Page 47 of Shifting Hearts

ONE

Shadows in the Cards

Emilia

T he cards never lie. They twist truths, speak in riddles, and veil their meanings in smoke and symbols, but they never lie. Never.

I run my fingers over the edge of the worn deck.

It’s an old one—cracked edges, burn marks on the High Priestess, the kind of deck that has teeth.

I’ve used it only once before, years ago.

The last time I thought I might lose myself.

Tonight feels the same as it did all those years ago and I know I have no choice.

I light a single tapered black candle and let the flame dance in the mirror behind it. Incense curls in the air like a serpent, mug wort, sage, and just a pinch of wolfsbane. I’m not casting a circle and I’m not summoning spirits. This is just for me. A private reading.

And I already know I’m going to regret it. Not that the growing feeling of foreboding stops me. I shuffle the deck, and the cards groan like old bones.

“Don’t lie to me,” I whisper. “Don’t show me what I want. Show me the truth.” The first card drops.

The Moon. Illusions. Secrets. Hidden things creeping to the surface. It’s always the Moon with me. She follows me like a curse.

The second card flutters out almost before I touch the deck.

The Lovers. I freeze. “No,” I mutter. “That doesn’t make sense.” It shouldn’t be here. Not for me.

I’ve had a mate. I was born with one, marked by the stars and the moon and every cruel law the Goddess wrote into our bones. I found him and he looked at me like I was filth. Told me I wasn’t enough. Half-witch, half-wolf, and a whole lot of disappointment.

Lucian. His name still tastes like glass in my mouth.

The third card falls before I can stop it.

Death. I stare at it. It doesn’t mean literal death… usually. It’s more likely to indicate change or transformation. Maybe even endings that begin new things.

The air around me thickens, like a storm pressing against the windows, sending a shiver crawling up my spine.

I don’t need a vision, and I certainly don’t need a damn reading. I can feel it, have been feeling it for weeks. Deep in my bones, deeper in the part of me that never stopped howling for him. He’s coming.

My stomach twists and my pulse flutters. I want to deny it, I want to throw the cards across the room and say the reading is wrong. But it isn’t. I know that heavy presence that’s moving toward me like a storm cloud with intent.

Lucian is coming back. And I’m not sure I’ll survive it, him, this time.

I close up the shop early, ignoring the last-minute texts from desperate clients and the one voicemail from Mrs. Rivera about her ghost cat.

“Tell it to stop knocking over the urns,” I mutter to myself, pulling down the blinds. “Maybe get a spray bottle.”

I should pack. Run. Move again. I’ve done it before but my legs won’t move.

It’s been years since I last saw him. Years since I stood in the middle of a snowy road with my heart cracked open, begging him not to say it.

But he’d said it anyway. “I reject you.” No ceremony. No warmth. Just ice and steel.

I don’t care what he wants now. I’ve built a life here, even if it’s stitched together with lies and tarot cards. The humans believe I’m eccentric. They don’t know I shift under the full moon. They don’t know what I had to bury to be free.

And I’ll do anything, anything , to keep Lucian from tearing it apart.

That night, I can’t sleep. I sit on the porch with a cup of tea and a loaded revolver in my lap. It’s not for him. Not really. I’d never be fast enough to get the drop on him. No, it’s just for peace of mind.

The woods whisper beyond the lake, and waterfall and lake glow with reflected moonlight, quiet and peaceful. Like it doesn’t remember blood on the rocks, screams in the trees, or the way my soul splintered on this land.

But I do. I remember everything.

So, when the wind shifts and I catch the faint scent of wild things and danger, of pine and ash and cold steel, I know it’s not a dream.

Lucian is here. And the damn cards were right.

The Moon. The Lovers. Death.

Endings that begin new things. I don’t know what’s coming next, but I know this, if he refuses me again, I won’t beg.

And if he thinks he can destroy me like he did last time, he’ll learn just how dangerous a half-witch, half-wolf with nothing left to lose can really be.