“I haven’t touched them in months,” I lied.
Phelan sighed, rubbing at his temple. “It’s not a talent you forget or lose because you’ve let it lay fallow for a few months, leánnan.”
“So you say.” I crossed my arms. “Why now? What’s changed?” I don’t want to do it—mostly because I’m afraid of what they’ll tell me. That’s par for the course these days, I guess. That’s why I left off reading them the last time, too. Something’s just screaming at me if I spread those cards, none of us are going to like what I see there.
He winced. “Just…Jac and I were out taking a walk and we ran into Cariocecus. He—he said some things—”
I sighed. “Like what?”
He’d managed to corner me in my cot, and now I watched him in the lamplight. My cards, tucked carefully into a niche between the bed and the wall, were easily within my reach as I slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, watching him. He looked away, lips thinning.
“Things that make me decidedly uncomfortable,” Phelan murmured. “Like the Hecate being on the move again. Like we made a mistake in letting Thesan live.”
I grimaced. There was a pretty big part of me that thought we really had made a big mistake in letting Thesan live. “That’s enough to make you want me spread the cards?”
“You don’t have to,” he said, “but I really hope you’ll say yes.”
I sighed, knuckling my eyes, trying to fight down the queasiness that suddenly sank its claws into my belly. “I don’t know, Phelan. It…it just doesn’t feel right.”
“Does anything feel right anymore?” he asked softly. “Like I said. You don’t have to say yes.”
“But it’ll hurt you if I say no.”
“I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t worry me.”
I stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. “All right. Go get me a cup of something hot, then I’ll spread the cards for you and we’ll see what the fates have to say.”
