Magpie shakes her head, slow half rotations that could be accompanied by the grinding of gears. Not enough. Naomi draws blood from her lower lip. She is going to win, she cannot fold, what has she brought with her?

“And my last name. And my right thumb.”

It is enough. It is barely enough.

There is nothing left, Naomi realizes, for Cupbearer to bet. He is shivering, fine and frail, all up and down his body. Lost his leg and his rib and himself. Naomi wishes that she could spare him this part. What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why. She does not love him, but she has loved him. He has bet his fear, so what is he feeling now?

He folds.

He makes, of course, no sound as his ribs crack from his torso. He crumples over himself. Sweat lies glittering on his featureless face. His body is stacked like steaks in a butcher shop, leg and set of ribs. Jesus fucking Christ.

Naomi waits for Magpie to turn over her cards. She must know, now, that Naomi has the Full Court.

“Raise.”

Naomi startles, and then there is a cold, insectoid creeping over her bones. There is one hand that beats a White Full Court, and that is a Black Full Court. The Black Queen High, Black Consort, Black Prince, these cards have not been folded, nor have enough court cards that Naomi could safely rule this hand out.

“Free and safe passage from this place.”

There is no arguing that this bet is valuable, but Naomi has never seen it offered before. She does not understand what it means. It is a threat of sorts, maybe. All of Magpie’s teeth are so very white, and the inside of her mouth is black-bruised like a dog’s jowls. It makes Naomi think of starlight.

“For you,” she susurrates, “and any comrades. And your book.”

And so she knows.

She’s laid Naomi bare like a moth pinned to paper. Exact and scientific, all her research and all her doubts, and who knows how long she has known or what else she knows? Who knows what the fay are capable of knowing, and who knows if there has been someone fair sitting behind Naomi on her train home while she scribbled into her notebook? Beneath the electric terror she feels a pulsing, hot humiliation. She has thought herself clever, swimming away from the baited hook, but what hidden set of jaws has she been propelling herself toward instead? She has sneered, quietly and sometimes guiltily, though sometimes not, at the fools who wander in here thinking to turn the game to their own purposes, fancying themselves hero of this story. But who is she, who let herself believe that when she left whole and fat with knowledge, this was down to her own intelligence, her competence? Who did not stop to wonder if the fair folk might only be playing with their food? Safe passage away.