“Well, thereisa bit of a downside to being chosen by a goddess. Once they leave this plane of reality as mortals and go back to their main forms, the shifters that fall for them become so lovesick they waste away, until they die of grief.” Arthur frowned. “It’s one of the side effects of loving someone so powerfully endless.”
“Sounds more like a curse than a blessing,” I mumbled.
“Perhaps the pain would be worth the short time you’d get to spend being loved by a deity. I wouldn’t know.” Arthur sighed and scooped up the book he’d been carrying. “Anyway, I should really get back to Lucien. He’s been wanting to go through this with me.” He waved the monstrous title in the air.
“You should take a break,” I suggested. “You’ve been reading day and night.”
Arthur hesitated. “To be honest… it’s good for me. Keeps me distracted.”
“From?” I raised an eyebrow.
He frowned. “Vara’s been sleeping a lot lately. Miroslava has her on bed rest.”
I’d never felt more guilty. Arthur should be excited and happy, getting ready for one of the biggest moments of his life… the arrival of his children. Instead, he was helping me with these damn Crystals. Gods, it felt like I’d taken everything from everyone I cared about.
“You should be at her side,” I insisted.
“I’ll only wake her. I can’t sit still, not when I’m so nervous about the babies coming.” He took a shivering sigh. “We’ve prepared as much as we can, but I can’t help but feel we’re missing something.”
I ignored the wriggling in my gut telling me that Arthur’s intuition was right, and said, “Take the day off. Seriously. You should spend some time with your mate, before you’re too busy with the babies to get any alone time.”
He hesitated, before dropping the book to his side. “You know what? You’re right. One day of rest will do me good. Thanks, Em.”
As he walked off, I finished my cup of hot chocolate, and took it back to the kitchen to place in the sink. As it was Friday, I had to do my infusion. I gathered my things and trekked slowly across the mansion, where Miroslava had set up a small medical room in one of the parlors.
It was more or less a sitting room converted into an area to hold supplies. I took some pain reliever and an allergy pill before I got a jar of plasma out of the fridge, then retrieved some syringes and tubing with needles from the supply cabinet. Once I filled the syringes up with plasma, I prepared the tubing.
I scowled as I poked the needles into my stomach, noticing a new line of pudge. I’d barely eaten anything in the past three months and I’d still gained weight as a side effect of my treatment.
I was slower, heavier, and in more pain than I’d ever been. When was this shit going toend?
I slipped the syringe into the infusion pump, turned it on, then sat down on the couch to watch TV. I was channel-scrolling mindlessly through Irish reality shows when Odette came hopping in. She was holding some kind of small box in her hand. It looked like a deck of cards.
“Hey, Emma. I was hoping I’d find you here,” she said— not quite eagerly, but sweetly enough. “Would you like me to give you an oracle reading? I’ve never tried before, and Theo’s too chicken to be my first experiment.” She made a silly face.
We hadn’t done anything together since our fight. I didn’t care if Odette wanted to rob a bank, so long as she wished to include me. I turned toward her as I shut the TV off and said, “Sure. You can give me a reading.”
“Ooh, goody.” She sat on the couch across from me and took the cards out of the box they came in. They were a lovely deck, cards that were sketched with beautiful drawings of unicorns, pegasi, and alicorns. They were rainbow colors, and had designs of magical equines with butterflies entangled in their manes, forms made of fire, water, and other elemental qualities.
“Are these cards supernatural?” I asked. The designs were so close to things I’d actually seen in the fae world.
“I’m not sure. I felt them calling to me.” She let out anoopsas she tried to shuffle the cards. They fell out of her fingers and into a pile on the floor.
She scooped them up and scrambled to put them back in order. “I’ve been using most of our time here to practice mydrycapowers, with Theo’s help. We’ve been looking into the history of the druids and learning as much as we can. I need water to scry, but I’ve found I can employ my powers in different ways, too.”
“Like reading tea leaves?” I asked.
“Yes. I picked up this deck of oracle cards the other day when Theo and I went into town. I thought I should try them out.”
We took turns heading into the nearby village for supplies, based on who was going the most stir-crazy. We tried not to leave often, because it was a risk we'd be seen, but we still needed stuff.
I hadn’t left the mansion since we’d gotten here. I’d turned down the chance to go every time.
Odette splayed the cards out in front of me. “Go ahead. Pick three— past, present, and future!”
This should be good. I was expecting nothing but bad news as I picked three cards from the deck and handed them to Odette. She laid them out in front of her on the couch cushion between us.
“I’m supposed to interpret them without the book,” she said, tongue sticking out as she observed them all. “But— oh…”
