Naomi knows now that Cupbearer was not just beautiful once. She knows that he was smart, quick with his own words and other people’s, vain, and too desperate to impress just for the sake of it. She knows that he took great pleasure in himself, his life, and Ari. She knows what it is like to kiss him, and to badly want him closer.

What would it be like to have yourself stripped away in layers? Memory and pleasure, thought and self-knowledge. Love. She didn’t know the weight of that poetry when she won it.

“Bet,” says Magpie. “Spell of healing.”

If Cupbearer could speak, she could ask him what it was like. She’s paid too much attention to him and Ari both, considered them too much outside the relevant context of the game, and now her mind keeps turning up questions for them. How did they get from the point A of that stolen memory to the point B of this night? What came between having and losing? Let’s say this is like an intimate interview. Except that there is nothing actually important for her to learn from them, and it isn’t like that at all.

Menagerie deals the next three cards.

White Horseman, Blood Oracle, White Cat. That’s four cards now toward a Full Court. The bottom swoops out of Naomi’s stomach.

The thing is, theoretically—

Theoretically, Naomi could play toward a Corruption hand, or Changeling High, or Treason, all these easy, inconspicuous things, which are plausible strategies for a cautious player but unlikely to win without impressive luck.

Or she could play toward a Full Court hand. Far more difficult, but an almost certain win, and this is the best foundation Naomi has had for one in the first turn since she learned the game.

And Naomi has learned the game. Naomi is good at it.

Imagine winning a favor from the fair folk. Naomi has a mathematical love for infinitesimal odds. Naomi has always, quietly, yearned to know if she could do it. And would it have to mean, if she did win—would it really have to mean she couldn’t come back? Some winners must return, even if she has yet to observe them. Some fish must double back to the hook, because after all it did not kill them last time; last time they got away well fed. Couldn’t Naomi be addicted to the thrill?