I frowned.“What about me?”
She tapped the first card.
The Chariot.Violence.Upheaval.Destruction.
“You have destroyed many lives,” she stated.“Your hands are red.Your spirit… darker than most I’ve read.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Her hand drifted to the second.
The High Priestess.Secrets.Intuition.Hidden weakness.
“You are losing something,” she whispered.“You think it’s power.But it will be so much more than that.”
I kept my face still.
When she turned the third card over, she inhaled deeply, then set it down between us.
The Devil.Fate tangled in blood.A bond twisted by danger.
Her gaze lifted to mine, heavy as a verdict.
“A girl,” she whispered, “is tied to you.Not by love or fate.But by violence and danger.By something you cannot outrun.”
“This is her card,” Zelda whispered in a low voice.“Neve’s.”
My jaw locked.“Explain.”
She leaned forward, voice dropping, urgent.Like she was afraid the tent itself might hear her.
“She is in danger.Real danger.And you—” she pointed at me “—you are the man in her cards.The one in her alignment.”
The air thickened.
Crackled.
Turned wrong.
“She didn’t tell me about you,” Zelda continued.“But her cards did.Every reading.Every single time.A shadowed man.Grey eyes.A past soaked in violence.”
My spine went rigid.
“I didn’t know who you were… until now.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“You have something to do with her suffering.Something old.Something that stained her childhood.”
The words hit like a dagger to my chest, but she went on, refusing to stop.
“But the cards say this too.”She pressed her palm flat against another card before she turned it over.
Swords.
“Whatever your original sin… your redemption is tied to saving Neve.”
Pressure tightened in my throat.