“Fate can do whatever she pleases,” Feo answered, reciting exactly what she said to me months earlier. Wrapping her armsaround Gentry, she pulled him down to her level to press her cheek against his in a hug. “Secretly, I’d always hoped you’d follow this thread.” She patted his stomach, kissed his cheek, and pushed him away. A swirl of color trailing behind her as she floated through the house into the kitchen.
It was in these small moments that I forgot the dull ache in my chest. Grim’s absence had become a void I carried everywhere; a weightless ache that never let up. It’s not the enemy’s blade that leaves the deepest scars, but the hand you once held.
It was worse than living cursed, and yet my resolve to stay away was stronger.
He hadn’t appeared once since our fight, and somehow, that made it easier. Not to forget, but to move on.
“What do you think she meant by that?” Gentry whispered in my ear, taking the stack of plates from my hands.
“I guess we will find out,” I answered, pulling a bottle of wine from the cupboard behind us.
Gentry had somehow convinced me to stay. In England, just outside Sussex. With Nemo’s help, and a lot of quiet strings pulled, I’d bought the cottage sight unseen. What I knew was that it stood alone in a wide field, older than memory, and had been vacant for some time.
Surprisingly, it was in decent shape. After a couple of months of hard work, it bloomed back to life. The gardens burst into wild, joyful color, flowers growing taller than me and tumbling over the lawn in a riot. Day gushed over the finer details—the slanting roof, the worn brick, the way the windows caught the last navy tinted light of evening.
At night, the wind sang lullabies through the rafters, and at dawn, the wildlife picked up the chorus as if they had never stopped.
It was peaceful. Everything I could have hoped for.
And still, I woke some nights with my heart pounding, certain that this fragile slice of peace couldn’t last. Certain I would have to leave it behind, just as everything else.
But for now, it was enough. Enough that the land was quiet. Enough that I could walk to the place where my father was buried.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you—” Gentry began, moving the same two forks back and forth on the placemat.
Day burst through the door, cutting him off, a large bottle of whiskey in hand and a cheeky grin on his handsome face. “Honey, I’m home!” he announced, striding forward without shutting the door to wrap me up in a hug and twirl me around.
He winked at Gentry, his mood mischievous as he sang my nickname, “Stoorryyboook. I missed you. It’s been what? A month?”
“A few hours,” I replied dryly, unraveling our limbs and taking the bottle from him. Day had all but moved in. When he wasn’t gone doing whatever Time does, he was here, living with me. “I only sent you to the store.”
“Wow really?” he looked at his watch, another expression of humor.
Gentry pushed napkins to Day’s chest, muttering under his breath before disappearing into the kitchen.
Day grinned, “Princess, you don’t mind that I invited someone, do you?”
Pulling an extra plate from the cupboard, I shrugged. “Of course not.”
Fortune was a disaster to play cards against. There was no winning, regardless of the game. Gentry was the last standing, his hand of cards tucked safely against his chest as if Fortune could somehow see them.They probably could.
Day beamed at Fortune as though they had hung the moon. I smiled, catching the way they looked at him too, like they were trying to memorize the warmth of daylight. They were handsome in this form, all tanned skin and dark hair, a little shorter than Day but solidly built. I could see the attraction.
But Fortune didn’t always look like this. Day once told me they’d worn bright blue curls for a while—his favorite, he’d said with a fond smile. Flesh didn’t seem to suit them for long; they shifted appearances and even gender the way some people changed moods, as if the world were a wardrobe and they were still deciding what to wear.
They leaned forward, eyes never quite leaving Day’s face, and placed another card down with the flicker of a grin, trumping Gentry’s with quiet triumph.
“I don’t know that this is entirely fair. Playing cards against literal fortune…”
“Hey, that doesn’t mean it's good fortune. It could be bad fortune,” Fortune replied, stretching back in their chair.
Feo snorted, a rainbow of colors in the twinkle of her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
Sometimes, I forgot. I forgot that Fate, Time, Fortune—even Death—weren’t human. That I was dining with cosmic beings, entities older than language, forces carved from the marrow of the universe itself. They called themselves Absolutes, as if it was both a title and a shrug. And yet, here they were, playing cards and passing bread, draped in flesh as casually as a shawl. It was easy to mistake them for people, until they looked at you just a second too long, and you remembered what you were sitting across from.
To onlookers, we’d look like a dinner party of friends. Candles were lit, the wax slowly dripping onto the patterned tablecloth below. The decadent chocolate cake I made was scattered about on mismatched floral porcelain plates; Gentry was on his second slice. I glanced around the room, taking it all in.
This was the very dream I never dared to have. I was lucky enough to have friends who loved me and cherished me, regardless of the magic imprisoning me. And they continued to do their best to help me break it.
