It made her wonder at all the other things he’d said to her in the past without words. By the time they reached the top of the steps and the room with the Ruscica, Tella was grateful the library swallowed up sound. It didn’t enhance her other senses, but it made her more aware of them, and more aware of Legend as he came up beside her and silently brushed his fingers against hers. The movement was quick and subtle, and she might not have noticed it if she’d been standing there waiting for him to speak, rather than paying attention to his silence.
The map didn’t give any indication of where in the room the Ruscica rested, forcing her and Legend to split up as they searched. Many of the volumes had spines covered in numbers, symbols, or languages she didn’t read. There were also a few spines with titles that she would have liked to read, had she not felt pressed for time.
Mermaids and Mermen and How to Become One
Ten Essential Rules of Time Travel
Shape-shifting for Beginners
Cakes, Cakes, and More Cakes
Turning Your Shadow into a Pet
Love, Death, and Immortality
She might have picked up the book on cakes or immortality, had the latter not been sitting right next to a thick flesh-colored volume with one word crudely stitched into the spine: Ruscica.
The book slid out from the shelf in a cloud of red-tinged dust that made the tips of Tella’s fingers tingle as she took it.
She found Legend on the opposite side of the silent room. When she showed him her prize, he smiled. Neither of them knew if it would have the information they needed, but Tella finally felt victorious as Legend took her hand again.
* * *
After the Maiden Death and the Assassin had visited his home in the Spice Quarter, Legend had decided they needed to move every night. But a part of Tella thought he was just showing off his many homes. His four-story coastal cottage looked as if it had been built around the same time as Count Nicolas’s estate, but whereas Nicolas’s estate had appeared as if it was in need of magic, Legend’s house was the opposite. Full of glittering windows and expansive balconies that looked over the foaming ocean, the house sat on Valenda’s rocky coast the way that Tella imagined Legend would have sat on his throne, demanding attention by simply being there.
They’d started about a mile away, and Legend’s fingers stayed entwined with hers for the entire walk. She should have broken free; earlier his touch had grounded her, as he pulled her through the spiders and steadied her in the library. But now, he wasn’t helping, he was making a claim. Tella reminded herself that nothing good could come from this as she looked down on their clasped hands. But she didn’t let go. He had long fingers, strong palms, neatly trimmed nails—and no traces of ink.
She lifted their hands, peering closer. “Your black rose is gone?”
“Did you really think I’d keep it?” He dragged her hand up to his mouth and brushed a kiss to her knuckles. “You don’t have to be jealous of the tattoo anymore.”
“I wasn’t jealous.”
“Then maybe I should have left it on longer.” The rose reappeared on the back of his hand.
“You’re wretched.” Tella lifted her free hand to playfully smack him with her book.
He caught her wrist before she could, and then he took her other hand and trapped them both behind her. They’d finally reached the porch of his cottage, and in one quick move he spun her around and pressed her back to the door. “I think you like me because I’m terrible.”
“No.” Tella wiggled against him, but he didn’t budge. “I’ve decided I like nice boys, like Caspar.”
“Lucky for me he doesn’t like girls that way. And I can also be nice. But I think you like it when I’m not.”
He freed her wrist and wrapped his hands around her hips. Tella’s heart raced as his fingers spread out, claiming her as he drew her closer.
Maybe one more kiss wouldn’t hurt.
Waves crashed against the nearby coast, filling the air with salt and damp, while Legend continued leaning—
The door behind her opened wide.
Tella stumbled backward, and she might have fallen if not for Legend’s arms tightening around her.
“Sorry about that.” Julian ran a hand through his hair, looking mildly embarrassed, though she sensed he actually wasn’t. There was something hard in his eyes that wasn’t normally there. And was it Tella’s imagination, or was he refusing to look at her?
He’d promised Legend he’d stay away from the Menagerie, where Scarlett was being kept, but knowing Julian, he was finding ways to meet with Jovan, who was supposed to be watching her sister.
“Is Scarlett all right?” Tella asked.
Julian finally looked at her, and he even managed to smile. But Tella couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. “I just need to talk to my brother.”
Legend’s arms slowly left her waist. “I’ll find you when we’re done,” he whispered.
Tella stepped inside the house and shut the door behind her. But she couldn’t bring herself to go up the curving wooden staircase to her bedroom just yet. If Julian was lying and Scarlett wasn’t all right—if she’d been hurt trying to get Gavriel’s blood, or if she wasn’t able to get it at all—Tella didn’t want to be protected from the information.
She stood close to the door, hands pressed against the warm wood, but there was only silence, save for the ocean waves. Wondering if the brothers were giving her a chance to walk out of earshot, she took a few noisy steps from the door and quickly tiptoed back in time to hear Julian say, “What are you doing with Tella?”
She jolted at the sound of her name, her alarm taking a new direction as she moved closer and peered through the door’s spy-hole.
Legend’s response was too low for her to hear, but she could see his expression. His dark brows slashed down and the look in his eyes shuttered.
“I know you don’t love her,” Julian said.
Tella staggered back a step. She already knew Legend didn’t love her, but the way Julian said the words made it sound so much worse. It didn’t matter that his voice was soft. The words were like a period at the end of a sentence, small but absolute in their power.
“If you care about her at all, then you should let her go rather than try to change her.”
Silence.
Tella dared to look through the spy-hole once more. The sun was almost set. Night was taking over the sky as Legend looked down on his brother with something like an accusation. “That’s her choice to make, not yours. Although you didn’t object when I told you that a blood oath could make you ageless.”
“And I hate myself for it sometimes.” Julian’s voice turned harsh. “I hate not just watching you lose yourself piece by piece, but benefitting from it. Then I saw you with Tella. I thought, maybe after you saved her from the deck, you would change.”
Tella held her breath, but nothing about Legend changed.
He looked like the Legend who’d left her on those steps in front of the Temple of the Stars—closed off and cold and utterly unreachable. “If I’d changed, I’d be dead.”
“You don’t know that,” Julian argued. “Maybe you would have just done things differently. You’re careless with your life. You take chances because you know you can’t die. That’s fine if that’s how you want to live, but don’t be careless with her life.” He looked up at his brother, brown hair sheltering eyes that appeared to be waging a battle between abandon and hope. “Do you remember what the game was like when it first began?”
“I try not to.”
“You should, it was fun.”
“It was barely a traveling carnival,” Legend mumbled.
Julian smiled, as if hope had just won. “It was. But it still inspired people to dream and believe in magic. It made me believe in magic.”
Legend eyed his brother as if he’d lost his mind. “You know magic is real.”
“Just because something is real doesn’t mean you believe in it. The Fates are real, b
ut I don’t put my faith in them. I used to put my faith in you, and I want to do it again. I know you can be better than this.”
Legend laughed, but it sounded so far from humorous that it made Tella sad, not just for Legend but for all of them. “When did you become such an idealist?”
“When I met a girl who loved her sister so much she was able to wish her back to life. You might possess magic, but love like that is real power.”
“And yet all the love in the world wouldn’t have brought Tella back without my magic.”
“She never would have died without your magic, either.” Julian’s smile disappeared. “Tella would have found another way. She didn’t and doesn’t need you to save her. She needs to save you.”
42
Scarlett
Scarlett stared in the mirror that rested above her marble-pink vanity and tried not to cry at what she saw. Tella wouldn’t have cried. Tella would have willed her pain into power and used it to find a way to fix everything—no matter the cost.
Scarlett could do that, too. She could do it for her sister, for Julian, for everyone in the empire, and for herself. Even if it felt impossible at the moment.
At least her sister and Julian couldn’t see her right now.
Scarlett continued to stare at her new reflection in the mirror, as her thoughts took her back to the night before, after she’d delivered her last note to Tella and Julian, when everything had gone so awry.
Once a day, since Scarlett had first arrived in the Menagerie, the Lady Prisoner’s purple eyes turned milky-white, letting Scarlett know she was glimpsing a fragment of the future as she told Scarlett, The only way to defeat the Fallen Star is to become what he wants most. But all the Fallen Star wanted from Scarlett was for her to conquer her powers, and control the emotions of others. And her original plan had been to do just that—to cultivate her powers to change his feelings and make him love her, so that he would become mortal.
But over the last couple of days the Fallen Star had made it clear that if Scarlett mastered her abilities, it would be the catalyst that would turn her into an immortal Fate.
He’d told her this to encourage her to conquer her powers. But Scarlett knew that once she was an immortal, she would no longer be able to love. Love was such a fundamental part of what drove her, she didn’t even know who she’d be without love. What if it made her like her father, who only wanted power?
So, despite Anissa’s warning, Scarlett had planned to get the blood that Tella and Julian needed for their Fated book.
* * *
“Are you certain you want to go through with this?” asked the Lady Prisoner. “I can’t lie, so if I make a threat, I have to be willing to follow through. And if he catches you, your magical key won’t get you out of one of his cages.”
“I know,” Scarlett said. “But if this works, neither of us will have to worry about being caged at all.” Which was one of the reasons she’d chosen to trust the Fate. Scarlett didn’t believe Anissa’s concern for her was genuine, but she did believe that Anissa wanted out of her cage. “I think this will work, but if you’re having second thoughts—”
“Gavriel and I have had skirmishes like this for decades.” The Lady Prisoner hopped off her perch to move closer to Scarlett. “I can handle whatever he throws my way.”
“So can I,” Scarlett said, feigning confidence she didn’t feel as she dropped the wineglass from her hand, shattering it against the marble floor. Sharp shards of glass landed around her feet while garnet wine spread out, staining the hem of Scarlett’s pink dress as the Lady Prisoner reached through her bars and picked up the largest glass fragment.
A moment later Scarlett cried out, loud enough to alert the guard outside her door. He clattered in an instant later. One look at Scarlett, forced against Anissa’s cage, as Anissa reached through the bars to press a shard of glass against Scarlett’s neck, and a moldy green cloud of fear formed around the guard as he reached for his sword.
“I wouldn’t do that, unless you want me to kill her.” The Lady Prisoner tilted her spike of broken glass to the most defenseless part of Scarlett’s throat.
“Now,” she went on conversationally. “Fetch Gavriel. Tell him what you’ve seen and that if he doesn’t come here right now, I’ll slit his daughter’s throat.”
The guard immediately did as he was told. Like Scarlett, he knew the Lady Prisoner couldn’t lie.
“I hope this works,” the Fate whispered once he left. “I really wouldn’t enjoy killing you.”
“I don’t particularly want to die,” Scarlett said, hoping she hadn’t overestimated her value to the Fallen Star. Scarlett knew that he didn’t care for her, and he certainly didn’t love her. But based on the amount of time he spent each day working with her to conquer her powers, she knew that he very much cared about her abilities and what she could do for him. And yet her palms began to sweat as he stepped inside.
Scarlett didn’t know, and didn’t want to know, what the Fallen Star had been doing, but there was blood spatter on his bone-white shirt and fury in his eyes. The room grew hotter as it filled with the violent red sparks surrounding him.
“Use your fire on me and I’ll kill her,” the Lady Prisoner called from behind her bars. “If you want her, come get her yourself.”
Scarlett didn’t have to pretend to tremble at the words. Because of the Lady Prisoner’s inability to lie, if the Fallen Star did use his flames, then she would be compelled to follow through with her threats. But both Scarlett and the Lady Prisoner had agreed on the risk. If the Fallen Star used his fire, then he would defeat Anissa before she was able to stab him with the broken glass and collect the blood that Scarlett needed.
Gavriel’s sparks disappeared and he crossed the room faster than Scarlett could blink.
She stumbled to the side as the Lady Prisoner shoved her out of the way and sliced the Fallen Star’s throat with her glass.
The cut was bloody and perfect.
Too perfect. But Scarlett wouldn’t realize that until later.
She ran to the Fallen Star as he dropped to his knees and pressed her handkerchief against his bleeding throat to collect his spilling blood as he closed his eyes and died.
It was the ugliest thing Scarlett had ever done. Was this what it was to be a Fate? It lasted less than a minute, but it felt like an eternity before his golden eyes closed and his body went limp. Scarlett couldn’t stop her legs or her hands from shaking. She knew they hadn’t killed him forever, though he deserved it. He’d killed her mother and countless others. Still, it felt wrong.
And Scarlett was already imagining what the Fallen Star would do in his fury when he did come back to life. She needed to move quickly.
She dripped blood across the marble floors as she ran to the bathing room with the bloodied cloth to squeeze the Fallen Star’s blood into a vial. Why, why hadn’t she thought to hide the vial somewhere on her person to have right at his throat?
Drip. Drip.
It was taking too long to fill the vial.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“What are you doing with that, auhtara?”
Scarlett’s eyes shot up to the bathing room mirror, her trembling limbs turning to liquid. The Fallen Star stood behind her like a bronze statue that had been sliced open. His skin was pale as the dead and his neck was still bloody, but he was very much alive. Had he been pretending? Or did he just recover that fast?
He knocked the vial to the ground, shattering the glass, and wrapped a hand around her throat, choking off her air. “Disappointed I’m not dead?”
“Please,” Scarlett rasped. “I—I only took the blood because I thought if I drank it then maybe it would help me finally conquer my magic.”
“Then you should have just asked. I would have given it to you, auhtara. But now I have to give you something else instead.” His fingers squeezed her throat again and her world went dark.
* * *
When Scarlett woke later on, her head felt too heavy to mo
ve, and there was something tight around her neck, grating against her skin.
“The cage will probably take a while to get used to.” The Fallen Star’s voice held a hint of diversion.
Scarlett’s eyes flashed open to a world of red. There were vertical rows of ruby-red beads fitted around her head—he’d imprisoned her in a cage. A sob shook her chest. She tried to rip it off; her fingers tore at the gems, tried to bend their bars and rip them off, but they were ineffectual, and soon she was weeping too hard to do anything else.
The Fallen Star reached in between the ruby bars to stroke Scarlett’s damp cheek. “Don’t betray me again. My punishment won’t be so kind next time.”
* * *
The memory faded as Scarlett looked in her vanity mirror. The ruby cage encasing her head looked like the bloody cousin to the cage worn by the Maiden Death. But rather than looking powerful like that Fate always did in Decks of Destiny, Scarlett thought that she looked entirely powerless. She hadn’t been able to sleep wearing it, so there were deep circles beneath her eyes, and since her hair had been down when he’d put it on, strands of her dark hair stuck to her throat, held in place by the unmoving collar of the cage.
Anissa had tried to tell her it was pretty, and that it matched her scarlet earrings. They’d once been a treasured gift from her mother. Your father gave these to me, she said, because scarlet was my favorite color. They used to make Scarlett think that Marcello Dragna, the father who’d raised her, had once been a better man. But, Scarlett realized, her mother must have been referring to the Fallen Star.
Scarlett tried not to think about her mother. But for once, she wished she could go back in time to talk to her and ask her what to do.
Finale Page 23