“Gwenna?”
Morgan raps lightly on the coffee table and I jump back to attention.
“Hm?”
“The question?” she says, like she’s repeating something I clearly missed her saying. “When I did that tarot reading for you, way back in the fall. What was the question you asked?”
Oh. God, I haven’t thought about that in ages. It was a lifetime ago, before I knew anything about what Morgan was or the four ofthemwere, back when I thought this was all just a normal college and I was going to be a normal medieval literature student falling asleep on dictionaries and arguing about whether Pierre Abelard or Bernard of Clairvaux was worse to women in his writings.
But I remember. That day in the Oracular Curio, in Sarrasford, when Morgan had drawn five cards for me: four knights, and the table. That’s when I’d first seen these cards.
I stare at them once more.
“I askedWhat am I doing at Camlann House?” I tell her. “Why?”
“Nothing,” Morgan muses. “Just…thinking.” She narrows her eyes at me. “You’re in love with all of them. No playing favorites, picking sides.”
“I…” It’s so forthright I can’t even conjure anything but the honest truth. “No. Yeah. Yes, I am.” I swallow. “Why?”
Morgan purses her lips. “I’m wondering,” she says. “I’m wondering if maybe that’s not a coincidence. For whatever you’re supposed to…be, or do, I mean. That you found the four of them,allfour of them. ” She shrugs. “Maybe I’m overthinking it. But they’re all sodifferent,you know? The four suits of the cards are so different. Objectively, it doesn’t even make sense as a reading. It should kind of cancel out, or contradict, or…pull in too many directions to point to anything clear. But.” She shrugs again. “Here you are. Here they are.” A faint smile flickers over her face. “For now, anyway.”
I look down at the cards again, running my fingers over their edges, taking in all the intricate details of the engravings of the tiny knights.
I want that to be true.
“And that’s…good,” I say slowly, looking back up at Morgan. “The reading is. You think?”
“It is what you make of it,” she says simply. “Nothing truly good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Tarot is just a tool to invite inquiry. Ultimately, you’re just interpreting the signs, drawing conclusions, making your own meaning.” She shrugs. “You know what they say. As above…” She taps my forehead. “…so below.” She presses her hand to my chest.
“Abracadabra,” I murmur.
“Now she’s getting it!” Morgan beams, but it’s a subdued smile.
After a few more minutes of logistics—keeping in touch, phone numbers and emails and maybe even letters in the mail if it comes to that—the sun is fully gone from the windows and I need to get back.
At the door, Morgan takes me by the shoulders.
“I promise you we’ll see each other again, Gwenna,” she says. “I promise you.”
“Okay,” I say, and hope I believe her.
She pulls me into one final hug, then lets me go and puts her hands to her chest, fingers arched and thumbs pressed: a heart.
After Morgan’s,I take my time crossing campus.
It looks, objectively, terrible. Dark—it’s fully evening now—butbleak, the patchy dead grass and salt-bloomed earth and stone buildings looming, silent as a held breath.
It makes my heart ache.
Caliburn University, myalma mater—my caring mother, such a weird Latin phrase, when you think about it—and here she is wasting away. I don’t want anyone to be sick or hurting—obviously, not even Elena Shalott—and yet the fact that thisplaceis so visibly dying too carves something right out of the middle of me.
I don’t want to leave.
I walk slowly, slowly, slowly, trying to memorize every detail. Too soon, the golden windows of Camlann House rise before me, and I tramp up the porch steps, wondering how many times I’ve done that, wondering how many more I’lleverdo that.
Inside, it’s warm and animated. A fire crackles in the hearth, and everyone seems to be in motion—carrying things, talking over each other, going up or coming down the stairs.
Kingston sees me first, stops in his tracks and practically runs over to take my coat.
