Page 69 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“This is the Five of Cups,” said the Lady, “but it is reversed.”

“Is it?” said Gabriel. He picked up the card and held it closer to the candle, soliciting a hiss of warning from the Lady. He turned it around, and yes, they were cups—elaborate goblets, filled with some green mystery liquid, not unlike the tea he’d just refused to drink.

“Put it down,” she said bossily. “You see it is reversed, like before.”

Gabriel did as he was told. “I can’t tell you what this one is saying to me. It’s not really saying anything. I thought they were lanterns.”

“Shh now, please. I’ll tell you.” She regained her composure and then tapped the card. “It is a good card. It means a bright future. But that is not all it means. It is… acceptance. You cannot change the past, but you must accept it.” Gabriel nodded. He’d already come to that conclusion by himself. Ho-hum.

The Lady looked annoyed. “No. Stop nodding. You must fully understand what it meant, what it still means, and through it you must understandyourselfbetter. You are in pain, but you must forgive yourself, and you must risk opening your heart again, knowing how much it hurts when you fail.Thatis true acceptance. Not this… giving up.” She gestured at him, obviously unimpressed. “It is nothiding. It is facing the world as it is, and as you are.”

Gabriel sat in a stunned silence until he realized she was expecting him to say something. “Oh. Good.”

He was going to continue hiding, thank you very much. There was bravery, and then there was stupidity—openinghimself up to love someone who had already moved on was a tragedy with only one ending.

The Ladytsked, as if reading his mind, and rolled her eyes. “Send someone else in,” she said. “And I wish you good luck running the country. You need a little.”

“… Thank you?”

Arthur was waiting by the door, looking vaguely amused by the whole thing. Something in Gabriel’s face must have given him pause, because he seemed downright worried when he knocked and was told to enter.

“I got a guy driving a chariot and two bright young things getting married,” Sidney said between mouthfuls of hot game stew. They had made camp farther down in the valley, out of the wind. “And the chariot was for… all the turbulence we’ve had, me and Ags, and then the love was for our future.”

“You’ve had turbulence?” asked Bridget.

“Oh, yeah. Tons. Apparently I’m sort of thoughtless and a bit hot-headed, and she’s stubborn and expects too much of me. But we always come right in the end. What did you get, Art?”

Arthur wasn’t eating much of his dinner.

“Oh,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m going to be rich and famous, and get taller somehow.”

“That’s not what she said.”

“How would you know? Just be happy with your cart and your love and shut up.”

Sidney leaned away from the fire to crane his neck and shout, “What did you get, Hurst?”

Sir Hurst was talking to Gwen and some of the guards, and did not reply. He’d refused a reading, and the Lady had chased after him waving cards in his direction, while he steadfastly tried to ignore her.

“He probably got a big sword,” Adah said. “And another big sword. Past sword, future sword.”

“Ha,” said Sidney, content. “Yeah. What about you, Arden?”

Florian had been quietly eating his stew. He dabbed at his mouth with his sleeve and said, “Upside-down Time, right-side-up Empress.”

“Which means?”

Florian shrugged. “Too much time alone, I suppose. Isolation. And, uh… fertility.”

Sidney laughed. “You pregnant, Florian?”

Arthur poked at his stew. “His wife is.”

This had the effect of a battering ram on Gabriel, who put down his spoon, ears ringing with the word “wife,” and said, “You’re married?”

“Yes,” Florian said, unable to conceal a smile. “Five years. We were childhood sweethearts. I have… somewhere, I have a portrait…” He dug around in the bag at his hip and pulled out a small flat wooden box, which when opened at the hinge, revealed a painting of a pretty woman with high cheekbones and russet skin, her dark hair adorned with minuscule chains of jewels.

Gabriel wet his lips, which were suddenly very dry. A wife. Awife, and he loved her. Besotted, from the look of him. And Arthur knew. A wife. A wife for Florian. “You didn’t… say.”