#but that being said if anyone catches any historical inaccuracies (there will likley be some let's be real) i'm happy to make edits!!

[moonb-eam]

the star or the high priestess for the tarot card inspired aus!! (it’s ok if u don’t wanna do these ones, no hard feelings!!) ahh I love your fics btw💕

the high priestess: magic, dreams, knowledge

“i had this dream, and now…”

possible AUs/settings: visions, sold fortunes, magic au

hello my darling, thank you so much!! 💛

it’s possible i got a bit carried away by this au (over 8k carried away) - but it’s inspired by one of my favourite books, and i had so much fun writing it 💫

i hope you like it! 🔮

ce destin est un marée (et nous sommes emportés)

read on ao3

Summer 1886

In the north end of the Paris, on the edge of the artist’s haven of Montmarte, sur le Boulevard de Clichy, you’ll find a man standing on top of a box in front of an old theatre. He’s strangely dressed, sporting a bright red suit and a top hat cast in shimmering gold. His beard is dark and neatly trimmed, a cane rests over his wrist, and a monocle dangles from his breast pocket. There’s an elegance about him that’s contrasted with a certain strangeness—it excites you. It makes you stop in your steady pace down the boulevard. It makes you perk your ears up.

“Venez tous! Venez tous!”

You listen as the man weaves a tapestry of words and images that floats over the gathering crowd, settles across their shoulders and tickles the backs of their necks with curiosity.

L’homme fort: the strongest man in all of France, capable of breaking apart stone with his bare hands.

Les acrobates: a death-defying act starring a pair siblings who have come all the way from the exotic south.

Les danseuses: no man alive is safe from the spell these young ladies weave as they move.

Then the man lowers his voice to a whisper. You feel yourself leaning forward involuntarily.

He tells of a new addition to their family, a young man plucked from the gutters of Paris like a rare jewel from the sewage—a young man of otherworldly abilities.

Le cartomancien.

Every secret you hold close to your heart can be found within the folds of his cards. He knows when you will meet the love of your life. He knows the last words you will say before you die.

The man raises his voice, spreads his arms out wide.

“If you are brave enough to discover your future, mesdames et meisseurs, you can meet this young man and his magical deck of cards for the low price of deux francs!”

This prompts scoffs from some of the crowd. They turn away, not wanting to spend their hard-earned money on such trifles. But you, you linger there in the boulevard, thinking about your present: directionless, bleak, your father’s unchanging disappointment a phantom pain between your shoulderblades. You feel a constant thrum under your skin, an unearthly restlessness waiting to break free from its mortal confines. Your future is as murky to you as the hazy mid-summer sky, and you wonder if knowing would ease the stress at all. Perhaps knowing what lies ahead in the future would give you purpose in the present.

The coins in your pockets are heavy with implication. Father’s money, the money of land ownership and property taxes and squeezing tenants until they bleed.

The thought of using that money for something Father would look down on with such distaste makes you smile. There is victory in the small revolutions, perhaps.

You consider it. You imagine sitting at a dimly lit table, watching cards fall to the surface like leaves in the autumn before some faceless, mysterious fortune-teller, and the idea is as enticing as the sweets you used to see in the windows of Le Bon Marché when you were a child.

But then you hear a clock chime in the distance, that dreaded mark of time passing, a warning that you are risking lateness to your meeting with Father’s business partners. And so, much like the sweets, you leave the man standing on the box, the theatre and the fortune-teller, because you know this is something that will forever be out of reach.

You take a hurried step back, turning to the direction you were first headed in, and nearly collide with a young man and woman coming towards you.

You step aside, lowering your hat in apology, but the pair barely take notice of you, talking excitedly amongst themselves.

You stare as they pass.

Not at the girl. She is pretty, yes, dark-haired and with a sweet smile, but the boy.

The first thing you see is deep, oceanic blue; eyes as alluring and freeing and terrifying as the Atlantic itself.

Then you take in more details in rapid succession: a straight, elegant nose, clear smooth skin, full lips curved into an inviting smile as he says something that makes the girl hit him on the arm in retaliation, his cheeks dimpling as he laughs.

You are late, you are squandering your final chance to gain Father’s trust as the minutes tick by, but you cannot move. You are fixed to the middle of the street because you have never seen a person so beautiful that they’ve caused such a violent reaction in you: a lightning storm roaring in your veins just from the sight of them, just from the thought of stroking your fingers across their cheek.

It scares you, this rush of instant attraction, for as exhilarating as it is, as good as it is to feel so alive you could soar, your heart is heavy with the knowledge that this is something else that is wrong with you. This is something else that makes you different. Something else that ensures Father will never approve of you.

So you merely watch as the beautiful boy passes you, as he disappears into the mouth of the old theatre and becomes nothing more than a memory. A dream.

You leave quickly, now inexcusably late to your meeting, and you will yourself to forget about possibilities and overturned cards predicting futures and fate lines that can be broken, or diverted.

You may have a strong will, young Monsieur Demaury, but you forget one thing: that just because you cannot see your own future, does not mean it isn’t already in motion.

Autumn 1888

Lucian de la Lune is sitting at a small table, across from a man with a perfectly-groomed moustache, waiting for him to pick a card.

He doesn’t know the man’s name—he never asks for names, in order to keep client privacy. He asks only for a word, something to identify them to him when they request appointments for readings.

This man called himself Oberon.

Oberon keeps fluttering his fingers across the fan of cards spread across the table, humming under his breath, but eventually lands on one, carefully picking it up from the fan spread across the table. When he turns it over, he raises his eyebrows, dropping it back down to the table as if the thick cut of paper is slowly catching fire, threatening to singe his fingertips.

The image on the card is a cloaked figure with a lantern, one skeletal hand stretched out to an unseen, unsuspecting person. The pale messenger. The dark omen. Death.

“Death, then is it?” Oberon says with a wry smile. “My time has come?”

Lucian de la Lune sighs, tugs the sleeves of his white shirt back over his wrists. It’s silk, one of Yann’s, and it swims on him, gapes open on his neck and collarbones in a way he knows they notice, the men and women who come into his small room inside the theatre—the one shrouded in navy blue and deep purple curtains, with tall, misshapen candles alighting every available surface. All of it—the eccentric room, the loose silk shirt, his perpetually messy hair—compounds to form the image of the pretty, mysterious boy with the magic cards and all-seeing eyes. The infamous Lucian de la Lune.

“It is not as literal as that.” He says to Oberon, waving a hand out over the table. His tarnished signet ring catches in the candlelight, a muted flash of light thrown across the ceiling. “The cards never are.” He picks up Death in his left hand, flipping its face towards Oberon. “What it means by death is rebirth. There’s a change coming for you, monsieur, whether you are ready for it or not. A necessary destruction in order for rebuilding.” He flits his gaze over to the man, who is staring back at him, rapt. “Choose two more, please.”

Oberon does, with more excitement, plucking two cards from the fan quickly and laying them face up between them.

The first is five thorn-stemmed roses, all cut sharply at the bottom. Unforeseen challenges approaching. But the card is inverted to Oberon, signifying a fall, of some sort. A price paid from dishonesty.

The second is a man, hanging by the foot from a wooden post. Also inverted. A possibility for change and self-reflection, but for Oberon more likely a stagnation of the self through materialistic pursuits.

“Ah,” Lucian de la Lune murmurs. It is becoming clearer to him. He lays a finger down on a card. “The five of wands, monsieur. It is reversed to you, signifying a coming challenge. Circumstances will change, and you will need to adapt to them.” He moves his finger to the other card. “The hanged man, which is also reversed. You are stuck in the habits you have created. These are selfish habits. They have led you to a life only concerned with profit, by any means, and if you keep in these habits,” he sweeps a hand across the three cards laying between them, “ there is a chance you will lose everything.”

Oberon stares at him, a deep crease forming between his eyebrows.

Lucian de la Lune sits back in his chair, satisfied. He’d had a feeling, when the man first stepped into his room, that there was an uneasiness about him; something he couldn’t put a name to, but gave a sensation like holding a stolen loaf of bread in your hand. A forbidden sort of feeling.

Caught. Which would imply breaking the rules. Which, in turn, could imply:

Exploitation. Criminality. Fraud.

It had only been a guess, but his guesses are usually right.

Always trust your instincts, Lucas, Maman used to tell him. Us Lallemants, we’re never wrong when we get a feeling about someone.

Now, the man across from him laughs, clapping his hands together in front of his chest.

“Well,” he says, grinning, chest puffed up with bravado, “that was very entertaining. But you’re not as good as they say you are, are you?” Oberon’s eyes glitter teasingly at him. “Because I can assure you, my business is secure, mon cher. I can assure you, I am very good at what I do.”

Lucian de la Lune shrugs, picking up the cards one at a time to place them back into his deck, their worn, fading edges smooth and familiar under his fingertips. “The cards only ever show one possibility, monsieur. One future.” He shuffles them with easy, practiced movements, letting the low hum of energy they hold seep into his hands, their hushed, ancient voices singing through his veins. “Each choice we make introduces a new future, or sends us careening towards the one we are meant to meet.” His fluid motions cease, suddenly, and he’s flipping a card over onto the table, face up.

Death.

He smiles sweetly. “You’re the one who made the appointment, monsieur. But then again,” he says, placing the deck down, “this is merely a game. Entertaining, as you say.”

An expression crosses over Oberon’s face as though he just bit into a rotten piece of fruit.

Lucian de la Lune’s smile only widens. “I believe you still owe two francs, monsieur.”

There’s a moment of silence, the two men staring at each other across the table. Then Oberon laughs, digging into his coat pocket for coins. “I think perhaps I underestimated you,”he says. “You are a rather fascinating creature.”

He slaps five down on the table. Nearly triple the usual rate.

“A little extra just for you,” he says, standing. “For giving me a great deal to think about.” He slips into his overcoat and smoothes down the lapel, gathering his cane and hat from the hook by the entrance. “I thank you for your time, Lucien. It was most enlightening.” He winks, tips his hat, and then disappears through the curtains.

It’s only when the curtains still, when Oberon’s footsteps recede into silence, that Lucien de la Lune exhales, rolls his shoulders away from his ears, and becomes Lucas Lallemant once again. It’s like shedding a skin, when he lets himself lose Lucian for a moment, when he doesn’t have to worry about being seen. Gone is the easy confidence, the lowered lashes and air of mystery. Instead there is only Lucas, with all of his scars and distrust.

(But here’s a secret. Lucian de la Lune is not magic, not really. Lucas Lallemant is.)

His Maman was. And her father, and his grandmother, and her great-grandmother, and so on to the very start of their name.

The Lallemants. There is a strange energy in their veins.

But it’s a volatile kind. An all-consuming kind. The kind that made Lucas’ father fall madly in love with Maman, then abandon her when Lucas was just a boy.

It’s the kind that, as the rumours go, drove Lucas’ Maman mad, the catalyst for her running away, for her leaving a thirteen-year-old Lucas behind. It’s the kind that made her disappear. It’s the kind that Lucas grew to see as a curse more than a gift—something for him to fight against, to repress.

He used it only a little, when he lived on the streets. Just enough to survive in the slums of Paris. He distracted shop owners so he could steal food, made a policeman fall asleep in an alleyway so he could escape and one time, saved a baby bird from being run over by a carriage with a well-timed gust of wind.

He wouldn’t use it any more than that. He wouldn’t let magic overtake him like it did Maman.

It’s with a touch of irony then, that he sweeps his gaze across his surroundings, lingering on all the trimmings and trappings that are put in place to say, magic. The energy he so fought against, the gift that is a curse, that is the thing he makes a living from now.

He could say it was pure chance that he met Manon one day on the street, how he was at the end of the little bit of money he’d made selling newspapers, was considering professional thievery, and Manon had taken one look at him and decided he would be perfect for Hercule Barnet’s Monde des Merveilles. He could say it was pure chance, but another cartomancien would scoff at such a thing.

Fate. That is what drives every moment in our lives.

Maman believed in fate.

Lucas picks one of the coins up from the table and rolls it between his fingers.

Was it fate that brought him to this place? To the theatre? This room shrouded in dark curtains? Was it fate that caused him to pull at threads of his magic every day, to tell husbands if their wives are faithful, to tell young women when they’ll meet the man of their dreams, to tell businessmen if their investments will prosper and to tell those sick in love whether or not their feelings will be reciprocated? The futures Lucas saw were rarely pleasing, and were often only vague notions of intent, possibilities as thin and fleeting as smoke. He’s had people break down into inculpable misery in his room. He’s had people react with violent anger. He’s been threatened. He’s been obsessively stalked. He’s had people try to steal his deck, convinced that the cards are cursed.

(But it’s not the cards that are cursed, it’s the boy who wields them.)

You encounter unbelievable faces of humanity, when you deal in the future.

“Lucas?”

He startles, stepping back from the table, and Daphné is poking her head between the curtains, her hair piled up messily on her head, with wildflowers braided sporadically into the strands. She smiles when she sees him.

“Do you have any more clients for the next hour or so?”

Lucas shrugs, rolling his shoulders back, trying to ease the tension at the base of his neck that’s bene plaguing him all morning. “No appointments, but there may still be some that wander in.” He knows what she’s going to ask, the same she does every Wednesday, and he gives a pre-emptive defence. “So no, I’m not coming to lunch.”

Daphné groans, waving a hand out at him. “Lucas. It’s the middle of the week! And it’s freezing outside. No one’s going to come in.” She steps through the curtains, her pale-pink dress brushing against the floor as she moves. “Come with us.” She pleads, bouncing on her toes excitedly. “The girls and I had a fabulous show last night, and we’re celebrating. We want to go to that new café by the park, the one with the incredible pastries.”

Her excitement is catching, her brightness a welcome change from Lucas’s dark curtains and low lighting. Lucas feels the stirrings of a smile, but he shakes his head.

“No. Another time, Daphy.”

Daphné huffs, blowing a stray strand of hair away from her face. “You’re no fun.”

“I’m plenty of fun.” Lucas argues lightly, pocketing two of the coins from the table and holding the other three out to Daphné. “Look how fun I am: I’m giving you extra funds for your decadent lunch.”

“Oh my.” Daphné laughs, taking the coins from Lucas. She examines them in her own palm. “Where did you get these? Another admirer slipping you extra money under the table?”

“Perhaps.” Lucas says, busying himself with reshuffling his cards. “Use it to get yourself one of those pastries.”

Daphné eyes him over her flat palm. “Lucas, are you sure? You could keep this money for yourself.”

“I don’t want it.”

Daphné watches him intently for another moment, eyes dancing over his face, travelling down to his hands, to the cards rapidly flitting between his fingers.

“Alright.” She says eventually. She steps forward and presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. “Thank you, Lucas.”

Lucas nods. He doesn’t tell her that he has no desire to take the money because it feels like being bought, in a way, like the man was attempting to stamp ownership on Lucas with a few extra pieces of change. Spending that money, to Lucas, would feel like solidifying that ownership.

He doesn’t say it, but he knows Daphné will understand anyway. They all would, all of them that perform for Barnet, who get pulled aside after their shows by wealthy patrons who bombard them with offers for lavish dinners and tickets to the opera. It’s a regular occurrence for them, and it gets all of their backs up.

Daphné squeezes his arm, the warmth and comfort in the gesture saying, It’s alright, Lucas, you’re still your own person. Lucas is at once infinitely grateful for her, for Manon, for everyone in the small family of strange creatures that populate Le Monde des Merveilles.

“You’re welcome,” he says quietly, the movements of his hands slowing as he returns her smile. “Enjoy your lunch.”

Another squeeze to his arm, and she’s gone, disappearing between the folds of the curtain with her pink dress trailing behind her. Lucas looks back down at his cards, his smile fading to something quiet and fond, and without thinking, he picks a card, setting it face-up on the table.

He blinks at what he sees.

A messenger with good news. A bringer of love and fortune. A romantic hero on a white horse.

The Knight of Cups.

Lucas snorts inelegantly, at the card that’s telling him a knight in shining armour is about to appear before him a sweet word and whisk him away, and places it back into the deck, shuffling the knight’s amorous eyes out of sight.

The best thing that has happened to Lucas in the last few years was being given a place in Le Monde des Merveilles. Steady income. A place to live. Food to eat. Friends. A certain level of fame that gives him access to most corners of the city. He does not consider wishing for more than that, ever. Wishing is for fools and romantics.

Lucas shuffles the deck again and focuses, letting the energy of the cards guide his touch. He pulls out one that calls to him, loud and desperate, begging to be seen. He lays it face-up on the table, and there, again.

The Knight of Cups.

Lucas scowls down at the table, at the knight’s eyes that are painted so full of hope.

“Enough,” he says aloud, to the cards, or to the universe, to the magic in his bones and the great magnet that tugs the chains of fate along the surface of the Earth. He says it to all of them at once, slamming the deck of cards down on top of the knight. “It isn’t funny,” he whispers, but he’s not entirely sure what he means by that.

It isn’t funny to make me look towards the door with hope, even when I know nothing will come.

It isn’t funny to promise on things you can’t deliver.

It isn’t funny to pretend that good things happen for no reason.

With a heavy sigh, Lucas pushes himself away from the table and out of his small room, the curtains blowing apart before him, a burst of magic erupting from the centre of his chest that’s unchecked, uncontrollable, and makes a door down the corridor slam shut.

He winces, but he keeps walking, turning a sharp right and making a direct line towards Barnet’s office, which he knows at this time of day will be unlocked, empty, and always has a fresh pot of tea sitting on his desk.

Lucas could really use a cup of tea right now. Preferably one with a strong whiskey in it.

He returns to his room slowly, balancing his cup of tea with a stack of stolen biscuits from the hidden cupboard in Barnet’s office, and he’s not paying attention to what’s in front of him. His eyes continuously drift from his cup to his feet to the biscuits and back to his feet, so Lucas doesn’t see him at all, at first. He has no idea he’s there until there’s a short clearing of a throat, a polite, “Excuse me—”, and Lucas’ head snaps up, his tea sloshing dangerously close to the rim of the cup.

He nearly drops the biscuits.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” There’s a young man stepping away from the thick curtains marking Lucas’ room, one arm stretched out as though he’s going to catch any tea that spills onto the floor, but seems to think better of that and snatches his hand back, eyes wide.

Lucas stares at him.

“I, ah…” The man fumbles his hat off his head in a clumsy grip, nearly dropping it with one hand and and catching it with the other, laughing at himself nervously. “I’m sorry,” he says again, bowing his head towards Lucas. “I was hoping to see you, but you were out when I arrived, so I…waited.”

Lucas is still staring at him. He’s staring hard, because the man before him is tall, young and handsome, very handsome, and he’s wearing a thick, expensive coat and perfectly-polished shoes, and Lucas hates it, but the first place his mind goes is to the amorous eyes of the Knight of Cups.

Fucking great magnet. Fucking universe. Fucking cards.

The young man looks like he’s struggling to find something else to say, but Lucas is also struggling, so they stand there, staring at each other for a moment that stretches itself too long, too intimate for strangers in a dim, empty corridor.

Lucas coughs and straightens slightly, desperately grasping at the edges of his Lucian de la Lune cloak, trying to pull it over his Lucas Lallemant face that is too open and honest, too taken aback by the appearance of the man before him, so sweet-faced and honey-voiced that he may very well be from a fairy tale.

“You…” He swallows the tremors in his voice down. “Did you want a reading?”

The young man blinks at him like Lucas woke him from a deep sleep. “A what?”

“The…” Lucas gestures with his pile of biscuits to the thick curtains. “The cards. A reading for your future.”

“Oh! Oh.” The man laughs again, light and warm like a ray of sunlight, and he nods. “Yes, of course. I mean, that’s what you do! Of course.”

“Alright.” Lucas steps around him to enter into his room, quickly dropping his biscuits on the corner table, snapping his fingers to re-light the candles that went out, and taking a rushed sip of his tea to fortify himself. The sip he gets is almost entirely whiskey, which he supposes is rather appropriate, but makes him give a strangled cough. The young man follows after him slowly, carefully, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to enter into Lucas’ little world.

Lucas watches as his eyes roam over the midnight blue curtains, the dripping candles and the round table at the centre, then his eyes find Lucas again, and stay there.

“This is a wonderful room,” the man says. “It suits you.”

Lucas raises an eyebrow. He thinks, that’s a strange thing to say when you don’t know me at all, but he bites back from saying it, swallowing the words down with another sip of tea, and heading right for his table.

“The price of a reading is two francs.” He says flatly, busying himself with straightening the tablecloth and shifting the candles around.

“Oh, of course!” The man plunges a hand into his coat pocket, and Lucas hears the sounds of coins rattling around in there. It’s a sign of wealth and a sign of carelessness, having so many in such an easy place to steal from.

So, wealthy yes, but perhaps newly wealthy. A recent inheritance is most likely, given how young the man looks—barely older than Lucas himself.

The man places two coins down on the table, two francs exactly, and he’s still standing awkwardly behind the other chair, his coat open and his hat in his hand. He looks like he’s halfway between sitting down and running away.

Lucas makes the choice for him. He walks around the table, hands outstretched. “Here, I will take your hat and coat. You can sit down.”

The young man nods, his nerves as palpable as the November chill in the air outside. His movements are jagged and uneasy, his eyes constantly shifting from the ground to Lucas’ face like he can’t decide where to look. Lucas wonders if the young man is looking for an answer to an illicit question. Maybe it has something to do with the beautiful coat in Lucas’ hands, with the money that bought that coat. Maybe this man makes his money like the man from this morning does: in the darkness. Maybe he’s unlucky in love, and he’s going to ask Lucas for help. Dozens of young Parisian men come to Lucas’s table every week with the same predicament.

Lucas is curious, and he’s rarely curious about the people that come to him.

“So,” he says at length when he sits again, reaching for his cards and giving them a quick shuffle, hastily turning the Knight of Cups back over the correct way, “what is it that you’re looking for?”

The young man shrugs, a movement startlingly contradictory to his fine coat, his elegant features and his nervous posture with its ease and insouciance . “I don’t know, really. I suppose I just…” he shrugs again, shifting in his seat, eyes fixed on the cards in Lucas’ hands, following them as they slip and fold into one another. “I suppose I’m curious about what you can see in my future. Or even in my present.”

“Hm.” Lucas sets the deck down on the centre of the table. He lays a finger on top of it. “If you have a clear question, it helps to give a clear reading. Is there anything specific you would want to know? Something to do with finances? Love?”

The young man smiles at Lucas. “Finances and love? Those are the most common inquiries you get?”

“Most people view them as the focuses of life.”

“But you don’t?”

“What I think does not matter.” Lucas replies shortly, and he removes his finger from the deck. “If there is nothing specific you’re seeking then it may dirty the waters of what I can see. Do you understand?”

The man nods. He’s still smiling at Lucas, more confidently now, his shoulders loosening from where they were sitting high around his ear, but his eyes are soft in the candlelight, pale grey-blue catching on the flickering flames.

“Very well.” Lucas murmurs. He gestures at the deck. “Shuffle those until you feel ready to begin.”

The young man inclines his head and he’s reaching forwards, ghosting his fingers across the top of the deck before touching them, as though he’s nervous to. As though he’s not sure if he deserves to touch them, just as he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to enter the room. Lucas shivers as though those long, careful fingers are hovering just above his own skin, mapping out the shape of his body.

When the young man does touch the cards, he touches them gently, reverently, his fingers smoothing across the worn edges, dancing along the intricately-patterned designs on the backs. He looks fascinated with them, as though each card is an entire world of possibility, and he would be right to think so, but he would also be the first person to sit at Lucas’ table who seems to think so.

Lucas shifts in his seat. He can’t stop watching the young man’s hands, listening to the sound of the paper under his fingertips, his own skin prickling with the phantom sensation of a touch on his own skin, and there’s a moment where his mind trips, stumbles on the thought of what it would be like to be touched like the man is touching his cards: so thoroughly and adoringly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the flame of a candle near the floor burst into a violent, bright orange, and he bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, holding his breath until the flame returns to a low, pale yellow. He tastes blood inside his mouth.

This is not right. The cloak of Lucian de la Lune keeps slipping off of his shoulders, revealing too much of Lucas Lallemant to the confines of the small room, to the bright, piercing eyes of the young man across from him.

“I think,” he says softly, breaking into Lucas’ thoughts, “that I am ready.” He places the pile back down on the table.

Lucas takes one steady, calming breath. He avoids the young man’s eyes, focusing on the deck as he moves it to one side, then in one swift movement, spreads it into a fan across the table.

The young man makes an impressed noise, which really is unnecessary, and Lucas feels his lips curling into a pleased smile at the sound, which is equally unnecessary.

Focus, Lallemant.

“Take a moment with the cards,” Lucas orders, waving a hand over the fan. “Find one that is calling to you, in some way, one that you feel yourself being drawn towards. When you do, take it from the pile, and lay it face up on the table.”

He expects the young man to proceed how everyone else normally does at this point, taking their time to consider each and every card, to dance their hands across the fan until eventually picking one that is chosen, they believe, at random; what they think is a split-second decision, but really is an insert of fate into their hands, forcing a choice when making one seems impossible.

But that is not what this young man does. Without hesitation he sends a hand out, fingers touching down on a card off to the left of the fan, nearly at the edge.

“This one,” the young man says, and it’s said without any doubt, so confidently that Lucas feels his own mouth dropping open slightly in surprise. Out of all the people who come into his room, out of all the desperate, future-seeking people in Paris, Lucas would never expect this young man to be the one who knows his card right away.

Is fate forcing his hand so strongly? Or is it a blind choice, one made too quickly, without any thought at all?

Then, the young man is picking the card up, he flips it over on the table, and Lucas blinks down at it.

A hand, hovering in the air, holding out a single coin.

Wealth. Prosperity. A coming successful business venture.

“The Ace of Pentacles,” Lucas says, nodding down at it. “It seems that you have had some good fortune lately, monsieur. Perhaps you’ve come into some money. Or you made an investment that has paid off.”

The young man frowns. “I suppose you could look at it like that,” he says, and Lucas is about to tell him that he doesn’t need to say anything, that he can just pull another card, but the young man says, “My father died a year ago.”

Ah. So Lucas was right about an inheritance.

“I was left ownership of some properties,” the young man says. “A few tenements. A few theatres. I lowered the rent on them, straight away, which, according to all of my advisors was a terrible decision.” He laughs, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “It would be a comfort to know I made the right choice.”

Lucas blinks. He heard about this, about some of the buildings he lives near, in the lower end of Paris, coming into new ownership. He heard about the rent being slashed in half, like magic. It’s one of the reasons Daphné, Manon and Alexia take so many luxurious lunches lately.

It doesn’t seem possible to Lucas, that the man across from him, young and nervous and with such careful hands, is responsible for that. It seems too good to be true, one of those stories they print in the papers to try and convince everyone that the wealthy really do care about the poor, that when they drop their spare change into a dirty child’s hand it’s because they want to end poverty. It seems like…Well, it seems like.

Like he’s a fucking knight in shining armour.

There’s an uncomfortable feeling in Lucas’ chest, something fiery and bright, like the birth of a star. He rubs at his sternum absently, and he doesn’t miss how the young man’s eyes follow the motion, dipping to the place where the shirt gapes open slightly on his collarbone.

Lucas flushes. “Choose two more cards.” He says, more sharply than he means to. “We’ll see how successful that choice will really be.”

It shouldn’t surprise Lucas, what happens next. It shouldn’t surprise someone who has magic, who wields the cards and knows that fate exists, that it is a tangible force at work in the universe. It shouldn’t surprise someone who, that same day, pulled the same card twice in a row.

But the young man turns over two more cards, finding them with the same confidence and speed that he did for the first, and Lucas is so shocked by it, that he thinks he can see that candle near the floor burst into a dark purple.

The second card: A messenger with good news. A bringer of love and fortune. A romantic hero on a white horse.

Then the third: a circle with archaic symbols etched into its surface, each corner of the card occupied by a winged creature with watchful eyes. An unexpected turn of events. Fate being pushed into motion.

Lucas both wants to laugh and cry.

The young is staring at him expectantly, hunched over in his seat with his hands clasped in his lap, eyes wide and earnest. Eyes that look so much like the knight’s when Lucas meets them.

“The, um…” Lucas coughs to break the hoarseness in his voice. “The Knight of Cups.” He points at the card in question. “A messenger bringing good tidings, or a symbol of love. Your…” He pauses, and bites down on his bottom lip, trying to gather his thoughts. “Your true love, as it were. Or if not love then a friend, someone coming to aid you. Someone with your best interests at heart.”

He keeps his eyes fixed on the cards as he speaks. He can feel his face growing warm, like the burning in his chest is travelling up through his bloodstream.

“Now, the, um…the next one is the Wheel of Fortune.” He points to it in turn. “There is a shift happening. A change in your life that you can only go along with. There is no point in fighting it. It’s telling you to let the events of fate unfold, as they are already in motion.” He tilts his head down, eyes scanning the three cards. “But usually it’s a good sign, that when the wheel eventually stops, you will find yourself where you need to be. Altogether, this is a very positive reading. It’s saying that if you stay on the course you’re on, then good things will come to you, monsieur. Very good things.”

Only when he finishes speaking does Lucas glance up, checking the young man’s reaction, and once again he finds himself shocked, because the young man doesn’t look smug, like many people who get a positive reading would be. He doesn’t look excited. He’s crying. Silently and reservedly but there it is, thin tears trickling down his cheeks to his chin.

He catches Lucas’ gaze, and he laughs at himself, something Lucas is realizing is a character trait of his, immediately going for self-depreciation whenever anyone takes notice of him. He wipes away his tears, smiling softly.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, his eyes moving between Lucas’ face and the cards. His cheeks are a mesmerizing shade of pink. “I…don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s alright,” Lucas says softly. The cloak of Lucien de la Lune is pooling at his feet, fallen completely away from his body, and it is just Lucas Lallemant sitting there, fighting the urge to cover the young man’s hand with his own. To soother. To comfort. “Many people cry during their readings.”

“I suppose it’s that I haven’t had very much good news lately.” The man’s smile takes on a melancholic shape, his eyes low. “It is…a bit overwhelming, when you’re in the dark, to have someone telling you eventually you will find light.”

Lucas doesn’t know what darkness a man like the one across from him could experience. Born wealthy, coming into an inheritance, strangely beloved by his tenants, gifted with a beauty that makes Lucas’ breath catch. What darkness could such a person face?

The tenderness that was blooming in Lucas’ heart is battling with bitter argument, with the desire to bite out, Have you ever slept on the street, monsieur? Stolen scraps for your meals? Have you ever had to sell everything you own, then be faced with selling yourself?

But the bare face he’s wearing must say some of that for him, as the young man frowns, his brow furrowing.

“I am sorry,” he says again, rubbing a hand through his hair, mussing the neat strands. “You must have no wish to hear the worries of businessmen.”

“I hear them every day,” Lucas says. “It’s my job.”

The young man shakes his head. “It’s your job to tell people what they hope for, is it not? To give reassurance.”

Lucas leans back in his chair, crossing his arms. “I don’t give anything,” he says, a touch tartly. “The cards are chosen by you. I only interpret them.”

“Well.” The young man runs a finger across the Wheel of Fortune card, tracing the edges of the image. “I think you are magic.”

The word makes Lucas balk for a moment, his fingers clenching at the sleeves of his shirt, but the man doesn’t look accusatory when he says it, doesn’t look like he means it any way other than innocent, the way a child might when they see a snowfall on Christmas.

Magic.

“Well,” Lucas says, propping his elbows on the table, mimicking the man’s tone. “I think you are a romantic.”

The man grins. “Is that a bad thing to be?”

Lucas tilts his head from side to side, humming. “It is not a practical thing to be.”

“But it’s necessary, don’t you think?” The man asks, his voice so soft it floats across the table like feathers. “To have love and beauty and romance in times like these? To have sweet things to live for?”

Lucas’ voice comes out as steel. “Many people can’t afford to live for sweet things. They live only to survive.”

The man is quiet at that,  chastised, considering Lucas with those bright eyes. Lucas doesn’t shy away from his gaze. He lets his words hang between them, lets them resonate with this lovely, sheltered person, with his money and prophesied success.

“You’re right.” The man huffs a breath and leans back. “It is a naïve outlook, I know. One based only in privilege.” He squints down at the table. “And in ignorance. In not knowing enough about the world. But that is something about myself I’m trying to change.”

“The desire for change is good,” Lucas says. “But it’s the embracing of its reality that is important.” He picks up the three cards on the table and returns them to the deck, shuffling the fan together in his hands. He’s frustrated by how intrigued he is by this man, how his pretty words are piercing so deeply into Lucas’ head. He can’t remember the last time he wanted to get to know someone so badly, to uncover all of their secrets, to sink beneath their chest and see their heart for himself, to taste the heavy beating of it.

His hand slips, and a few cards spill onto the floor.

Lucas curses under his breath, and the man dives down, retrieving the cards from the floor. He brushes each one off carefully, stacking them back into a neat pile to hand to Lucas.

When Lucas takes them, his fingers brush against the man’s. Only for a moment, the briefest touch of skin against skin, but it’s enough to make Lucas’ skin flare up, the place they touched burning as brightly as that place deep in his chest. Lucas snatches his hand away, holding the cards close to himself like they can protect him from the dizzying sensation of those warm, gentle fingers pressed against his own.

Lucas is about to open his mouth to order the man to leave, because there’s only so much he can take of this enthralling, endearing young man who may or may not have been foretold as a knight in shining armour to Lucas, a literal romantic hero sweeping into his midnight-blue room with bight eyes and the outlook of a poet. It should be hilarious, this storybook person who has come to life, so completely different from everything Lucas is, but more than anything, it’s overwhelming. It’s exhausting to be in the same room as him.

“Can I ask you something?” The young man is standing at the side of the table, his fingers spread wide on the top of it.

Lucas narrows his eyes. “I suppose.“

“Lucien de la Lune. That isn’t your real name.”

Lucas snorts, setting the deck down again. “Of course it isn’t.”

“Will you tell me your real name?”

It’s not the first time someone has asked Lucas this, so he has his standard answer ready: a flat, apathetic, “No.”

The man nods like he was expecting this. He presses one hand against his chest, over the burgundy tie knotted there. “I’ll tell you mine.”

Lucas raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t ask for yours, did I?”

“No,” he says on laugh. “You didn’t, but I would like you to know it, if that’s alright.”

Lucas shrugs instead of protesting. He never asks for client’s names, ever. Because it makes them feel secure and he really doesn’t care, but he doesn’t tell this young man, not to tell him, because there’s a corner of his mind where he thinks he really wouldn’t mind knowing.

“It’s Eliott. Eliott Demaury.”

He says it nervously, as nervous as he was when he first entered the room, and Lucas bites back on a smile as he stands from his chair.

“Well, Monsieur Demaury,” he says pleasantly, “thank you for coming today. I hope your fortune was to your liking.” Standing so close to him, within the confines of his room, Lucas becomes at once aware of how much taller Demaury is than him. Lucas has to tilt his head back slightly to meet his eyes.

“It certainly was.” Demaury replies, just as courteously. “Thank you, Monsieur de la Lune.” He draws the name out with a smile, and Lucas shoots him a withering glance as he fetches his belongings from the rack by the entrance.

Lucas watches as Demaury slips into his fine coat, clasping his hat between his hands and looking all the part of a gentleman—the sort of man Lucas would expect to see at the opera, or dining at Foyot. He does not look like the sort of man who would cry from hearing there is good news in his future.

Demaury lingers by the entrance to Lucas’ room, scuffing one polished shoe against the floor and fiddling with his hat, and Lucas finds he doesn’t mind. He’s not sure if he wants him to leave either. He thinks he might want him to stay around, to discover if he really could be the knight in the cards. If there’s some part of him that could be meant for Lucas.

But there’s the sound of laughter at the end of the hall accompanying heavy footsteps, and Demaury startles, turning towards Lucas to make a clumsy bow, placing his hat back ono his head.

“Thank you,” he says. “Again. I…well, I hope to see you again. Sometime.”

“You could always return for another reading.” Lucas says, following Demaury outside of the room. He stops in the doorway, holding the curtain aside and clenching the thick velvet in his hand to centre himself, to make his voice even. “Perhaps your future will change.”

Demaury smiles, head tilting down towards the floor. He sticks his hands in his pockets, a boyish gesture at odds with his gentlemanly exterior. “I really hope it doesn’t change, actually. But…I suppose it is good to check, isn’t it?”

Lucas bites back a grin. “Yes, it is.”

“Alright.” Eliott takes a step backwards, turning on the spot. “Then I will, um…yes. Alright. Yes. Have a…pleasant day, Lucien.”

It comes out before Lucas even thinks of it, the desire to hear his own name in that honeyed voice overpowering the practical, rational side of his brain like an oceanic wave.

“Lucas,” he says quietly. Demaury whirls back towards him, mouth open in surprise. “You may call me Lucas.”

“Lucas,” Demaury says, and his mouth holds the letters are carefully and reverently as he held the cards, as though he’s not sure he’s allowed to touch such things.

Lucas is holding the curtain so tightly now he thinks there may be a real possibility he will rip it down. The burning in his chest has spread into his entire body, humming with something that feels a bit like magic, but also feels entirely separate from it.

“Have a pleasant day, Lucas.” Demaury whispers, and he’s smiling so sweetly at Lucas, his eyes crinkling, that Lucas lets one out in return. Just one small smile, only for one moment.

“Have a pleasant day, Monsieur Demaury.” He replies, and he watches as Demaury turns away, taking a few steps down the hallway before turning back towards Lucas, huffing a laugh when his eyes land on him and turning once again, towards the entrance of the theatre, and he disappears from sight, his footsteps swallowed up by the sounds of laughter and excited voices as people come and go within the theatre, searching for entertainment or searching for their future or searching for the very thing they did not know they would find.

Lucas exhales and steps back into his room. It feels different in there after Demaury, like the room itself is holding memory of his shape, of his presence. Lucas goes to the corner table and knocks back the rest of his tea, the remaining whiskey a welcome burn in his throat. He takes a large bite from a biscuit and chews slowly, thoughtfully, paces a circle around the room like he’s walking in a dream.

He stops in front of the round table, where the deck of cards sits like a northern star, pulling him forwards, leading him somewhere he cannot see.

He pops the rest of the biscuit into his mouth and picks the deck up, shutting his eyes and he shuffles, letting the energy of the cards guide every movement, every brush and slide of paper against paper. It’s a whirlwind of sensation behind his eyes, sounds and colours and feeling, but then there’s ah, there’s something, and Lucas plucks out a card, dropping it down onto the table.

He opens his eyes.

Not the Knight of Cups. Not what he was, possibly, expecting.

But the very thing he should have been expecting.

A circle with archaic symbols etched into its surface, each corner of the card occupied by a winged creature with watchful eyes. An unexpected turn of events. Fate being pushed into motion.

The Wheel of Fortune.

A laugh bursts out of Lucas, one that’s long and lingers and is full of wonder rather than spite, tapering off to giggles that shake his shoulders.

He sighs, running a finger along the card the same way Demaury did, as though touching the same edges of the wheel will feel like touching Demaury’s hand again.

“I see you’ve given up on subtlety altogether,” Lucas says. He says it to the cards, to the universe, to the magic in his bones and the great magnet that tugs the chains of fate along the surface of the Earth. He says it to all of them at once.

He lets out another laugh, at the impossibility of it all, at the wheel staring back at him so intently from the table, promising changes Lucas himself could never have predicted.

We are in motion.