فصل 12

12

Donatella

Tella wished that time would stop. For years she’d divided her life into two periods: When Her Mother Had Been There and After Her Mother Had Left. Now her mother was dead. But Tella didn’t want to use this moment as a measure of time. She didn’t want time to move forward at all. She wanted time to freeze, like her unmoving limbs, but even they were regaining echoes of feeling.

She couldn’t walk, but she managed to crawl across the cavern’s granite floor to her mother’s body. But that’s all it was, a body. When Paloma had been in her enchanted sleep, her face had still possessed color, her chest had moved up and down. Tella had once thought she was still as a corpse, but she wasn’t—until now.

“At least he stabbed her instead of burning her to death with his powers,” Jacks said. “Fire’s the most painful way to die.” “That’s not helping,” Tella muttered.

“Well, I’m not really the comforting sort.” Jacks’s cool arms slipped beneath Tella’s back as he picked her up from the ground.

“Put me down,” Tella said. Jacks was a Fate, and the last thing she wanted was help from someone like him.

Jacks huffed a sigh. “If I leave you here, you’ll die like your mother when Gavriel comes back to life. Or another Fate will just find you.” “Why do you care?”

“I don’t.” Jacks flashed his dimples, narrow lips parting into a sharp smile that turned him into the beautifully cunning Prince of Hearts that she’d been fascinated with as a child. “I just prefer torturing you myself.” “Too late,” Tella mumbled, and she probably should have tried to fight him more.

Jacks hadn’t bothered her for the last sixty-odd days, and supposedly she was his true love—the one person immune to his fatal kiss—but he was still a Fate. A murderous one. He’d been heir to the throne before Legend, and according to rumors he’d killed seventeen people to take that place. He’d even threatened to kill Tella. He was viperous and fatal. Yet Tella couldn’t muster the appropriate fear. She couldn’t feel anything other than numb.

Her mother’s death didn’t even make sense. Gavriel hadn’t hurt her until after she’d wounded him. He might not have killed her if she hadn’t stabbed him. Why would she risk it, when he would only come back to life?

“Who is Gavriel?” Tella choked out. “Which Fate is he?”

Jacks’s cold fingers tensed against her back. “I’m only telling you this because I like him even less than I like you. Gavriel is the Fallen Star.” The same Fate who, according to Legend’s witch, had created all the Fates. A venomous surge of rage briefly broke through Tella’s shock. If Legend really did want to kill the Fallen Star to defeat the other Fates, he’d have to get in line.

“I’ll find a way to destroy him,” Tella vowed.

“Not in this condition,” Jacks muttered as he carried her up a set of steps.

She didn’t want to see the sky as she and Jacks finally emerged outside. It should have been black. But it was still impossibly blue, rippling with threads of indigo. Tella usually loved it when the sun stayed out so late, when it was night and the world remained light, but now it just felt wrong. The day should have ended. The sun should have fled and turned the world dark the moment her mother had died.

Tella’s throat went tight. She closed her eyes, attempting to shut out the light, but that only made it worse. Every time her eyes closed, all she could see was the Fallen Star as he drove a knife into her mother.

A sob began to build inside her. She was only dimly aware of her surroundings as Jacks carried her down a brick street. She didn’t know where he lived now that he was no longer heir to the Meridian Empire and had been kicked out of Idyllwild Castle. She’d assumed he resided in the Spice Quarter, inside a crooked building with a coven of thieves, or in an underground tomb with a den of gangsters.

But it didn’t smell as if he was taking her to the Spice Quarter. There were no pungent cigars. No streams of spilled liquor or urine stained the ground. Jacks had brought her to the clean pathways of University Circle, a world of leather-bound books, pressed robes, and pristine hedges, where ambitious scholars grew like weeds.

His pace turned leisurely as he approached a four-story house made of clay-red bricks and onyx columns. Tella might have asked what they were doing here, or if this was where he lived. But all she could do was let her tears fall.

It couldn’t even be called crying. Crying gave the impression of participation, action. But Tella was done acting. She could barely keep breathing.

“I’d try to say something comforting, but last time you didn’t appreciate it,” Jacks murmured. But despite his words, he held her closer to his cool chest as he reached a pair of polished doors.

Maybe he really did plan to torture her. Or maybe he knew that even though her paralysis was almost gone, Tella wouldn’t have moved if he’d left her. Maybe he knew she’d have lain on the steps leading up to his house even after the sun finally fell and the night turned cold enough to make her numb once again. Because now that she had all her feeling back, it hurt. Everywhere. Her emotions were bruised and bleeding. And for a moment she hoped that they’d bleed out. Then maybe it wouldn’t feel so impossibly painful, or so hard to breathe and think and feel anything but agony.

The door before them swung open. They stepped inside and the wretched blue sky was replaced by a ceiling covered in gold chandeliers that dangled lights over walls papered with black and red symbols from playing cards. It was a den of gambling, full of dealers who smiled like tigers and players eager as cubs.

People were laughing and clapping and rolling dice on tables with whoops and hollers, and all of it had never sounded so wrong. It was a blur of gaming chips, and fizzing drinks, discarded cravats and clacking wheels of misfortune and chance. When someone won, confetti made of diamonds and hearts and clubs and spades rained down on everyone. The room was alive in a way her mother was not.

If anyone thought it odd that Jacks was carrying a hysterical girl, no one remarked on it. Or maybe Tella just didn’t notice. The drawn windows might have managed to block out the sun, but all the noise and chaos of Jacks’s gaming parlor only intensified the piercing emptiness inside of her.

Jacks’s arms tightened around her as he wove through the crowd. Multiple people approached him. “Can’t you see my hands are full?” he drawled, or simply just ignored them.

A few steps later and they were on the stairs. The carpets went from plush to threadbare the higher they climbed. Jacks had redecorated the ground floor for his guests, but left the upper levels unchanged. Not that Tella saw much of them. Her eyes mostly stayed on the ground and Jacks’s scuffed boots until he carried her through another door.

It looked like a study. There was an empty fireplace with a decorative amber rug marred by several scorch marks in front of it, a worn whiskey-brown leather couch, and a scratched desk with a lone plant underneath a glass dome. Jacks continued to cradle her as he sat slowly on the deep couch.

Tella could have pulled away. It was wrong to let him touch her—he was the same type of creature that had killed her mother in front of her. And yet she feared that Jacks’s deadly arms were the only things still holding her together. She didn’t want his comfort, but she desperately needed comfort.

Jacks’s shirt had quickly dampened against Tella’s cheek, but rather than push her away, he held her closer. He rubbed circles around her back, while his other cold hand wove through her curls, carefully untangling them with gentle fingers.

“Why are you helping me?” Tella finally managed. Unlike Legend, who either hid his feelings or pretended to have them when he didn’t, Jacks never pretended to care. When he had an agenda, he just made threats to get what he wanted.

“You’re not fun when you’re this pathetic. I can’t torment you if you’re already miserable.” His hand left her hair to press against her cheek and brush several tears away. The touch was as soft as the last kiss her mother had pressed to that very same cheek, and Tella lost what she’d been able to keep together.

No longer were tears just falling from her eyes. She was crying harder than she ever had in her life, sobbing with so much force she felt as if she might break. It was too much emotion to hold on to and too much to release.

“It was all for nothing,” Tella moaned. “Everything I did to save her only worked to destroy her. I should have never tried to change the future I’d seen in the Aracle. The first time I saw her, the card only showed her in a prison. If I hadn’t tried to alter that future, she’d still be alive.” “Or maybe you’d be dead too,” Jacks said. “You don’t know how things could have turned out differently.” “But they could have been different.” Tella pictured all the other ways her mother’s story could have ended. If Tella had listened to her mother as a child and never played with her cursed Deck of Destiny, maybe her mother never would have left the girls on Trisda in the first place. Or if Legend had just taken the deck, like Tella had asked, and then destroyed it before any more of the Fates escaped, her mother would be alive now.

Tella had made so many mistakes. If only she could go back and make one right. If she could just rechart her path so it led somewhere else.

That was it.

A spark of hope lit up inside her.

Tella could travel back in time and re-create the entire day. Now that all the Fates were awake, there was a way to do it. Then at least one good thing could come from their return.

Tella looked up at Jacks, seeing him for the first time since he’d carried her away. His untamed locks of golden hair made him look more like a lost boy than a murderous Fate; his unearthly eyes were the silver-blue of young girls’ dreams; and his lips were so sharp she imagined he could cut with a kiss. She couldn’t trust him, but to do this, she would need him.

“In Decks of Destiny, there was a Fate that could move through space and time—the Assassin. What if he could help undo this?” “I know you’re grieving,” Jacks said, “but that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Traveling through time is always a mistake.” “So is trusting you. But here I am, and you haven’t hurt me yet.”

“Yet is the key word in that sentence.” He ran a cool finger under her chin. “Stay long enough and I guarantee that will change.” Tella sat up straight. “Tell me where the Assassin is and I’ll leave right now.”

“Even if I knew where he was I wouldn’t tell you, Donatella. Contacting the Assassin is not a good idea, and not just because of his nickname. Before the Fates were trapped in the deck, the Fallen Star, the Undead Queen, and the Murdered King all used the Assassin to travel through space and time, and all the different timelines made him insane. He’s not always aware of when he is, and he’ll disappear for long stretches. People who’ve convinced him to take them back in time don’t always return. As I said, worst idea.” “Nothing could be worse than this! Please, Jacks.” Tella grabbed his damp shirt with her fists, pulling his cruel face even closer. “Help me find him. I’m begging you. It hurts so much. Too much. Everything is painful. Each time I close my eyes I see him murdering her. Every time it’s quiet I hear the awful click-clack of that wheel. And I can’t shut it off!” Jacks’s hand went still against her back. “What if I could take away the pain and the sadness?”

“How?” she asked.

“It’s one of my abilities.” He wiped another trail of tears from her cheeks.

A warning flare cut through some of Tella’s grief. Myth had it that the Prince of Hearts had the ability to control emotions. But, since Jacks had not been in the Deck of Destiny when Legend had freed the other Fates, he should have still been at half power. “I thought you didn’t have your full powers back.” “I don’t,” he bit out. “I still can’t control emotions the way I used to, or give someone feelings that they don’t have. But I can temporarily remove unwanted feelings. I can take away your pain for tonight.” His icy fingers lingered on her cheek, a numbing promise and a warning all at once. “I won’t be permanently erasing it, my love. You’ll still experience it. But when your sorrow returns tomorrow, it won’t be as powerful as it is now.” His other hand stroked up and down her back again until it was easier for her to breathe. Too easy. She wondered if he was using his powers to calm her. But Tella couldn’t bring herself to care as much as she should have. The heartache was too overwhelming. She knew that the instant Jacks let her go, her lungs would tighten once more, her tears would return to sobs, and even if she didn’t close her eyes, she’d see her mother dying over and over and over. A hundred deaths in the span of one heartbeat. Too many heartbeats and she might die, too.

“Do it,” Tella said. A part of her knew how desperately wrong it was to take comfort from a Fate. But even if it was a mistake, it couldn’t be as bad as this. “Take the sadness and the pain—just take everything that hurts.”