“I’m fine. I’m fine. I’mfine—”
The last one catches, snagging in my throat. My lips keep moving—I’m fine, everything is fine. I grit my teeth and force the words back into the air, as if sheer volume can hammer them into reality.
“I’m fine!” The shout ricochets off stone. “I’m fine, I’m fine, I am fine!”
The syllables rip from my mouth in sparks—bright, angry comets that hiss into existence and burn hot against the night. They streak through the dark, spitting embers as they go, until they slam into the altar. Ash stirs and lifts at the impact, and the whole bowl catches, fire leaping higher as if the Tower itself is feeding on the sound of my lie.
Fortune’s voice swirls around me.
Remember…
“Shut up!”
I sink to my knees and sob, shoulders heaving, lungs wheezing, the noise filling the hollow until it sounds like the whole place is breaking with me. The sobs are proof. I am anything but fine.
Fear begins to take hold. It combs through my insides, twirls my veins around cold fingers, and whispers that this is all I’ll ever get. This is what I’m worth. That I have broken something in myself that won’t stitch back together.
Remember…
“I can’t! I don’t know how!”
Remember…
Fortune’s haunting me now, mocking me with something she knows I can’t reach. I am falling apart, and I cannot stand it. So I stop being small, stop trying to decode the magick, stop letting this realm run over me, and I let the anger move in.
Rage burns through me, scorching the edges of my despair until it becomes something sharp. I welcome it as it sears a path through me. Anger for letting Declan into the parts of me I shouldn’t have given. Rage for the universe for dangling hope like it was ever mine to keep. Contempt for myself for ever believing the tease.
My voice tears raw as I curse it all—every affirmation, every magickal card, every single thing that’s ever put me on my knees like this.
“You ruin everything!” I shout at the fire, at the Tower, at the universe, myself. “I am done! I am fucking done! Do you hear me? Done with all of it!”
Movement flickers in the corner of my eye. TheWheel of Fortune card lies where I left it. The wheel in its center turns slowly, mocking me.
“Oh, fuck you.” I snatch it up, strike a match, and feed the card to the flame.
The paper hisses and curls. Gold flakes blister and fall away in sparks.
The stone vibrates beneath me as the altar fire expands, and the flames swell and stretch into a single column of heat that claws the sky.
Shapes emerge within the inferno. Faces swim into focus before collapsing into ash. From the flames their voices take shape. They hum at a pitch just shy of pain, the sound crawling over my skin like static, pressing against my teeth, making the hairs at the nape of my neck rise.
Control…burns. Worthiness…rage… Love…unlovable… Died with lies in our mouths.
The figures begin to circle, every movement scattering a shower of embers that whip between them like snapping chains.
My gaze jerks from one spectral face to another, never certain if I’m looking at the same figure twice or if they’re shifting between forms to keep me unsteady.
Remember…Fortune’s voice fills me, pressing in until my heartbeat rattles my ribs like a cage.
Part of it clicks. I’ve heard these specters before—when I touched Fortune. The cryptic riddles, the sense of being chosen. It felt like I was being handed a key I didn’t yet know how to use. Now it feels like they’re furious I never figured out what it unlocked.
Remember!
And Fortune is too.
…waited for the right moment…called it fate. …stayed small…called it safe.
The spiral of apparitions tightens. Their heat pulls at the hairs on my arms, and I taste ash on my tongue.
