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Whatever you’ve heard about Caraval, it doesn’t compare to the reality. It’s more than just a game or a performance. It’s the closest you’ll ever find to magic in this world.
Magic like this was only supposed to live in stories, but this dress was very real, leaving Scarlett unsure what to think. The child inside her loved it; the grown-up Scarlett wasn’t sure she felt quite comfortable in it—whether it was magical or not.
A world built of make-believe. So while we want you to get swept away, be careful of being swept too far away. Dreams that come true can be beautiful, but they can also turn into nightmares when people won’t wake up.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Scarlett said. “It doesn’t work on me.” “That’s why it’s so fun.”
“It’s—” Words failed her. Scarlett wanted to say it was beautiful or marvelous. But those sentiments seemed suddenly too common for such an uncommon sight.
Tella liked the taste of trouble. But it wasn’t the wildness that hurt Scarlett. Tella was the most important person in the world to Scarlett, but it always broke Scarlett to know her sister did not feel the same way.
Scarlett and Julian were closer to the kissing tent now. Perfume wafted from it. It smelled like the middle of the night, making Scarlett think of soft lips and strong hands, dark stubble brushing her cheek that reminded her entirely too much of Julian.
The future knows what things we desire, unless there is something greater in our path that chases us away.”
Every person has the power to change their fate if they are brave enough to fight for what they desire more than anything.”
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.
Not quite sure how far she’d already fallen, she imagined loving him would feel like falling in love with darkness, frightening and consuming yet utterly beautiful when the stars came out.
Tella loved danger the same way candlewicks loved to burn. It never seemed to scare her that some of the things she lusted for might consume her like a flame.
With Julian it wasn’t about protection—she just wanted to be with him. The boy who’d saved her from drowning in more ways than one.
But even if he kept her safe from this point on and never lifted a finger against her, no universe existed where Count Nicolas d’Arcy would ever make Scarlett happy. Not when the only person she wanted to be with was Julian.
“I don’t care if you lied. If you don’t die, I’ll forgive you for everything.” Julian’s eyes shut, as if he didn’t hear her. “Julian, please keep fighting. You’ve been fighting me this whole game, don’t stop now.”
It tasted like the moment before night gives birth to morning; it was the end of one thing and the beginning of something else all wrapped up together. Julian kissed her as if he’d never touched her lips before, sealing the promise he’d just made as he pulled her against his chest, wrapping long fingers in the ribbons of her gown.
Scarlett could spend her afternoons daydreaming about traveling shows like Caraval, but Tella liked to have real adventures.
During the party to celebrate the end of Caraval, she had danced until her slippers were stained with grass and sipped flutes of bubbly wine until she’d practically floated. But now she was facedown on the cold, hard forest floor.
Tella had kissed enough young men to know that anything said by a boy right before or directly after she kissed him could not be believed at all.
Yet, as the pair stood there with their arms wrapped around each other, and their heads leaning closer together, they looked like two halves of the same heart.
The myths claimed the Prince of Hearts’s kisses had been worth dying for, and Tella had often wondered how such a deadly kiss would feel. But as she’d grown, and kissed enough boys to realize that no kiss could be worth dying for, Tella started to suspect the stories were merely fables to illustrate the dangers of falling in love.
Legend had fooled her, exactly like he’d fooled everyone else. It had never occurred to Tella that an actor might have been playing the role of her sister’s fiancé. Legend truly did deserve the name he’d given himself.
This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals were as ephemeral as feelings, eventually they would wilt and die, leaving nothing but the thorns.
‘Every good story needs a villain.’ ‘But the best villains are the ones you secretly like, and my nana always said Legend was the villain in Caraval.’
‘Not even Legend could make me dress like a unicorn.’ ‘But unicorns are magical, and then all the ladies would want to pet you.’
‘The key to a charade like this is to forget it’s an act. Invite the lie to play until you become so comfortable with it that it feels like the truth. Don’t tell yourself we’re pretending to be engaged, tell yourself that I love you. That I want you more than anyone.’ He reeled her closer and ran a hand up the back of her neck, toying with the ribbon around her throat. ‘If you can convince yourself it’s true, you can convince anyone.’
He tasted like exquisite nightmares and stolen dreams, like the wings of fallen angels, and bottles of fresh moonlight.
It was the sort of kiss she could have lived in. The sort of kiss worth dying for. God’s teeth. A kiss worth dying for. Only one person in the history of the Empire had ever kissed like –
It transformed from death to delight, as if showing Tella that what happened next was all up to her, and whether she managed to win this game for Jacks.
Scarlett was Tella’s person – the one someone in the world whom Tella could always count on. Tella might not have believed in falling in love, but she had literally bet her life that Scarlett loved her. Tella would destroy the world before she allowed anything to happen to her sister.
People would drink each other’s blood to synchronize their heartbeats. So that even when they were parted they could sense if the other was safe or afraid by the pace of their hearts. That’s what I would want, someone who would give me a piece of himself rather than scraps of fabric.’
There were no kisses worth dying for. No souls worth merging with. There were many beautiful young men in the world, but Tella believed that none of them could be trusted with something as fragile, or valuable, as a heart – especially when her heart had been doomed by the Prince of Hearts to be broken long ago.
Jacks could not be Legend. But if he was, then Legend was a greater villain than Tella had ever imagined.
He leaned one jacketed elbow against a tarnished silver door, the color of disillusioned dreams and bad decisions. Or maybe he was the one who looked like a bad decision.
There was almost something more intimate about it than touching. When Dante looked in Tella’s eyes he wasn’t watching the rest of the world. He wasn’t looking out for himself. He was risking part of his person to focus solely on her.
And yet, she couldn’t completely dismiss the idea, because as much as it might hurt later on, and as foolish as it could make her in the end, a part of her wanted it to be true, wanted to believe that something inside of her burned bright enough to capture Legend’s uncapturable attention.
She’d known he’d only been following her as part of his role, and even if his interest had been real, she had no doubts he’d give up on her eventually. Everyone gave up on her, except for Scarlett – who couldn’t seem to stop caring about Tella.
If she were Scarlett, someone would have come to her rescue by now. Julian would have probably flown in on a hot-air balloon, and then sprouted wings to soar down and carry her away. Unfortunately Tella wasn’t the sort of girl people saved – she was the one they left behind. But she was also the sort they underestimated.
‘I shouldn’t have kissed him,’ she mumbled. ‘I don’t even know why I kissed him. I didn’t really care if he kicked me out of the palace for lying. I think I wanted to make you jealous.’ ‘It worked,’
‘I’m sure El will adore you.’ ‘Did you just refer to the empress as El?’ ‘“Elantine” is such a mouthful.’ ‘You call me Donatella.’ ‘I like the way it tastes.’
What if Jacks didn’t just want Legend in order to restore his own power? What if Jacks wanted Legend’s power so that he could break the curse on the cards and free all of the Fates? Maybe the real reason he wanted the throne was so the Fates could reign once again exactly as they had before.
Dante leaned against one of the pillars flanking the temple’s massive door, all bronzed flesh and brilliant tattoos – And, oh glory, he was shirtless. So very shirtless.
‘You can’t take apart my dress on these stairs.’ ‘Does that mean I can take it apart somewhere else?’
This was nothing like the drunken kiss they’d shared on the forest floor, a rough combination of lust and desire for temporary entertainment. This kiss felt like a confession, brutal and raw and honest in a way kisses rarely were.
In that moment, inside of that kiss, she wanted to know everything about him. She wanted him, and it no longer scared her.
Something like guilt prickled inside of Tella at the thought of allowing her mother to remain trapped in a card. But Paloma had treated Tella’s life as if it were a piece of collateral. Her mother was no better than Jacks or Legend, and Tella would be damned before she allowed any of them to use her like a pawn on a game board again.
‘Not everyone gets a true ending. There are two types of endings because most people give up at the part of the story where things are the worst, where the situation feels hopeless. But that’s when hope is needed most. Only those who persevere can find their true ending.’
Dante was Legend. Legend was Dante.
As long as they kissed, only she and Dante existed. Tella never wanted to open her eyes; as soon as she did, the world would shift. Dante would be gone and there would only be Legend.
If he was Legend, he wasn’t supposed to care. He wasn’t supposed to still gaze at her as if she’d just shattered his world with a kiss. He was supposed to laugh at her for being foolish enough to fall for him. He wasn’t supposed to lean in closer, as if he’d fallen for her, too. He was supposed to rip the cards from her hands and abandon her on the moonstone steps. He was supposed to break her heart. She wasn’t supposed to break his.
