فصل 15

15

Death visited Tella while she slept. The tips of his claws stroked the back of her neck, while his shadow followed her into pristine dreams, poisoning all the colors until everything tasted of dust and withered to ash.

Soon you will be mine once more.

The rasp of Death’s rotting voice woke Tella with a start. She shot up in bed, her tongue heavy, wet hair clinging to her scalp. Yet her heart didn’t pound. If anything, it felt as though it worked a touch more slowly than it had the night before.

Beat … beat … beat.

Nothing.

Beat … beat … beat.

Nothing.

Beat … beat … beat.

Nothing.

Damn Jacks and his cursed lips.

Tella clutched her damp sheets with one hand and the card imprisoning her mother with the other. She’d bent its edges during her nightmarish sleep, wrinkling the corner right above her mother’s dark head. Clearly it was not indestructible like the Aracle. Tella would have to be more protective of it.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to her mother. She didn’t want to part with the card, but it felt a little too risky to keep on her person.

Tella shuffled to the tiny chest where she stored the Aracle and slipped the card with her captive mother inside. Then she pulled out the Aracle.

So much had happened, Tella needed to see if the new deal she’d made had changed her mother’s future yet.

The Aracle felt hotter than usual. But the future it showed had not shifted. The vision of her mother’s empty eyes stared back at Tella, as dead as they’d been the last time.

But her mother wasn’t dead yet. For now she was only trapped. Tella refused to be discouraged. She would win Caraval, and she would fix this. “No matter what it costs.” As soon as the words left Tella’s lips the Aracle burned the tips of her fingers. Magic. Tella felt it, heating her entire hand as the Aracle’s image flickered and shifted from Paloma lying dead, to Scarlett and Tella embracing their mother with the same abandon they had as little girls.

It looked so real, Tella could almost feel her mother’s arms, strong and soft and warm. A soft sob bubbled up in Tella’s throat.

Then, almost as quickly as it appeared, the image returned to her mother’s corpse.

“No!” Tella screamed.

The vision shifted once more, returning to Scarlett and Tella reuniting with their mother.

“Miss Dragna!” A guard knocked heavily on her door. “Is everything all right in there?” “Yes,” Tella said distractedly as the card continued to shift. Tella had never seen it do anything like this before. 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.

Tella put the Aracle back inside the trunk and, with renewed resolve, she pulled out the first clue.

THE OTHER CLUES YOU’LL NEED ARE HIDDEN

THROUGHOUT THE CITY;

TO POSSESS THE SECOND ONE,

VENTURE SOMEWHERE PRETTY.

THIS REGION OF VALENDA WAS ONCE SO TRAGIC,

BUT NOW IT PROMISES FAITH AND MAGIC.

During the last Caraval, Scarlett had received one card with hints about all five clues at the start of the game, but it seemed this game would follow another pattern. According to this clue, and what Dante had said in the carriage, a different district of the city would hide a new clue each night. Tella would need to find them all to win, and then she would come face-to-face with Legend.

Unfortunately, since Caraval was only played at night, Tella could not begin to search until that evening. And it seemed Jacks already had plans for her during the day.

At the end of her bed rested a familiar box. It looked exactly like the one Jacks had sent the day before, only this time it was wrapped with a golden bow instead of a white one.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE ENGAGED TO THE NEXT EMPEROR, YOU’LL NEED TO DRESS LIKE IT.

Tucked inside with the message was a small card with a thorny purple border.

Minerva’s ModernWear

Clothing the progressive half of Valenda,since before the Elantine Dynasty—and we’ll be dressing them after as well.

By appointment only.

On the back of the card someone had scrawled the words Satine District, along with a time, which had been crossed out and rewritten: The order was almost laughable, given how little Jacks seemed to care about his own appearance. But Tella imagined Jacks’s directive to appear wasn’t so much about appearance as it was about possession: he wanted to make it clear that she now belonged to him.

Demon was too appealing a word for him.

If this engagement had been real, this note alone would have convinced Tella to break it off. But that wasn’t currently an option.

Inside the box, Tella found a pair of elbow-length nude gloves with blue-pearl buttons. She tossed them to the side and pulled out the matching dress beneath. She hated how lovely it was. How the neckline was off the shoulders—a style her father never let her wear. He’d have turned absolutely purple at the sight of this dress. Covered in sapphire-blue lace that clung to a nude shell, the gown was delicate and feminine and a little scandalous all at once.

Tella still wanted to ignore the appointment and throw the dress aside along with the gloves; she didn’t like the idea of Jacks dressing her up like his doll. But her trunks still hadn’t arrived. And Jacks had made it clear that to save her mother and her life Tella not only needed to win the game, she needed to be a convincing fiancée.

Beat … beat … beat.

Nothing.

Beat … beat … beat.

Nothing.

Beat … beat … beat.

Nothing.

Her heart wasn’t slower than when she’d woken up, but it wasn’t faster, either. She tried to eat a rushed breakfast and then hurry to the carriage house, but her everything was slightly sluggish.

It took more effort than it should have to keep alert as her coach landed. Perhaps that’s why Tella found herself standing on a street teeming with bloated shadows, searching for Minerva’s ModernWear.

Though Tella had yet to explore the city, she knew all about the different regions of Valenda, the illicit Spice Quarter, the brazen Temple District, the imperious University Circle, and the elegant Satine District. The last was where Tella was supposed to have been. One of the more glamorous parts of the city, the Satine District was said to be a labyrinth of glistening dress shops, hat shops, and sweet shops, all soaked in petal-fresh colors.

But, either Tella had her facts wrong or she was in the incorrect place. The shops around her were as dark as an unkindness of ravens, packed between alleys that smelled of unmentionable things, and full of patrons who were far from the genteel sort she’d expected. Clad in her delicate gown of sapphire-blue lace, Tella looked like a character who had wandered into the wrong story.

As she searched for Minerva’s ModernWear, Tella observed lots of fantastically gaudy jackets, overly amorous couples leaning against lampposts, women smoking pungent cigars, and lots of exposed corsets in harsh hues—burnt oranges, overripe yellows, bruised blues, and ruddy reds.

Every other post had painted signs tacked to it. Some had the word Wanted printed above a picture. Others said Missing Person. A few surprisingly decorative ones announced the advent of Elantine’s Day, though they appeared as out of place as she must have.

Tella resisted the urge to cross her arms over her chest and reveal her discomfort as she passed a series of poisonous shops.

Mandrake’s Medicines—To Kill Nasty Colds, Maladies & More

Fausto’s: For all your Fennel, Feverfew, and Foxglove Needs!

Hemlock & Hawthorn’s Herbery

She was certainly not in the right district. This looked—and smelled—more liked Valenda’s infamous Spice Quarter, where people traveled when they wished to purchase contacts for assassins, untraceable poisons, people—or just certain body parts. It was also a home for gambling pits, drug dens, and brothels. None of which were legal in Valenda, so they all existed belowground in primeval passages, accessible only through passwords and hidden doors from the exotic spice shops above.

“Not sure a pretty thing like you should be on these streets alone, even in daylight.” Tella took a nervous step back, though the woman who addressed her looked too old to cause any harm.

The crone had to be at least five times Tella’s age, with wrinkled hands stained with ink, and gleaming white hair that nearly reached the ground she swept. Back and forth, the old woman wiped all the dirt and grime away from the front steps of Elantine’s Most Wanted.

Tella loosed an uneven breath. The Spice Quarter might have been a stranger to her, but this ramshackle store called to her like an old friend. It was the same place where she’d sent all her letters to Jacks.

Tella had never actually been certain if it was a genuine business or merely an address people used to ferry illicit requests and letters. But clearly it was very real. She’d seen Wanted posters for criminals tacked throughout the quarter, and apparently they’d all come from here.

Tella drew nearer, to better look inside. Parchment posters flapped, flickering black-and-white images, with some of the most interesting criminals she had ever seen. Alluring and disturbing, she wondered if the portraits were bewitched, for they tempted her to climb the steps and come all the way inside, to take a closer peek, the same way her mother’s Deck of Destiny had tempted her to play with it all those years ago.

Of course that had led her nowhere good.

“Are you lost?” asked the old woman. “This isn’t a district where you want that to happen.” In the distance, bells began to chime. If Tella counted she imagined there’d be ten in total. She was definitely late for her appointment now. Maybe she could come back to explore the shop later.

“I’m searching for Minerva’s ModernWear,” she said.

The woman’s gaze turned shrewd. “Not sure what you need in that place, but I think it’s just down that road.” She lifted her chin toward a sign down the block labeled Wrong Way.

“Watch yourself,” the woman called. “Minerva’s isn’t—”

But Tella didn’t catch the rest of the warning as she disappeared down the street. It didn’t take long for her stomach to start sweating, and her heart to labor a little more with its beats. But she kept jogging, until she reached a sunlit sidewalk lined in shops as pretty as freshly wrapped packages. Minerva’s ModernWear rested on the corner. Closed lilac drapes sheltered the windows and heavy plum awnings shaded the door like sleepy bows.

Scarlett would have hated it, given her distaste for the color purple.

Tella felt a stab of guilt then that she’d left the palace without checking in on her sister, especially after what Scarlett had learned about Armando last night. But Scarlett had also probably heard of Tella’s engagement. The moment Scarlett spoke with Tella, she’d know for certain it was a hoax, and very likely try to do something heroic about it that would place her in all sorts of danger that Tella could not allow.

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.

“Pardon me.” Tella struggled to catch her breath as she reached the front of Minerva’s, where a barrel of a man with slicked-back hair and a plum suit the same hue as the shop guarded the door as if he were an extension of it. “My name’s Donatella Dragna.” “A little early, aren’t you?” said the man.

Tella was fairly certain he had it backward and that she was rather late. The first of many peculiar observations. The second was the unnecessary number of locks the man unlatched before opening the dark purple door and letting her inside.