Caraval Series, Book 1

by Stephanie Garber

  “Is that how you got injured?” she asked.

  “If you believe I’d get injured over costume jewelry, you’re thinking too highly of me again.” Julian pushed up from the sofa and started for the door.

  “Stop,” Scarlett said. “You can’t leave in your condition.”

  His head cocked to the side. “Is that an invitation to stay?”

  Scarlett hesitated.

  He was injured.

  That still didn’t make it appropriate.

  She was engaged, and even if she wasn’t—

  “I didn’t think so.” Julian grabbed the doorknob.

  “Wait—” Scarlett stopped him again. “You still haven’t told me what happened to you. Does it have something to do with the tunnels beneath Castillo Maldito?”

  Julian paused, his hand hovering over the knob as if suspended by an invisible thread. “What are you talking about?”

  “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.” Scarlett distinctly recalled the second set of screams she’d heard. “I followed you.”

  Julian’s expression sharpened; hair dark as wet feathers shadowed a brow pulled tight. “I wasn’t in any tunnels. If you were following someone, it wasn’t me.”

  “If you weren’t down there, then how did this happen?”

  “I swear, I’ve never heard about these tunnels.” Julian dropped his hand from the doorknob and took a step closer to Scarlett. “Tell me exactly what you saw down there.”

  The fire in the hearth finally died, sending a gray coil of smoke into the air, the color of things better said in whispers.

  Scarlett wanted to doubt him. If Julian had been down there it would explain at least a few things. Then again, if he’d been the other person she’d heard screaming, she imagined more than just his head would bear a wound.

  “I found the tunnels after I left the fortune-teller’s tent.” She detailed everything that followed, leaving out the bit about how she’d thought he had a heart made of black. After Julian had given her the earrings she’d stopped believing that was entirely true, though she still watched him carefully for any signs of deception. She wanted to trust him, but a lifetime of mistrust made it impossible. He still seemed unsteady on his feet, but she imagined it was mostly from the cut on his head. “Do you think it might be where they’re keeping Tella?” she asked.

  “That’s not how Legend works. He might lead us through screaming corridors to find a clue to your sister, but I doubt he’s keeping her there.” Julian flashed his teeth, reminding her of his wolfish look from that first night on the beach. “Legend likes his prisoners to feel like guests.”

  Scarlett tried to figure out if Julian was just being dramatic. She’d never heard of Legend holding anyone captive. But Julian had said something similar before, and his use of the word prisoners left Scarlett with the same uneasy feeling she’d had the first time she’d wondered why Legend had chosen to abduct her sister. “If Legend doesn’t have Tella locked up, then what is he doing with her?”

  “Now you’re finally starting to ask the right questions.” Julian’s eyes met Scarlett’s. There was a flicker of something dangerous, right before they began to shut and he swayed once more.

  “Julian!” Scarlett caught both his arms, but he was too heavy to hold, and the couch was too far. She pressed against him. He’d gone from cold to almost feverish. Heat poured from his skin through his shirt, warming her in unexpected ways as she held him up to the door with her body.

  “Crimson,” Julian murmured as his eyes flickered back open. Light brown, the color of caramel and liquid amber lust.

  “I think you need to lie back down.” Scarlett started to back away, but Julian’s arms wrapped around her waist. As hot as his chest and just as solid.

  Scarlett tried to wiggle free, but the look on his face stopped her. He’d never stared at her like this before. Sometimes he gazed at her as if he wanted to be her undoing, but just then it was as if he wanted her to undo him. It was probably just the fever and the head wound. But for a moment, she swore he wanted to kiss her. Really kiss her, not like when he’d been teasing in the Castillo. Her heartbeat quickened and every inch of her felt sensitive to every part of him as his hot hands roamed up her back. She knew she should have pulled away, but his hands seemed to know exactly what they were doing, and she found herself letting him guide her, gently bringing her closer as his lips parted.

  Scarlett gasped.

  Julian’s hands stopped moving. Her tiny sound seemed to jolt him back. His eyes opened wider, as if he suddenly remembered he thought she was just a silly girl afraid to play a game. He released her and cold air replaced the heat of his hands.

  “I think it’s time for me to go.” He reached for the doorknob. “I’ll find you in the tavern right after sunset. We can go take a look at those tunnels together.”

  Julian slipped out the door, leaving Scarlett wondering what had just happened. It would have been a mistake to kiss him, yet she felt … disappointed. It came in cool shades of forget-me-not blue, which wrapped around her like evening fog, making her feel hidden enough to acknowledge that she wanted to experience more of Caraval’s pleasures than she would ever have admitted out loud.

  It wasn’t until Scarlett lay back down that she realized Julian had managed to avoid telling her exactly how he got injured. Or, how he managed to make it back to La Serpiente, long after the sun had come up and the doors had locked.

  NIGHT TWO OF CARAVAL

  18

  Scarlett didn’t notice the roses at first.

  White with ruby-red tips, like the blossoms speckling her room’s papered walls. That must have been why she’d not seen them before she’d fallen asleep. She told herself the flowers blended into the room. Someone hadn’t come in while she was sleeping.

  But what she really meant was, Legend had not entered her room while she’d slumbered.

  Though his early notes had felt like tiny treasures, something about this latest gift resembled a warning. She wasn’t certain the flowers were from Legend. There was no note next to their crystal vase, but she couldn’t imagine they were from anyone else. Four roses, one for every night that remained of Caraval.

  It was the fifteenth. The game officially ended at dawn on the nineteenth, and her wedding was on the twentieth. Scarlett only had that night and the following night to find Tella, or at the very latest by dawn on the eighteenth, if she wanted to leave the island in time for her wedding.

  Scarlett imagined her father could keep her kidnapping a secret from the count if her fiancé arrived on Trisda early; there were old superstitions about a groom not seeing a bride. However there’d be no salvaging her wedding if Scarlett never showed up for it.

  Scarlett reached into her pocket and pulled out the note with the clues once again:

  Scarlett no longer believed that Julian was the third clue, the boy with the heart made of black. But she couldn’t dismiss the feeling he was keeping things from her. She continued to wonder how he’d been wounded, how he’d retrieved her earrings, and about their almost-kiss. Though she couldn’t think about the kiss now. Not when she was marrying the count in only five days.

  And because all that mattered was finding Tella.

  Scarlett hurried to make herself presentable, but her dress seemed to be in less of a rush. It took its time shifting into a lovely cream-and-pink creation, with a milky-white bodice covered in delicate black dots and lined with pink lace, a bustle made of stylish matching bows, and a smart-looking skirt of brushed pink silk. Somehow the dress had managed to fit her with buttoned gloves as well.

  Scarlett had a twisting feeling the gown had gone to extra trouble to impress Julian. Or maybe she was only hoping it would have that effect. His abrupt departure the day before had left her with a multitude of battling feelings, and even more questions.

  Scarlett prepared to press the sailor for answers. But when she went to meet him, Scarlett found the tavern mostly empty. Soft jade light lit only one patr
on—a dark-haired girl hunched over a notebook who sat near the glass fireplace. She didn’t even look up at Scarlett, though others did, as the hour waxed by and the room began to fill.

  There were still no signs of Julian.

  Had he taken what she’d learned about the tunnels and left her waiting in the tavern so he could search them for clues all alone?

  Or maybe distrust should not always be her first response.

  Julian had his faults, but even though he’d left her on a couple of occasions, each time it was only for a short duration and he always came back. Had something happened? She wondered if she needed to search for him. But what if she left and then he appeared?

  With every thought she watched her buttoned gloves turn from white to black, and she could feel the neckline of her gown transforming from a heart shape to a high collar. Thankfully it wasn’t turning sheer, but the silk was shifting to uncomfortable crepe and she could see the tiny black dots on her bodice growing larger, spreading like stains all over her gown. Reflecting her worries.

  She tried to relax, hoping Julian would show up soon and her gown would go back to normal. Glimpsing herself in the table’s glass, she looked as if she were in mourning, though that didn’t stop people from talking to her.

  “Aren’t you the sister of that missing girl?” One patron asked the question, and suddenly a small herd of people was upon her.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know anything.” Scarlett repeated the phrase until one by one they all departed.

  “You should try to have some fun with them.” The girl who’d been sitting quietly, poring over a journal, appeared at Scarlett’s table. As pretty as a watercolor and dressed as bold as a trumpet in a golden gown, daringly sleeveless, with ruffles up to her neck and a bright chartreuse bustle, she folded herself into the glass chair across from Scarlett. “If I were you I’d tell them all sorts of things. Say you saw your sister arm-in-arm with a man in a cape, or that you found a bit of fur on one of her gloves that looked as if it belonged to an elephant.”

  Were elephants even furry?

  For a moment Scarlett just stared at the curious girl. It didn’t even seem to occur to her that Scarlett might not want to talk about her sister that way, or that she was waiting for someone else. This girl was that hot sunny day in the middle of the Cold Season, either unaware or uncaring that she did not belong.

  “People don’t expect the truth here,” the girl went on, undeterred. “They don’t want it either. A lot of the people here don’t expect to win the wish; they come here for an adventure. You might as well give them one. I know it’s in you, otherwise you wouldn’t have been invited.” The girl sparkled, from her metallic skirt to the matching gold lines of paint around her angular eyes.

  She didn’t look like a thief, but after Scarlett’s experience with the strawberry blonde the night before, she wasn’t feeling particularly trusting.

  “Who are you?” Scarlett asked. “And what do you want?”

  “You can call me Aiko. And maybe I don’t want anything.”

  “Everyone who’s playing wants something.”

  “Then I suppose it’s a good thing I’m not actually playing—” Aiko cut off as a new couple approached.

  Barely older than Scarlett, and obviously newlywed, the young man held his young bride’s hand with the care of a man not used to holding such an important thing.

  “’Scuse me, miss.” He spoke with a foreign accent that took a bit of concentration to discern. “We’s were wonderin’, are you really Donatella’s sister?”

  Aiko nodded encouragingly. “She is, and she’d be delighted to answer your questions.”

  The couple brightened. “Oh, thank you, miss. Yesternight when we made it to ’er room everything was picked clean. We’s were jus’ hopin’ for some bit o’ a clue.”

  The mention of Tella’s scavenged room set something ablaze inside of Scarlett, yet the couple looked so sincere. They didn’t seem to be mercenaries who would sell things to the highest bidder. Their threadbare clothes were in worse shape than Scarlett’s blackened dress, yet their clasped hands and hopeful expressions reminded her of what the game was meant to be. Or what she’d thought it was meant to be. Joy. Magic. Wonder.

  “I wish I could tell you where my sister was, but I haven’t seen her since I—” Scarlett hesitated as their faces fell, and she remembered how Aiko had said people at Caraval didn’t expect or want the truth: They come here for an adventure. You might as well give them one.

  “Actually, my sister asked me to meet her—near a fountain with a mermaid.” The lie sounded ridiculous to Scarlett’s ears, but the couple lapped it up like a bowl of sweetened cream, their faces alighting at the prospect of a clue.

  “Oh, I think I know dat statue,” said the young woman. “Is it da one with a ’ottom all covered in ’earls?”

  Scarlett wasn’t sure exactly what the woman was trying to say, but she sent them off with a nod and wished them the best of luck.

  “See?” said Aiko. “Look how happy you just made them.”

  “But I lied to them,” said Scarlett.

  “You’re missing the point of the game,” said Aiko. “They didn’t travel here for truth, they came for an adventure, and you just sent them on one. Maybe they won’t find anything, but perchance they will; the game sometimes has a way of rewarding people just for trying. Either way that couple is happier than you. I’ve been watching, and you’ve been sitting here as sour as rotten milk for the past hour.”

  “You would be too if your sister was missing.”

  “Oh, poor you. Here you are on a magical isle and all you can think of is what you don’t have.”

  “But it’s my—”

  “Your sister, I know,” said Aiko. “I also know you’ll find her at the end when all of this is over and you’ll wish you’d not spent your evenings sitting in this stinking tavern feeling sorry for yourself.”

  It was the exact sort of thing Tella would have said. A masochistic part of Scarlett felt she owed her sister some sort of tithe made of misery, but maybe it was the opposite. Knowing Tella, she would have been more disappointed in Scarlett for not enjoying Legend’s isle.

  “I’m not going to sit here all night,” Scarlett said. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Is that someone late, or are you just very early?” Aiko raised two painted brows. “I hate to inform you of this, but I don’t think whoever it is you’re waiting for is going to be showing up.”

  Scarlett’s eyes darted to the door for the hundredth time that evening, still hoping to see Julian walk through. She had been so sure he would come, but if there was a respectable time to wait for someone, she’d surpassed it.

  Scarlett pushed up from her chair.

  “Does this mean you’ve decided not to sit around anymore?” Aiko rose elegantly from her own seat, clutching her notebook close, as the back door to the tavern swung open once more.

  A pair of giggling young women stepped in, followed by the last person Scarlett wanted to see. He stormed inside like a foul wind made of messy black clothes and mud-caked boots, more disheveled than he’d been the last time she’d seen him—Dante’s dark pants were rumpled, as if he’d slept in them, and his tailcoat was gone.

  Scarlett remembered how Julian had said Dante wanted Legend’s wish to fix something that had happened during an earlier Caraval. Right now Dante looked more desperate than ever to win it.

  Scarlett prayed his eyes would pass over her. After their last encounter she wasn’t ready for another confrontation with him; waiting for Julian had already sliced her nerves to ribbons and turned her dress black. But even as Scarlett hoped Dante wouldn’t notice her, her eyes continued to fall on him. On the sleeves he’d bunched up around his forearms, and the tattoos they exposed.

  Specifically, a black tattoo shaped like a heart.

  19

  Follow the boy with a heart made of black.

  Nigel’s words rushed back to Scarlett right as Dante�
�s eyes fell on her. The look he gave her was pure loathing. But rather than frightening Scarlett, it ignited something inside her; she imagined this was the game’s way of testing her resolve to play without Julian’s help.

  When Dante disappeared out the tavern’s back door, Scarlett dashed outside after him. She didn’t realize how toasty it had been in the tavern until she escaped into the brittle evening. Crisp, like the first bite of a chilled apple, smelling just as sweet, with hints of burnt sugar weaving through the charcoal night air. Around her, the people on the street were as thick as a murder of crows.

  Scarlett thought she glimpsed Dante slip onto a covered bridge, but once she reached the bridge it contained nothing but lantern light, and led to a disappointing dead end. All Scarlett found after she crossed it was an alley made of brick walls, and a cider cart manned by a cute boy with a monkey on his shoulder.

  “Can I interest you in some burnt-sugar cider?” asked the boy. “It will make you see things more clearly.”

  “Oh, no—I’m looking for someone, with tattoos all over his arms, all black clothes, and an angry look on his face.”

  “I think he might have bought some cider last night, but I haven’t seen him tonight. Good luck!” called the boy as Scarlett darted back onto the bridge.

  Once she reached the other side, she spied a number of young men with untidy black clothes—at this point in the game, everyone was starting to appear a bit ragged around the edges—but no one had arms covered in ink. Scarlett continued weaving through the crowd, until she caught sight of someone with what looked like a black heart tattoo heading up a set of emerald stairs a few shops past the Glass Tavern.

  Picking up the hem of her skirt, Scarlett rushed to follow her black-hearted boy. She tore up the stairs and onto another covered bridge. But when she reached the other side of the bridge, all she found was another dead end and another cute boy, again with a cider cart and a monkey.