“Oh yeah?” He waggles his brows. “Is it in your bag of tricks?”
“Even better.” I give him a playful shove. “You can sleep in the bed.”
His arm stiffens against mine.
Ever since that first night when getting into the same bed would’ve been a fun but disastrous idea, he’s made a point of bedding down on the floor like it’s some kind of moral duty. And every night since, I’ve caught myself wondering what it would be like to tell him not to.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I say, not sure at all.
I feel his gaze on me, the slow curve of a grin tugging at his mouth. It’s the kind of look that would melt me on the spot if I let it. Which is exactly why I don’t look up. Because if I do, I’m not sure I’ll remember why keeping my distance ever felt like the smart decision.
Thirteen
We pass the final row of tents at the outer edge of the kingdom’s caravan where the desert unrolls in an endless carpet of ecru dunes stacked like waves on a sunburned sea. Heat rises in silken sheets, warping the horizon until sand and sky bleed together in glistening golds.
Declan halts beside me, hands on his hips, eyes scanning the landscape. “That’s a lot of nothing,” he mutters.
“Not nothing.” I swallow, throat dry. “This is where Fortune disappeared. Where the world unfroze. There has to be something out here I’m meant to find. A spark of magick I’m supposed to channel.”
If I can just figure out how.
Hot sand bites through the thin fabric of my dress as I kneel and shrug off my purse. Declan leans over my shoulder, his shadow falling across my hands.
“Need anything from your knight-in-training slash extremely supportive sidekick?” he asks, giving my shoulder a nudge.
Despite the heat and the pressure I’ve put on myself and the fact that I’m kneeling in a desert about to attempt fire magick for the very first time, my lips quirk into a grin. “Think happy thoughts.”
“Noted. Less brooding, more believing. It’ll mess with your energy if I stand here cataloging how this could go sideways.” He sobers a beat. “For what it’s worth, I do believe in you. And in this.”
“Then here’s hoping the portal opens gently and we can walk through instead of being dropped from the sky.”
“As long as we don’t land in the Hudson, I’m flexible.” He taps two fingers to the citrine in my palm, giving it a tiny blessing, then steps back to allow me space.
I open my purse and pull out what I packed this morning: a small bag of crushed cinnamon bark I bartered for at the market from a spice seller in a bejeweled vest in exchange for an eighty-dollar impulse buy highlighter brush; the chunk of raw citrine I keep in my bag next to the other crystals I use for emotional stability; and a single strand of red silk thread torn from the hem of our bedsheets. Symbols of fire, clarity, and intention—anchors to help me draw down whatever magick Towerfall and the Wheel of Fortune are willing to lend, to shape it, to guide it, and maybe, just maybe, to get us home.
From the purse’s depths, the Wheel of Fortune pulses against my fingertips. A slow, steady throb. A heartbeat that’s not my own.
I slide my fingers along the worn edges, pulse hammering, anticipation building in my chest. The card hums against my skin, heat gathering. It’s alive, expectant.
I draw it out.
My breath stalls in my lungs.
It’s blank.
The tarot card is blank.
The wheel, the figures, the shifting spokes—they’re gone. Wiped clean. It’s just a sheet of glossy cardstock catching the sun, smeared with my fingerprints.
“What the—” The words rasp, dry and cracked, sticking to the back of my throat.
Panic spikes. I’m dizzy, ribs locked tight around my lungs. Heat flashes down my arms, then cold, leaving my fingers trembling around the useless slab of cardstock.
This was my proof, my tether. This was the one thing in this world I could hold on to. The one thing that could get us home.
And now it’s nothing.
