“Well, then, what’s my Fate?” Yallara asked.
“Hmm,” Lunelle said, pointing to the first row, nearest Yallara. “I see swift change coming for you—you see all these daggers? They cut ties. They unleash you. But over here,” Lunelle tapped a card featuring a man with broad shoulders and a bejeweled crown. “You’re blocked by the weight of expectations. Imposed by others, but also by yourself. You can’t get to here—” she pointed to the Divine Queen in the middle, “—without shedding all that extra weight.”
“So you’re saying I’m well on my way to becoming queen of the universe.” Yallara’s lips cut into a wicked grin over her glass. “As long as a certain…weight…were to take his boot off my neck.”
“Precisely,” Lunelle giggled.
“What do you see for me?”
Three heads swiveled to Arcas at the end of the table, watching silently.
Lunelle stiffened. She hadn’t seen him since their uncomfortable interaction—if she could call it that—in the atrium. She gathered the cards before her and gestured to Mirquios, shooing him to another seat. The king moved aside, making room for Arcas to settle like a heavy fog over the table.
“Have you had your cards read before?” she asked.
Yallara laughed behind him.“Be gentle, Princess, it’s his first time.”
Arcas glared over his shoulder at his sister and sat straighter.
“I have not,” he confirmed.
“There are a few rules,” Lunelle said, pushing through the faint pink heat Yallara’s comment summoned. “While Lunarians are blessed by the Mother with an intense intuition, I cannot tell the future, and neither can these cards. Anything I say is for you to reflect on and take what makes sense—leave anything else.”
Arcas nodded.
Lunelle turned over three cards, letting him absorb them before she made any commentary.
“What do you see first?” she asked.
Arcas leaned over the table, his eyes searching the cards.
“Stars,” he said. “Many stars.”
Lunelle nodded. “What else?”
A crooked grin pulled at his lips. “The Moon.”
Lunelle felt the slightest hint of something burn against her ribs.
“The last one?”
“The High Priestess.”
“She’s a teacher,” Lunelle explained. “Above all her duties to serve her court, her priority is to impart wisdom through grace.Perhapsthere’s a feminine presence in your life you could learn from.”
She tilted her chin toward Yallara, but Arcas was staring at the third card, a cluster of celestial bodies with no name.
“What is this one?”
“That’s The Void,” Lunelle said. “It’s meant as a placeholder of sorts. It appears when you’re missing something—an answer or insight you have not been able to grasp.”
The prince eyed her, a softening within his gaze that Lunelle was starting to recognize.
“What do you think I’m missing, Lunelle?”
The air pulled between them, a tightness she couldn’t explain—something in the way he said her name.
“Only you can answer that.”
