“The Emperor to my Empress,” I say, ignoring the urge to classify Chase as the Minor to my Major. That time feels like it has maybe passed.

Chase and I might be setting out on diverging paths very soon, but these paths will always have started in the same place. So I just hope that means we’ll end up in the same place, too. Until then, we’ll always have this trip—and the tarot we inherited—to keep us connected.

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“You’re walking away from all this, too?” I ask.

“It feels kind of necessary, doesn’t it?” Chase answers. “How are we going to figure out who we’re supposed to be if we cling to the things we already know? Besides, I’ve never really been much for the whole organized religion thing.”

“Yeah, the tarot feels more personal to me. But you already knew that.”

“You’re really okay leaving behind this last part Perilli and Gran Flo left you with?” Chase asks.

“Maybe not forever,” I answer. “But definitely for now.”

Chase and I catch each other’s eyes then, with looks full of meaning. In so many ways, we’re cut from the same cloth, despite all the ways we differ. Two halves of the same whole, smoothing out each other’s roughest corners. But what happens when you separate these halves? Whether we like it or not, that discovery is exactly what this next chapter has to be about.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the Major Arcana’s end,” Chase says. “How it’s all about achieving a new consciousness, a new perspective. But even after shifts like this, you don’t enter a new world—you just see the same world differently. I have a feeling the lessons we just learned are lessons we’ll end up relearning the rest of our lives, over and over again in different ways.”

“Okay, preacher Chase,” I laugh, nudging him. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to say this,” Chase says, smiling too. “We always thought of ourselves as two halves of one whole, Minor and Major. But maybe we’re really meant to be two wholes, like The Sun and The Moon, existing separately, but always together in cycles. Speaking in non-tarot terms, I just mean that no matter how much we grow and change, you’ll always be my best friend.”

Emotion stirs in my chest yet again, hearing Chase’s words.

“Now you’re talking like a true king.”

“And you too, my queen.”

I lock arms with Chase as we walk. Impossible as it still seems, I start to feel the future arriving, like water staining the edges of paper. Things won’t ever be like they were before. But maybe, if we let them, things will be even better?

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