Fortune

“The final card of your reading.” Allyndra’s voice was firm and clear, though her movements were a rushed flurry. From the moment Emmaline had reached for the next card, Allyndra had begun to sway back and forth. Her arms were raised in front of her like she was holding a bowl against her chest, but she moved them in a rapid, almost frenzied series of sweeping, circling gestures. They wrapped in on one another, circling some invisible center point right in front of her chest.

The vigorous motion set her ample cleavage jiggling quite a bit, though the enticing sight was a bit wasted on Liv compared to most. She was more interested in what was happening with the woman’s mouth.

Allyndra had drawn her breath in until her cheeks puffed out, though Liv was only left with the goofy image for a moment before her face began to fill with that silver glow. Even through the skin of her cheeks, Liv could see it glowing like molten platinum, brilliantly shimmering until Allyndra parted her lips, and allowed the lunar mist to pour out onto the table.

The smoke landed as though she had dropped a ball of sand. The instant it reached the surface of the table, it exploded outward in every direction. Yet, somehow, it still remained thick enough to retain that glow and to utterly mask everything on the surface of the table. Including Emmaline’s now face-up card.

Liv raised an eyebrow to Emmaline, only to find the other woman utterly entranced. She wasn’t gawking, but rather staring with utter focus as though some actually important answer lay shrouded in the silver fog.

Allyndra’s hands continued their dance and now the mist obeyed. Each twist of her slender fingers was met by an equal display of swirling in the fog below. And when Allyndra shifted her focus to another part of the table, the spinning mist didn’t stop.

Soon the entire table was covered in a complex pattern of dancing spirals and small tornados of mist all moving together in asynchronous harmony. It was almost hypnotic to look at. Everywhere Liv cast her gaze there was that shimmering spiral of movement, drawing her inward. But there were so many at once! If she allowed one spiral to take her focus, the others would still pull at the edges of her mind from all directions. If she allowed them to hold part of her mind, every last bit of her attention would be siphoned into that silvery dance.

With a sudden upward gesture, Allyndra pulled the mist all at once into the center of the table. It shot upward in a sudden towering spike, a sturdy arrow pointing straight upward from the deck of cards toward the hole in the ceiling above.

And then it collapsed. And the mist faded.

“Fortune,” Allyndra said. The word seemed to resonate somewhere deep inside Liv’s chest, as though she wasn’t hearing the words, but feeling them spoken from within her.

She blinked and, for the first time in… she wasn’t sure how long, Liv looked around the room. Cassio was standing in the corner and met her gaze for a single moment before casting his eyes to the floor. Emmaline on the other hand…

If Liv had somehow failed to notice the silver glow before, there was no way she would have missed it now. Hell, even Robin would have spotted the screen of shimmering silver that lay across Emmaline’s eyes and over the bridge of her nose like a blindfold. It was brighter now, so bright Liv could see the faint glow of it casting silver against Emmaline’s cheeks. With the lenses bigger now, Liv could see those same spiraling shapes dancing in their surface, constantly moving, swirling, shimmering, entrancing…

Liv tore her eyes away. Allyndra was still speaking.

“Do you consider yourself to be a lucky woman, Miss Beumanoire?” Allyndra asked. And, like she was mumbling in her sleep, Emmaline responded, “I do…”

“I’ll say,” Liv muttered. She’d have to be lucky to have fucked so many guys and still not have gotten herself knocked up. Though Becky’s regulatory alchemy certainly had something to do with that as well.

“Fortune is the call of destiny, more than luck,” Allyndra said. “It is a wheel of nature, the inevitable turning of fate. Cycles of life and ****, realization of prophecy. This is what awaits you.”

For the first time, Liv looked down at the card on the table. It was no less intricate than the first two which it now sat beside, though it was somewhat less interesting. For one, the Fortune card had no human figures on it, only a single, golden wheel in the middle of the card. Small rabbits and birds stared up at it in admiration and Elven lettering decorated the wheel’s surface. Though the elven wording might as well have been embellishments in gibberish for all Liv could make sense of it.

Actually, just like Allyndra’s magic, it very well could be utter nonsense, and she would have no way of knowing.

“Perhaps this may offer some truth for you, or a resolution to your need to run,” Allyndra said. Then she seemed to look Emmaline up and down. She took in the way Emmaline’s gorgeous body was barely contained within her skimpy bikini, the way the girl was utterly slack, held captive by the magical lenses she had been given. The even rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed peaceful breaths and the wide, gentle curve of her perfect birthing hips. Allyndra raised an eyebrow and continued, “Or perhaps it is a more literal prediction, and it is time for you to take part in one of life’s many cycles.”

Then with an air that Liv might have taken as disappointment or frustration, Allyndra waved her arms and the glasses vanished. Emmaline all but toppled forward onto the table, only catching herself at the last second before she would have smacked her nose on the dark wood of the thing.