Cards of Love: The High Priestess

  Cards of Love: The High Priestess

  Vivian Wood

  Author’s Copyright

  Copyright Olivia Ryann 2018

  May not be replicated or reproduced in any manner without express and written permission from the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to author and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  More Is Coming, and Soon

  About the Author

  Preface

  This book is interwoven with my Cherish Underworld series, the story of the three Aetós brothers. It is meant to be a peek into Damen and Bianka’s story. Currently, I’m finishing the story of Fiore and Arsen. If you like this peek, I suggest you read the series!

  Capture

  Control

  Covet

  Cherish

  Thanks for reading! — Olivia

  1

  Bianka

  I try not to tremble as I look out the second story window of the old farmhouse. In this tiny bedroom, I feel so cramped and claustrophobic. Something within me screams to be let out, though I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to go about that.

  I stare at the ocean, grey as slate and awesome in its wildness, foaming and frothing and churning. It reflects the unsettled feeling I have inside.

  The ocean understands me, at least.

  I tug at the train of my long white dress, fidgeting. The dress itself is a century old at least, worn by my mother and her mother and so many women before her. It’s pristine silk is starting to turn to cream, the step before it turns yellow with age. It has a hundred little pearl buttons done up the back of the dress, to symbolize purity, generosity, integrity, and loyalty.

  I have to wonder how many women have ben in my position, forced into a marriage because the patriarch of the family says so. I’m a traveller; what the patriarch says goes.

  Even if the patriarch is my father. His word is untrustworthy, distilled with spirits instead of wisdom. And with my grandad and the older women gone, there is no one to right the ship when he makes a blunder.

  That’s why I’m here today, called home from Dublin to just south of Peel, on the Isle of Man. My father arranged a marriage for me. I’m going on twenty one, and I would’ve ignored him.

  But there is Cass, my little sister. The person who I am closest to in the whole world; the only one who has visions that rival mine. We’re tight as can be. Or we were, until my father banished me. He has halfway figured out her secret, that she sees the future in her dreams. He wants Cass all for himself, wants to harness that energy for his own use.

  But he’s too stupid to know that I have a similar gift. She dreams of the future; I have feelings about things, deep in my gut. My gift is no doubt less than Cass’s, but I make up for it by being my sister’s bulldog.

  Or I did, until my father drove me away. Until today, when he needs me. He’s a gambler, and not a very good one at that. He has gambled away every last cent, no doubt.

  And so it is that I am to be married to my father’s biggest creditor. Damen Aetós. The very name makes me feel ill.

  Da made it perfectly clear that it was me or Cass who marries the Madman. The very idea of Cass in the grip of some man that Da owes money to gives me chills. Da knows that. He knows that I would do anything to protect her.

  So I packed my few things and headed here, like a good girl. Inside, I’m a snarling, hateful jumble of emotions. But I try not to show it, for Cass.

  I don’t see her very often. Da says that my rebellious nature could be catching, so he needs to shelter Cass from my influence. But today, my wedding day, I get all the Cass I can handle.

  I try not to let my eyes tear up when I think of what Cass’s future might be without me around.

  “Can you stand still, Bianka?” Cass scolds.

  I look down, where she’s kneeling at my feet, trying to fix a tear in the hem of my dress. Her inky hair spills over her shoulders, her dark brows pull down over ice blue eyes. She’s very slender, like myself.

  Cass and I are the spitting image of our Ma, god rest her wandering soul. At least, that’s what people tell us. There are only a few photos of her, and even in those she seems quiet and reserved.

  Much more like Cass than me, in that respect.

  “Hey Cass?” I say.

  Cass looks up at me. “Yeah?”

  “I’ve missed you. It’s not the same in Dublin without you, you know that?”

  Her face goes warm and she grins. “I’ve missed you too. Maybe you and Mr. Aetós will move close to us here.”

  My mouth pulls down into a frown. No way is Damen Aetós going to live here in Peel. There’s not even the slightest chance that he’s going to want to stay on the island, not from what I know about him.

  And I know very little. I know that he’s been a business associate of my father’s for a few years, running a lot of the mob connections out of London. I know that he’s killed people in cold blood. That he likes it.

  That’s why they call him the Madman, after all.

  I know that he’s older than me, in his thirties at least. And I know that today, he gets to claim me as his wife. My mouth goes dry just thinking about it.

  Mr. Aetós is a stranger, unknown to me. I’ve never laid eyes on him before, never had a feeling about him other than a crushing sense of blank numbness. When I try to get a feeling, I just come up empty. I’m not sure what that means, but I doubt that it’s good.

  I turn to look out the window, determined to hide my thoughts from Cass.

  Thoughts about just what a man nicknamed the Madman will want in the bedroom. A chill races up my spine.

  “All fixed,” Cass says, getting up. She puts away her needle and thread. “You have to admit, you do look breathtaking.”

  She turns me toward the mirror. Reflected back at me are two dark haired young women, one in light pink, one in white. I reach up to touch my hair, which Cass braided into an elaborate updo.

  I hardly recognize the girl with her starched white bodice, her yellowing heavy silk train, her arms covered in translucent tight silk. Yet she stares back at me. I know I am her, down to the icy blue of her gaze.

  Will the whole day be like this, a strange disassociation from my body?

  “Bianka,” Cass says, prodding me. She looks quizzical. She is so young and naive; she thinks that I agreed to this marriage because it’s what Da wants.

  “Yes,” I say, turning away from the mirror. I hide my trembling hands. “Do you think you could get me something to drink? Just to calm my nerves.”

  Cass smiles at me. “Of course. I’ll be right back with something. Why don’t you check your suitcase and see that you have everything? I heard Da say that we’re leaving as soon as the ceremony and celebrations are over, so you’ll want to track everything down now.”

  I incline my head. She’s right, of course. She usually is. Cass slips out of the room, and I turn toward my suitcase, laying open on the bed.

  I stand there, looking down at the suitcase. In it are five changes of clothes, a few paperback novels, toiletries, and of course the Tarot. I reach for the Tarot deck, a bunch of well-used cards t
hat were my Ma’s, held together by a rubber band. I don’t have much else to my name.

  After all, I’ve only been living in Dublin for a year, and only in my dingy little basement apartment for three months. No proper job wanted a girl with no education or residence to speak of; I didn’t even bother to explain that I came from a family of travellers, the Irish version of Roma culture.

  You could say gypsy, of course, but I’ve had that word shouted at me since I was little. On the lips of storekeepers, who chased my family out of their shops. A word that’s used by hoity-toity ladies, when my sister and I were stealing their wallets.

  Deserved or no, I’ve come to hate that word. I consider it a slur.

  Pulling the rubber band off the Tarot deck, I shuffle the cards. At first, I picked up the cards because I was curious about what other travellers saw in them. Then I realized that they’re a sort of mirror; you see in them whatever is going on with you, if you look at them the right way.

  It’s a good way to distill my feelings, I have found.

  Plus, they were Ma’s. It’s a way to be close to her, even through the veil between worlds. I sit on the bed and think of what to ask, my hands nimbly shuffling.

  Of course, there is only one thing on my mind.

  What will the Madman be like?

  I select three cards, laying them down side by side with a satisfying thwack-thwack-thwack. They are meant to represent the past, the present, and the future.

  For the past, I have the Knight of Wands, but the card is facing away from me, or reversed. It means haste, scattered energies, delays, or frustration.

  For the present, I draw the Tower. It represents disaster, sudden change, or revelation. No question about that one, the Tower is how I feel right now.

  The future is the Devil, but reversed. It means detachment, breaking free, or a power reclaimed. I frown and pick up the card, only to see that it is somehow stuck to a second card.

  The High Priestess, reversed. Hidden agendas, a need to listen to my inner voice.

  What could that mean? I’ve never seen the cards stick together like that before. If anything, I’m even more confused about the wedding and my groom to be now.

  As I gather the deck and put the rubber band back, Cass comes back in the room. She lifts a little bottle of whiskey.

  “Sorry, I had to get Uncle Tam’s spare bottle. It’s all that’s to be had,” she says, unscrewing the lid and handing it to me.

  I take a swig from it, grateful. Wincing at the taste, I shake my head. “If you think that Da and the uncles aren’t outside getting drunk, then you’re mad.”

  Cass nods, but I can tell that she thinks I’ve said too much. My poor little sister, raised to be so meek and mild. Enough that she puts up with Da and his bottomless bag of bullshit, anyway.

  “So…” she says, trying to change the subject. “How much do you know about Mr. Aetós? Da won’t tell me anything at all.”

  I shrug, taking another slug of the whiskey. It’s real rotgut stuff, the bottom of the bottom of the barrel.

  “Dunno. All I know is that he’s older. In his thirties at least. And he’s all tied up in the mob, like all of Da’s business associates.”

  I leave out the fact that he’s killed, that he enjoys it, and his nickname. There are some things that Cass is just too young to know, flat out. Things I shouldn’t know, but the young men in my family have loose lips, especially when they’re drunk.

  Cass’s forehead wrinkles critically. “Bianka, why on earth are you marrying him? He sounds like a proper thug.”

  I wait three full seconds before I respond, to give myself a chance to rid the emotion from my voice. Squinting, I glance away at the window. “Because Da asked me to.”

  Threatened is more like it. And God knows, with me married off, I won’t have any sway the next time Da is in a bind.

  What will Cass do then?

  We are both silent for a minute, absorbed in our own thoughts. I cap the whiskey bottle and tuck it in my suitcase. I might need it later; Uncle Tam will have to find more of this swill for himself.

  There is a knock on the door, making us both jump.

  “Come on down, it’s time,” says Braden, one of Uncle Tam’s teenaged sons.

  I freeze, but Cass has no such hesitations. She leans over and shouts, “Right!”

  Oh God. I’m about to make this life-changing declaration, before my family and God himself. I don’t believe in much, but it has been drilled into me since birth that a traveller only has one soul mate.

  I swallow against the hard lump in my throat, knowing already that Damen Aetós is not mine.

  Cass puts her hands on mine, covering them. I look up at her, too glazed for any real emotion other than panic.

  “I can’t do this,” I tell her, grabbing her hands with my trembling ones. I feel sick; vomit rises in my throat.

  “Yes you can,” Cass says with a gentle smile.

  “No, you don’t understand. I cannot marry that man down there. It would be a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake.”

  Cass’s brows knit. “Bianka, you said—”

  Eyes wide, I cut her off, even though it just feels like I’m saying a string of nonsense words. “I had to say yes! Don’t you see? Da has you. You’re his trump card.”

  “Oh my. I might have let you get a bit drunk.” She wrinkles her nose and glances behind her.

  “I’m not drunk! I’m telling you—”

  “Shhhh. I promise, in twenty minutes, this will all be over. You’ll forget that you were even nervous. Okay?”

  And because she’s Cass, because she dreams of the future, I let her treat me like a toddler.

  Cass helps me off the bed, and I go. I go because it’s her hands that guide me. I go because I’m too scared of what happens when my Da finds out that I’ve run away.

  Cass at my side, we walk down the stairs and out of the ancient inn. She leads me towards a big group of men, all standing in a huddle. I hold my breath as they notice me, parting like the Red Sea did for Moses.

  I feel the eyes of my family on me. My Da’s, drunken and unkind. Uncle Tam, drunken and benevolent. And there, in the middle of the group, is the man I want so desperately to avoid.

  Damen Aetós, looking tall and dashing, and every bit as wicked as they say. His big frame outstrips everyone around him. His blue-grey eyes glint like rare gemstones.

  But it’s his expression that tells me I’m in trouble.

  His hint of a smile, as I’m lead toward him, like a fatted calf to the altar. His gaze threatens to burn me alive.

  When I see that, the tears begin to fall in earnest.

  2

  Damen

  When I pull my attention from Seamus and Tamlin Braemar’s drunken antics, I’m impatient. I’m a busy man with a lot of things to do and a shit ton of places to be. All of which are better than this particular hellhole Seamus dragged me out to, all in the name of repaying his substantial debt to me.

  He promised me a girl, a very meek and mild girl who would bend to my every single whim. Something made me agree, some unknown force in the universe.

  Maybe Seamus just seemed pathetic to me that day. I figured I’d never know.

  But when I look up, when the Braemar clan parts to reveal the girls, I know instantly. The second I lay eyes on her, rail-thin and dark haired, eyes just the color of the sky on a cloudless morning, I know.

  It’s meant to be.

  For what, I don’t know, but this meeting? This is predestined, or maybe preordained.

  See I’ve been walking around for years with this feeling. I can’t quite describe it, other than to say that I always knew that I wasn’t settled. I came over to London from Cyprus with my brothers Arsen and Dryas, as part of the Cypriot mafia.

  But even back then, I knew that it wasn’t enough for me. Even then I was pushing to do more hits for the family, to climb the ladder higher, to move faster. I didn’t know what I was moving toward, I just knew it wasn’t that.


  When I see her, make eye contact with her, a piece of the puzzle clicks into place. We’re meant to be here. She’s meant to be mine.

  My lips tip upward in the hint of a smile. Her expression goes from timid to terrified, but I don’t mind. I am the Madman after all. She won’t be the first woman I have to take by force.

  I shift in place, noting her pallor as she’s lead over to me. When she’s close enough that I could reach out and grab her, I can see that she’s shaking like a leaf, her lips gone pale despite the dash of pink lipstick she wears. The priest I brought for the ceremony steps to my right.

  Her younger sister steps back, her eyes already filling with tears.

  I pin her with my gaze, and she shudders. In her eyes too I see tears, but they’re not the happy tears I saw in her sister’s eyes.

  Bianka Braemar is prettier than I anticipated. The way her father casually gambled her away, I had assumed that she was plain. But no, she is exceptional. Her hair shines like polished obsidian. Dark lashes rim her baby blue eyes. Her bone structure is flawless; she has high cheekbones and a delicate nose.

  She looks like a relic in that ancient wedding dress of hers. It’s definitely of another era. Wearing it, her beauty seems both frail and timeless.

  She’ll do very nicely for a wife. She fits in with my plans almost perfectly, like there was always a place for someone just her size and shape all along.

  “Are ye prepared?” the priest says to me, ignoring Bianka altogether. He’s being paid very well to come out to this desolate stretch of land, no buildings in sight but the crumbling old farmhouse. He’s to marry us without asking any questions, so I imagine he wants to get the ceremony over with.