Page 68 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“All right,” she said. “Let us turn over the next card, the dream of your future…”

A tall, blocky skeleton with too much face stood on a green lawn, a blue mountain ridge on the horizon, a striped bow in one hand and a primitive arrow in the other. Bridget didn’t need to know anything about cards to intimate that this was also bad news.

“Ah,” whispered the Lady. “Death.”

“Great,” said Bridget. “I’m going to die. Are we done?”

“Well, you might die tomorrow. You might die in sixty years, happy and fat in your bed with a maiden in each hand. That is not what the card means.” Bridget was still stuck ona maiden in each handas the Lady leaned toward her. “It means that endings, young knight, are necessary for new beginnings. Sometimes we must let go of the things we have held dear to us… our egos, perhaps, or the people we have tried to be to appease others, even the things we once loved that no longer serve us… so that we can be reborn.”

Bridget looked down at the grinning skull and shivered despite herself, discomfited in ways she couldn’t explain. Had it always been this cold in here? This dark? The room, lit with just the one candle, suddenly felt so far from the rest of the world that it was as if they were floating in the night sky, playing cards by the light of a single star.

“Now,” said the Lady, slapping the table and breaking the spell, the room just a room again, “we are done.”

Twenty-Eight

A sort of numbness had descended over Gabriel during the past week of travel—a distance from his feelings that was welcome, compared to the usual maelstrom. It was almost like a good mood. Life was bad, ho-hum, it would continue to be bad in perpetuity, but he’d get through it somehow, and there would probably be bright hours or days or perhaps even weeks, but if not, that was the hand you were dealt.

So what if he’d wrecked his one chance at love? Lots of people never found love at all; at least he’d been briefly warmed by it before being cast out into the cold. And who cared if he had no idea whether his reforms were for the best? He had advisors to tell him that. He trusted Gwen, Lord Das, the Wizard, and even Sir Hurst to an extent. He’d do whatever they told him to do. He was done with the burden, the fear, the guilt. Perhaps they could build a bigger library at home, put a bed in there… maybe he could leave Camelot and set up permanent residence at Tintagel, which was being slowly transformed into a place of study.

People would hate him, but they did already. It didn’t seem to matter what he did; he was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. His father had been right about one thing: Taking a strong stance was difficult and dangerous. But then, his father had been interrupted in his careful, neutral balancing act by cold-blooded murder. More proof that there was no way to do any of this right.

He walked into the small chamber in the Lady’s hut with much the same soothing detachment he’d felt on the road. It didn’t particularly matter what she said to him in this room. It was a calming space though, devoid of any fripperies, dark and single-minded. Not unlike a cupboard.

“You are a strange sort of king,” said the Lady.

Gabriel nodded. “You’re not the first person to point that out.”

“No,” said the Lady. “But I am the most clever. You will draw two cards from those before you, and they will tell you what they mean.”

“Don’t you meanyouwill tell me?”

“Be quiet,” said the Lady, with refreshing impertinence. “Choose.”

Gabriel spent a good half a minute looking at the cards, all beautiful, nothing standing out to him in particular. Eventually he chose one because it was almost hidden by another, and a second because it had a small crack in the gold leaf.

She laid the cards out side by side and turned the first one over. It was a castle tower, rent by lightning, its occupants—who were so large they would have taken up half the building, had they been inside it—falling in dramatic style with blank expressions on their faces. Rubble littered the grass below, and a scarlet sun seemed to be urging the lightning on.

“The Devil’s House,” said the Lady. “What is it saying to you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gabriel said. “That my castle is falling down? It is actually. They’ve been repairing the roof for fifteen years, and every time they finish, it starts falling in somewhere else and they have to start again.”

“You are being glib.”

“I am a bit,” Gabriel conceded. “Sorry. Um. It looks like… some sort of disaster.”

“Yes,” said the Lady. “A sudden change. An unforeseen catastrophe. The collapse of your old life, your beliefs, the things you once held dear. The loss of ones you loved. This is the challenge you face, and it is monumental.”

Everyone knew Gabriel had lost his father in a sudden and violent catastrophe. No magic required.

“And this, I think…” said the Lady, pointing to the two figures falling, divided by the tower crumbling in the background. “Two people, falling apart. Separated by circumstance, not lack of love. A relationship lost in the rubble.”

Gabriel leaned in to look closely at the card, so she wouldn’t see the expression on his face. He was done being sad about this. He’d already decided.

“And now, for the future…”

It would be something regal, Gabriel thought. A king on a throne. She’d tell him that he’d grow to be the strongest and most beloved king who ever lived. That was the sort of thing people liked to hear. If she wanted to be written into his story, it would be the logical thing to do, nice and neat—if there was a picture of a sad, lonely man in there, she’d probably already hidden it.

It wasn’t a king on a throne. Gabriel actually had no idea what it was. It looked like… lanterns, perhaps, hanging froma ceiling. Striped globes of azure and gold. There were five of them, with a border of green ivy and a few charmingly simple flowers scattered down the middle, the fifth lantern lying on its side.