Caraval Series, Book 1

by Stephanie Garber

  He licked her finger a final time; a shiver coursed through her so painfully cold it felt hot. Then he was lying beside her on the bed, weighing it down as he brought her into the cradle of his arms. Her back fit perfectly against his chest, solid and strong. She burrowed against him, attempting to fight off death for another minute and hold on to him instead.

  “You’re going to be fine.” Julian stroked her hair as her vision went dark.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He said something else, but all she felt was his hand brush her cheek. So soft she thought she imagined it, along with the tender press of his lips to the back of her neck, right before she died.

  21

  Death was the color purple. Purple wallpaper and purple temperatures. Her nana’s purple gown—only the honey-blond young woman wearing the gown, and sitting in the purple chair, looked much more like Donatella.

  Her cheeks were full of color, her smile full of mischief, and the bruise that had marred her face days ago was healed, leaving her looking healthier than she had in ages. If Scarlett’s heart had been beating, it would have stopped. “Tella, is that really you?”

  “I know you’re dead right now,” Tella said, “but you should try to come up with better questions. We don’t have much time.”

  Before Scarlett could respond, her sister opened the ancient book on her lap. Much larger than the journal Aiko carried around in life, this book was the size of a tombstone, and the color of dark fairy tales—black ice covered with tarnished gold script. It swallowed Scarlett with its leather-bound mouth, and spit her onto a chilly sidewalk.

  Donatella materialized beside her, though she looked less corporeal than before, transparent around the edges.

  Scarlett didn’t feel very solid herself; her head was fuzzy from dreaming and dying and all that came with it, but this time she managed to ask, “Where can I find you?”

  “If I told you, that would be cheating,” Tella sang. “You need to watch.”

  In front of them, a purple sun fell behind a grand home, similar to the turreted building that housed Caraval, but smaller, and painted dark plum with violet trim.

  The girl inside it wore a shade of purple as well. Again, it looked like her nana’s purple dress. In fact it was that gown, only this time the woman who wore it was her nana, a much younger version, almost as pretty as she had claimed, with golden-blond curls that reminded Scarlett of Tella.

  Her arms were wrapped around a dark-haired young man who seemed to think she would look better without the purple dress on. He also looked a great deal like her grandfather, before his body went to fat and his nose filled with blue veins. The young man’s fingers fumbled with the purple gown’s laces.

  “Ugh,” Tella said. “I don’t want to see this part.” She vanished again as Scarlett scrambled to find anywhere else to look. But everywhere she turned she saw the same window.

  “Oh,” her young grandfather mumbled, “Annalise.”

  Scarlett had never heard her grandmother called that name; she’d always been just Anna. But something about the name Annalise rang familiar.

  Then bells were ringing everywhere. Bells of mourning, in a world covered in mist and black roses.

  The purple house was gone and Scarlett was on a new street, surrounded by people wearing black hats and even gloomier expressions.

  “I knew they were full of evil,” said a man. “Rosa would never have died if they hadn’t come.”

  Black rose petals rained on a funeral procession, and without being told who they were, Scarlett knew the man referred to the players of Caraval. A woman had died during Caraval’s long history. The year Caraval had stopped traveling, after rumors started that Legend had murdered her.

  Rosa must have been that woman, thought Scarlett.

  “This dream is just awful, isn’t it?” Tella reappeared once again, though now her image was ghostly sheer. “I’ve never really liked black. When I die, will you please tell everyone to wear brighter clothes at my funeral?”

  “Tella, you’re not going to die,” Scarlett scolded.

  Tella’s image flickered like a candle lacking confidence. “I might if you don’t win this game. Legend likes to—”

  Tella vanished.

  “Donatella!” Scarlett called for her sister. “Tella!” But she seemed to be gone for good this time. No more traces of her purple dress or blond curls. Just a funeral of endless gloom.

  Scarlett could feel the gray press of everyone’s grief as she continued to listen, hoping to learn what Tella had been unable to say, as words of mourning switched to gossip.

  “Sad, sad story,” whispered one woman to another. “When Rosa’s fiancé won the game, his prize was finding her in bed with Legend.”

  “But I heard she was the one who called off their wedding,” said the other woman.

  “She did, right after her fiancé caught them. Rosa said she was in love with Legend and wanted to be with him instead. But Legend laughed and said she’d gotten too carried away with the game.”

  “I thought no one ever saw Legend,” said the other woman.

  “No one sees him more than once; they say he wears a different face every game. Beautiful but cruel. I heard he was there when Rosa flung herself out the window, and he didn’t even try to stop her.”

  “Monster.”

  “I thought he pushed her,” said a third woman.

  “Not physically,” said the first. “Legend likes to play twisted games with people, and one of his favorites is making girls fall in love with him. Rosa jumped the day after he discarded her, after her parents found out and refused to let her return home. Her fiancé blames himself, though. His servants say he moans Rosa’s name in his sleep every night.”

  The three women turned as a young man trudged by at the very rear of the procession. His dark hair was not so long and his hands contained no ink from tattoos—no rose for Rosa—but Scarlett recognized him right away. Dante.

  This must have been why he wanted to win the wish so badly, to bring his fiancée back to life.

  Just then, Dante’s head cocked in Scarlett’s direction. But his wounded eyes did not fall on her. They roamed the crowd as if hunting. Searching through the thickening curtain of black flower petals. A soft puddle of them formed around Scarlett’s feet, and several petals covered Dante’s eyes as he walked past her. The flowers blinded him from seeing the one person whom Scarlett imagined he’d been looking for, a young man in a velvet-rimmed top hat only a few paces from where she stood.

  All the air raced from Scarlett’s lungs. In every other dream Legend’s face had not been clear, but this time she could see him perfectly. His handsome face held no emotion, his light-brown eyes were void of warmth, no hint of a smile curved his lips; he was a shadow of the boy she’d come to know. Julian.

  DAY FOUR OF CARAVAL

  22

  The world tasted like lies and ashes when Scarlett woke. Damp blankets clung to sweaty skin, wet with nightmares and visions of black roses. At least Aiko had not lied about remembering the dreams. Scarlett’s memories of her last moments alive were still blurry but her dreams were vivid. They felt as solid and real as the heavy arms encasing her.

  Julian.

  His hand rested just above her breast. Scarlett sucked in a sharp breath. His fingers were cool against her skin while the marble ice of his chest pressed to her back with an unbeating heart inside. Her body shuddered, but she didn’t so much as whimper, afraid it might wake him from his deadly slumber.

  She could picture the way he’d looked in her dream, wearing that top hat. A callous expression. Exactly the type of look she would have pictured on Legend, and Julian was certainly as attractive as she’d always imagined Legend to be.

  She recalled the innkeeper’s frightened eyes when she’d first seen Julian. Scarlett had thought it was because they were Legend’s guests, but what if it was because Julian really was Legend? He knew so much about Caraval. He’d known what to do when she’d bee
n dying. And Julian could have easily put the roses in her room.

  A sudden heartbeat pressed against her back.

  Julian’s heart.

  Or was it Legend’s heart?

  No.

  Scarlett closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. She’d been warned about this, the game playing tricks on her. It couldn’t be true. She didn’t know when it had happened, but somewhere, at some point, in this strange world full of impossible, Julian had started to mean something to her. She’d begun to trust him. But if Julian really was Legend, everything significant to her had only been part of a game to him.

  Julian’s solid chest rose and fell against her back, as heat slowly returned to him. Scarlett felt warmth wherever their bodies aligned. The space behind her knees. The small of her back. Her breath came out in uneven wisps as he leaned farther into her, his fingers drifting up to her collarbone.

  A prick of blue on the tip of one of his fingers brought a flush to her cheeks as she remembered his blood on her tongue and the way his lips had felt as he’d tasted her. The most intimate thing she’d ever done. She needed that to be real. She wanted Julian to be real.

  But …

  This wasn’t just about what she wanted. Scarlett remembered every time Julian had told her that Legend knew how to take care of his guests. According to her dream, he did more than just take care of them. He’d made that woman fall so madly in love, it had driven her to suicide. Legend likes to play twisted games with people, and one of his favorites is making girls fall in love with him. The words from her dream gurgled up like vomit in Scarlett’s throat. If Julian was Legend, he’d been enticing Tella before the game even started. Perhaps he’d even seduced them both.

  Nausea coated Scarlett’s stomach at that awful possibility. With disturbing clarity, she recalled those last moments before she’d died, and how she would have given him more than just her blood if he’d only asked.

  She needed to escape from Julian’s arms before he woke. She was still trying to hold on to the hope he wasn’t Legend, but it was too much of a risk to assume otherwise. She would never throw herself out of a window for any man, but her sister was more impulsive. Scarlett had learned to temper her feelings, yet Tella was driven by her volatile emotions and desires. Scarlett could see how both Legend and this game could easily drive Tella to the same unhappy ending as Rosa, if Scarlett did not save her.

  Scarlett needed to leave and find Dante. If Rosa had been his fiancée, she imagined he would know if Julian was really Legend.

  Holding her breath, Scarlett took Julian’s wrist and carefully pried one hand from her waist.

  “Crimson,” he murmured.

  Scarlett sucked in a gasp as the fingers that had been on her collarbone lingered up the column of her neck, leaving a prickly trail of ice and fire. He was still asleep.

  But he would wake up soon.

  No longer bothering with caution, Scarlett slid off the bed and landed in a heap on the floor. Her clothes now looked somewhere between a mourning dress and a nightgown, black lace and not enough fabric, but she didn’t have time to change into her new dress, and in that moment she didn’t care.

  As she pushed up from the ground, she calculated that it must be exactly one day since she had died. It was the cusp of sunup on the seventeenth, giving her only one night to find Tella before she had to leave for her wed—

  Scarlett froze as she caught her reflection in the mirror. Her thick dark hair now had a slender streak of gray ripping through it. At first she thought it a trick of the light, but it was there: her fingers shook as she touched it—right near the temple, impossible to hide with a braid. Scarlett had never thought of herself as vain, but in that moment she wanted to cry.

  The game was not supposed to be real, but it was having very genuine consequences. If this was the price of a dress, what else would it cost her to get Tella back? Would she be strong enough?

  Red-eyed, and still looking half dead, Scarlett didn’t feel particularly tough. The chain of fear around her throat choked her as she thought of how little time she had. But if Nigel, the fortune-teller, was right about fate, then there was no omnipotent hand determining her destiny; she needed to stop letting her worries control it. She might have felt weak, but her love for her sister was not.

  The sun had recently risen, so she couldn’t leave the inn, but she could make the most of her day by searching La Serpiente for Dante.

  As she stepped out of her room, candlelight flickered across the crooked hall, buttery and warm, but something about the space felt wrong. The scent. The usual hints of sweat and fading fire smoke were mired with heavier, harsher scents. Anise and lavender and something akin to rotted plums.

  No.

  Scarlett had only a blink to panic as she watched her father step around the corner.

  She darted back into her room, locked the door, and prayed to the stars—if there was a god or saints, they hated her. How had her father gotten there? If he found her and Tella now, Scarlett had no doubt he would kill her sister as punishment.

  Scarlett wanted to think the sight of her father was a cruel hallucination, but it made more sense to believe he’d figured out her sister’s kidnapping ruse. And maybe the master of Caraval somehow managed to send him a hint. Tell me who you fear the most, the woman had said, and Scarlett had been foolish enough to answer.

  What had she done to make Legend hate her so? Even if Julian wasn’t Legend, it felt very personal now, though Scarlett couldn’t fathom why. Perhaps it was all the letters she’d sent? Or maybe Legend just had a sadistic sense of humor and Scarlett was an easy person to torment? Or maybe—

  The beginning of Scarlett’s dream rushed back in awful shades of purple, followed by one name, Annalise. During the vision she’d been unable to make the connection, but now she remembered her nana’s stories about Legend’s origin. How he’d been in love with a girl who’d broken his heart by marrying another. Had her grandmother been Legend’s Anna—

  “Crimson?” Julian sat up in the bed. “What are you doing against the door like that?”

  “I—” Scarlett froze.

  His wild dark hair framed a face cloaked with convincing concern, but all she could see was the soulless look Julian had worn as he watched the funeral procession of the girl who’d killed herself after he’d made her fall in love with him.

  Legend.

  Her heartbeat pounded. She told herself it wasn’t true. Julian wasn’t Legend. Yet she pressed harder against the door as Julian pushed up off the bed and stalked toward her, his steps surprisingly sure and even for someone who’d just awoken from death.

  If he was Legend, somewhere in this magical world he’d built was her sister. Scarlett wanted to demand an answer. She wanted to smack him in the face once again. But tipping her hand right now would not help. If Julian really was Legend, and this twisted game was all some way to get back at her grandmother for breaking his heart, the only advantage Scarlett had was that he did not know she’d discovered him.

  “Crimson, you’re not looking too good. How long ago did you wake up?” Julian lifted his hand and brushed cool knuckles to her cheek. “You have no idea how much you scared me, I—”

  “I’m fine,” Scarlett cut him off, and slid to the side. She didn’t want him touching her.

  Julian clenched his jaw. All his earlier concern was gone, replaced with—Scarlett wanted to think it was anger, but it wasn’t. It was hurt. She could see the sting of her rejection in shades of stormy blue, ghosting over his heart like sad morning mist.

  Scarlett had always seen her own emotions in color, but she’d never seen another person’s. She didn’t know what shocked her more, that she could now see the color of Julian’s feelings, or that those feelings were so wounded.

  She tried to imagine how Julian would be feeling if he weren’t Legend. Before she’d died, they’d shared something extraordinarily special. She remembered how gently he’d carried her up to their room. How he’d given up a day of
his life for her. How strong and safe his arms had felt as he’d cradled her on the bed. She could even see the evidence of his sacrifice; in the midst of the dark stubble lining his jaw, there was a thin silver streak—matching the new stripe in her hair. And now Scarlett wouldn’t even touch him.

  “I’m sorry,” Scarlett said. “It’s just—I think I’m still shaken up from what happened. If I’m acting strange, I’m sorry. I’m not thinking clearly. I’m sorry,” she repeated, which may have been too many sorrys.

  A muscle ticked in Julian’s neck. He clearly didn’t believe her. “Maybe you should lie back down.”

  “You know I can’t get back in that bed with you,” Scarlett snapped. It was what she would have said before, but her words came out harsher than she intended.

  Julian wiped every emotion from his face, yet the turbulent colors hovering over his heart told Scarlett he was far from unfeeling. His hurt now mingled with a shade of something Scarlett had never seen. The color was indiscernible, not quite silver or gray, but she swore she could feel the sharp emotion behind it—maybe it was because they’d shared blood?

  Her lungs were tight, and so was her throat. Every breath hurt as Julian strode over to the other door. “I wasn’t planning on getting back in bed with you,” he said.

  Scarlett tried to respond, but now her vocal cords were closed and her eyes were stinging. It wasn’t until Julian stepped out of the room that she could breathe once more, and she realized: when he left, it felt as if he was closing the door on her as well.

  * * *

  Scarlett stood with her body pressed against the wall, fighting the urge to run after Julian, to apologize for acting so strange and awful. When he walked out the door, she would have sworn he wasn’t Legend, but she couldn’t risk trusting him and being wrong.

  No, Scarlett corrected herself.

  She could risk being wrong.