Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137958 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 690(@200wpm)___ 552(@250wpm)___ 460(@300wpm)
Now I simply pulled a card in any moment when my mind was struck open, even if just for a second.
Which was what I did.
I set the deck aside.
Then I flipped the card I selected, allowing it to fall on the rug before me.
And my heart stopped beating.
The Banshee.
The other omen card.
Death of a loved one, one you hold dear, or one in your heart.
Colossal change in life as you know it.
I had never turned that either.
“Good goddess,” I murmured, staring at it.
This couldn’t be.
Because it could not be borne.
“Mother,” I whispered.
I heard his boots on the mosaics and I knew it was he.
Quickly, I flipped the Banshee but then folded my hands together and left them hanging in my lap.
Perhaps he would think I was meditating and leave me to it.
The sounds of his heels on tiles came ever closer.
Until they stopped right behind me.
His deep voice rumbled at me.
“When you are my princess, you must teach these positions to my warriors. I see how they would increase strength, flexibility and balance,” he announced.
He’d seen me stretch.
How?
Dear goddess, he had to have rooms facing the gardens.
Perhaps this wasn’t as private a spot as I had thought.
“I’m meditating, go away,” I told him.
“You’re reading cards,” he told me.
Drat it all!
I should have shoved the cards under my bottom.
“I’m meditating over my reading,” I lied.
“You’re lying in an effort not to speak to me.”
I ground my teeth.
I felt him get closer but didn’t hear his feet hit the tiles in order to round the rug to get in front of me.
I would find that this was because he’d come to stand on my rug.
And he did this moments before he crouched beside me, at my back, but to my side, meaning his long, thick thighs were straddling me so close, his leathers nearly brushed the skin of my arm.
Which made my arm, in a curious (but not unpleasant in the slightest) way, tingle.
This meant his deep voice was closer too.
“What is your reading?” he asked quietly.
“It’s private.”
Being what I was coming to learn was Cassius Laird, regardless of my words, he reached an arm out in front of me toward the card that lay before me.
I reached out too.
In order to slap his hand.
He chuckled.
Chuckled!
Goddess deliver me.
Though he withdrew his hand.
“Would you like to do my reading?” he asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“I’d like you to do my reading.”
“There is no need. I can tell you which card you’d select before you selected it.”
“And what card would I select?” he queried.
“The Simpleton.”
He chuckled again.
I sighed.
“What does that mean, or do I need ask?” he inquired.
“It means recklessness. Thoughtlessness. Impulsiveness. Inconsideration.”
“All that?”
“Also gullibility and imprudence.”
“Hmm,” he murmured. “Let us see.”
At that, for the first time since he arrived, I moved my head to see he was still crouched beside me but now he was reaching to my cards.
“Do not touch those,” I demanded precisely when he picked them up with his long fingers.
His hand, I saw, was veined and visibly calloused.
No courtly prince was he.
“Put them down,” I ordered.
Even though they were large, he shuffled the cards expertly one handed, not a man, clearly, who was a stranger to the handling of cards.
I was sure he engaged in games of chance regularly.
I just hoped he lost.
“How’s this?” he asked, flicked an expert thumb on the top of the deck and thus a card flew out, turning over in midair, to land on top of the one I’d drawn.
The image depicted a majestic lion with a full mane, open mouth, dragon’s wings and a scorpion’s tail.
It was the manticore.
But of course.
“He looks fierce,” Cassius noted.
“Manticore,” I forced out.
“And he means?” Cassius asked.
I could concoct something. Something dire. Or awkward.
I did not.
“Power. Battle. War.” I hesitated. “Victory.”
I was staring at the card, but I would swear I felt him smile.
He sent another flying and it fell before me.
“You only get one,” I snapped, twisting my head to look at him.
He was very close.
“Do I?” he murmured, his eyes wandering my face.
The way they did that made me uneasy.
Therefore, I gave my attention to the card he’d turned.
It was mostly blues, silvers, grays and black.
A warrior in intricate battle armor with blue stones and accents, standing in front of a wide, imposing, craggy black castle set in a black cliff. There was a barren tree to his right, and in it was a crow, a being that had its own card, an indication of second sight, the need for reflection, magic and mystery.
The warrior’s head was bowed, his steel-gauntleted hands at rest at his sides—but the breadth of his shoulders, the trimness of his waist, the manner of his bearing—his strength could not be denied and there was no question about it, even with head bowed, this was not a pose of defeat.
In other words, it was the Warrior card.