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Each Minor Arcana is governed by an element. Wands are fire, Swords air, Coins earth, and Cups water. The cards Two all the way through King of each suit have their own unique properties…but the Ace? That’s the beginning. The primordial essence of the suit.
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…
They are void of all light, warmth, and kindness. They are the place that the world forgot, where not even screams can escape.
The prince has impeccable taste, and I think I hate him even more for it.
The deeper my displeasure, the more amused he becomes.
“This is Arcana Academy. Your future is your tuition.”
“I can’t change the past…but I can mend the present.
You think you appreciate what you have and then it’s taken from you…and you wonder if you ever treasured it enough.
“You don’t get to make a problem and then take credit for fixing it!”
“Perhaps I should show you.” “Show me what?” Kaelis releases me and steps away. “Come, and I’ll take you to the place where everything you know met its beginning, and will soon meet its end.”
The way he looks at me is as something to be claimed. Possessed. Owned. I tighten my arms slightly around myself, as though I could protect my person from the man who already has me in his palm. Maybe, something in me whispers, he was right about you. Maybe, for once in your life, it’d feel good to submit.
“He’s nothing but an old wound.” “One that won’t close or mend.” Kaelis is so confident, and I hate how right he is. I glance away, but my attention is drawn back as his knuckles graze up my arm, brushing against my cheek. “How many wounds do you have that you just let bleed, Clara?”
“How many wounds do you have?” Turning the question back to him is a weak retort and I know it. As weak as my knees feel. “Enough that I’ll remake the whole world to fix them.” His voice is deep. I didn’t expect him to answer.
“A rumor can be more deadly than a poison.”
“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.”
“Am I to believe you’d get yourself dirty for me?” “Believe whatever you like,” he says aloud. But his slight smile says simply, Yes.
“I am not like most.” “No…no, you’re not.”
it’s also true that, sometimes, even the worst among us want a moment of absolution. To feel our humanity isn’t entirely rotted away, that we aren’t just a cold and lonely husk.”
“You’re a man of flesh and blood, whether you want to be or not.”
Your whole existence is the antithesis to all I am.
I thought you said it was innate talent.” “Talent is having your starting line placed closer to the finish. Sure, those with it get to the goal faster. But with hard work and diligence, you can cover the same distance.
Love me, hate me, but only look at me like my existence sets you on fire…
Everything is built on the past. Renamed and reused. Rebuilt anew on long-forgotten histories…”
“Yes. You, and only ever you,” he whispers.
“You don’t strike me as the jealous type,” I say. He straightens. “I’m usually not. But you are—you’ve always been—different.” “Why is that?” The question isn’t a throwaway for conversation’s sake. I want to know. “Because…” A slight smile tugs at the edges of his mouth. “It’s you.”
“Every time I see you, I see what the world could be.”
“Nothing is guaranteed when everything is remade from the ground up,”
I’ve never let anyone else get close enough to have worry for me alight in their eyes.
“I doubt the world around me. I fear what I can’t control. But I do not doubt myself, and I do not fear the one thing I have power over: me.”
“May I carry you?” “Please,” I say without hesitation. I’m exhausted to my core, and no idea has ever been sweeter than allowing him to be my entire support. Kaelis scoops me into his arms, like he’s done before, and I sink into his sturdy form.
There’s a whisper of murder in his voice that’s shamefully arousing. “If there is a next time, I’ll end him once and for all,” I correct. “Very well. If my lady demands it.” My lady…It sounds good on his lips.
Will this be the moment? I ask him. I ask myself.
“I’m worried about you,” he chokes out. The room goes silent, and all I hear is him. I can feel the fear that furrowed his brow the other night at dinner. That had him holding me tightly throughout the night.
The way he looks at me is as if I am the most magnificent thing he’s ever beheld. As if the world begins and ends here.
“You have everything you need from me. We’re over.”
“We never were anything to begin with. Never could be anything…not in this lifetime. But give me one last time.” “What?” “Let me kiss you one last time when you know me as I am. When you see the man beneath the cards and the names, the crowns and the power.”
“I’m a relic of a bygone era,” he continues. “A cursed man with no future who shouldn’t have existed in the first place. If anyone will be my downfall, it’s you.”
“You’ll never be done with me,” Kaelis says with all the arrogance in the world. “I will haunt you from this world into the next.”
