It’s strange, that the sensation of Ari’s anger remains even after it leaves her. The familiar and the outrage, Naomi surrenders both the burdensome little animals, but there’s still the tension in her knuckles and her jaw, the burning at the back of her throat. The physicality of the emotion lingers, maybe. Or maybe it is Naomi who’s angry.

More wine is poured and Menagerie shuffles the deck, cards flashing between his ringed fingers with a speed that might be magical and might be practiced deftness. Even in the midst of all this, Naomi’s hands want for her pen, her notebook, the chance to keep record.

There’s something about this place, or rather its inhabitants, how mathematic and perfectly selfish they are, that Naomi finds more sympathetic than the people she is often surrounded with. Or, no, sympathetic is not the word—more comprehensible. Say again that Naomi is like a war photographer, which means she is not like a soldier or a battlefield surgeon. Even the war photographers must feel twinges sometimes, but it doesn’t do to live inside the twinge. Maybe, even, say Naomi is the camera; only here to click the shutter in her mind.

She looks at her cards.

Queen High, White, White Prince, White Oracle.

Well, fuck. Something bucks and lurches in Naomi’s stomach, because she is holding part of a Full Court, an exceptionally good hand.

For her bet, Oracle tosses Ari’s fingers onto the table in a clattering handful, and Naomi watches them roll. This is hardly the first or the most awful time she has played with pieces of somebody else. How old now is the firstborn child she saw wagered so many games ago, if it has even been born yet? Will he have any idea that he was cast onto the table? And yet this is not Naomi’s business. If they are going to use this boy as poker chips, she may as well cash in. “Bet. His memory.”

Cupbearer does not bother with the careful finger signs this time. He tips his chair back and lifts his leg onto the table.

The third round is when the favor is offered. It is when you bet high, bet early, fold late.

Perhaps Ari has noticed this. “Bet. My last name.”

What will it be like for him to go without that? What will it be like for him, to not share a name anymore with his mother, or his sister, whose name in his memory was alight with fondness? The people that Naomi has given up pieces of, her parents, her sister, her first girlfriend, whose love she has excised from her body in bite-sized pieces; she does not think they would be surprised. She thinks that Ari’s people would. Naomi has a mind for detail, and so it is the details that are unfortunate.