Page 82 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
The tent smelt strongly of incense, and a purple haze permeated the room. Drapes fell from the ceiling, faux velvets and flimsy, frayed bits of gossamer. At the centre stood a table, filled with crystals and cards. Bells and trinkets trembled on the poles.
A hunched figure sat at the table, wrapped in red silks, only her eyes visible. A strange, startling violet—no doubt a trick, an illusion to further sell her lies.
“Good evening, Young Master.”
He stilled, hands moving to his mask.
“Rest assured, you are still well enough disguised,” said the woman in a strange, smoky voice. “Come, sit. Or stand. Whatever you prefer.”
“You’re the fortune teller. You tell me what I’m going to do.”
“Whatever I tell you, you will do the opposite. Why waste my breath?”
Dimitri had the strangest feeling he was being laughed at and stayed standing. “How did you know who I was?”
“Your maid is quite the chatterbox.”
“I was expecting a more mysterious answer.”
“I know you were.”
“How did you know I’d follow her?”
“I had an inkling.” She gestured to the empty chair. “Are you ready to sit?”
Dimitri, half still wanting to bolt, did. The fortune-teller’s gaze made him uncomfortable, so he tried to stare at other things: the crystals, the windchimes, the pickled herbs hanging from the ceiling. “What did you tell Adeline?”
“I’m here to speak your future, Dimitri Von Mortimer, not hers, although they may be entwined.”
His heart thumped hopefully. “Are they?”
“I cannot say.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“I doubt you would believe me anyway.”
Dimitri kicked the table, making the crystals jump. “WhatwouldI believe?”
“That you were born under an ill-fated star, that your father never loved you, that you are entirely alone in the world and always will be.”
Dimitri’s heart plummeted, and something like a chasm opened beneath him, both at the notion that those things—the greatest fears of his heart—were true, and that this fortune-teller would have to be the real thing to know them.
The fortune-teller righted her crystals. “That’s what youwouldbelieve,” she continued. “It is not the truth. Not all of it.”
“Then whatisthe truth?”
She scratched a nail down one of her crystals, making the darkness inside it swirl. “Youwereborn under an ill-fated star,” he told him. “But your father did love you, once. Just not as much as he loved himself, or his legacy. When you were five, he spoke to a sister of mine. She told him something he did not wish to hear.”
Dimitri’s mouth went dry. “What… what did she tell him?”
“The precise words I cannot see, but it was something about what you would do if you inherited the dukedom.”
“Why wouldn’t I inherit the dukedom?”
“Well, that’s what your father thought. Who else could he give it to, after all? He had no other heir, not a whisper of one coming. No matter, he thought. He had years. But then the years rolled by… still no heir.”
Dimitri swallowed. He had a terrible, terrible idea he knew where this was going. Because his motherhadconceived again, just before the curse, and lost it not long after.
