. I lunge.

The line between physical and magical combat blurs. Cards evaporate, unravel into threads of light, burst into multicolored stardust, disappear into a haze. The room is upended as we go for the throat—for the kill.

It’s been ages since I fought like this. Since I really, truly stopped holding back. Breathless, bloody, every muscle screaming. Anger and desperation keep me moving. My pain tolerance is so much higher than his. I’m betting my life on it.

“Stop. Moving. You. Bitch,” he snarls. I don’t see the next card that hits me.

I’m thrown, tumbling over the far table, my body’s momentum stopped only by the wall. Blinking stars away, I see Eza moving for his Hanged Man card. No…I won’t go back there. But my body doesn’t heed my commands. I can’t move a finger.

“I won’t go back there,” I rasp. Going back to Halazar, even if it’s only in my mind…“ I’d rather die.”

It’s difficult to even stand when my hand keeps sliding down the wall, slick with blood.

Eza is almost in close enough proximity to his card to cast it with a thought.

I stagger to the table I was working at and fall into it.

The papers from earlier are still scattered, coated by my scribbles, my nose dripping constellations of blood onto them.

If there was ever a time that I needed luck…

The Wheel of Fortune, a turn of fate. It’s not complicated.

Not even something that can be controlled.

It encompasses everything and nothing at the same time.

I draw a circle on one paper, then another circle, half finished, on the outside of it.

Lines stretch from the outer ring to the center point of the inner circle.

I slam my hand into the paper and pour out every bit of magic, of myself, every scrap of luck I’ve ever had and watch as it illuminates with a silvery haze and vanishes.

But whatever I did wasn’t enough. Eza is finally at his card. It hovers. I brace myself. But the attack doesn’t come.

Peeling my eyes open, I see what he’s staring at in disbelief. His card has inexplicably shredded into a dozen pieces and been rendered useless. A twist of fate. Not what I’d imagined…but everything I needed.

Seizing my opportunity, I hurl myself at him. Not with magic. But with my whole body.

I’m atop him. Eza is helpless beneath me. He’s no longer fighting back, and yet I can’t stop myself. I punch and punch, our blood mixing. All the pent-up pain within me finally finds its outlet.

He’s never going to make me feel small again. No one will. I’ll kill anyone who ever threatens me or those I love. There will be no quarter for them. No peace. I’ll remake the whole fucking world if that’s what it takes to have my family and keep them safe.

I might actually kill him…until a force yanks me away.

Kaelis’s grip on my wrist is ironclad as he hoists me off Eza. I stumble back, falling on my ass. Eza wastes no time spitting up blood and rolling onto his side.

“Monstrous wench! She attacked me in cold blood!” he sneers.

The prince’s gaze is as unyielding as his grip as his eyes take in the chaos we’ve wreaked in the Majors’ once-cozy haven. Then his gaze lands on me, and it softens before immediately hardening again. Danger pervades Kaelis’s aura, and it’s apparent enough that even Eza leans away from him.

“Call her a wench again and you’ll answer to much worse than her fists.” Kaelis’s words are like cold fire. Bitter and biting. Little more than a deadly snarl.

“But, but—”

“I have your golden card, Eza. Even if you died, it could still be used to summon the World. I don’t need you any longer.” Kaelis doubles down on his threat.

“Your father would say different.”

That hits a nerve. “Leave. Now. And learn some sense before I set eyes on you again, or we’ll test that theory.”

Eza somehow finds his footing, though it’s shaky. He shoots me a withering glare. “Hide behind his coattails like the coward you are. We will finish this.”

I don’t have time to respond before he stumbles away. Kaelis turns to me. “He started it,” I say, before the prince can get in a word.

“I know he did.” There’s no longer a tone of reprimand in his words, not toward me. “When I didn’t see you at dinner, I went looking…” Kaelis’s free hand shifts, as if to touch my face. I realize it’s the first time we’ve been this close and this alone since the soiree weeks ago.

A shiver runs down my spine. Vulnerability sneaks into my veins, replacing the rush of the fight. Worry from Kaelis? For me? Impossible.

“I don’t need you to save me.” I object to the way he’s looking at me now. To the notion that he’d fear for me.

“No, clearly you don’t.” Kaelis shakes his head.

“But you do need me to ensure that my father doesn’t inflict all manner of torture on you for slaying one of his Majors after you ink your golden card.

” The prince stands. I don’t miss how “all manner of torture” is something different from Halazar…

something that sounds worse. “Now, come with me.”

“Where?”

“My apartments.”

“I don’t want to go.” The objection lacks its usual bite.

“I wasn’t asking.” He smirks slightly, but it does little to subdue the worry in his eyes. “Consider it an order from your prince.”

“How dare—”

“You’re a mess, Clara. And I’ll not have my future wife looking like she fell down several flights of stairs lined with daggers and I did nothing about it.” I don’t move. He arches a dark brow at me. “What now?” Kaelis sighs.

“I don’t care how I look. I’m not your prize to be dressed up and paraded around as it suits you.”

He kneels before me, eyes level with mine.

The oddity of a prince on his knee in front of me has my head spinning from more than just Eza’s blows.

“Fine. I don’t care how you look. Be a bloody mess.

Be the rat queen of Eclipse City that you so want to be.

But I will not ever have it be said I don’t care for those closest to me. ”

The words settle on me like a poultice for my wounds. Words that sound like my own. Warm heat floods me. For the first time, I feel as though I can understand something about him.

“I am close to you?” The words have gone soft.

“You don’t see me surrounded by copious amounts of company, do you?”

That elicits a weak laugh from me. Even Kaelis smiles, before the expression is abandoned.

“Unless you will reject my help again this time?” The question reminds me of my first night in the academy. Of the wounds I carried from the Fire Festival that I refused to even let him touch. I say nothing. Still a skeptical, wounded creature. “Please, let me help you.”

It’s the “please” that does it.

With a grimace and a concomitant grunt, I give in and take his hand so he can help me up.

Kaelis fights a little smile and loses, as if my moodiness is somehow endearing to him.

He tidies the room with some deft card wielding and then begins to escort me out.

When it’s clear my body can no longer support itself, he slips an arm behind my legs and hoists me.

“Excuse you,” I protest, though it lacks any real force.

“What am I going to do with you?” he says with a sigh.

My arms are folded on my chest to prevent myself from wrapping them around his neck, even though it’d be more stable as we ascend the stairs. “Let me go.”

“Trust me when I say, that’s the one thing neither of us wants.”